Embracing Defiance

Halbert helps parents understand the benefits of defiant behavior, because discovering and expressing one's unique voice is crucial for healthy psychological and emotional development.

Sitting in the pew at her husband's funeral, author Anna Madsen heard the last verse of the great Reformation hymn: "Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom's ours forever!" Reflecting on this experience, Madsen realized that death takes victories when its power appears to be greater than life. And she defiantly refused to cede death any more wins: "Not my spirit, not my strength, not my joy, and certainly not those of my children." The challenge is to acknowledge death in its manifold forms and own one's indignation and grief, and yet transcend it so that even if we are angry, we do not become anger. This book names the tension between grief and hope, acknowledges the reality of both, and defines a path forward to a life of joyful defiance. That path runs through Holy Saturday, a day that has one foot in the fear, grief, and death of Good Friday while the other is in Easter, a day of hope, freedom, life, and joy. Christians are not immune from experiencing anxiety, anger, exhaustion, and grief--emotions and effects arising from personal and communal trauma, including the trauma of death. Yet, the accompanying angst and pain, while real, are not the last word for people of faith. This book is written particularly for advocates, caregivers, and those who suffer in any number of ways, among them chronic illness, chronic injustice, and chronic exhaustion. Despite facing grief, anger, fear, and fatigue, readers will be encouraged not just to cope but to embrace hope and joy again, and then to plow them back into the ground of the wider world for the sake of their neighbors.

In this book, Mireya Loza sheds new light on the private lives of migrant men who participated in the Bracero Program (1942–1964), a binational agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to enter this country on temporary work permits. While this program and the issue of temporary workers has long been politicized on both sides of the border, Loza argues that the prevailing romanticized image of braceros as a family-oriented, productive, legal workforce has obscured the real, diverse experiences of the workers themselves. Focusing on underexplored aspects of workers' lives--such as their transnational union-organizing efforts, the sexual economies of both hetero and queer workers, and the ethno-racial boundaries among Mexican indigenous braceros--Loza reveals how these men defied perceived political, sexual, and racial norms. Basing her work on an archive of more than 800 oral histories from the United States and Mexico, Loza is the first scholar to carefully differentiate between the experiences of mestizo guest workers and the many Mixtec, Zapotec, Purhepecha, and Mayan laborers. In doing so, she captures the myriad ways these defiant workers responded to the intense discrimination and exploitation of an unjust system that still persists today.

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker

The Brexit vote; the election of Trump; the upsurge of European nationalism; the devolution of the Arab Spring; global violence; Chinese expansionism; disruptive climate change; the riotous instabilities of the world capitalist system...While diverse in nature, these events share a common denominator: they are less a failure of policy, and more a complex social psychological reaction to globalization, the result of which presently threatens our survival on Earth. Based on a critical reading of Freud’s Civilization and its discontents, The defiance of global commitment constructs a complex social psychology of how people all over the world are addressing globalization. Drawing on the latest advances in the cognitive, social, and complexity sciences, this timely volume presents a global model of defiance and the triangular tensions between nostalgic retreat, global aggression, and civil society, as manifested in forms ranging from nostalgic resentment and LGBTQI issues to racism and ecological aggression. Revealing how globalization and its discontents manifest the darker reaches of the human psyche and its conflicted relations with others, this insightful monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as globalization studies, complexity sciences and social psychology.

Newly updated, this is a comprehensive guide to ODD and conduct disorder (CD) in children aged 3-14 for professionals, students, and researchers. Summarizes the most important empirical knowledge across a broad array of topics, with a focus on the latest research and meta-analyses, as well as high-quality older studies Includes revised diagnostic conceptualizations for ODD and CD from DSM-V and the upcoming ICD-11 classification systems, with particular attention to similarities, differences, and information about an angry-irritable subtype for ODD Provides updated reviews of biological and social-cognitive risk and protective factors and the evidence base for relevant treatment and prevention procedures Describes best practices for assessment, treatment, and prevention for children and their families, based on the clinical and research work of the well-respected author team