San Antonio College Library

The notion of identity -- personal, religious, ethnic, or national -- has given rise to heated passions and crimes throughout history. What makes each one of us unique has been a fundamental question of philosophy from Socrates to Freud. This book argues that the concept of identity that prevails the world over is still very much tribal. It allows men of all countries, conditions, and faiths to be transformed into butchers and fanatics, passing themselves...

A clinical psychologist as well as a sociologist, Thomas J. Cottle is the author of more than twenty-five books. At the heart of his work is a concern with the problems confronted by ordinary people in their everyday lives, the kinds of issues that shape who we are and how we interact with the world around us. In A Sense of Self, his focus is on affirmation, on that mysterious process by which the self comes to know itself in relation to others and...

In proposing this view, Digeser responds to communitarians, classical political rationalists, and genealogists who argue that liberal culture fragments, debases, or normalizes our selves. He also critically analyzes perfectionist liberals who justify liberalism by virtue of its ability to cultivate autonomy and authenticity, as well as liberal neutralists who wish to avoid altogether the problem of selfcraft. All these, he argues, fall short in some...

"The individual is not what he or she was. During the Enlightenment, the individual was the antidote to the unruly mob, the locus of rights and freedoms, a check on the power of the state, and the way to unleash the power of the free market. But the Enlightenment trampled over some old truths - the power of the community, a sense of "common stock"--Now newly relevant and confirmed by the science of evolutionary biology and social physics." "John Henry...

From its beginning, jazz has presented a contradictory social world: jazz musicians have worked diligently to erase old boundaries, but they have just as resolutely constructed new ones. David Ake's book considers the diverse musics and related identities that jazz communities have shaped over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the many ways in which jazz musicians and audiences experience and understand themselves, their music, their...

"Drawing on examples from the US and Mexico, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, Spain and Morocco, as well as various parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, this timely book offers a comparative perspective on culture at state boundaries. The authors examine the role of the state, ethnicity, transnationalism, border symbols, rituals and identity in an effort to understand how nationalism informs attitudes and behaviour at local, national and international...

Tells the stories of six present day "passers": a black screenwriter who passed as a white Jew, a white teacher who passed for black, a working-class Puerto Rican desktop publishing expert who passes for someone of more privileged background, a gay Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight, and a poet who radically shifts his persona to write about rock 'n' roll. These and other stories from history explore...

"The author explores the origins and nature of French national identity by looking at one of the central elements in French national culture - luxury wine - and the rural communities that profited from its production. The book examines the development of the champagne industry between 1820 and 1920."--

In this fresh and original analysis, Brian J. McVeigh confronts both the demonizers and apologists of Japan. He argues persuasively that far from being unique, Japanese nationalism becomes demystified once 'management' and 'mysticism'--the same processes and practices that operate in other national states--are taken into account. Stripping away Orientalist-inspired misconceptions, the author stresses the variety and relative intensity of nationalisms,...

In this book polymath William Ian Miller probes one of the dirty little secrets of humanity: that we are all faking it much more than anyone would care to admit. He writes with wit and wisdom about the vain anxiety of being exposed as frauds in our professions, cads in our loves, and hypocrites to our creeds. He finds, however, that we are more than mere fools for wanting so badly to look good to ourselves and others. Sometimes, when we are faking...