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Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture
This book discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing popularity of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life. The book argues that despite intellectual and political movements to dismiss tradition as a force in social life, the concept has persisted and remained important to people in the formation of modern culture and folklore. The book points to the functions of traditions as cultural expressions connecting the past and the present, and engaging and adapting practices as symbolic projections of anxieties, hopes, and aspirations. Traditions that are covered include architecture, craft, legends, tales, sports, and the Internet. ...Read More
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A Tour of Reconstruction: Travel Letters of 1875
During the Civil War, public speaker Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became a national sensation, lecturing on abolitionism, women's rights, and the Union war effort. After the war she remained one of the nation's most celebrated orators and among the country's most famous women. In 1875 Dickinson toured the South, lecturing and inspecting life in the southern states ten years after the war. Her letters are a fascinating window into race relations, gender relations, and the state of the southern economy and society a decade after Appomattox. In a series of long letters home to her mother, Dickinson describes the places she ...Read More
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Kentucky Rising: Democracy, Slavery, and Culture from the Early Republic to the Civil War
Kentucky's first settlers brought with them a dedication to democracy and a sense of limitless hope about the future. Determined to participate in world progress in science, education, and manufacturing, Kentuckians wanted to make the United States a great nation. They strongly supported the War of 1812, and Kentucky emerged as a model of patriotism and military spirit. This book offers a new synthesis of the sixty years before the Civil War. The book explores this crucial but often overlooked period, finding that the early years of statehood were an era of great optimism and progress. Drawing on a wealth ...Read More
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Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South
White southerners recognized that the perpetuation of segregation required whites of all ages to uphold a strict social order — especially the young members of the next generation. White children rested at the core of the system of segregation between 1890 and 1939 because their participation was crucial to ensuring the future of white supremacy. Their socialization in the segregated South offers an examination of white supremacy from the inside, showcasing the culture's efforts to preserve itself by teaching its beliefs to the next generation. This book reveals how white adults in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continually ...Read More
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Constructing Affirmative Action: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity
Between 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson defined affirmative action as a legitimate federal goal, and 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon named one of affirmative action's chief antagonists the head of the Department of Labor, government officials at all levels addressed racial economic inequality in earnest. Providing members of historically disadvantaged groups an equal chance at obtaining limited and competitive positions, affirmative action had the potential to alienate large numbers of white Americans, even those who had viewed school desegregation and voting rights in a positive light. Thus, affirmative action was — and continues to be — controversial. This ...Read More
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Korean Democracy in Transition: A Rational Blueprint for Developing Societies
As Asian countries emerge as global economic powers, many undergo fundamental political transformations. This book evaluates the past thirty years of political change in South Korea, including the decision of the authoritarian government to open up the political process in 1987 and the presidential impeachment of 2004. The book uses rational choice theory—which holds that individuals choose to act in ways that they think will give them the most benefit for the least cost—to explain events central to South Korea's democratization process. The book's theoretical and quantitative analysis provides a context for South Korea's remarkable transformation and offers predictions of ...Read More
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After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965
Martin Luther King's 1965 address from Montgomery, Alabama, the center of much racial conflict at the time and the location of the well-publicized bus boycott a decade earlier, is often considered by historians to be the culmination of the civil rights era in American history. In his momentous speech, King declared that segregation was “on its deathbed” and that the movement had already achieved significant milestones. Although the civil rights movement had won many battles in the struggle for racial equality by the mid-1960s, including legislation to guarantee black voting rights and to desegregate public accommodations, the fight to implement ...Read More
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Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia
Homemade liquor has played a prominent role in the Appalachian economy for nearly two centuries. The region endured profound transformations during the extreme prohibition movements of the nineteenth century, when the manufacturing and sale of alcohol—an integral part of daily life for many Appalachians—was banned. This book chronicles the social tensions that accompanied the region's early transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy. The book analyzes the dynamic relationship of the bootleggers and opponents of liquor sales in western North Carolina, as well as conflict driven by social and economic development that manifested in political discord. The book also ...Read More
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Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War
In light of recent controversies and legal actions related to America's treatment of enemy prisoners in the Middle East and Guantánamo Bay, the regulation of government during wartime has become a volatile issue on the global scene. By today's standards, Abraham Lincoln's adherence to the laws of war could be considered questionable, and his critics, past and present, have not hesitated to charge that he was a war criminal. This book conducts an extensive analysis of Lincoln's leadership throughout the Civil War as he struggled to balance his own humanity against the demands of his generals. The author specifically scrutinizes ...Read More
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Integral Pluralism: Beyond Culture Wars
In addition to war, terrorism, and unchecked military violence, modernity is also subject to less visible but no less venomous conflicts. Global in nature, these “culture wars” exacerbate the tensions between tradition and innovation, virtue and freedom. This book charts a course beyond these persistent but curable dichotomies. Consulting diverse fields such as philosophy, literature, political science, and religious studies, the book equates modern history with a process of steady pluralization. This process, which the book calls “integral pluralism,” requires new connections and creates ethical responsibilities. The book critically compares integral pluralism against the theories of Carl Schmitt, the Religious ...Read More
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