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Roots of Evil is a saga of the prestigious Juelson family in the Rio GrandeValley of South Texas, in the early 1900s, struggling with racial intoleranceand injustices in a hostile land.
In this fascinating book, Michael Herzfeld argues that 'modern' bureaucratically regulated societies are no more 'rational' or less 'symbolic' than the societies traditionally studied by anthropologists. Drawing primarily on the example of modern Greece and utilizing other European materials, he suggests that we cannot understand national bureaucracies divorced from local-level ideas about chance, personal character, social relationships and responsibility. He points out that both formal regulations and day-to-day bureaucratic practices rely heavily on the symbols and language of the moral boundaries between insiders and outsiders; a ready means of expressing prejudice and of justifying neglect. It therefore happens that societies with proud traditions of generous hospitality may paradoxically produce at the official level some of the most calculated indifference one can find anywhere.
In this fascinating book, Michael Herzfeld argues that 'modern' bureaucratically regulated societies are no more 'rational' or less 'symbolic' than the societies traditionally studied by anthropologists. Drawing primarily on the example of modern Greece and utilizing other European materials, he suggests that we cannot understand national bureaucracies divorced from local-level ideas about chance, personal character, social relationships and responsibility. He points out that both formal regulations and day-to-day bureaucratic practices rely heavily on the symbols and language of the moral boundaries between insiders and outsiders; a ready means of expressing prejudice and of justifying neglect. It therefore happens that societies with proud traditions of generous hospitality may paradoxically produce at the official level some of the most calculated indifference one can find anywhere.
in 1993 an historian wrote: ..". The lynching was especially atrocious: Two young black men were seized, dragged into the woods, and there chained to trees and tortured to death with blowtorches while a howling crowd of whites cursed and taunted them. Photographs were made of the dead bodies...." (K.S. Davis) This historical novel - ground-breaking in its emotional and graphic intensity - portrays the impact of that atrocity (1937) on two empathetic boys who didn't taunt, but secretly snapped pictures of the living, screaming victims (ironically, one with FDR's surname) - and desperately tried to stop it! Two against 500 (some came by school bus). Failing, they fled in despair and determination - with their Brownie Eagle Eye, embarking on a compelling mission! They had no choice - they'd been 'Out There.' Enraged, then galvanized, by the failures and heart-breaks of Book I, 'Einstein' Brian and 'Maestro' Marcus become avenging angels, sworn to strike 'Preacher-Creature Cecil' and his 'henchmen from hell' with the swords of retribution, self-defense, and 'un-Confederate' justice. Kids no more, they begin to act like God because 'Somebody has to...!' With images of brutality sealed in camera, conscience, and nightmares, they write to Eleanor and FDR, and accept her invitation to dinner at the White House. Irrevocably sworn to the most profound 'what-if' of the Twentieth Century, the boys pledge themselves to a daunting 'rendezvous with destiny' - theirs and humanity's. And a Time Capsule ticket to 6939 (CE) and beyond from Albert Einstein.......
What happens when three hundred alleged squatters go head-to-head with an enormous city government looking to develop the place where they live? As anthropologist Michael Herzfeld shows in this book, the answer can be surprising. He tells the story of Pom Mahakan, a tiny enclave in the heart of old Bangkok whose residents have resisted authorities’ demands to vacate their homes for a quarter of a century. It’s a story of community versus government, of old versus new, and of political will versus the law. Herzfeld argues that even though the residents of Pom Mahakan have lost every legal battle the city government has dragged them into, they have won every public relations contest, highlighting their struggle as one against bureaucrats who do not respect the age-old values of Thai/Siamese social and cultural order. Such values include compassion for the poor and an understanding of urban space as deeply embedded in social and ritual relations. In a gripping account of their standoff, Herzfeld—who simultaneously argues for the importance of activism in scholarship—traces the agile political tactics and styles of the community’s leadership, using their struggle to illuminate the larger difficulties, tensions, and unresolved debates that continue to roil Thai society to this day.
What is knowledge? In what sense is the environment of a cognitive system more than a mere source of information? What are the roles of relevance and indifference for a characterisation of knowledge? How are knowledge and action related? These issues are considered and discussed in this book. Although it does not offer an account of knowledge, this work addresses a diverse range of important topics concerning that notion, seeking to connect them in a unifying way.
In this book Stephen Makin offers a striking new account of some intriguing but neglected arguments - indifference arguments - and of the presocratic atomism underpinned by indifference reasoning. Used by Parmenides, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz as well as some contemporary philosophers, indifference arguments start from claims about a balance of reasons or an absence of asymmetries. While some provide plausible support for surprisingly strong conclusions, others produce no conviction. Here, Makin offers an account of indifference arguments and provides answers to such philosophical questions as ′What makes a good piece of indifference reasoning?′, ′How do the arguments work?′, ′Do they involve claims about metaphysical commitments?′ The account that is presented of the Democritean atomic theory strongly emphasizes the continuity of atomism with earlier thought. A number of Zeno′s arguments are considered, and there is some discussion of other Eleatics. Indifference arguments in other ancient philosophers, such as Anaximander and Aristotle, also receive attention. The book will be of interest to all those concerned with ancient philosophy and philosophical logic.
Gary Indiana, a 'huge satirical talent' (The New York Times), presents a darkly comic novel fueled by the virtuoso con artist Evangeline Slote and her extravagant life of chicanery and petty crime. Inspired by the case of Sante and Ken Kimes, the real-life mother/son grifters, the novel is a dissection of the mind of a charismatic sociopath and a satire of the society that appeases and abets her.
In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition.
A Return to Aesthetics confronts postmodernism's rejection of aesthetics by showing that this critique rests on central concepts of classical aesthetic theory, namely autonomous form, disinterest, and symbolic discourse. The author argues for the value of these concepts by recovering them through a historical reinterpretation of their meaning prior to their distortion by twentieth-century formalism. Loesberg then applies these concepts to a discussion of two of the most significant critics of the ideology of Enlightenment, Foucault and Bourdieu. He argues that understanding the role of aesthetics in the postmodern critique of Enlightenment will get us out of the intellectual impasse wherein numbingly repeated attacks upon postmodernism as self-contradictory match numbingly repeated defenses. Construing postmodern critiques as examples of aesthetic reseeing gives us a new understanding of the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment.