"Beyond the Global Culture War" presents a cross-cultural critique of global liberalism and argues for a broad-based challenge that can meet it on its own scale. Adam Webb is one of our most exciting and original young scholars, and this book is certain to generate many new debates. This timely volume probes many of the key challenges we face in the new millennium. This is essential reading for all students of politics and globalization.
In the heated academic warfare over multiculturalism and the curriculum, Gerald Graff takes a daring stand. He suggests that the anger and hostility over political correctness should be channelled into productive debate and that teachers, administrators and students alike could actually make good use of the crisis to tackle the real problems of academic incoherence and student apathy.
"Beyond the Global Culture War" presents a cross-cultural critique of global liberalism and argues for a broad-based challenge that can meet it on its own scale. Adam Webb is one of our most exciting and original young scholars, and this book is certain to generate many new debates. This timely volume probes many of the key challenges we face in the new millennium. This is essential reading for all students of politics and globalization.
This volume reframes the narrative that has too often dominated the field of historical study of religion and politics: the culture wars. Influenced by culture war theories first introduced in the 1990s, much of the recent history of modern American religion and politics is written in a mode that takes for granted the enduring partisan divides that can blind us to the complex and dynamic intersections of faith and politics. The contributors to Religion and Politics Beyond the Culture Wars argue that such narratives do not tell the whole story of religion and politics in the modern age. This collection of essays, authored by leading scholars in American religious and political history, challenges readers to look past familiar clashes over social issues to appreciate the ways in which faith has fueled twentieth-century U.S. politics beyond predictable partisan divides and across a spectrum of debates ranging from environment to labor, immigration to civil rights, domestic legislation to foreign policy. Offering fresh illustrations drawn from a range of innovative primary sources, theories, and methods, these essays emphasize that our rendering of religion and politics in the twentieth century must appreciate the intersectionality of identities, interests, and motivations that transpire and exist outside an unbending dualistic paradigm. Contributors: Darren Dochuk, Janine Giordano Drake, Joseph Kip Kosek, Josef Sorett, Patrick Q. Mason, Wendy L. Wall, Mark Brilliant, Andrew Preston, Matthew Avery Sutton, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Benjamin Francis-Fallon, Michelle Nickerson, Keith Makoto Woodhouse, Kate Bowler, and James T. Kloppenberg.
A riveting account of how Christian fundamentalists, Orthodox Jews, and conservative Catholics have joined forces in a battle against their progressive counterparts for control of American secular culture.
Every day, major headlines tell the story of how Christianity is attempting to influence American culture and politics. But statistics show that young Americans are disenchanted with a faith that has become culturally antagonistic and too closely aligned with partisan politics. In this personal yet practical work, Jonathan Merritt uncovers the changing face of American Christianity by uniquely examining the coming of age of a new generation of Christians. Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.
Why has identity become so central to judging art today? Why are some groups reluctant to defend free speech within culture? Has state support made artists poorer not richer? How does the movement for social justice influence cultural production? Why is Post-Modernism dominant in the art world? Why are consumers of comic books so bitterly divided? In Culture War: Art, Identity Politics and Cultural Entryism Alexander Adams examines a series of pressing issues in today's culture: censorship, Islamism, Feminism, identity politics, historical reparations and public arts policy. Through a series of linked essays, Culture War exposes connections between seemingly unrelated events and trends in high and popular cultures. From fine art to superhero comics, from political cartoons to museum policy, certain persistent ideas underpin the most contentious issues today. Adams draws on history, philosophy, politics and cultural criticism to explain the reasoning of creators, consumers and critics and to expose some uncomfortable truths.
Portrayed in Western discourse as tribal and traditional, Afghans have in fact intensely debated women's rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam as part of their nation building in the post-9/11 era. Wazhmah Osman places television at the heart of these public and politically charged clashes while revealing how the medium also provides war-weary Afghans with a semblance of open discussion and healing. After four decades of gender and sectarian violence, she argues, the internationally funded media sector has the potential to bring about justice, national integration, and peace. Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of many Afghan media producers and people. Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the role of international interventions. Osman analyzes the impact of transnational media and foreign funding while keeping the focus on local cultural contestations, productions, and social movements. As a result, she redirects the global dialogue about Afghanistan to Afghans and challenges top-down narratives of humanitarian development.
