Contrell Leo Floyd teaches in Ambition: The New Era, the New Movement that now is the time to be ambitious, determined, and self-motivated to take that leap of faith to stand for what you believe in no matter what anyone thinks or what society says. The main reason why people are not taking that leap of faith in society is because of the fear of what others think and how they are viewed in the fear of being rejected or blackballed indefinitely by society until one takes that leap of faith to break the cycle to start his own new world movement.
This is an edited collection of items on unionism worldwide, recognising the crisis that an informatised and globalised capitalism implies for work, workers and the trade-union movement. It considers radical alternatives for labour organisation and action in the 21st century. The book includes contributions by informed academics and unionists and proposes alternative union policies or models in relation to the working class(es), to women, democracy, ecology, internationalism.
Sociologist, social critic, and political radical C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) was one of the leading public intellectuals in twentieth century America. Offering an important new understanding of Mills and the times in which he lived, Radical Ambition challenges the captivating caricature that has prevailed of him as a lone rebel critic of 1950s complacency. Instead, it places Mills within broader trends in American politics, thought, and culture. Indeed, Daniel Geary reveals that Mills shared key assumptions about American society even with those liberal intellectuals who were his primary opponents. The book also sets Mills firmly within the history of American sociology and traces his political trajectory from committed supporter of the Old Left labor movement to influential herald of an international New Left. More than just a biography, Radical Ambition illuminates the career of a brilliant thinker whose life and works illustrate both the promise and the dilemmas of left-wing social thought in the United States.
TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS.. 3 THE NEW WORLD OF ISLAM... 4 INTRODUCTION: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD.. 4 CHAPTER I: THE MOHAMMEDAN REVIVAL. 20 CHAPTER II: PAN-ISLAMISM... 36 CHAPTER III: THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST. 72 CHAPTER IV: POLITICAL CHANGE. 105 CHAPTER V: NATIONALISM... 126 CHAPTER VI: NATIONALISM IN INDIA.. 189 CHAPTER VII: ECONOMIC CHANGE. 211 CHAPTER VIII: SOCIAL CHANGE. 233 CHAPTER IX: SOCIAL UNREST AND BOLSHEVISM... 254 ABOUT THE AUTHOR. 276 THE NEW ERA OF ISLAM "Das Alte stürzt, es ändert sich die Zeit, Und neues Leben blüht aus den Ruinen." Schiller, Wilhelm Tell. INTRODUCTION: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE OLD ISLAMIC WORLD The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing event in human history. Springing from a land and a people alike previously negligible, Islam spread within a century over half the earth, shattering great empires, overthrowing long-established religions, remoulding the souls of races, and building up a whole new world—the world of Islam. The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it appear. The other great religions won their way slowly, by painful struggle, and finally triumphed with the aid of powerful monarchs converted to the new faith. Christianity had its Constantine, Buddhism its Asoka, and Zoroastrianism its Cyrus, each lending to his chosen cult the mighty force of secular authority. Not so Islam. Arising in a desert land sparsely inhabited by a nomad race previously undistinguished in human annals, Islam sallied forth on its great adventure with the slenderest human backing and against the heaviest material odds. Yet Islam triumphed with seemingly miraculous ease, and a couple of genera tions saw the Fiery Crescent borne victorious from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas and from the deserts of Central Asia to the deserts of Central Africa. This amazing success was due to a number of contributing factors, chief among them being the character of the Arab race, the nature of Mohammed's teaching, and the general state of the contemporary Eastern world. Undistinguished though the Arabs had hitherto been, they were a people of remarkable potentialities, which were at that moment patently seeking self-realization. For several generations before Mohammed, Arabia had been astir with exuberant vitality. The Arabs had outgrown their ancestral paganism and were instinctively yearning for better things. Athwart this seething ferment of mind and spirit Islam rang like a trumpet-call. Mohammed, an Arab of the Arabs, was the very incarnation of the soul of his race. Preaching a simple, austere monotheism, free from priestcraft or elaborate doctrinal trappings, he tapped the well-springs of religious zeal always present in the Semitic heart. Forgetting the chronic rivalries and blood-feuds which had consumed their energies in internecine strife, and welded into a glowing unity by the fire of their new-found faith, the Arabs poured forth from their deserts to conquer the earth for Allah, the One True God. Thus Islam, like the resistless breath of the sirocco, the desert wind, swept out of Arabia and encountered—a spiritual vacuum. Those neighbouring Byzantine and Persian Empires, so imposing to the casual eye, were mere dried husks, devoid of real vitality. Their religions were a mockery and a sham. Persia's ancestral cult of Zoroaster had degenerated into "Magism"—a pompous priestcraft, tyrannical and persecuting, hated and secretly despised. As for Eastern Christianity, bedizened with the gewgaws of paganism and bedevilled by the maddening theological speculations of the decadent Greek mind, it had become a repellent caricature of the teachings of Christ. Both Magism and Byzantine Christen dom were riven by great heresies which engendered savage persecutions and furious hates. Furthermore, both the Byzantine and Persian Empires were harsh despotisms which crushed their subjects to the dust and killed out all love of country or loyalty to the state. Lastly, the two empires had just fought a terrible war from which they had emerged mutually bled white and utterly exhausted. Such was the world compelled to face the lava-flood of Islam. The result was inevitable. Once the disciplined strength of the East Roman legions and the Persian cuirassiers had broken before the fiery onslaught of the fanatic sons of the desert, it was all over. There was no patriotic resistance. The down-trodden populations passively accepted new masters, while the numerous heretics actually welcomed the overthrow of persecuting co-religionists whom they hated far worse than their alien conquerors. In a short time most of the subject peoples accepted the new faith, so refreshingly simple compared with their own degenerate cults. The Arabs, in their turn, knew how to consolidate their rule. They were no bloodthirsty savages, bent solely on loot and destruction. On the contrary, they were an innately gifted race, eager to learn and appreciative of the cultural gifts which older civilizations had to bestow. Intermarrying freely and professing a common belief, conquerors and conquered rapidly fused, and from this fusion arose a new civilization—the Saracenic civilization, in which the ancient cultures of Greece, Rome, and Persia were revitalized by Arab vigour and synthesized by the Arab genius and the Islamic spirit. For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. a.d. 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques, and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages. However, by the tenth century the Saracenic civilization began to display unmistakable symptoms of decline. This decline was at first gradual. Down to the terrible disasters of the thirteenth century it still displayed vigour and remained ahead of the Christian West. Still, by the year a.d. 1000 its golden age was over. For this there were several reasons. In the first place, that inveterate spirit of faction which has always been the bane of the Arab race soon reappeared once more. Rival clans strove for the headship of Islam, and their quarrels degenerated into bloody civil wars. In this fratricidal strife the fervour of the first days cooled, and saintly men like Abu Bekr and Omar, Islam's first standard-bearers, gave place to worldly minded leaders who regarded their position of "Khalifa" as a means to despotic power and self-glorification. The seat of government was moved to Damascus in Syria, and afterward to Bagdad in Mesopotamia. The reason for this was obvious. In Mecca despotism was impossible. The fierce, free-born Arabs of the desert would tolerate no master, and their innate democracy had been sanctioned by the Prophet, who had explicitly declared that all Believers were brothers. The Meccan caliphate was a theocratic democracy. Abu Bekr and Omar were elected by the people, and held themselves responsible to public opinion, subject to the divine law as revealed by Mohammed in the Koran.
*Winner in the Management and Leadership Textbook Category at CMI Management Book of the Year Awards 2015* An ideal course text for Organizational Behaviour, Human Resource Management or Cross-Cultural Management courses. Chapters present the fundamental theoretical approaches in all key areas including leadership, ethics and change, and then explore them in the context of culture and cross-cultural management. Encourages self-reflection and critical appraisal through a series of questions and scenarios designed to get you thinking like a manager working with an international team. Provides practical guidance on tackling the most complex issues facing managers today. Contains insights into the experiences of real employees working in a multicultural environment. The companion website provides a wealth of additional material to support students and teachers alike.
This book examines the legacy of international interwar modernism as a case of cultural transfer through the travels of a central motif: the square. The square was the most emblematic and widely known form/motif of the international avant-garde in the interwar years. It originated from the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich who painted The Black Square on White Ground in 1915 and was then picked up by another Russian artist El Lissitzky and the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg. It came to be understood as a symbol of a new internationalism and modernity and while Forgács uses it as part of her overall narrative, she focuses on it and its journey across borders to follow its significance, how it was used by the above key artists and how its meaning became modified in Western Europe. It is unusual to discuss interwar modernism and its postwar survival, but this book's chapters work together to argue that the interwar developments signified a turning point in twentieth-century art that led to much creativity and innovation. Forgács supports her theory with newly found and newly interpreted documents that prove how this exciting legacy was shaped by three major agents: Malevich, Lissitzsky and van Doesburg. She offers a wider interpretation of modernism that examines its postwar significance, reception and history up until the emergence of the New Left in 1956 and the seismic events of 1968.
This groundbreaking book surveys the entire history of popular religious sects in Chinese history. “Publish this Book!” is the unequivocal recommendation taken from the peer reviews. In part one the reader will find a thorough treatment of the formation of the notions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the contexts of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Chronologically organized, the work continues to deal with each new religious movement; its teachings, scriptures, social organisation, and political significance. The discussions on the patterns laid bare and on the dynamics of popular religious movements in Chinese society, make this book indispensable for all those who wish to gain a true understanding of the mechanics of Popular religious movements in historical and contemporary China.
This book marks a major contribution since the work of Tan Liok Eee (1997) on the Dongjiaozong movement in Malaysia. The author's familiarity with both popular and academic writings in Mandarin has yielded rare, first-hand, and often bottom-up views on the Dongjiaozong movement from actors directly involved in the movement. As a result, readers get a better understanding of the personalities, leadership dynamics, creative strategies of control and resistance within this social movement as well as its ability to exploit political vulnerabilities and interpersonal relationships to cajole, negotiate and arm-twist the state in its bid to defend Chinese education in Malaysia. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of political science and Malaysian studies, in general, and the study of state-society relations and social movements in non-liberal democratic contexts, in particular. - Associate Professor Goh Beng Lan, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
