Rethinking Progress provides a challenging reevaluation of one of the crucial ideas of Western civilization; the notion of progress. Progress often seems to have become self-defeating, producing ecological deserts, overpopulated cities, exhausted resources, decaying cultures, and widespread feelings of alienation. The contributors, from all over the world, present their diversified perspectives on the fate of progress.
At a time when global civilization stands at the crossroads comes a book that helps to understand the emerging challenges, from global warming and other environmental issues, global poverty, free trade, foreign debt burdens, and the expanding global economy, to the worsening conditions in many nations. // The book takes a look at the causes of the crises that have developed over centuries, and describes how, even as the miracles of technology have unfolded, the model of progress itself has proven to be disruptive and damaging. The book shares a vision of how we can help re-vitalize and re-direct global society. From environmental rejuvenation to democratic forms of progress, from the reform of the United Nations to greater international democracy, and from solutions to social problems to a new ethics needed for life and the planet, the book lays out interesting possibilities. For those who want things to change, beneficial directions are provided. For others it questions many pre-conceived notions, and provides refreshingly different perspectives.
At a time when global civilization stands at the crossroads comes a book that helps to understand the emerging challenges, from global warming and other environmental issues, global poverty, free trade, foreign debt burdens, and the expanding global economy, to the worsening conditions in many nations. // The book takes a look at the causes of the crises that have developed over centuries, and describes how, even as the miracles of technology have unfolded, the model of progress itself has proven to be disruptive and damaging. The book shares a vision of how we can help re-vitalize and re-direct global society. From environmental rejuvenation to democratic forms of progress, from the reform of the United Nations to greater international democracy, and from solutions to social problems to a new ethics needed for life and the planet, the book lays out interesting possibilities. For those who want things to change, beneficial directions are provided. For others it questions many pre-conceived notions, and provides refreshingly different perspectives.
Based on an insightful and innovative reading of Kant's theory of knowledge, this book explores the political implications of Kant's philosophical writings on knowledge. It suggests that Kant offers a stable foundation for the reconsideration of the idea of progress as crucial in matters of political management at the outset of the 21st Century.
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.
Winner of the PSA Mackenzie Prize for best politics book of 1999. Rethinking Green Politics offers a wide-ranging overview and critical analysis of the theoretical framework that underpins the values, principles and concerns of contemporary green politics and the appropriate institutional means for realizing green ends.
The Oxford Handbook of International Legal Theory provides an accessible and authoritative guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The Handbook features 48 original essays by leading international scholars from a wide range of traditions, nationalities, and perspectives, reflecting the richness and diversity of this dynamic field. The collection explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, and theoretical approaches. It provides a much-needed map of the field of international legal theory, and a guide to the main themes and debates that have driven theoretical work in international law. The Handbook will be an indispensable reference work for students, scholars, and practitioners seeking to gain an overview of current theoretical debates about the nature, function, foundations, and future role of international law.
The term ’progress’ is a modern Western notion that life is always improving and advancing toward an ideal state. It is a vital modern concept which underlies geographic explorations and scientific and technological inventions as well as the desire to harness nature in order to increase human beings’ ease and comfort. With the advent of Western colonization and to the great detriment of the colonized, the notion of progress began to perniciously and pervasively permeate across cultures. This book details the impact of the notion of progress on the Nagas and their culture. The interaction between the Nagas and the West, beginning with British military conquest and followed by American missionary intrusion, has resulted in the gradual demise of Naga culture. It is almost a cliché to assert that since the colonial contact, the long evolved Naga traditional values are being replaced by Western values. Consequences are still being felt in the lack of sense of direction and confusion among the Nagas today. Just like other Indigenous Peoples, whose history is characterized by traumatic cultural turmoil because of colonial interference, the Nagas have long been engaged in self-shame, self-negation and self-sabotage.
