After a brief introduction that sets the contemporary scene of "archive fever," this book considers the political legacy of 1960s counterculture for what it reveals about the process of commemoration. How far can the archive serve as a platform for dialogue and debate between different generations of activists in a culture that fetishizes the evanescent present, practices a profound amnesia about its counterfactual past, and forecloses the sociological imagination of an alternative future? Can the Left establish its own autonomous model of commemoration?
Focusing on civic engagement, this guide offers practical insights for current and aspiring social scientists aiming to establish careers in the public sphere. It provides strategies and tools to effectively navigate and contribute to community and societal issues, emphasizing the importance of active participation in civic life.
A deliberately hybrid text, the fruit of a partnership over many years between a poet/ethnographer and a painter who have mutually enriched each other's understanding of the meaning of place, 'Graphologies' takes a line of thought for a walk across poetry and the visual arts, autobiography and fiction, cultural and literary studies, exploring the emotional and narrative hinterlands of the commonplace.
"Modern families provide essential support for happiness and well-being, but they are also engines of inequality, between men and women, between adults and children, and also between those who have supportive families and those who don't. The ability to successfully manage a family life is a modern marker of individual competence, and any failure risks social scorn and stigma. This collection of essays, tied to events in the news and using original demographic data with intuitive graphics, addresses the place of families in our system of inequality, the politics of family structure and change, the role of gender differentiation and segregation in family inequality, and the intersection of families with other forms of inequality"--Provided by publisher.
Like many other books, this book is about a journey. But unlike other books, the destination of the journey is the point where the parallel lines meet. The narrator is locked inside the book. The only way he can get out of it is by persuading one of the other characters in the book to finish off the writing process for him. But before he can do this, he has to make a journey. On his travels, there are a number of waypoints where he must stop and collect materials which are pasted into the book. When the book is completed, he can leave the book by delivering it to the individual whom he will meet at the point where the parallel lines meet. This journey, which is accomplished across his lifetime, takes him from the birth of Christ to the near future, with the author bending time by complex double time schemes, riddles and mathematical formulae. Every waypoint appears incredible at first, but we are in the world of weaving narrative into fiction but not fantasy. Every one of the waypoints is historical fact. There is no trickery. The narrator does indeed take us to the point where the parallel lines meet. It had been staring at us in the face all along.
Based on an intriguing alternative history hypothesis, this novel imagines a world where the Moors never left Southern Spain after their 800-year reign but instead expanded their empire across Europe. This fascinating premise is explored through the chaotic lens of a bumbling film crew in the Sahara desert. The director, lost in a haze of Moroccan kif, has embraced the local culture a little too enthusiastically. With the scriptwriters gone and the leading actor in a perpetual sulk inside his Airstream, the production is at a standstill. Enter Tinctorio Indigolin, a bitcoin billionaire on the run from a Shakespeare-quoting Irish assassin. In a bid to leverage a tax loss, Indigolin acquires the film rights, injecting a new lease of life into the project. Mysteriously, a captivating screenplay begins to appear on set, page by page, night after night. Penned by an enigmatic writer, the script proposes a world where the Moors didn't just resist expulsion in 1492 but went on to dominate Spain, France, and Italy, creating an Islamic State of Europe. As the screenplay unfolds, it transforms the lives of everyone involved in the film. The narrative weaves through a labyrinth of twists, assassinations, and narrow escapes, employing the most unexpected methods, only to culminate in the most uplifting conclusion you'll encounter this year.
