Extravagant Expectations

The proliferation of dating websites, printed personals and self-help relationship books reflect the new ways Americans seek close, personal relationships. Exposed to changing and often conflicting values, trends, and fashions—disseminated by popular culture, advertising and assorted "experts"—Americans face uncertainties about the best ways to meet important emotional and social needs. How do we establish lasting and intimate personal relationships including marriage? In Extravagant Expectations Paul Hollander investigates how Americans today pursue romantic relationships, with special reference to the advantages and drawbacks of Internet dating compared to connections made in school, college, and the workplace. By analyzing printed personals, dating websites, and advice offered by pop psychology books, he examines the qualities that people seek in a partner and also assesses the influence of the remaining conventional ideas of romantic love. Hollander suggests that notions of romantic love have changed due to conflicting values and expectations and the impact of pragmatic considerations. Individualism, high expectations, social and geographic mobility, changing sex roles, and the American national character all play a part in this fascinating and finally sobering exploration of men and women to find love and meaning in life.

"During the 20th Century Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a sweeping cultural transformation. Between 1900 and 2000 the Christian population in Kenya alone grew from less than one percent to approximately eighty percent. Behind this astonishing cultural revolution were the evangelical missionary movement and the critical support network that gave the movement its energy and staying power. Central to this network were the schools established around Africa for the children of missionaries. "School in the Clouds" is the story of the oldest and largest missionary boarding school in Africa. However, as a driving force behind this dramatic larger narrative, the history of the Rift Valley Academy is more than the story of an institution and the lives that made it up. It is a microcosm of one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in world history."--Back cover

The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life covers the popular theories of Erving Goffman, and shows modern applications of dramaturgical analysis in a wide range of social contexts. David Shulman’s innovative new text demonstrates how Goffman’s ideas, first introduced in 1959, continue to inspire research into how we manage the impressions that others form about us. He synthesizes the work of contemporary scholars who use dramaturgical approaches from several disciplines, who recognize that many values, social norms, and laws have changed since Goffman’s time, and that contemporary society offers significant new forms of impression management that we can engage in and experience. After a general introduction to dramaturgical sociology, readers will see many examples of how Goffman’s ideas can provide powerful insights into familiar aspects of contemporary life today, including business and the workplace, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and the digital world.

This collection of scholarly essays examines reality television. The first show, Survivor, inspired a national craze when it aired in the summer of 2000. Ever since, successors and copycats have been on each of the four largest networks. The basics stay the same: put a group of people into situations bound to cause conflict, and watch them squirm. Rather than criticize the series' voyeuristic appeal, this work evaluates what goes on within the text of such shows and how they reflect or affect our larger culture. Contributors include researchers from communications, sociology, political science, and psychology. The contributions cover such topics as reality television's relationships with cultural identity, publicity rights, historical perspectives, trust, decision-making strategies, political rationality, office politics, and primitivism. Each chapter includes a bibliography. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

'Lazere's [book] is heaven-sent and will provide a crucial link in the chain of understanding how conflicts are structured and, most importantly, how they can be rationally addressed - a healthy antidote to the scepticism that has become so pervasive in academic life.' Alan Hausman, Hunter College This innovative book addresses the need for college students to develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills for self-defence in the contentious arena of American civic rhetoric. In a groundbreaking reconception of composition theory, it presents a comprehensive critical perspective on American public discourse and practical methods for its analysis. Exercises following the text sections and readings help students understand the ideological positions and rhetorical patterns that underlie opposing viewpoints in current controversies - such as the growing inequality of wealth in America and its impact on the finances of college students - as expressed in paired sets of readings from the political left and right. Widely debated issues of whether objectivity is possible and whether there is a liberal or conservative bias in news and entertainment media, as well as in education itself, are foregrounded as topics for rhetorical analysis.

This is a book about hope. Part 1 is a compact but necessarily limited attempt to describe the actual structure and concrete forms of hope and hopelessness; Part 2 is an exploration of a psychology of hope, the beginning of an investigation of what psychic forms and dynamisms move most toward hope and against hopelessness; and Part 3 is an analogous effort to suggest the outlines of a metaphysics of hope.

On Shedding an Obsolete Past provides a much-needed and comprehensive critique of recent US national security policies in both the Trump and Biden administrations. These policy decisions have produced a series of costly disappointments and outright failures that have destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands around the world and cost US taxpayers astronomical sums of money. Bacevich provides urgent and critical insights into how these failures occurred and what needs to be done to prevent similar failures in the future. He reminds us that, by understanding the past, we can alter our current trajectory and transform the world for the better.

Drawing on his storied career as a pop-culture wallflower, Steve Turner provides an all-access pass to the pervasive cultures of style, media and celebrity. Passing on his uniquely Christian way of viewing these cultures, Turner opens our eyes to a world of ideas lying just beneath the hype.