"Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's 'beauty and attraction' invisible. In 'The Beauty of a Social Problem, ' Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several cont…
""Objectivist" writers, conjoined through a variety of personal, ideological, and literary-historical links, have, from the late 1920s to the present, attracted emulation and suspicion. Representing a nonsymbolist, postimagist poetics and characterized by a historical, realist, …
"Residential motels have long been places of last resort for many vulnerable Americans--released prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they surv…
Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business. The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 m…
"Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business. The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 …
This challenging book works towards a redefinition of literature and literary study. The texts the author examines are viewed not as works of art embodying enduring themes, but as attempts to redefine the social order.
Introduction : fighting for new rights / Clifford Bob -- Orphaned again? Children born of wartime rape as a non-issue for the human rights movement / R. Charli Carpenter -- "Dalit rights are human rights" : untouchables, NGOs, and the Indian state / Clifford Bob -- Applying the …
This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while su…
"After World War II, Hollywood's "social problem films"--tackling topical issues that included racism, crime, mental illness, and drug abuse--were hits with critics and general moviegoers alike. Sociology on Film considers the postwar "problem film" as a form of popular sociolog…
