The Primordial Challenge
The Primordial Challenge

Author: John F. Stack

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1986-10-16

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Ethnicity plays a vital role in contemporary world politics. This collection of essays documents the international dimensions of ethnic identity by examining the interaction between ethnicity and the actions of modern nation-states in a variety of global, regional, and urban settings throughout the world. The editor, John F. Stack, Jr., provocatively argues that the dynamics of ethnicity in the contemporary world are best examined from the perspective of primordial attachments--those givens of social existence based on family ties, race, custom, language, religion, and region. This perspective is disputed by a number of the contributors who see ethnicity as the result of instrumental forces--state building, socioeconomic class, modernization, political development, and the transformation of the global political economy.

The Quest for the Primordial
The Quest for the Primordial

Author: Elisa Vitali

Publisher: Sapienza Università Editrice

Published: 2023-07-31

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 8893772833

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Although fifty years passed since the boom of the theories on Japanese national character and considerable academic literature was produced to debunk its ideological tenets, the Nihonjinron still plays a significant role in the mainstream public discourse on Japanese identity. Intellectuals, journalists, policymakers routinely repropose the ever-lasting cliché of Japanese cultural, linguistic, racial uniqueness. In doing so, they adopt a primordialist stance in the narration of Japanese identity, that is a conception of Japanese nation as a primordial entity, located in an original fatherland since immemorial times. Drawing on the writings of Suzuki Takao and Watanabe Shoichi, the book analyses the rhetorical strategies and discursive features supporting essentialist ideas of Japaneseness. At the same time, it highlights the heuristic value of primordialism as an effective descriptor of the nationalist ideology, thus challenging its widespread usage as a category of analysis.

The Genesis Quest
The Genesis Quest

Author: Michael Marshall

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-11-20

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 022671537X

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From the primordial soup to meteorite impact zones, the Manhattan Project to the latest research, this book is the first full history of the scientists who strive to explain the genesis of life. How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervor, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life’s genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way, the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life’s family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life’s beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity
Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity

Author: Dermot Anthony Nestor

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-04-08

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0567012972

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It presents a vision of Israel as an epistemological rather than an ontological entity; a perspective on the world rather than an entity in it. >

Challenging the Absolute
Challenging the Absolute

Author: Simon F. Oliai

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2014-12-30

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 0761865160

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Our contemporary world presents a seemingly inexplicable paradox. It is a world where interaction among societies of different cultural traditions has never been easier. A world in which modern technology has visibly overcome the physical barriers that had long condemned the majority of men to relative isolation from one another. Yet, our world is also one in which the illusion of a lost “original” cultural or religious identity, grounded by a metaphysical absolute, pits men against one another. A physically more accessible world has thus become an increasingly fundamentalist one. In this book, written in the wake of such influential European thinkers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and Vattimo, Simon Oliai analyzes the conceptual underpinnings of this paradox and argues that, unless the “European” affirmation of man’s finite existence becomes universal, we shall never rid ourselves, to echo Nietzsche, of the repressive shadow of a long dead metaphysical idol.

The Hero's Quest and the Cycles of Nature
The Hero's Quest and the Cycles of Nature

Author: Rachel S. McCoppin

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2016-10-13

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1476625751

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This examination of the heroic journey in world mythology casts the protagonist as a personification of nature--a "botanical hero" one might say--who begins the quest in a metaphorical seed-like state, then sprouts into a period of verdant strength. But the hero must face a mythic underworld where he or she contends with mortality and sacrifice--embracing death as a part of life. For centuries, humans have sought superiority over nature, yet the botanical hero finds nothing is lost by recognizing that one is merely a part of nature. Instead, a cyclical promise of continuous life is realized, in which no element fully disappears, and the hero's message is not to dwell on death.

Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World
Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World

Author: Bill Green

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-18

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 3030616673

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This book brings together voices and perspectives from across the world and draws in a new generation of curriculum scholars to provide fresh insight into the contemporary field. By opening up Curriculum Studies with contributions from twelve countries—including every continent—the book outlines and exemplifies the challenges and opportunities for transnational curriculum inquiry. While curriculum remains largely shaped and enabled nationally, global policy borrowing and scholarly exchange continue to influence local practice. Contributors explore major shared debates and future implications through four key sections: Decolonising the Curriculum; Knowledge Questions and Curriculum Dilemmas; Nation, History, Curriculum; and Curriculum Challenges for the Future.

Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective
Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective

Author: Hans Günter Brauch

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-10-08

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 3319309900

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Addressing global environmental challenges from a peace ecology perspective, the present book offers peer-reviewed texts that build on the expanding field of peace ecology and applies this concept to global environmental challenges in the Anthropocene. Hans Günter Brauch (Germany) offers a typology of time and turning points in the 20th century; Juliet Bennett (Australia) discusses the global ecological crisis resulting from a “tyranny of small decisions”; Katharina Bitzker (Canada) debates “the emotional dimensions of ecological peacebuilding” through love of nature; Henri Myrttinen (UK) analyses “preliminary findings on gender, peacebuilding and climate change in Honduras” while Úrsula Oswald Spring (Mexíco) offers a critical review of the policy and scientific nexus debate on “the water, energy, food and biodiversity nexus”, reflecting on security in Mexico. In closing, Brauch discusses whether strategies of sustainability transition may enhance the prospects for achieving sustainable peace in the Anthropocene.

Navigating Sovereignty
Navigating Sovereignty

Author: C. Shih

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-16

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1403978441

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In this book, the author undertakes a postcolonial analysis of identities the Chinese state uses to confront world politics and globalization. Because these identities are created at the confluence of Western modernity and Confucian tradition, two elements that are continually reinterpreted themselves, the result is an ambiguity regarding the identities best suited to explain Chinese behavior. The author argues that this uncertainty is not a new condition but one that reaches back to end of the nineteenth century. It is by understanding this ambiguity surrounding identities that will in turn help present -day authorities predict the future course of Chinese behavior in world politics.