This book explores the construction and maintenance of alternative worlds of common sense. Employing a comparative approach, Dr. Pepinsky monitors events in Norway and the United States over several decades, treating these countries as prototypes of societies that are classifiable as modern Western democracies, but which exhibit marked contrasts in size and cultural homogeneity. She examines the conditions under which different social realities are generated, the assumptions that they presuppose, and the practices that sustain them. She then goes on to analyze the methods by which...