Sociology

This book explores the convergence of different notions of Asia through the meeting between Rabindranath Tagore and the Japanese art historian and curator Okakura Tenshin in Calcutta in 1902. Set against a panoramic background, it draws on the intersections of the late Meiji period in Japan and the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, weaves through an intricate tapestry of ideas relating to pan-Asianism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and friendship, and positions the early modernist tensions of the period within-and against-the spectre of a unified Asia that concealed considerable political differences. In addition to countering the imperialist subtext of Okakura's The Ideals of the East and The Awakening of the East against Tagore's radical critique of Nationalism, it inflects the dominant tropes of postcolonial theory by highlighting the subtleties of beauty and the interstices of homosociality and love. Spanning geographical boundaries, across the cities of Tokyo, Boston, and Calcutta, the book offers new insights into the ways in which the Orient travelled within and beyond Asia, stimulated by emergent modes of vernacular cosmopolitanism.

How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real world? What binds societies together and how can these social orders be structured in a fair way? This book addresses this central paradox of modern life. Feelings for others—the solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or self-interest—are at the heart of this novel inquiry into the meeting place between normative theories of what we think we should do and empirical studies of who we actually are. The book demonstrates that solidarity creates inclusive and exclusive social structures, and shows how they can be repaired. It is not perfect, it is not absolute, and the horrors which occur in its lapses have been seen all too frequently in the forms of discrimination, genocide, and war. Despite its worldly flaws and contradictions, however, solidarity and the project of civil society remain our best hope—the antidote to every divisive institution, every unfair distribution, and every abusive and dominating hierarchy. A grand and sweeping statement, the book is a major contribution to our thinking about the real but ideal world in which we all reside.

This book studies the rise of social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century, up until 2012. It provides both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of networking services in the context of a changing ecosystem of connective media. Such history is needed to understand how the intricate constellation of platforms profoundly affects our experience of online sociality. In a short period of time, services like Facebook, YouTube and many others have come to deeply penetrate our daily habits of communication and creative production. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate user connectedness, but have become global information and data mining companies extracting and exploiting user connectivity. Offering a dual analytical prism to examine techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of social media, the author dissects five major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Each of these microsystems occupies a distinct position in the larger ecosystem of connective media, and yet, their underlying mechanisms for coding interfaces, steering users, filtering content, governance and business models rely on shared ideological principles. Reconstructing the premises on which these platforms are built, this study highlights how norms for online interaction and communication gradually changed. “Sharing,” “friending,” “liking,” “following,” “trending,” and “favoriting” have come to denote online practices imbued with specific technological and economic meanings. This process of normalization is part of a larger political and ideological battle over information control in an online world where everything is bound to become “social.”

The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is a classic example of a conspiracy of silence, a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth. But the denial of social realities—whether incest, alcoholism, corruption, or even genocide—is no fairy tale. This book sheds light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial—the keeping of “open secrets.” The author shows that conspiracies of silence exist at every level of society, ranging from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics. He also shows how such conspiracies evolve, illuminating the social pressures that cause people to deny what is right before their eyes. We see how each conspirator's denial is symbiotically complemented by the others', and learn that silence is usually more intense when there are more people conspiring—and especially when there are significant power differences among them. The author concludes by showing that the longer we ignore “elephants,” the larger they loom in our minds, as each avoidance triggers an even greater spiral of denial. Drawing on examples from newspapers and comedy shows to novels, children's stories, and film, the book travels back and forth across different levels of social life, and from everyday moments to large-scale historical events. At its core, it helps us understand why we ignore truths that are known to all of us.

This book presents a new approach to how culture works in contemporary societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, it shows how these unseen yet potent cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Only when these deep patterns of meaning are revealed, it argues, can we understand the stubborn staying power of violence and degradation, but also the steady persistence of hope. By understanding the darker structures that restrict our imagination, we can seek to transform them. By recognizing the culture structures that sustain hope, we can allow our idealistic imaginations to gain more traction in the world.

Though Islam and Muslims form an integral part of the rich history and culture of India, their voice in present times is a muted one. Academic discourse in the West, which is increasingly engaging with Islam, often chooses to ignore their existence. Much of what is written about India's Muslims, by Indian as well as Western scholars, tends to highlight the reactionary and strident over the moderate and normal. In this book, Mushirul Hasan articulates a vision of Islam or rather the many different kinds of Islam, instead of the frightening monolith of popular perception, living in harmony with other faiths, and of Indian Muslims, inheritors of the great Indian civilization, living in a plural society. Engaging with the debates surrounding the society, polity, and history of India's Muslims, and using historical and literary sources, as well as the writings of modern Muslim thinkers like Aziz Ahmad and Mohammad Mujeeb, Hasan traces the development of contemporary ideas about Muslims from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, through British rule and the partition, to the present day. For Hasan, a truly secular reading of Indian history reveals Indian Islam as one that exists in a pluralist milieu

Contemporary observers of politics in America often reduce democracy to demography. Whatever portion of the vote not explained by the class, gender, race, and religious differences of voters is attributed to the candidates' positions on the issues of the day. But are these the only—or even the main—factors that determine the vote? This book develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for power, explaining what happened, and why, during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. Drawing on vivid examples taken from a range of media coverage, participant observation at a Camp Obama, and interviews with leading political journalists, the book argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power. While these features have been largely overlooked by pundits, they are, in fact, the primary foci of politicians and their staff. Obama and McCain painstakingly constructed heroic self-images for their campaigns and the successful projections of those images suffused not only each candidate's actual rallies, and not only their media messages, but also the ground game. Money and organization facilitate the ground game, but they do not determine it. Emotion, images, and performance do. Though an untested senator and the underdog in his own party, Obama succeeded in casting himself as the hero—and McCain the anti-hero—and the only candidate fit to lead in challenging times. Illuminating the drama of Obama's celebrity, the effect of Sarah Palin on the race, and the impact of the emerging financial crisis, the book marries the immediacy and excitement of the final months of this historic presidential campaign with a new understanding of how politics work.

This book explains why the Holocaust has come to be considered the central event of the 20th century, and what this means. It debates how the Holocaust has evolved over the years, and the profound effects it will have on the way we envision the future. Presenting controversial work, and following up with challenging and equally provocative responses to it, the book offers a sweeping historical reconstruction of the Jewish mass murder as it evolved in the popular imagination of Western peoples, as well as an examination of its consequences. The book's inquiry points to a broad cultural transition that took place in Western societies after World War II—from confidence in moving past the most terrible of Nazi wartime atrocities to pessimism about the possibility for overcoming violence, ethnic conflict, and war. The Holocaust has become the central tragedy of modern times, an event which can no longer be overcome, but one that offers possibilities to extend its moral lessons beyond Jews to victims of other types of secular and religious strife. Following the main chapter's controversial thesis is a series of responses by distinguished scholars in the humanities and social sciences, considering the implications of the universal moral relevance of the Holocaust. A final response comes in a postscript, focusing on the repercussions of the Holocaust in Israel.

Why doesn't self-help help? This book puts forward this paradoxical question as it looks at a world where the market for self-improvement products—books, audiotapes, and extreme makeovers—is exploding, and there seems to be no end in sight. Rather than seeing narcissism at the root of the self-help craze, as others have contended, the author shows a nation relying on self-help culture for advice on how to cope in an increasingly volatile and competitive work world. The book reveals how makeover culture traps Americans in endless cycles of self-invention and overwork as they struggle to stay ahead of a rapidly restructuring economic order. A lucid treatment of the modern obsession with work and self-improvement, it will strike a chord with its acute diagnosis of the self-help trap and its sharp suggestions for how we can address the alienating conditions of modern work and family life.

Frequenting gun shops and shooting ranges, and devoting particular attention to those whose interest in weaponry extends beyond the casual, this book captures in detail how gun owners actually think and feel about their guns. Through conversations—with cowboy action shooters at a regional match, sport shooters, hunters, with shooters of all ages and races—we hear of the “savage beauty” of a beautifully crafted long gun, of the powerful historical import owners attach to their guns, of the sense of empowerment that comes with shooting skill, and the visceral thrill of discharging a dangerous weapon. Cutting through the clichés that link gun ownership with violent, criminal subcultures and portray shooters as “gun nuts” or potential terrorists, the book provides us with a lively and untainted portrait of American gun enthusiasts.