Convenient Criticism

Why and how does critical reporting persist at the local level in China despite state media control, a hallmark of authoritarian rule? Synthesizing ethnographic observation, interviews, survey and content analysis data, Convenient Criticism reveals evolving dynamics in local governance and the state-media relationship. Local critical reporting, though limited in scope, occurs because local leaders, motivated by political career advancement, use media criticism strategically to increase bureaucratic control, address citizen grievances, and improve governance. This new approach to governance enables the shaping of public opinion while, at the same time, disciplining subordinate bureaucrats. In this way, the party-state not only monopolizes propaganda but also expropriates criticism, which expands the notion of media control from the suppression of journalism to its manipulation. One positive consequence of these practices has been to invigorate television journalists' unique brand of advocacy journalism.

George Jean Nathan authored this book to share his thoughts about the relationship between a drama critic and the art form that they chose to savor and scrutinize. Nathan is known as an American drama critic in the late 19th and early 20th century, and often credited for bringing success to The Smart Set as its editor and co-founding and editing The American Mercury and The American Spectator.

For graduate students and research mathematicians interested in global analysis and the analysis of manifolds, lays the foundations for a differential calculus in infinite dimensions and discusses applications in infinite-dimension differential geometry and global analysis not involving Sobolev completions and fixed-point theory. Shows how the notion of smoothness as mapping smooth curves to smooth curves coincides with all known reasonable concepts up to Frechet spaces. Then develops a calculus of holomorphic mappings, and another of real analytical mapping. Emphasizes regular infinite dimensional Lie groups. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Most researchers would be amazed to discover that opinions they have about cherished themes in biology and medicine are biased. Van der Steen and Ho contend that logic and methodology are not well applied in biology and medicine, arguing that the impact of social and moral factors on claims within these two disciplines is underestimated. In response to this situation, Van der Steen and Ho present tools from logic and ethics for assessing existing literature. These tools will help to create sound articles and materials in the life sciences. After reviewing logic and methodological approaches, broad guidelines are used to place science in a social context. Examples from life sciences illustrate the implementation of logic, methodology, and guidelines in forty-five brief case studies. Each study includes comments on quoted and paraphrased passages from a single article or book. Cross-references facilitate the assimilation of lessons from the text. Students, researchers, and scholars in biology, biomedicine, philosophy, and ethics as applied to the life sciences will find this guide useful in improving their research and writing skills.

Frequently perceived as a characteristic of modern culture, the phenomenon of celebrity has much older roots. In this book Antoine Lilti shows that the mechanisms of celebrity were developed in Europe during the Enlightenment, well before films, yellow journalism, and television, and then flourished during the Romantic period on both sides of the Atlantic. Figures from across the arts like Voltaire, Garrick, and Liszt were all veritable celebrities in their time, arousing curiosity and passionate loyalty from their “fans.” The rise of the press, new advertising techniques, and the marketing of leisure brought a profound transformation in the visibility of celebrities: private lives were now very much on public show. Nor was politics spared this cultural upheaval: Marie-Antoinette, George Washington, and Napoleon all experienced a political world transformed by the new demands of celebrity. And when the people suddenly appeared on the revolutionary scene, it was no longer enough to be legitimate; it was crucial to be popular too. Lilti retraces the profound social upheaval precipitated by the rise of celebrity and explores the ambivalence felt toward this new phenomenon. Both sought after and denounced, celebrity evolved as the modern form of personal prestige, assuming the role that glory played in the aristocratic world in a new age of democracy and evolving forms of media. While uncovering the birth of celebrity in the eighteenth century, Lilti's perceptive history at the same time shines light on the continuing importance of this phenomenon in today’s world.