Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Essays

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's 'propaganda model' argues that there are five classes of 'filters' in society which determine what is news: in other words, what gets printed in newspapers or broadcast by radio and television. Whether a news item is going to be used by the media, or not, is going to depend on whether it can pass through these filters.

Filtering the News begins with a critical review and assessment of the propaganda model, then applies Herman and Chomsky's model to a range of ongoing news events. In the final chapters, several common criticisms of the...

This collection features essays chronicling his rejection of Freudian psychoanalysis and our recent recovered memory...

Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential critical social theorists of the second half of the twentieth century, once described sociology as "a combat sport." This comprehensive collection of his writings on politics and social science, from early 1960s articles on the Algerian War of Independence to the last text he published before his death, proves that this vision was enduring throughout his life as well as a serious scholar Bourdieu was always an outspoken public intellectual.

Political Interventions includes many texts hitherto unavailable in English and, placing them in their...

A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and, mental hospitals, in particular. The main focus is, on the world of the inmate, not the world of the staff. A chief concern...

A progressive secular society is one committed to the widening of scientific knowledge and humane feeling. It regards humanity as part of physical nature and opposes any appeal to supernatural agencies or explanations. In particular, human moral perspectives are human creations and the only basis for ethics. Secular values need re-affirming in the face of the resurgence of aggressive supernatural religious doctrines and practices. This book gives a set of 'secular thoughts for the day' many only a page or two long on topics as varied as Shakespeare and Comte, economics, science and social...