The WEIRDest People in the World
The WEIRDest People in the World

Author: Joseph Henrich

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2020-09-08

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0374710457

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A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Cold War Cultures
Cold War Cultures

Author: Annette Vowinckel

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0857452444

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The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term “Cold War Culture” is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether — or to what extent — the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.

Social Cohesion in the Western World
Social Cohesion in the Western World

Author: Georgi Dragolov

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-05-25

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 3319324640

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Many people in the Western world are concerned that the social fabric of societies is fraying. This book constitutes the first-of-its-kind systematic account of social cohesion, from theory through methodology to empirical evidence. Readers are introduced to the academically developed Social Cohesion Radar of Bertelsmann Stiftung, a globally active non-governmental organization. The Social Cohesion Radar defines and measures cohesion as characterized by three core aspects: resilient social relations, positive emotional connectedness between people and the community, and a pronounced focus on the common good. Using high-quality academic and institutional data sources, the Social Cohesion Radar provides insights into the level and development of social cohesion over a period of almost 25 years internationally, among 34 European Union and OECD members, and regionally, among the 16 federal states of Germany. It further provides insights into what influences cohesion, and what cohesion is good for. One of the key findings is that social cohesion promotes a happier life for everyone.

Studying Contemporary Western Society
Studying Contemporary Western Society

Author: Margaret Mead

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9781571818164

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Few anthropologists today realize the pioneering role Margaret Mead played in the investigation of contemporary cultures. This volume collects and presents a variety of her essays on research methodology relating to contemporary culture. Many of these essays were printed originally in limited circulation journals, research reports and books edited by others. They reflect Mead's continuing commitment to searching out methods for studying and extending the anthropologist's tools of investigation for use in complex societies. Essays on American and European societies, intergenerational relations, architecture and social space, industrialization, and interracial relations are included in this varied and exciting collection.

Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500
Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500

Author: Hugh Cunningham

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-10

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 131786803X

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This book investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, and assesses how it has changed over the span of five hundred years. Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, taking in Locke, Rosseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societites have understood and valued childhood over time. His survey of parent/child relationships uncovers evidence of parental love, care and, in the frequent cases of child death, grief throughout the period, concluding that there was as much continuity as change in the actual relations of children and adults across these five centuries. For undergraduate courses in History of the Family, European Social History, History of Children and Gender History.

Intellectuals, Universities, and the State in Western Modern Societies
Intellectuals, Universities, and the State in Western Modern Societies

Author: Ron Eyerman

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2021-05-28

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0520369521

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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Civil Society
Civil Society

Author: Elizabeth Dunn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1134827083

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Between kinship ties on the one hand and the state on the other, human beings experience a diversity of social relationships and groupings which in modern western thought have come to be gathered under the label 'civil society'. A liberal-individualist model of civil society has become fashionable in recent years, but what can such a term mean in the late twentieth century? Civil Society argues that civil society should not be studied as a separate, 'private' realm clearly separated in opposition to the state; nor should it be confined to the institutions of the 'voluntary' or 'non-governmental' sector. A broader understanding of civil society involves the investigation of everyday social practices, often elusive power relations and the shared moralities that hold communities together. By drawing on case materials from a range of contemporary societies, including the US, Britain, four of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle and Far East, Civil Society demonstrates what anthropology contributes to debates taking place throughout the social sciences; adding up to an exciting renewal of the agenda for political anthropology.

Modes of Thought in Western and Non-Western Societies
Modes of Thought in Western and Non-Western Societies

Author: Ruth Finnegan

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-10-04

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1532617615

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Is there a basic difference in thinking between Western and non-Western societies? This long-debated yet highly topical problem forms the central question to which distinguished contributors in the fields of psychology, linguistics, history, and sociology and, more particularly, of social anthropology and philosophy, address themselves in this interdisciplinary collec­tion. They are: Barry Barnes, Benjamin N. Colby and Michael Cole, Ruth Finnegan, Ernest Gellner, Robin Horton, J. M. Ita, Hilary Jenkins, Steven Lukes, Nobuhiro Nagashima, S. J. Tambiah, W. H. Whiteley, and Sybil Wolfram. The central ideas of this classic work are reformulated and refined in the various contributions with different possible dichotomies discussed such as: 'traditional/modern', 'industrial/non­ industrial', or 'scientific/non-scientific', and 'thinking,' analyzed in terms of its thought processes, content, logic or social background. The material in the book, which is dedicated to Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, falls within the general area of the comparative sociology of knowledge, and will thus particularly interest philosophers, social anthropologists, and sociologists. The volume is however conceived in an interdisciplinary spirit and will be of interest to anyone seriously concerned to examine the nature of thinking in our own and other societies.

Marx at the Margins
Marx at the Margins

Author: Kevin B. Anderson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 022634570X

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In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by Marx that cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well. Through highly informed readings of work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond. For this expanded edition, Anderson has written a new preface that discusses the additional 1879–82 notebook material, as well as the influence of the Russian-American philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya on his thinking.