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The Decline of Public Access and Neo-Liberal Media Regimes

This book examines the reasons behind the declining fortunes of public access channels. Public access, which provided perhaps the boldest experiment in popular media democracy, is in steep decline. While some have argued it is technologically outmoded, Caterino argues that the real reason lies with the rise of a neo-liberal media regime. This regime creates a climate in which we can understand these changes. This book considers the role of neo-liberalism in transforming notions of public obligations and regulation of media that have impacted non-profit media, specifically public access. Neo-liberalism has tried to eliminate public forums and public discourse and weakens institutions of civil society. Though social media is often championed as an arena of communicative freedom, Caterino argues that neo-liberalism has created a colonized social media environment that severely limits popular democracy.

The Decline of the Individual: Reconciling Autonomy with Community

This book explores the steady decline in the status of the individual in recent years and addresses common misunderstandings about the concept of individuality. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, technology, economics, philosophy, politics, and law, White explains how and why the individual has been devalued in the eyes of scholars, government leaders, and the public. He notes that developments in science have led to doubts about our cognitive competence, while assumptions made in the humanities have led to questions about our moral competence. In this book, White goes on to argue that both of these views are mistaken and that they stem from overly simplistic ideas about how individuals make choices, however imperfectly, in their interests, which are multifaceted and complex. In response, he proposes a new way to look at individuals that preserves their essential autonomy while emphasizing their responsibility to others, inspired by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the legal and political philosophy reflected in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. This book explains how individuality combines both rights and responsibilities, reconciles the popular yet false dichotomy between individual and society, and provides the basis for a humane and respectful civil society and government. This book is part of White's trilogy on the individual and society, which includes The Manipulation of Choice and The Illusion of Well-Being.

The Decline of the Intellectual

In perhaps his most famous book, The Decline of the Intellectual, Thomas Molnar launches into a fundamental critique of the intellectual class. He sees it as a group that had lost its way, collapsing a sense of vision into political activism, social engineering, and culture manipulation, and abandoning the writing, philosophizing, and scholarship that had occupied their predecessors. Universities began to produce factory-like, faceless citizens, as the job market became the arbiter of education and culture. Today's professors are recruited from this group of job seekers, and hence, have a shared indifference toward learning.Molnar likens present-day intellectuals to the earlier Marxists who elaborated their Utopian model in the Communist party. The campus intellectuals' objective is to transform the university into a replica and a laboratory of the ideal society. Colleges and universities thus become sources of propaganda of various political, financial, cultural, and ideological trends, not only among students, but professors as well. The thirty years separating editions have done nothing to weaken such a critical appraisal.In his new introduction, Molnar writes that the decline of intellectuals has extended outside of the campus to the arts, the public discourse, and the robotization caused by technology. On the initial publication of this work, Frank S. Meyer wrote in Modern Age, Thomas Molnar's book is not only true; it is intellectually exciting and it will remain a necessary handbook for anyone interested in the decisive problem of the 20th century. The Decline of the Intellectual is essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, educators, and university officials. It is the basis of present-day critiques of the academic world.

The Decline of the Intellectual

In perhaps his most famous book, The Decline of the Intellectual, Thomas Molnar launches into a fundamental critique of the intellectual class. He sees it as a group that had lost its way, collapsing a sense of vision into political activism, social engineering, and culture manipulation, and abandoning the writing, philosophizing, and scholarship that had occupied their predecessors. Universities began to produce factory-like, faceless citizens, as the job market became the arbiter of education and culture. Today's professors are recruited from this group of job seekers, and hence, have a shared indifference toward learning.Molnar likens present-day intellectuals to the earlier Marxists who elaborated their Utopian model in the Communist party. The campus intellectuals' objective is to transform the university into a replica and a laboratory of the ideal society. Colleges and universities thus become sources of propaganda of various political, financial, cultural, and ideological trends, not only among students, but professors as well. The thirty years separating editions have done nothing to weaken such a critical appraisal.In his new introduction, Molnar writes that the decline of intellectuals has extended outside of the campus to the arts, the public discourse, and the robotization caused by technology. On the initial publication of this work, Frank S. Meyer wrote in Modern Age, Thomas Molnar's book is not only true; it is intellectually exciting and it will remain a necessary handbook for anyone interested in the decisive problem of the 20th century. The Decline of the Intellectual is essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, educators, and university officials. It is the basis of present-day critiques of the academic world.

The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order: Contending Views (China Policy Series)

The Western liberal democratic world order, which seemingly triumphed following the collapse of communism, is looking increasingly fragile as populists and nationalists take power in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, as the momentum of democratization in developing countries stalls, and as Western liberal establishments fail to deal with economic stagnation, worsening political polarization, social inequality, and migrant crises. At the same time there is a shift of economic power from the West towards Asia. This book explores these critical developments and their consequences for the world order. It considers how far the loss of the West’s power to dominate the world order, together with the relative decline of US power and its abdication of its global leadership role, will lead to more conflict, disorder and chaos; and how far non-Western actors, including China, India and the Muslim world, are capable of establishing visionary policy initiatives which reconfigure the paths and rules of economic integration and globalization, and the mechanisms of global governance. The book also assesses the sustainability of the economic rise of China and other non-Western actors, explores the Western liberal democratic order’s capacity for resilience, and discusses how far the outlook is pessimistic or optimistic.

The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order: Contending Views (China Policy Series)

The Western liberal democratic world order, which seemingly triumphed following the collapse of communism, is looking increasingly fragile as populists and nationalists take power in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, as the momentum of democratization in developing countries stalls, and as Western liberal establishments fail to deal with economic stagnation, worsening political polarization, social inequality, and migrant crises. At the same time there is a shift of economic power from the West towards Asia. This book explores these critical developments and their consequences for the world order. It considers how far the loss of the West’s power to dominate the world order, together with the relative decline of US power and its abdication of its global leadership role, will lead to more conflict, disorder and chaos; and how far non-Western actors, including China, India and the Muslim world, are capable of establishing visionary policy initiatives which reconfigure the paths and rules of economic integration and globalization, and the mechanisms of global governance. The book also assesses the sustainability of the economic rise of China and other non-Western actors, explores the Western liberal democratic order’s capacity for resilience, and discusses how far the outlook is pessimistic or optimistic.

The Declining Birth Rate in Rotterdam: A Statistical Analysis of the Drop in the Number of Children in 24644 Rotterdam Families During the Last 50 Years

The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Third Edition

When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy. “The intellectual strength of this book lies in his capacity to integrate disparate findings from historical studies, social theory and research on contemporary trends into a complex and original synthesis that challenges widespread assumptions about the cause of black disadvantage and the way to remove it.”—Paul Starr, New York Times Book Review “This publication is easily one of the most erudite and sober diagnoses of the American black situation. Students of race relations and anybody in a policy-making position cannot afford to bypass this study.”—Ernest Manheim, Sociology

The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Third Edition

When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy. “The intellectual strength of this book lies in his capacity to integrate disparate findings from historical studies, social theory and research on contemporary trends into a complex and original synthesis that challenges widespread assumptions about the cause of black disadvantage and the way to remove it.”—Paul Starr, New York Times Book Review “This publication is easily one of the most erudite and sober diagnoses of the American black situation. Students of race relations and anybody in a policy-making position cannot afford to bypass this study.”—Ernest Manheim, Sociology

The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Third Edition

When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy. “The intellectual strength of this book lies in his capacity to integrate disparate findings from historical studies, social theory and research on contemporary trends into a complex and original synthesis that challenges widespread assumptions about the cause of black disadvantage and the way to remove it.”—Paul Starr, New York Times Book Review “This publication is easily one of the most erudite and sober diagnoses of the American black situation. Students of race relations and anybody in a policy-making position cannot afford to bypass this study.”—Ernest Manheim, Sociology

The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Third Edition

When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy. “The intellectual strength of this book lies in his capacity to integrate disparate findings from historical studies, social theory and research on contemporary trends into a complex and original synthesis that challenges widespread assumptions about the cause of black disadvantage and the way to remove it.”—Paul Starr, New York Times Book Review “This publication is easily one of the most erudite and sober diagnoses of the American black situation. Students of race relations and anybody in a policy-making position cannot afford to bypass this study.”—Ernest Manheim, Sociology

Decoding Advertisements: Ideology And Meaning In Advertising

Judith Williamson does not simply criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but examines in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function is to involve us as 'individuals' in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If economic conditions are the ones that make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions seem necessary. In order to change society, the vicious circle of 'necessity' and ideas must be broken. Decoding Advertisements is an attempt to forge, in our acceptance not only of the images and values of advertising, but of the 'transparent' forms and structures in which they are embodied. It provides a 'set of tools' which we can use to alter our own pereptions of one society's subtlest and most complex forms of propoganda.

Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse)

This open access book is the first comprehensive guide to identifying antisemitism online today, in both its explicit and implicit (or coded) forms. Developed through years of on-the-ground analysis of over 100,000 authentic comments posted by social media users in the UK, France, Germany and beyond, the book introduces and explains the central historical, conceptual and linguistic-semiotic elements of 46 antisemitic concepts, stereotypes and speech acts. The guide was assembled by researchers working on the Decoding Antisemitism project at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at Technische Universität Berlin, building on existing basic definitions of antisemitism, and drawing on expertise in various fields. Using authentic examples taken from social media over the past four years, it sets out a pioneering step-by-step approach to identifying and categorising antisemitic content, providing guidance on how to recognise a statement as antisemitic or not. This book will be an invaluable tool through which researchers, students, practitioners and social media moderators can learn to recognise contemporary antisemitism online – and the structural aspects of hate speech more generally – in all its breadth and diversity.

Decoding Astronomy in Art and Architecture (Springer Praxis Books)

For centuries, our ancestors carefully observed the movements of the heavens and wove that astronomical knowledge into their city planning, architecture, mythology, paintings, sculpture, and poetry. This book uncovers the hidden messages and advanced science encoded within these sacred spaces, showing how the rhythmic motions of the night sky played a central role across many different cultures. Our astronomical tour transports readers through time and space, from prehistoric megaliths to Renaissance paintings, Greco-Roman temples to Inca architecture. Along the way, you will investigate unexpected findings at Lascaux, Delphi, Petra, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, and many more archaeological sites both famous and little known. Through these vivid examples, you will come to appreciate the masterful ways that astronomical knowledge was incorporated into each society’s religion and mythology, then translated into their physical surroundings. The latest archaeoastronomical studies and discoveries are recounted through a poetic and nontechnical narrative, revealing how many longstanding beliefs about our ancestors are being overturned. Through this celestial journey, readers of all backgrounds will learn the basics about this exciting field and share in the wonders of cultural astronomy.

Decoding Astronomy in Maya Art and Architecture (Springer Praxis Books)

The exciting discoveries and newest revelations in the field of archeoastronomy present fascinating examples of the importance of astronomy to the ancient Maya Civilization. Through technological advancements made in the archeoastronomy community, this book will allow you to uncover a time capsule from an ancient past. In a clear and comprehensible manner you will read about art and architecture from various important Maya cities, drawn from diverse time periods and from different geographical areas of Mesoamerica. The topics covered include new findings in wide variety of fields; including the history's of astronomy, science, art, architecture, literature and religion. You will explore in this book how the motions of the heavens were closely watched and notated by Maya astronomers and how those celestial objects determined the patterns of everyday life, religious rites, community festivals, agriculture, even birth and death! This book will open your mind to a deeper awareness and an even greater admiration for the Maya ingenuity in preserving their astronomical knowledge and passing it on to assist future generations. These latest findings will broaden our perception of the Maya cultures of the Pre-classic and their development through the Classic period and the remarkable changes that occurred throughout their 3000 years of history.

Decoding Cultural Heritage: A Critical Dissection and Taxonomy of Human Creativity through Digital Tools

This book provides readers with an overview of the use of digital techniques for cultural heritage preservation. Those include image processing, advanced sensing, geomatics or virtual and augmented reality. The use of newer tools such as generative artificial intelligence for images and 3D or advanced natural language processing systems is also considered. The ultimate goal is to provide readers with a global perspective of the state of the art on the use of digital tools for cultural heritage applications, both for researchers and professionals involved in cultural heritage and for computer scientists and engineers that design and develop technologies that can be used for cultural heritage preservation.

Decoding Culture: Theory and Method in Cultural Studies (PDF)

`This book represents a significant intervention and, as such, should be used on numerous cultural studies courses. In its intellectual honesty and clarity Tudor's book will stand as an authoritative basis for further developments in the coming years' - David Chaney Decoding Culture offers a concise and accessible account of the development of cultural studies from the late 1950s to the 1990s. Focusing on the significant theoretical and methodological assumptions that have informed the cultural studies project - the text: covers the key thinkers and key perspectives including, structuralism and post-structuralism, Screen theory, the Birmingham School, and audience analysis; offers a timely corrective to anti-sociological interpretations of cultural change; and invites readers to contest the standard 'text-book' accounts of the developement of cultural studies. Through its fair and accessible account of complex ideas, Decoding Culture provides a more analytic understading of the theoretical and methodological dynamics of cultural studies than has been hitherto available. It will be welcomed by all students of cultural studies, sociology and media studies.

Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction: Hyper-Modernism, Hyperreality, and Posthumanism (Digitale Gesellschaft #67)

How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.

Decoding Gender in Science Fiction

From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.

Decoding Gender in Science Fiction

From Frankenstein to futuristic feminist utopias, Decoding Gender in Science Fiction examines the ways science fiction writers have incorporated, explored, and revised conventional notions of sexual difference. Attebery traces a fascinating history of men's and women's writing that covertly or overtly investigates conceptions of gender, suggesting new perspectives on the genre.

Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture)

Software is more than a set of instructions for computers: it enables (and disables) political imperatives and policies. Nowhere is the potential for radical social and political change more apparent than in the practice and movement known as "free software." Free software makes the knowledge and innovation of its creators publicly available. This liberation of code—celebrated in free software’s explicatory slogan "Think free speech, not free beer"—is the foundation, for example, of the Linux phenomenon. Decoding Liberation provides a synoptic perspective on the relationships between free software and freedom. Focusing on five main themes—the emancipatory potential of technology, social liberties, the facilitation of creativity, the objectivity of computing as scientific practice, and the role of software in a cyborg world—the authors ask: What are the freedoms of free software, and how are they manifested? This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how free software promises to transform not only technology but society as well.

Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software (Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture)

Software is more than a set of instructions for computers: it enables (and disables) political imperatives and policies. Nowhere is the potential for radical social and political change more apparent than in the practice and movement known as "free software." Free software makes the knowledge and innovation of its creators publicly available. This liberation of code—celebrated in free software’s explicatory slogan "Think free speech, not free beer"—is the foundation, for example, of the Linux phenomenon. Decoding Liberation provides a synoptic perspective on the relationships between free software and freedom. Focusing on five main themes—the emancipatory potential of technology, social liberties, the facilitation of creativity, the objectivity of computing as scientific practice, and the role of software in a cyborg world—the authors ask: What are the freedoms of free software, and how are they manifested? This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how free software promises to transform not only technology but society as well.

Decoding Modern Consumer Societies (Worlds of Consumption)

Drawing on a wide range of studies of Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa, the contributions gathered here consider how political history, business history, the history of science, cultural history, gender history, intellectual history, anthropology, and even environmental history can help us decode modern consumer societies.

Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

James C. Scott has researched and written on subaltern groups, and, in particular, peasants, rebellion, resistance, and agriculture, for over 35 years. Yet much of Scott’s most interesting work on the peasantry and the state, both conceptually and empirically, has never been published in book form. For the first time Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics, brings together some of his most important work in one volume. The book covers three distinct yet interlinked bodies of work. The first lays out a framework for understanding peasant politics and rebellion, much of which is applicable to rural areas of the contemporary global south. Scott then goes on to develop his arguments regarding everyday forms of peasant resistance using the comparative example of the religious tithe in France and Malaysia, and tracing the forms of resistance that cover their own tracks and avoid direct clashes with authorities. For much of the world’s population, and for most of its history, this sort of politics was far more common than the violent clashes that dominate the history books, and in this book one can examine the anatomy of such resistance in rich comparative detail. Finally, Scott explores how the state’s increasing grip on its population: its identity, land-holding, income, and movements, is a precondition for political hegemony. Crucially, in examining the invention of state-mandated legal identities, especially, the permanent patronym and the vagaries of its imposition on vernacular life, Scott lays bare the micro-processes of state-formation and resistance. Written by one of the leading social theorists of our age, Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics is an indispensible guide to the study of subaltern culture and politics and is essential reading for political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians alike.

Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

James C. Scott has researched and written on subaltern groups, and, in particular, peasants, rebellion, resistance, and agriculture, for over 35 years. Yet much of Scott’s most interesting work on the peasantry and the state, both conceptually and empirically, has never been published in book form. For the first time Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics, brings together some of his most important work in one volume. The book covers three distinct yet interlinked bodies of work. The first lays out a framework for understanding peasant politics and rebellion, much of which is applicable to rural areas of the contemporary global south. Scott then goes on to develop his arguments regarding everyday forms of peasant resistance using the comparative example of the religious tithe in France and Malaysia, and tracing the forms of resistance that cover their own tracks and avoid direct clashes with authorities. For much of the world’s population, and for most of its history, this sort of politics was far more common than the violent clashes that dominate the history books, and in this book one can examine the anatomy of such resistance in rich comparative detail. Finally, Scott explores how the state’s increasing grip on its population: its identity, land-holding, income, and movements, is a precondition for political hegemony. Crucially, in examining the invention of state-mandated legal identities, especially, the permanent patronym and the vagaries of its imposition on vernacular life, Scott lays bare the micro-processes of state-formation and resistance. Written by one of the leading social theorists of our age, Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics is an indispensible guide to the study of subaltern culture and politics and is essential reading for political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians alike.