Title: Practicing virtues: moral traditions at Quaker and military boarding schools 
Author: Hays, Kim
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Sociology | Philosophy | Education
Publisher's Description: Practicing Virtues is about learning to be good in the distinct moral worlds of Quaker and military boarding schools. Both types of schools bind their communities with shared codes of conduct, the military schools' conservative tradition emphasizing discipline and hard work, the Quaker schools' liberal tradition favoring tolerance and togetherness. At the heart of this contrast are two sets of virtues: pride, loyalty, and leadership among the cadets; simplicity, equality, and concern among the students at Quaker schools.During the course of a year Kim Hays lived in six schools, attending classes and staff meetings, sharing meals and informal conversation, and participating in the nonacademic side of boarding-school life.Despite the outward contrast between the Quaker and military settings, Hays found surprising similarities. Both systems cherish individualism while encouraging group identification and service to the school community. Hays shows that orderliness, obedience, and harmony do not in themselves create a vital moral environment. To reach that goal, teachers, students, and administrators need to disagree, question rules, and fight for change.This book has much to say about the role of education in developing moral responsibility. Every educator, student, and parent who cares about the future of American schooling will find valuable lessons here.   [brief]
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Title: The myth of the noble savage
Author: Ellingson, Terry Jay
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Intellectual History | European History | American Studies | European Studies | Postcolonial Studies
Publisher's Description: In this important and original study, the myth of the Noble Savage is an altogether different myth from the one defended or debunked by others over the years. That the concept of the Noble Savage was first invented by Rousseau in the mid-eighteenth century in order to glorify the "natural" life is easily refuted. The myth that persists is that there was ever, at any time, widespread belief in the nobility of savages. The fact is, as Ter Ellingson shows, the humanist eighteenth century actually avoided the term because of its association with the feudalist-colonialist mentality that had spawned it 150 years earlier. The Noble Savage reappeared in the mid-nineteenth century, however, when the "myth" was deliberately used to fuel anthropology's oldest and most successful hoax. Ellingson's narrative follows the career of anthropologist John Crawfurd, whose political ambition and racist agenda were well served by his construction of what was manifestly a myth of savage nobility. Generations of anthropologists have accepted the existence of the myth as fact, and Ellingson makes clear the extent to which the misdirection implicit in this circumstance can enter into struggles over human rights and racial equality. His examination of the myth's influence in the late twentieth century, ranging from the World Wide Web to anthropological debates and political confrontations, rounds out this fascinating study.   [brief]
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Title: Moral communities: the culture of class relations in the Russian printing industry, 1867-1907 
Author: Steinberg, Mark
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | European History | Russian and Eastern European Studies
Publisher's Description: This valuable study offers a rare perspective on the social and political crisis in late Imperial Russia. Mark D. Steinberg focuses on employers, supervisors, and workers in the printing industry as it evolved from a state-dependent handicraft to a capitalist industry. He explores class relations and the values, norms, and perceptions with which they were made meaningful. Using archival and printed sources, Steinberg examines economic changes, workplace relations, professional organizations, unions, strikes, and political activism, as well as shop customs, trade festivals, and everyday life. In rich detail he describes efforts to build a community of masters and men united by shared interests and moral norms. The collapse of this ideal in the face of growing class conflict is also explored, giving a full view of an important moment in Russian history.   [brief]
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Title: The Myth of the Independent voter 
Author: Keith, Bruce E
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Politics | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Few events in American politics over the past two decades have generated more attention than the increasing number of voters calling themselves Independent. By the early 1970s Independents outnumbered Republicans, according to many eminent experts on voting behavior. Yet the authors of this incisive new commentary on American politics claim that most of this widespread speculation on declining party affiliation is simply wrong. They contend that most so-called Independents lean strongly toward one of the two parties and resemble - in all important respects - either Democrats or Republicans. Contrary to expert opinion, only a small segment of voters are truly "independent" of either major party.Based on the most up-to-date 1990 data, The Myth of the Independent Voter provides a roadmap of the political arena for the general reader and scholar alike. Debunking conventional wisdom about voting patterns and allaying recent concerns about electoral stability and possible third party movements, the authors uncover faulty polling practices that have resulted in a skewed sense of the American voting population.Demonstrating that most of what has been written about Independents for more than thirty years is myth, this challenging book offers a trenchant new understanding of the party system, voting behavior, and public opinion.   [brief]
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Title: Myth, meaning, and memory on Roman sarcophagi 
Author: Koortbojian, Michael
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | Art | Art History | Art and Architecture
Publisher's Description: Michael Koortbojian brings a novel approach to his study of the role of Greek mythology in Roman funerary art. He looks at two myths - Aphrodite and Adonis and Selene and Endymion - not only with respect to their appearance on Roman sarcophagi, but also with regard to the myths' significance in the greater fabric of Roman life. Moving beyond the examination of these sarcophagi as artistic achievements, he sets them in their broader historical and social contexts.Remembrance was an important factor in ancient social life and fueled the need for memorials. In helping us to understand the powerful allusions that Greek myths presented for the Romans, and the role of those allusions in preserving the memory of the dead, Koortbojian effectively widens our vision of the ancient world.   [brief]
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Title: Neither gods nor emperors: students and the struggle for democracy in China
Author: Calhoun, Craig J 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Sociology | Language and Linguistics | African Studies | American Studies
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Title: Genethics: moral issues in the creation of people 
Author: Heyd, David
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Philosophy | Ethics
Publisher's Description: Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound . . . [more]
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Title: China's Catholics: tragedy and hope in an emerging civil society
Author: Madsen, Richard 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | History | Sociology | Christianity
Publisher's Description: After suffering isolation and persecution during the Maoist era, the Catholic Church in China has reemerged with astonishing vitality in recent years. Richard Madsen focuses on this revival and relates it to the larger issue of the changing structure of Chinese society, particularly to its implications for the development of a "civil society."Madsen knows China well and has spent extensive time there interviewing Chinese Catholics both young and old, the "true believers" and the less devout. Their stories reveal the tensions that have arisen even as political control over everyday life in China has loosened. Of particular interest are the rural-urban split in the church, the question of church authority, and the divisions between public and underground practices of church followers.All kinds of religious groups have revived and flourished in the post-Mao era. Protestants, Buddhists, Daoists, practitioners of folk religions, even intellectuals seeking more secularized answers to "ultimate" concerns are engaged in spiritual quests. Madsen is interested in determining if such quests contain the resources for constructing a more humane political order in China. Will religion contribute to or impede economic modernization? What role will the church play in the pluralization of society? The questions he raises in China's Catholics are important not only for China's political future but for all countries in transition from political totalitarianism.   [brief]
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Title: Whose keeper?: social science and moral obligation 
Author: Wolfe, Alan 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Sociology | Ethics | Politics | American Studies
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Title: The persistence of memory: organism, myth, text 
Author: Kuberski, Philip
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Literature | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: While memory is one of the most fascinating faculties of consciousness, it is also one of the most mysterious. Is it memory - our own marvelous personal computer or data base - that brings us the intense feelings prompted by a certain object or situation?Drawing on an expansive array of sources, from microbiology to cosmology, Ovid to Proust, Egyptology to the cinema, Philip Kuberski leads us on a brave and beguiling exploration of memory. He enables us to see it as a worldly process in which individuals both remember and are remembered, all in a network of associations that join our bodies, personal and cultural myths, and aesthetic and literary experiences. His essays will provide a tantalizing and thoughtful read for those interested in literature, psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy.   [brief]
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Title: Form and good in Plato's Eleatic dialogues: the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman 
Author: Dorter, Kenneth 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Classical Literature and Language
Publisher's Description: In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry.   [brief]
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Title: The worth of a child
Author: Murray, Thomas H 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Philosophy | Ethics | Medicine | Social Problems | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: Thomas Murray's graceful and humane book illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child?Ethicist Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy in order to reflect on the moral perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. Observing that abstract moral terms such as altruism and selfishness can be buried in the everyday doings of families, he maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children. How far should adults go in their quest for children? What options are available to women who do not want to bear a child now? Should couples be allowed to reject a child because of genetic disability or "wrong" gender? How can we weigh the competing claims of the genetic and the rearing parents to a particular child? The Worth of a Child couples impressive learning with a conversational style. Only by getting down to cases, Murray insists, can we reach moral conclusions that are unsentimental, farsighted, and just. In an era of intense public and private acrimony about the place and meaning of "family values," his practical wisdom about extraordinary difficult moral issues offers compelling reading for both experienced and prospective parents, as well as for ethicists, social and behavioral scientists, and legal theorists.   [brief]
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Title: Starting at home: caring and social policy
Author: Noddings, Nel
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | American Studies | Anthropology | Social and Political Thought | Political Theory | Public Policy | Social Problems | Public Policy | Sociology | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Nel Noddings, one of the central figures in the contemporary discussion of ethics and moral education, argues that caring--a way of life learned at home--can be extended into a theory that guides social policy. Tackling issues such as capital punishment, drug treatment, homelessness, mental illness, and abortion, Noddings inverts traditional philosophical priorities to show how an ethic of care can have profound and compelling implications for social and political thought. Instead of beginning with an ideal state and then describing a role for home and family, this book starts with an ideal home and asks how what is learned there may be extended to the larger social domain. Noddings examines the tension between freedom and equality that characterized liberal thought in the twentieth century and finds that--for all its strengths--liberalism is still inadequate as social policy. She suggests instead that an attitude of attentive love in the home induces a corresponding responsiveness that can serve as a foundation for social policy. With her characteristic sensitivity to the individual and to the vulnerable in society, the author concludes that any corrective practice that does more harm than the behavior it is aimed at correcting should be abandoned. This suggests an end to the disastrous war on drugs. In addition, Noddings states that the caring professions that deal with the homeless should be guided by flexible policies that allow practitioners to respond adequately to the needs of very different clients. She recommends that the school curriculum should include serious preparation for home life as well as for professional and civic life. Emphasizing the importance of improving life in everyday homes and the possible role social policy might play in this improvement, Starting at Home highlights the inextricable link between the development of care in individual lives and any discussion of moral life and social policy.   [brief]
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Title: The spiritual quest: transcendence in myth, religion, and science 
Author: Torrance, Robert M. (Robert Mitchell) 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Religion | Indigenous Religions | Cultural Anthropology | Folklore and Mythology | Language and Linguistics | Philosophy | History and Philosophy of Science | Literature
Publisher's Description: Robert Torrance's wide-ranging, innovative study argues that the spiritual quest is rooted in our biological, psychological, linguistic, and social nature. The quest is not, as most have believed, a rare mystical experience, but a frequent expression of our most basic human impulses. Shaman and scientist, medium and poet, prophet and philosopher, all venture forth in quest of visionary truths to transform and renew the world.Yet Torrance is not trying to reduce the quest to an "archetype" or "monomyth." Instead, he presents the full diversity of the quest in the myths and religious practices of tribal peoples throughout the world, from Oceania to India, Africa, Siberia, and especially the Americas. In theorizing about the quest, Torrance draws on thinkers as diverse as Bergson and Piaget, van Gennep and Turner, Pierce and Popper, Freud, Darwin, and Chomsky. This is a book that will expand our knowledge - and awareness - of a fundamental human activity in all its fascinating complexity.   [brief]
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Title: The Manchurian myth: nationalism, resistance and collaboration in modern China
Author: Mitter, Rana 1969-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: History | China | Japan
Publisher's Description: A powerful element in twentieth-century Chinese politics has been the myth of Chinese resistance to Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Investigating the shifting alliances of key players in that event, Rana Mitter traces the development of the narrative of resistance to the occupation and shows how it became part of China's political consciousness, enduring even today. After Japan's September 1931 military strike leading to a takeover of the Northeast, the Chinese responded in three major ways: collaboration, resistance in exile, and resistance on the ground. What motives prompted some Chinese to collaborate, others to resist? What were conditions like under the Japanese? Through careful reading of Chinese and Japanese sources, particularly local government records, newspapers, and journals published both inside and outside occupied Manchuria, Mitter sheds important new light on these questions.   [brief]
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Title: Off with her head!: the denial of women's identity in myth, religion, and culture
Author: Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Religion | Women's Studies | Cultural Anthropology | Classical Religions | Jewish Studies
Publisher's Description: Whereas many books look at how women's bodies are represented in different religions and cultures around the world, this work explores the site of a woman's voice and identity, her head . The female head threatens to disrupt the classic gender distinctions that link men to speech, identity, and mind while relegating women to silence, anonymity, and flesh. The contributors to this collection argue that the objectification of women as sexual and reproductive bodies results in their symbolic beheading. Decapitation occurs symbolically in myths as well as in actual practices such as veiling, head covering, and cosmetic highlighting, which by sexualizing a woman's face turns it into an extension of her body.The essays explore how similar treatments of the female head find their unique articulation in diverse religious traditions and cultures: in Hindu myths of beheading, in Buddhist and Tantric practices and poetry about the hair of female nuns, in the resistance to veiling by early Christian women at Corinth, in contemporary veiling practices in a Turkish village, in the eroticization of the female mouth in ancient Judaism, and in Greek and Roman cosmetic practices.Together these essays show how the depiction of the female head is critical for an understanding of gender and its influence on other fundamental religious and cultural issues.   [brief]
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Title: Democracy and moral development 
Author: Norton, David L
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Philosophy | Political Theory | Ethics
Publisher's Description: At a time when politics and virtue seem less compatible than oil and water, Democracy and Moral Development shows how to bring the two together. Philosopher David Norton applies classical concepts of virtue to the premises of modern democracy. The centerpiece of the book is a model of organizational . . . [more]
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Title: Moral vision in the Histories of Polybius
Author: Eckstein, Arthur M
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | History | Classical Politics | Political Theory | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Arthur Eckstein's fresh and stimulating interpretation challenges the way Polybius' Histories have long been viewed. He argues that Polybius evaluates people and events as much from a moral viewpoint as from a pragmatic, utilitarian, or even "Machiavellian" one. Polybius particularly asks for "improvement" in his audience, hoping that those who study his writings will emerge with a firm determination to live their lives nobly. Teaching by the use of moral exemplars, Polybius also tries to prove that success is not the sole standard by which human action should be judged.   [brief]
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Title: To craft democracies: an essay on democratic transitions 
Author: Di Palma, Giuseppe
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Politics | Russian and Eastern European Studies | History
Publisher's Description: Is democracy a hot-house plant? Is it difficult to transplant it into new soil? The fall of so many dictatorships in the last few years - first in Southern Europe, then in Latin America, now in Eastern Europe - opens new, more optimistic perspectives on democratic development. The crises of dictatorships and the search for a new political order offer fertile ground for an examination of how best to effect democratic transitions.By focusing on the objective conditions that make democracy probable, sociological and historical theories of democracy often lose sight of what is possible. Here Giuseppe Di Palma instead explores those conciliatory political undertakings that political actors on all sides now engage in to make the improbable possible. His emphasis is on political crafting: in regard to constitutional choices, to alliances and convergences between contestants, to trade-offs, to the pacing of the transitions. Di Palma also examines the reasons - stalemate, the high cost of repression, a loss of goals, international constraints and inducements - that may motivate incumbents and nondemocratic political actors to accept democracy, even in those cases, as in Central America and Eastern Europe, where acceptance would seem least likely.An original and imaginative work that, in the light of recent transitions, challenges our assumptions about fledgling democracies and breaks new theoretical ground, To Craft Democracies will appeal to anyone interested in the way we forge our political communities today.   [brief]
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Title: What price better health?: hazards of the research imperative
Author: Callahan, Daniel 1930-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Medicine | Philosophy | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: The idea that we have an unlimited moral imperative to pursue medical research is deeply rooted in American society and medicine. In this provocative work, Daniel Callahan exposes the ways in which such a seemingly high and humane ideal can be corrupted and distorted into a harmful practice. Medical research, with its power to attract money and political support, and its promise of cures for a wide range of medical burdens, has good and bad sides - which are often indistinguishable. In What Price Better Health?, Callahan teases out the distinctions and differences, revealing the difficulties that result when the research imperative is suffused with excessive zeal, adulterated by the profit motive, or used to justify cutting moral corners. Exploring the National Institutes of Health's annual budget, the inflated estimates of health care cost savings that result from research, the high prices charged by drug companies, the use and misuse of human subjects for medical testing, and the controversies surrounding human cloning and stem cell research, Callahan clarifies the fine line between doing good and doing harm in the name of medical progress. His work shows that medical research must be understood in light of other social and economic needs and how even the research imperative, dedicated to the highest human good, has its limits.   [brief]
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