The Guardian of Difference

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Richard Langston
Keyword(s):  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
German City ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
At Home

This introductory chapter provides a background of the essayist Alexander Kluge. Born in 1932 in the central German city of Halberstadt, the German polymath Alexander Kluge is certainly known both at home and abroad for wearing many hats. Above all, his career as one of New German Cinema's most cerebral filmmakers still commands international acclaim. First and foremost a writer of stories, Kluge returned to writing in earnest in 2000 and has generated since then an astonishing complex corpus of storybooks that has grown more than twice the size of what he published during his first robust literary phase. A filmmaker, author, and television producer, Kluge is, however, more than just the sum of this triumvirate. He is also recognized as a trained musician and lawyer, an accomplished theorist with roots in the Frankfurt School, a savvy media activist and entrepreneur, and a celebrated public intellectual of the highest stature. Kluge is also arguably one of Germany's great essayists of the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Collected in the present volume are twenty-eight examples of Kluge's essayistic thinking that attest to his long-standing commitment to “intellectual freedom.” The chapter then looks at the concepts of difference and orientation, which are recurrent themes throughout all of Kluge's thought.

Introduction

Tap ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anindya Ghose
Keyword(s):  
Smart Phones ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Mobile Data ◽  
Present Volume

This introductory chapter begins with an explanation of the motivation behind the present volume. The author goes back to sometime in late 2009 or early 2010, when he first heard the phrase “we live in an era of smart phones and stupid people.” He recalls being both very amused and intellectually intrigued by this statement, not so much about what smartphones would eventually do to human intelligence, but more by how it could become an exceptional source of intelligence for businesses. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, which is to demystify the mobile economy and take the uncertainty out of the process of harnessing the power of mobile data and delivering value to consumers. It concludes with an overview of the three parts of the book.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Corsino
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Italian Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Personal Community ◽  
Group Characteristics

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the emergence of the Italian Mafia in one particular setting. It examines a long-standing organizational component of the Chicago Outfit—namely, the Chicago Heights boys. It looks at the Chicago Heights operation from its beginning in the early 1900s to the heyday of Outfit activities in the post-World War II era. Along the way, the book attempts to unravel the mix of social and cultural discriminations against Italians in the early part of the last century, the consequential group characteristics that emerged within the local Italian population, and the appropriation of these characteristics as social capital resources in the collective pursuit of social mobility. The remainder of the chapter discusses the personal, community, and public contexts of the present volume, followed by an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Privacy and Public Intellectual Freedom: Why Trained Library Staff Preserve and Protect Patron Confidentiality

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Miles Caudesch
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Basic Documentation ◽  
Library Staff

On the layman's level, this Commentary presents the essence of how and why library staff engage with the public while preserving patron privacy. Basic documentation, such as the Library Bill of Rights and the ALA's Intellectual Freedom Manual are referenced, along with an unsettling article about arson. After reading this Commentary, library staff should feel a renewed sense of loyalty to their profession, as well as an uncomfortable realization that every day, someone's life is held in the balance for educational good or for misapplied freedom: it is partially up to the librarian to help each person pursue excellence within the framework of free access to information.

Ethnography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kwame Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) provides a comprehensive guide to understanding, conceptualizing, and critically assessing ethnographic research and its resultant texts. Through a series of discussions and illustrations, utilizing both classic and contemporary examples, the book highlights distinct features of ethnography as both a research methodology and a writing tradition. It emphasizes the importance of training—including familiarity with culture as an anthropologically derived concept and critical awareness of the history of ethnography. To this end, it introduces the notion of ethnographic comportment, which serves as a standard for engaging and gauging ethnography. Indeed, ethnographic comportment issues from a familiarity with ethnography’s problematic past and inspires a disposition of accountability for one’s role in advancing ethnographic practices. Following an introductory chapter outlining the emergence and character of ethnography as a professionalized field, subsequent chapters conceptualize ethnographic research design, consider the practices of representing research methodologies, discuss the crafting of accurate and evocative ethnographic texts, and explain the different ways in which research and writing gets evaluated. While foregrounding interpretive and literary qualities that have gained prominence since the late twentieth century, the book properly situates ethnography at the nexus of the social sciences and the humanities. Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) presents novice ethnographers with clear examples and illustrations of how to go about conducting, analyzing, and representing their research; its primary purpose, however, is to introduce readers to effective practices for understanding and evaluating the quality of ethnography.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Walter Armbrust
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
The Political ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Condition Characteristic ◽  
At Home

This introductory chapter provides a background of the January 25 Revolution, or the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. It also outlines the formal characteristics of liminality and its relevance to politics. The book explores revolution through the concept of liminality, which is understood as a condition characteristic of all transitions between normative social states. Liminality allows for flexible articulation between the political and social, artistic, or cultural spheres and is also attentive to the spatial dimensions of performance. A thread that runs through much of the book is martyrdom, specifically its use in political performances. The chapter then introduces the concept of political Tricksters. In the uncomfortable condition of protracted liminality, Tricksters—beings at home in liminality, common in folklore, mythology, and literature—can become dangerous in politics. The structuring of liminality as precarity enables the rise of Trickster politics on a global scale.

Introduction: Slavery, Social Revolutions and Enduring Memories

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Lane ◽  
Kevin C. Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Approach ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Slavery played an important role in the economies of most historically documented African states of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This introductory chapter considers the regionality and relative antiquity of various forms of enslavement on the African continent, as well as a range of emergent archaeological studies on the subject. Further, the lingering impacts of slave economies and the memories of enslavement are critically assessed, including consideration of recent efforts to document and ‘memorialise’ both the tangible and intangible heritage of slavery on the continent. The contributions to the present volume are situated within these issues with the aim of drawing out commonalities between chapters and emphasising the value of an inter-regional comparative approach.

Departures from Orthodoxy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Steven J. Ericson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Finance Minister ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Made In

This introductory chapter briefly considers the ways in which the reforms of Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi unfolded along the lines of mid-nineteenth-century British-style orthodoxy or the late-twentieth-century International Monetary Fund version. It then goes on to argue that Matsukata was dealing with the challenge, shared by many of his contemporaries, of establishing a modern financial system in a developing state emerging from warfare and aiming to industrialize. At least on monetary policy, his economic nationalism was of the liberal nationalist variety like that of state leaders in other late industrializers. Moreover, Matsukata emerged as a practitioner primarily of unorthodox policies from the standpoint of both nineteenth- and late-twentieth-century versions of financial and economic orthodoxy. He also departed from orthodox mindsets in his pursuit of statist and nationalist priorities, his commitment to made-in-Japan solutions, his reliance on local intellectual tradition, and his willingness to be flexible in response to “the dictates of practical expediency,” as he would proclaim in 1886.

Introduction

2006 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kiril Tomoff
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Professional Musicians ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Production ◽  
Cultural World ◽  
At Home

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Union of Soviet Composers, the institution that came to dominate musical production in the Soviet Union. The Union of Soviet Composers was one of four institutions which were known in Soviet parlance as “creative unions.” Each creative union dominated artistic production in its respective area of expertise: the Composers' Union in music, the Writers' Union in literature, the Architects' Union in architecture, and the Artists' Union in the visual arts. This book analyzes the Composers' Union in institutional, cultural, social, and economic terms in order to show that in the Soviet cultural world, artistic expertise mattered. It afforded professional musicians the agency to construct a musical culture that appealed to audiences at home and abroad.

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