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Values, Relationships and Engagement in Quaker Education: Student Perspectives on Inclusive School Cultures (Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education)
by Nigel NewtonThis book provides a unique critical perspective on the importance of values to school culture. Drawing on research in Quaker schools in England, and the perspectives of students, it challenges the idea that school evaluation should be primarily based on measurable outcomes and argues that values matter more to learning than is often acknowledged. Furthermore, the book provides important insights on how to research schools that claim to hold similar values, from multi-academy chains to other so-called faith schools. Throughout the text, the author underscores the importance of values to students’ dispositions, in order to engage with the learning opportunities their schools provide. He argues for seeing schools as places where equality, inclusiveness and mutual respect should be central, not only to help students understand our fragile, multicultural democracy, but also because these values open up the possibility of learners’ increased engagement with curriculum knowledge.
Values, Religion, and Culture in Adolescent Development
by Gisela Trommsdorff Xinyin ChenCultural values and religious beliefs play a substantial role in adolescent development. Developmental scientists have shown increasing interest in how culture and religion are involved in the processes through which adolescents adapt to environments. This volume constitutes a timely and unique addition to the literature on human development from a cultural-contextual perspective. Editors Gisela Trommsdorff and Xinyin Chen present systematic and in-depth discussions of theoretical perspectives, landmark studies, and strategies for further research in the field. The eminent contributors reflect diverse cultural perspectives, transcending the Western emphasis of many previous works. This volume will be of interest to scholars and professionals interested in basic developmental processes, adolescent social psychology, and the sociological and psychological dimensions of religion.
Values, Religions and Education in Changing Societies
by Karin Sporre Jan MannbergEducation is a societal matter and takes place in relation to societal changes. Today, in many countries, it has to grapple with diversity and differences brought about by migration and changes in gender relations. Questions of values, human rights and the role of religions are raised. In this book scholars from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Namibia and South Africa discuss the issues above. Similarities as well as differences are highlighted. The varied contributors engage in a North-South dialogue. Among the questions addressed are: Can the Scandinavian countries be understood as more religious than their up-to-date, seemingly secularist reputation has led us to believe? How do some European, Muslim, Christian and secular pupils understand the religious education they receive? Could a global citizenship education, with a gendered understanding as an integral part, be accomplished? 'Diversity' and 'social justice': what does it take to theoretically integrate these two crucial parameters in education, in South Africa, and in Sweden? The role of religious and values education under changing circumstances is explored through the diverse contributions, that also challenge the hegemony of a Western understanding of democracy, among other values. The purpose of this is to assess what could now constitute global educational common ground.
Values, Self and Society: Toward a Humanist Social Psychology
by Mahlon Brewster SmithIn a tough opening statement, M. Brewster Smith outlines his own life course and contrasts it with the agenda of social psychology in the present professional moment. "Today's journals, textbooks, and conferences represent a vigorous but narrow scientific specialty in psychology, the practitioners of which are more closely focused on agendas that are primarily and often only intelligible within the subdiscipline than was the case when I formed my identity as a psychologist." In contrast, Smith sees himself, and has long been seen by others, as a social psychologist in the tradition of Gordon Allport, Gardner and Lois Murphy, Kurt Lewin, and Muzafer Sherif. Smith's unique ability has been to contribute to the emergence of personality as a differentiated academic field and at the same time maintain strong interdisciplinary ties to a variety of fields ranging from sociology to philosophy. In recent years, such concerns have made the author a central figure in the development of Humanistic Psychology as a part of the American Psychological Association. Because of these wide ranging concerns, the major statements of Brewster Smith have appeared in diverse places. Here, brought into a unified and uniform frame of reference, one has his work on values and selfhood, humanistic psychology and the social sciences, and humanism and social issues brought together for the first time. The picture is of a major thinker who is at home in the details of psychology and in the broad areas of public interest and social policy. Brewster Smith discusses major issues in terms of the political processes involved in the public interest. These range from the issue of advocacy within social research to conceptualizing anew familiar issues within psychology. For the generalist interested in the broader meanings of social psychology to the specialist aiming to recapture the big issues with which the field was once identified, this is a must volume.
Valuing Care Work
by Helga Hallgrimsdottir Cecilia BenoitThere are many forms of paid and unpaid labour encompassed in health care systems, including home care for the elderly or disabled, community health services, and the care family members provide for loved ones. Valuing Care Work is an international comparative study that examines economic organizations as well as intimate settings to show how personal service work is shaped by broader welfare state developments.To trace the relationships between gender, labour, and equity in health care, the essays in this volume analyse the rules and practices that shape care work. The contributors highlight how national configurations of the welfare state shape the gendering of paid and unpaid intimate labour in a range of settings and discuss how the policies and practices associated with neoliberalism have focussed on efficiency and accountability to the detriment of other policy agendas, including those that might further increase dignity and equity for both recipients and providers of paid and unpaid health care.
Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family (The Family and Public Policy #5)
by Nancy FolbreNancy Folbre challenges the conventional economist's assumption that parents have children for the same reason that they acquire pets--primarily for the pleasure of their company. Children become the workers and taxpayers of the next generation, and "investments" in them offer a significant payback to other participants in the economy. Yet parents, especially mothers, pay most of the costs. The high price of childrearing pushes many families into poverty, often with adverse consequences for children themselves. Parents spend time as well as money on children. Yet most estimates of the "cost" of children ignore the value of this time. Folbre provides a startlingly high but entirely credible estimate of the value of parental time per child by asking what it would cost to purchase a comparable substitute for it. She also emphasizes the need for better accounting of public expenditure on children over the life cycle and describes the need to rethink the very structure and logic of the welfare state. A new institutional structure could promote more cooperative, sustainable, and efficient commitments to the next generation.
Valuing Customer Engagement: Strategies to Measure and Maximize Profitability (Palgrave Executive Essentials)
by V. KumarIn recent years, the concept of customer engagement has evolved as a powerful tool in the managerial toolkit of firms to incorporate a profitable approach to customer management. There is a pressing need for an authoritative book that communicates the fundamentals of profitable customer engagement by proposing a customer engagement value framework. This book, Valuing Customer Engagement, is first of its kind on customer engagement that outlines the theory and methods of engaging customers profitably in business-to-consumer and business-to-business settings.Written by world-renowned scholar and thought leader V. Kumar, this seminal work book explains the definitions of the metrics within the CEV framework and analyzes ways to measure and maximize these metrics that can help in engaging customers profitably. Dr. Kumar also reveals the interrelationships between these metrics, i.e. how each metric impacts the other, with examples from all over the world.This updated edition introduces of Customer Valuation Theory as a way of quantifying direct and indirect engagement value while presenting newer applications and case studies. With practical examples of companies that have benefited by implementing these strategies, this guide is a must have for business executives who want to maximize companies profitability as well as students wanting to learn how to engage customers and build loyalty.
Valuing Disabled Children and Young People: Research, policy, and practice
by Berni Kelly and Bronagh ByrneFocusing on contemporary childhood disability issues, and relevant to the lived experiences of disabled children and young people and their families, this book addresses themes such as transition, identity, education, inclusion, and service provision. It also includes insightful contributions on participatory research and practice with disabled children and young people, including an emphasis on capability, voice, and communicative spaces for those with life limiting and more severe levels of impairment. The contributions to this book are grounded in a commitment to the rights of disabled children and young people, as explicitly recognised under the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (1989) and Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). However, the authors also draw our attention to the detrimental impact of economic austerity and conflict on the extent to which these rights are being realised, encouraging further consideration of issues relating to social justice, inter-dependence, and participation. Addressing the diversity of disabled children’s lives across service domains and international contexts, this book provides an evidence base to support the realisation of the rights of disabled children and young people. This book was originally published as a special issue of Child Care in Practice.
Valuing Health in Practice: Priorities QALYs and Choice
by Douglas McCullochThis title was first published in 2002. Most of those working in health services are aware of scarcity and the need for choice, and many also know that health sector choices in the future may be made on a "cost per quality-adjusted-life-year" (QALY) basis. This volume explains health service choice, focusing in particular on the QALY success story, and the merits and drawbacks of this measure are explained. On the basis of some of the problems identified, a new QALY-based approach to resource allocation is developed, and other methods of priority setting are explained, ranging from heart surgery to Alzheimer's Disease. The author explains the problems of health sector choice from first principles, in an approach that should be particularly useful to healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical industry managers, and students of economics.
Valuing Hindu Women’s Domestic Shrine Traditions as Reproductive Labor
by Ashlee Norene AndrewsHistorically in middle-class Bengali Hindu households it has been the matriarch’s responsibility to arrange and maintain the domestic shrine and to perform daily rituals of deity worship and caretaking—termed in this book as domestic shrine traditions. These traditions are often assimilated with the other domestic caretaking labor women are expected to complete for their families. Utilizing a years-long ethnography with Bengali American Hindu women, and drawing from Marxist feminist Social Reproduction Theory, this book argues that domestic shrine traditions are reproductive labor that is essential to the transnational and transgenerational sustenance of Hindu traditions and subjectivities. As the first monograph focused on Hindu women’s domestic shrine traditions in the United States, this book illuminates both the value of these traditions for the women who maintain them, and how these traditions connect immigrant Hindus to family and ethno-religious identity in ways unmatched by the public Hindu temple or organization.
Valuing Profoundly Disabled People: Fellowship, Community and Ties of Birth (Routledge Research in Special Educational Needs)
by John VorhausGrowing numbers of human beings live with profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities. Exploring the moral, social and political implications of this trend, Valuing Profoundly Disabled People addresses questions that are high on policy and practice agendas in numerous regions around the world, including the UK and the EU, the USA, and Australasia. In this important work Vorhaus examines fundamental moral and social questions about profound disability, and each chapter combines a comprehensive review of existing literature with thought-provoking and original philosophical arguments. Vorhaus argues that there is a pressing need to consider the moral and political claims of people whose lives are characterised by extensive impairments, dependency and vulnerability. The book prompts readers to reflect on complex issues relating to the practices of caring, teaching and treating people with profound disabilities in contexts such as education, health care and social policy. Providing a much-needed contribution to the field, this book will be of interest to postgraduates, academics and researchers in a number of distinct and interrelated fields, including disability and impairment, human rights, philosophy, sociology, health and social policy, and education. The book will also be of great interest to practitioners and policymakers seeking to promote the aims of realising human potential and respecting disability.
Valuing the Field: Child Welfare in an International Context (Routledge Revivals Ser.)
by Marilyn Callahan Sven Hessle Susan StregaThis title was first published in 2000: This text provides international perspectives on examples of best practice in child welfare and proposes organizational structures and policies to support this practice. Practice innovations span the range of child welfare services, including prevention, protection and out-of-family care. The contributors describe the child welfare context in each of their particular jurisdictions, producing an addition to the literature comparing child welfare in different countries. Moreover, existing books on the subject are primarily descriptive and examine overall child welfare legislation and policy. The work adopts an analytical approach, proposing policies and focusing on the largely unexamined topic of excellence in child welfare practice.
Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities
by Lucien KarpikIn this landmark work of economic sociology, Lucien Karpik introduces the theory and practical tools needed to analyze markets for singularities. Singularities are goods and services that cannot be studied by standard methods because they are multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. Examples include movies, novels, music, artwork, fine wine, lawyers, and doctors. Valuing the Unique provides a theoretical framework to explain this important class of products and markets that for so long have eluded neoclassical economics. With this innovative theory--called the economics of singularities--Karpik shows that, because of the uncertainty and the highly subjective valuation of singularities, these markets are necessarily equipped with what he calls "judgment devices"--such as labels, brands, guides, critics, and rankings--which provide consumers with the credible knowledge needed to make reasonable choices. He explains why these markets are characterized by the primacy of competition by qualities over competition by prices, and he identifies the conditions under which singularities are constructed or are in danger of losing their uniqueness. After demonstrating how combinations of the numerous and multiform judgment devices can be used to identify different market models, Karpik applies his analytical tools to the functioning of a large number of actual markets, including fine wines, movies, luxury goods, pop music, and legal services.
Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade
by Winnie Won Yin WongIn a manufacturing metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that famously houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about work and life in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists who made projects there; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world--one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius. Confronting big questions about the definition of art, the ownership of an image, and the meaning of originality and imitation, Wong describes an art world in which idealistic migrant workers, lofty propaganda makers, savvy dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art and creativity. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen's painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen "assembly-line" painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, neatly styling himself into a Dafen boss. Taking the Shenzhen-based photojournalist Yu Haibo's award-winning photograph from the Amsterdam's World Press Photo organization, she finds and meets the Dafen painter pictured in it and traces his paintings back to an unlikely place in Amsterdam. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen's painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about creativity, and the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art. Providing a valuable account of art practices in an ascendant China, Van Gogh on Demand is a rich and detailed look at the implications of a world that can offer countless copies of everything that has ever been called "art. "
Vandalism and Anti-Social Behaviour
by Matt Long Roger Hopkins BurkeThere has been a lack of theorisation and conceptualisation of vandalism and anti-social behaviour in criminology in the decades following Cohen's seminal typology of vandalism in the 1970s. This important book forwards a new typology of vandalism, one that addresses the various challenges of the late modern world, rather than the older industrial world Cohen addressed. Matt Long and Roger Hopkins Burke analyse the various types of vandalism and anti-social behaviour conducted by individuals. However, they highlight that individuals are not always the locus of blame - the state also has the capacity to act in a profoundly anti-social way. Crucially, Long and Hopkins Burke argue that in order to fully understand vandalism and anti-social behaviour, a culturally criminological perspective should be fostered. This is a perspective which accounts for both the emotional and experiential aspects of crime as well as its broader social and political contexts.
Vandalismus an Schulen
by Ina HerrmannKritzeleien und Graffiti werden alltagstheoretisch als Vandalismus und somit als grundlegend negativ konnotierte Ausdrucksformen bezeichnet. Jedoch lassen sich vandalistische Praktiken als akteursseitige 'Gebrauchsspuren' oder ,Inbesitznahmen' lesen, die im Rahmen dieser Studie als manifester Bestandteil einer Schularchitektur rekonstruiert werden. Vor dem raumtheoretischen Hintergrund sind die latenten Bedeutungsstrukturen der sog. Maskierungen des Schulraums zu verorten und hinsichtlich der Frage nach inh#65533;renten Bildungspotentialen zu diskutieren.
The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
by Ben Sasse<P>In an era of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and an unprecedented election, the country's youth are in crisis. Senator Ben Sasse warns the nation about the existential threat to America's future. <P>Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, America's youth are ill-equipped to survive in our highly-competitive global economy. Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the Founding: learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant—are being delayed or skipped altogether. <P>The statistics are daunting: 30% of college students drop out after the first year, and only 4 in 10 graduate. One in three 18-to-34 year-olds live with their parents. From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. <P>In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue: hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body—and explains how parents can encourage them. <P>Our democracy depends on responsible, contributing adults to function properly—without them America falls prey to populist demagogues. A call to arms, The Vanishing American Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we're raising our children and the future of our country. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Vanishing American Dream: Immigration, Population, Debt, Scarcity
by Virginia Deane AbernethyThe United States has gone off track, allowing domestic and foreign aid policies to be co-opted by a government—abetted by mass media—that serves special interests rather than the greater national good. Americans' tendencies to trust, play fair, and help have been abused and require replacement by a realistic outlook.The Vanishing American Dream posits solutions to get America back on the right track. Abernethy sees population growth driven by mass immigration as a major cause of economic and cultural changes that have been detrimental to most Americans. The environment has been degraded by over-crowding and increasing demands on natural resources. Work is cheapened by explosive growth in the labour force creating a buyer's market. One salary or wage no longer supports a family and educates children. Women working outside the home is a necessity, not a choice, for most American families. Furthermore, feminism, aimed originally at balanced gender roles, has been turned viciously against males of all ages and ultimately against females through degrading their traditional and valuable contributions.Abernethy proposes that Americans need time to regroup, untroubled by a continuing influx of foreign peoples. The family, small business, and responsive local government are centres around which a solvent and confident citizenry can prosper again.
The Vanishing Countryman (Routledge Revivals)
by G. E. MingayFirst published in 1989, The Vanishing Countryman investigates how farmers, farm workers, and other country crafts- and tradespeople have fared in response to significant changes across the British countryside in the past one hundred years. The book explores the move towards large-scale and capital-intensive farming, and the conflict between increased production and damage to the environment. It looks at the decline in the number of farm workers, crafts- and tradespeople. It also considers the changes in social composition across country villages and the impact that this has had on living standards, housing, and transport. The Vanishing Countryman will appeal to those with an interest in rural and social history, and in the history of the British countryside specifically.
The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community
by Marc J. DunkelmanA sweeping new look at the unheralded transformation that is eroding the foundations of American exceptionalism. Americans today find themselves mired in an era of uncertainty and frustration. The nation's safety net is pulling apart under its own weight; political compromise is viewed as a form of defeat; and our faith in the enduring concept of American exceptionalism appears increasingly outdated. But the American Age may not be ending. In The Vanishing Neighbor, Marc J. Dunkelman identifies an epochal shift in the structure of American life--a shift unnoticed by many. Routines that once put doctors and lawyers in touch with grocers and plumbers--interactions that encouraged debate and cultivated compromise--have changed dramatically since the postwar era. Both technology and the new routines of everyday life connect tight-knit circles and expand the breadth of our social landscapes, but they've sapped the commonplace, incidental interactions that for centuries have built local communities and fostered healthy debate. The disappearance of these once-central relationships--between people who are familiar but not close, or friendly but not intimate--lies at the root of America's economic woes and political gridlock. The institutions that were erected to support what Tocqueville called the "township"--that unique locus of the power of citizens--are failing because they haven't yet been molded to the realities of the new American community. It's time we moved beyond the debate over whether the changes being made to American life are good or bad and focus instead on understanding the tradeoffs. Our cities are less racially segregated than in decades past, but we've become less cognizant of what's happening in the lives of people from different economic backgrounds, education levels, or age groups. Familiar divisions have been replaced by cross-cutting networks--with profound effects for the way we resolve conflicts, spur innovation, and care for those in need. The good news is that the very transformation at the heart of our current anxiety holds the promise of more hope and prosperity than would have been possible under the old order. The Vanishing Neighbor argues persuasively that to win the future we need to adapt yesterday's institutions to the realities of the twenty-first-century American community.
Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul
by Jeremiah Moss"Essential reading for fans of Jane Jacobs, Joseph Mitchell, Patti Smith, Luc Sante, and Cheap Pierogi" —Vanity FairAn unflinching chronicle of gentrification in the twenty-first century and a love letter to lost New York by the creator of the popular and incendiary blog Vanishing New York.For generations, New York City has been a mecca for artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the one percent can afford.A Jane Jacobs for the digital age, blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss has emerged as one of the most outspoken and celebrated critics of this dramatic shift. In Vanishing New York, he reports on the city’s development in the twenty-first century, a period of "hyper-gentrification" that has resulted in the shocking transformation of beloved neighborhoods and the loss of treasured unofficial landmarks. In prose that the Village Voice has called a "mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit," Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town—from the Lower East Side and Chelsea to Harlem and Williamsburg—lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they’re replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains.Propelled by Moss’ hard-hitting, cantankerous style, Vanishing New York is a staggering examination of contemporary "urban renewal" and its repercussions—not only for New Yorkers, but for all of America and the world.
Vanishing Twins: A Marriage
by Leah Dieterich"[Dieterich's] writing is crisp and intelligent . . . She writes about her own reckoning with her sexuality and exploration of queer identity without becoming pat or coy, giving readers intimate access to her fears and conflicting emotions." --NPRFor as long as she can remember, Leah has had the mysterious feeling that she’s been searching for a twin--that she should be part of an intimate pair. It begins with dance partners as she studies ballet growing up; continues with her attractions to girlfriends in college; and leads her, finally, to Eric, whom she moves across the country for and marries. But her steadfast, monogamous relationship leaves her with questions about her sexuality and her identity, so she and her husband decide to try an open marriage.How does a young couple make room for their individual desires, their evolving selfhoods, and their artistic ambitions while building a life together? Can they pursue other sexual partners, even live in separate cities, and keep their original passionate bond alive? Vanishing Twins looks for answers in psychology, science, pop culture, art, architecture, Greek mythology, dance, and language to create a lucid, suspenseful portrait of a woman testing the limits and fluidities of love.
The Vanishing World of The Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia (Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology)
by Máiréad Nic CraithExploring An t-Oileánach (anglicised as The Islandman), an indigenous Irish-language memoir written by Tomás Ó Criomhthain (Tomás O'Crohan), Máiréad Nic Craith charts the development of Ó Criomhthain as an author; the writing, illustration, and publication of the memoir in Irish; and the reaction to its portrayal of an authentic, Gaelic lifestyle in Ireland. As she probes the appeal of an island fisherman’s century-old life-story to readers in several languages—considering the memoir’s global reception in human, literary and artistic terms—Nic Craith uncovers the indelible marks of Ó Criomhthain’s writing closer to home: the Blasket Island Interpretive Centre, which seeks to institutionalize the experience evoked by the memoir, and a widespread writerly habit amongst the diasporic population of the Island. Through the overlapping frames of literary analysis, archival work, interviews, and ethnographic examination, nostalgia emerges and re-emerges as a central theme, expressed in different ways by the young Irish state, by Irish-American descendants of Blasket Islanders in the US today, by anthropologists, and beyond.
Vanity Fairs: Another View of the Economy of Attention
by Georg FranckThis book offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the economy of attention from the perspective of the basic motive of the pursuit of attention: self-esteem. As a jumping-off point, it states the stark equation at the heart of this economy— that the self-esteem one can afford depends on one’s income of appreciative attention. The information markets in which participants compete to play a role in the consciousness of others are described as ‘vanity fairs’. Since the pursuit of self-esteem is highly effective when it comes to mobilizing human energies, vanity fairs are not just playgrounds of individual passions, but have been utilized by society since time immemorial as markets for particularly challenging demands.Starting with an analysis of the interface that connects the social economy of attention with the intra-psychic economy of self-esteem, the book then examines two main cases in point: modern science and the post-modern media culture. On the one hand we have scientists working for a ‘wage of fame’, who invest their own attention into getting the attention of others. On the other, today’s dominant media have left the sale of information behind to focus solely on the attraction of attention, which is sold as a service to the advertising industry. In each case the use of attention as a means of payment is key to its phenomenal success. But success comes at a price: the dark side of this monetization of attention is a kind of ’climate change’ in the collective mental sphere which threatens the very existence of our social fabric.
The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
by Robert GerwarthAn epic, groundbreaking account of the ethnic and state violence that followed the end of World War I―conflicts that would shape the course of the twentieth century For the Western Allies, November 11, 1918, has always been a solemn date―the end of fighting that had destroyed a generation, but also a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of the principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing, nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country. In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe’s future, but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes. In the years immediately after the armistice, millions would die across central, eastern, and southeastern Europe before the Soviet Union and a series of rickety and exhausted small new states would come into being. It was here, in the ruins of Europe, that extreme ideologies such as fascism would take shape and ultimately emerge triumphant. As absorbing in its drama as it is unsettling in its analysis, The Vanquished is destined to transform our understanding of not just the First World War but the twentieth century as a whole.