Since the early nineteenth century, African-Americans have turned to Black newspapers to monitor the mainstream media and to develop alternative interpretations of public events. Ronald Jacobs tells the stories of these newspapers--in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles--for the first time, comparing African-American and "mainstream" media coverage of racial crises such as the Watts riot, the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles uprisings and the O. J. Simpson trial. In an engaging yet scholarly style, Jacobs shows us why a strong African-American press is still needed today.

Situated at the crossroads of feminism, queer theory, and poststructuralist debates around identity, this is not a book about Simone de Beauvoir, but, rather, a book that addresses the different ways in which she is constructed as an intelligible "self" by academics, biographers and the media. It shows how key Western concepts such as individuality constrain attempts to deconstruct the self and prevent bisexuality being understood as an identity. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari to see what this construction of bisexuality offers contemporary theories, it also critiques Foucault's work.

The authors argue that American patriotism is a civil religion organized around a sacred flag, whose followers engage in periodic blood sacrifice of their own children to unify the group. Using an anthropological theory, this groundbreaking book presents and explains the ritual sacrifices and regeneration that constitute American nationalism, the factors making particular elections or wars successful or unsuccessful rituals, the role of the mass media in the process, and the sense of malaise that has pervaded American society during the post-World War II period.

Meyda Yegenoglu investigates the intersection between postcolonial and feminist criticism, via the Western fascination with the veiled women of the Orient. Linking representations of cultural and sexual difference, she shows the Oriental woman to have functioned as the veiled interior of Western identity. Her original and compelling argument calls into question dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East, masculinist assumptions of Orientalism, and Western feminist discourses that seek to "liberate" the veiled woman.

This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the transition to democracy of post-Franco Spain. Since General Franco's death in 1975, Spanish political life has seen an extraordinarily quiescent "period of consensus," unique in its own history. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to this "strategy of consensus" and institutionalization of democracy, and uncovers the processes of symbolization and ritualization that characterize it.

Music and song are central to modern culture--social movements to cultural change. Building on their studies of the sixties culture and the theory of cognitive praxis, the authors examine the mobilization of cultural traditions and the formation of new collective identities through the music of activism. Specific chapters examine American folk and country music, black music, music of the sixties, and the transfer of the American experience to Europe. This highly readable book is among the first to link social movement and cultural theory.

This book is a major comparative analysis of fundamentalist movements in historical and cultural context, spanning revolutionary France, America and Japan, with an emphasis on the contemporary scene. Leading sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt examines the protofundamentalist movements that arose in the great "axial civilizations" in premodern times in order to illuminate the meaning of the global rise of fundamentalism that is shown to be an important current in modernity. The central theme of the book is the distinctively Jacobin features of fundamentalist movements and their ambivalent attitude...

Charlesworth examines themes of poverty and class by focusing on a particular town--Rotherham--in South Yorkshire, England, and using the personal testimony of disadvantaged people who live there, acquired through recorded interviews and conversations. He applies to their life stories the interpretative tools of philosophy and social theory, drawing in particular on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty. Charlesworth argues the culture described in this book is not unique to Rotherham and the problems identified in this book will be familiar to economically powerless and politically...

This book combines original theoretical analysis with real life case studies to examine the nature of the standoff. The author explores seven actual standoffs between anti-state groups and organizations of law enforcement (six from the United Staes and one from Peru), and the archetypal patterns of human action and cognition that move us into and out of these highly charged situations. Evoking original ideas about time, space and appropriate or anticipated action, she develops a theory of the fundamental existential indeterminacy of social life and the role improvisation can play in...

This book combines original theoretical analysis with real life case studies to examine the nature of the standoff. The author explores seven actual standoffs between anti-state groups and organizations of law enforcement (six from the United Staes and one from Peru), and the archetypal patterns of human action and cognition that move us into and out of these highly charged situations. Evoking original ideas about time, space and appropriate or anticipated action, she develops a theory of the fundamental existential indeterminacy of social life and the role improvisation can play in...