The Temple of Perfection
The Temple of Perfection

Author: Eric Chaline

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1780234791

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These days there is only one right answer when someone asks you what you are doing after work. Hitting the gym! With an explosion of apps, clothing, devices, and countless DVDs, fitness has never felt more modern, and the gym is its holy laboratory, alive with machinery, sweat, and dance music. But we are far from the first to pursue bodily perfection—the gymnasium dates back 2,800 years, to the very beginnings of Western civilization. In The Temple of Perfection, Eric Chaline offers the first proper consideration of the gym’s complex, layered history and the influence it has had on the development of Western individualism, society, education, and politics. As Chaline shows, how we take care of our bodies has long been based on a complex mix of spiritual beliefs, moral discipline, and aesthetic ideals that are all entangled with political, social, and sexual power. Today, training in a gym is seen primarily as part of the pursuit of individual fulfillment. As he shows, however, the gym has always had a secondary role in creating men and women who are “fit for purpose”—a notion that has meant a lot of different things throughout history. Chaline surveys the gym’s many incarnations and the ways the individual, the nation-state, the media, and the corporate world have intersected in its steamy confines, sometimes with unintended consequences. He shows that the gym is far more than a factory for superficiality and self-obsession—it is one of the principle battlefields of humanity’s social, sexual, and cultural wars. Exploring the gym’s history from a multitude of perspectives, Chaline concludes by looking toward its future as it struggles to redefine itself in a world in thrall to quick fixes—such as plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals—meant to attain the gym’s ultimate promises: physical fitness and beauty.

Valparaíso School
Valparaíso School

Author: Rodrigo Pérez de Arce

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9780773526204

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"The School of Architecture at the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile, underwent a transformation in 1952 when a group of young architects led by Alberto Cruz began teaching at the school. The Valparaiso School, as it became known, acquired an international reputation for its radical stance and its commitment to dialogue between architects and other disciplines. From 1970 onwards, it began to focus much of its research and design activity on the Open City project, which had been created by a group of architects, artists and poets with a vision of a city with "no master plan, no imposed ordering devices, and no hierarchical networks of infrastructure." Originally set up as a laboratory-type environment, this alternative community has since become a place of residence and work for like-minded people. Valparaiso School: Open City Group provides an insight into this radical experiment in urban development through a series of essays and photographs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Moral Imagination
The Moral Imagination

Author: John Paul Lederach

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 019974758X

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"John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. He has provided consultation, training and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, Tajikistan, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. In this book, Lederach poses the question, "How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still living in them?" Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act-an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination." This imagination must, however, emerge from and speak to the hard realities of human affairs. The peacebuilder must have one foot in what is and one foot beyond what exists. The book is organized around four guiding stories that point to the moral imagination but are incomplete. Lederach seeks to understand what happened in these individual cases and how they are relevant to large-scale change. His purpose is not to propose a grand new theory. Instead he wishes to stay close to the "messiness" of real processes and change, and to recognize the serendipitous nature of the discoveries and insights that emerge along the way. overwhelmed the equally important creative process. Like most professional peacemakers, Lederach sees his work as a religious vocation. Lederach meditates on his own calling and on the spirituality that moves ordinary people to reject violence and seek reconciliation. Drawing on his twenty-five years of experience in the field he explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding and points the way toward the future of the art." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0616/2004011794-d.html.