Title: A magic still dwells: comparative religion in the postmodern age
Author: Patton, Kimberley C. (Kimberley Christine) 1958-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Religion | Comparative Religions
Publisher's Description: The first thorough assessment of the field of comparative religion in forty years, this groundbreaking volume surmounts the seemingly intractable division between postmodern scholars who reject the comparative endeavor and those who affirm it. The contributors demonstrate that a broader vision of religion, involving different scales of comparison for different purposes, is both justifiable and necessary. A Magic Still Dwells brings together leading historians of religions from a wide range of backgrounds and vantage points, and draws from traditions as diverse as Indo-European mythology, ancient Greek religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Ndembu ritual, and the spectrum of religions practiced in America. The contributors take seriously the postmodern critique, explain its impact on their work, uphold or reject various premises, and in several cases demonstrate new comparative approaches. Together, the essays represent a state-of-the-art assessment of current issues in the comparative study of religion.   [brief]
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Title: Playing with power in movies, television, and video games: from Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 
Author: Kinder, Marsha
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Cinema and Performance Arts | Film | Television and Radio | Popular Culture
Publisher's Description: How do children today learn to understand stories? Why do they respond so enthusiastically to home video games and to a myth like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? And how are such fads related to multinational media mergers and the "new world order"? In assessing these questions, Marsha Kinder provides . . . [more]
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Title: Mind games: American culture and the birth of psychotherapy 
Author: Caplan, Eric 1962-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | United States History | American Studies | Science | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: Eric Caplan's fascinating exploration of Victorian culture in the United States shatters the myth of Freud's seminal role in the creation of American psychotherapy. Resurrecting the long-buried "prehistory" of American mental therapeutics, Mind Games tells the remarkable story of how a widely assorted group of actors - none of them hailing from Vienna or from any other European city - compelled a reluctant medical profession to accept a new role for the mind in medicine. By the time Freud first set foot on American soil in 1909, as Caplan demonstrates, psychotherapy was already integrally woven into the fabric of American culture and medicine.What came to be known as psychotherapy emerged in the face of considerable opposition, much - indeed most - of which was generated by the medical profession itself. Caplan examines the contentious interplay within the American medical community, as well as between American physicians and their lay rivals, who included faith-healers, mind-curists, Christian Scientists, and Protestant ministers. These early practitioners of alternative medicine ultimately laid the groundwork for a distinctive and much heralded American type of psychotherapy. Its grudging acceptance by both medical elites and rank and file physicians signified their understanding that reliance on physical therapies to treat nervous and mental symptoms compromised their capacity to treat - and compete - effectively in a rapidly expanding mental-medical marketplace. Mind Games shows how psychotherapy came to occupy its central position in mainstream American culture.   [brief]
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Title: Sainthood: its manifestations in world religions
Author: Bond, George Doherty 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Religion | Comparative Religions | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: Every major religion exalts certain individuals who occupy a dual role. On the one hand they serve as exemplars of virtue to be imitated, and on the other hand they stand removed from other mortals, privileged and unique. Christianity knows them as saints, and in the study of religion the term has been taken over and applied to similar figures in other traditions. The essays in this volume analyze the role of the saint in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, providing both a comparative and an interpretive view of sainthood.The notion of sainthood is problematic in two ways. First, can the category be usefully applied to individuals in religious traditions other than Christianity? How has it manifested itself, and what differences are there in the various manifestations of sainthood? Second, where individuals are considered to have risen above the norms in these different traditions, how is it possible to resolve the tension between the saint's imitability and his or her otherness, between imitating and venerating the saint? The authors consider these questions in relation to a wide range of individuals in all the major traditions.   [brief]
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Title: Tiny game hunting: environmentally healthy ways to trap and kill the pests in your house and garden
Author: Klein, Hilary Dole 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: EcologyEvolutionEnvironment | Gardening | Entomology | Plants | Environment
Publisher's Description: Every year Americans use a staggering five hundred million pounds of toxic pesticides in and around their homes, schools, parks, and roads - a growing health risk for people and the environment. But are these poisons really necessary? This book, appealing to the hunter in us all, shows how to triumph in combat with pests without losing the war to toxic chemicals. Tiny Game Hunting, written in a lively and entertaining style and illustrated with detailed drawings, gives more than two hundred tried-and-true ways to control or kill common household and garden pests without using toxic pesticides.   [brief]
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Title: The comparative imagination: on the history of racism, nationalism, and social movements 
Author: Fredrickson, George M 1934-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | United States History
Publisher's Description: In this collection of essays, an eminent American historian of race relations discusses issues central to our understanding of the history of racism, the role of racism, and the possibilites for justice in contemporary society. George M. Fredrickson provides an eloquent and vigorous examination of race relations in the United States and South Africa and at the same time illuminates the emerging field of comparative history - history that is explicitly cross-cultural in its comparisons of nations, eras, or social structures. Taken together, these thought-provoking, accessible essays - several never before published - bring new precision and depth to our understanding of racism and justice, both historically and for society today.The first group of essays in The Comparative Imagination summarizes and evaluates the cross-national comparative history written in the past fifty years. These essays pay particular attention to comparative work on slavery and race relations, frontiers, nation-building and the growth of modern welfare states, and class and gender relations. The second group of essays represents some of Fredrickson's own explorations into the cross-cultural study of race and racism. Included are new essays covering such topics as the theoretical and cross-cultural meaning of racism, the problem of race in liberal thought, and the complex relationship between racism and state-based nationalism. The third group contains Fredrickson's recent work on anti-racist and black liberation movements in the United States and South Africa, especially in the period since World War II.In addition, Fredrickson's provocative introduction breaks significant new intellectual ground, outlining a justification for the methods of comparative history in light of such contemporary intellectual trends as the revival of narrative history and the predominance of postmodern thought.   [brief]
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Title: Beyond second opinions: making choices about fertility treatment 
Author: Turiel, Judith Steinberg 1948-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Science | Sociology | Gender Studies | Medicine
Publisher's Description: Beyond Second Opinions is both an exposé of the risks, errors, and distortions surrounding fertility medicine and an authoritative guide for people seeking treatment. Accessible, comprehensive, and extremely well-informed, this book takes the reader beyond hype to the hard data on diagnoses and treatments. Judith Steinberg Turiel, a consumer health activist and herself a veteran of fertility treatments, uses the most up-to-date medical literature to shed new light on difficult decisions patients face today and on reproductive questions society must begin to address now. Those who are seeking a more balanced perspective to help them make better, more informed decisions will find a wealth of information about current reproductive interventions - from simple fertility pills to dazzling experimental options - as well as a discussion of the non-medical forces (economic and political) that shape an individual's treatment choices and reproductive outcomes. Despite quantities of information showered upon patients, they remain woefully misinformed; some fertility treatments may actually reduce chances for a successful pregnancy and threaten a patient's health. Turiel looks beyond surface claims to the real information, often uncovering counterintuitive findings and sometimes scandalous revelations. She exposes a realm of unregulated expansion, unscientific experimentation, and recent scandal over stolen embryos. Weaving together first-hand accounts, compelling stories, a range of scientific information, and lively anecdotes, Turiel addresses the persistent gulfs that separate medical professionals and health care consumers. In the process she arms laypeople with what they might not learn about infertility practices from doctors, patient education brochures, and the newspaper.   [brief]
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Title: Imagining karma: ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth
Author: Obeyesekere, Gananath
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Buddhism | Classics | Indigenous Religions | Asian Studies
Publisher's Description: With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.   [brief]
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Title: Regulatory choices: a perspective on developments in energy policy 
Author: Gilbert, Richard J 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Economics and Business | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: Regulatory Choices offers the first comprehensive economic history of energy policy and its consequences for California, where some of the most innovative and far-ranging programs of regulatory reform have originated. The authors of this volume have gathered together an impressive wealth of material about actual policy decisions and their repercussions and have subjected their findings to astute economic analysis. This book will serve for years to come as an invaluable reference on the costs and effects of various energy policies.With its focus on bringing prices in alignment with the true cost of producing power and delivering it to the customer, the first part of the book outlines the issue of setting utility rates and considers some of the proposals to provide regulated industries with incentives to respond to economic and environmental concerns. The problems of energy supply occupy the second part of the book, which includes a survey of the costs of alternative energy sources and estimates of their environmental impacts, as well as a case study of the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The book concludes by documenting the results of subsidy programs that were designed to target the development of wind power and residential energy conservation.Regulators, we learn, have a mixed record when it comes to managing the production of energy. Some conservation programs have enjoyed considerable economic success, particularly those that correct a lack of consumer information. Others, such as the renewable energy tax credits or programs designed to subsidize new technologies, have cost much more than the value of the energy they have saved. What emerges clearly from this study is that regulated industries are not immune from the forces of competition.   [brief]
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Title: Feminism and politics: a comparative perspective 
Author: Gelb, Joyce 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Politics | Gender Studies | European Studies | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: This incisive work provides a comparative political analysis of the women's movement in England, the United States, and Sweden from the 1960s to the present. Based on extensive interviews in each of the three countries, Feminism and Politics focuses not only on the internal dynamics of the movements themselves, but also on the relationship of feminist politics to the political process as a whole and to the economic and ideological context.Gelb finds that differences in the feminist movements in each country relate to systemic and cultural differences. In Britain the closed nature of the political system has greatly narrowed opportunities for feminist political activities. By contrast, the feminist movement in the United States has enjoyed relative autonomy and success, primarily because it has been unconstrained by the necessity of working through existing groups such as unions and political parties. In Sweden Gelb finds an anomalous situation in which the state has implemented many feminist policies but has allowed little ideological or political space for an autonomous movement.In its scope and analysis, Feminism and Politics offers a valuable new perspective on women's political activities.   [brief]
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Title: Rich democracies: political economy, public policy, and performance
Author: Wilensky, Harold L
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | Social Theory | Public Policy | Economics and Business | Sociology
Publisher's Description: In this landmark work, the culmination of 30 years of systematic, comprehensive comparison of 19 rich democracies, Wilensky answers two basic questions: (1) What is distinctly modern about modern societies--in what ways are they becoming alike? (2) How do variations in types of political economy shape system performance? He specifies similarities and differences in the structure and interplay of government, political parties, the mass media, industry, labor, professions, agriculture, churches, and voluntary associations. He then demonstrates how differences in bargaining arrangements among these groups lead to contrasting policy profiles and patterns of taxing and spending, which in turn explain a large number of outcomes: economic performance, political legitimacy, equality, job security, safety and risk, real health, the reduction of poverty and environmental threats, and the effectiveness and fairness of regulatory regimes. Drawing on quantitative data and case studies covering the last 50 years and more than 400 interviews he conducted with top decision-makers and advisors, Wilensky provides a richly detailed account of the common social, economic, and labor problems modern governments confront and their contrasting styles of conflict resolution. The result is new light on the likely paths of development of rich democracies as they become richer. Assessing alternative theories, Wilensky offers a powerful critique of such images of modern society as "post-industrial" or "high-tech," "the information age" or the alleged dominance of "globalization." Because he systematically compares all of the rich democracies with at least three million population, Wilensky can specify what is truly exceptional about the United States, what it shares with Britain and Britain abroad (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and what it shares with all or almost all of the West European democracies, Israel, and Japan. He gives careful attention to which successful social and labor policies are transferable across nations and which are not. Rich Democracies will interest both scholars and practitioners. It combines the perspectives of political economy (the interplay of markets and politics) and political sociology (the social bases of politics). It will be especially useful in courses on comparative political economy, comparative politics, European politics, public policy, political sociology, the welfare state, American government, advanced industrial societies, and industrial relations.   [brief]
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Title: Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: an exploration of the comparative method 
Author: Gregor, Thomas
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Anthropology | Gender Studies | Geography
Publisher's Description: One of the great riddles of cultural history is the remarkable parallel that exists between the peoples of Amazonia and those of Melanesia. Although the two regions are separated by half a world in distance and at least 40,000 years of history, their cultures nonetheless reveal striking similarities in the areas of sex and gender. In both Amazonia and Melanesia, male-female differences infuse social organization and self-conception. They are the core of religion, symbolism, and cosmology, and they permeate ideas about body imagery, procreation, growth, men's cults, and rituals of initiation. The contributors to this innovative volume illuminate the various ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized, shaping subjective experiences common to entire cultural regions, and beyond. Through comparison of the life ways of Melanesia and Amazonia the authors expand the study of gender, as well as the comparative method in anthropology, in new and rewarding directions.   [brief]
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Title: Epic traditions in the contemporary world: the poetics of community 
Author: Beissinger, Margaret H
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Literature | Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Comparative Literature
Publisher's Description: The epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre. Employing theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropology, literary studies, and gender studies, the authors examine familiar and less well known oral and literary traditions - ancient Greek and Latin, Arabic, South Slavic, Indian, Native American, Italian, English, and Caribbean - demonstrating the continuing vitality of the epic tradition.Juxtaposing work on the traditional canon of western epics with scholarship on contemporary epics from various parts of the world, these essays cross the divide between oral and literary forms that has long marked the approach to the genre. With its focus on the links among narrative, politics, and performance, the collection creates a new dialogue illustrating the sociopolitical significance of the epic tradition. Taken together, the essays raise compelling new issues for the study of epic, as they examine concerns such as national identity, gender, pedagogy, and the creation of the canon.   [brief]
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Title: Scarcity, choice, and public policy in middle Africa 
Author: Rothchild, Donald S
Published: University of California Press,  1978
Subjects: African Studies | Politics | Public Policy
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Title: Interpreting the self: autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition 
Author: Reynolds, Dwight Fletcher 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies | Literature in Translation | Comparative Literature | Middle Eastern History
Publisher's Description: Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent an astonishing variety of geographical areas, occupations, and religious affiliations. This pioneering study explores the origins, historical development, and distinctive characteristics of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, drawing from texts written between the ninth and nineteenth centuries c.e. This volume consists of two parts: a general study rethinking the place of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, and the translated texts. Part one demonstrates that there are far more Arabic autobiographical texts than previously recognized by modern scholars and shows that these texts represent an established and - especially in the Middle Ages - well-known category of literary production. The thirteen translated texts in part two are drawn from the full one-thousand-year period covered by this survey and represent a variety of styles. Each text is preceded by a brief introduction guiding the reader to specific features in the text and providing general background information about the author. The volume also contains an annotated bibliography of 130 premodern Arabic autobiographical texts.In addition to presenting much little-known material, this volume revisits current understandings of autobiographical writing and helps create an important cross-cultural comparative framework for studying the genre.   [brief]
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Title: Bureaucratic authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966-1973, in comparative perspective 
Author: O'Donnell, Guillermo A
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Politics | Political Theory | Latin American Studies
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Title: Aesthetics and analysis in writing on religion: modern fascinations
Author: Gold, Daniel
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | Comparative Religions
Publisher's Description: This book addresses a fundamental dilemma in religious studies. Exploring the tension between humanistic and social scientific approaches to thinking and writing about religion, Daniel Gold develops a line of argument that begins with the aesthetics of academic writing in the field. He shows that successful writers on religion employ characteristic aesthetic strategies in communicating their visions of human truths. Gold examines these strategies with regard to epistemology and to the study of religion as a collective endeavor.   [brief]
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Title: Choosing justice: an experimental approach to ethical theory 
Author: Frohlich, Norman
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Politics | Economics and Business | Philosophy | Political Theory | Social Theory | Ethics
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Title: Seeing double: intercultural poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria
Author: Stephens, Susan A
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Poetry | Classical Politics
Publisher's Description: When, in the third century B.C.E., the Ptolemies became rulers in Egypt, they found themselves not only kings of a Greek population but also pharaohs for the Egyptian people. Offering a new and expanded understanding of Alexandrian poetry, Susan Stephens argues that poets such as Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius proved instrumental in bridging the distance between the two distinct and at times diametrically opposed cultures under Ptolemaic rule. Her work successfully positions Alexandrian poetry as part of the dynamic in which Greek and Egyptian worlds were bound to interact socially, politically, and imaginatively. The Alexandrian poets were image-makers for the Ptolemaic court, Seeing Double suggests; their poems were political in the broadest sense, serving neither to support nor to subvert the status quo, but to open up a space in which social and political values could be imaginatively re-created, examined, and critiqued. Seeing Double depicts Alexandrian poetry in its proper context - within the writing of foundation stories and within the imaginative redefinition of Egypt as "Two Lands" - no longer the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, but of a shared Greek and Egyptian culture.   [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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