Stardust To Stardust Reflections On Living And Dying

Erik Olin Wright, one of the most important sociologists of his time, takes readers along on his intimate and brave journey toward death, and asks the big questions about human mortality. From the renowned Marxist sociologist and educator Erik Olin Wright, Stardust to Stardust is a curated collection of writings from the months of his treatment and hospitalization for acute myeloid leukemia. This combination of personal narrative with Wright’s analytical perspective results in a deeply complex, philosophical meditation on death and the meaning of existence.

Michael Burawoy has helped to reshape the theory and practice of sociology across the Western world. Public Sociology is his most thoroughgoing attempt to explore what a truly committed, engaged sociology should look like in the twenty-first century. Burawoy looks back on the defining moments of his intellectual journey, exploring his pivotal early experiences as a researcher, such as his fieldwork in a Zambian copper mine and a Chicago factory. He recounts his time as a graduate and professor during the ideological ferment in sociology departments of the 1970s, and explores how his experiences intersected with a changing political and intellectual world up to the present. Recalling Max Weber, Burawoy argues that sociology is much more than just a discipline – it is a vocation, to be practiced everywhere and by everyone.

Drawing upon a vast range of human experience and reflection, The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying demonstrates how people try to cope with the inevitability of death. Different cultures, informed by religious beliefs and sometimes desperate hope, teach people to respond to their own death and the deaths of others in modes as various as defiance, stoic resignation, and unbridled grief. In addition to examples from literature, poetry, and religious texts, Father Richard John Neuhaus provides an intensely personal account of his encounter with death through emergency cancer surgery and reflects on how that encounter has changed the way he lives. While many writers have deplored the "denial of death" in our culture, The Eternal Pity shows how themes of death and dying are nevertheless perennial and pervasive. Society may be viewed as a disorganized march of multitudes waving little banners of meaning before the threat of nonbeing that is death. Some selections in this book depict people utterly surprised by their mortality; others highlight how the whole of one's life can be a preparation for what used to be called "a good death." For some, life is a relentless effort to hold death at bay; for others, death is, although not welcomed, reflectively anticipated. Nothing so universally defines the human condition as the fact that we shall die. The Eternal Pity helps us to understand how the prospect of death compels decisions about how we might live.

Life is not a cakewalk for any of us. We each have our individual sufferings and challenges in life, and we each must endure vital questions that have no certain answers. Why are we here? Where is God when we need him? How do our lives matter in the long run? Our science cannot help us with such questions, but theology can. And that’s what this book has to offer. This book’s theology is based on an arresting theory about God. Turning to modern physics, it finds God in the origin of the universe and in the innermost foundations of the natural world. The universe flowed from his nature, but his nature was not perfect, which is why we have an imperfect world where bad things happen to good people. And yet we also find this God deep within us, enabling us to confront our suffering with resilience and grace. The evil in the world has power, but we have power too, the power from our inner God to hold steady against the slings and arrows of our misfortunes. The theology presented here builds on the discoveries of particle physics and quantum mechanics about the foundational building blocks and forces in all of creation. These reveal the abounding spirit and purposes of the Creator—a spirit that empowers us and instills in us purposes we can embrace and foster. It may seem we are essentially on our own as we navigate through life, but in this book’s theology, God is always and everywhere with us and in us.

Busy and deeply absorbed in all the complexity of life, Ruth Scott's packed diary suddenly had to be cleared when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She said, 'Discovering that life might be shorter than expected or hoped for concentrates the mind wonderfully. Whatever life is left to me, I do not want to waste it.'In the final months of her life, in the shadows between living and dying, she learned to live with the extremes of treatments that were as aggressive as the disease - and with daily ups and downs that created constant uncertainty.Throughout it all, Ruth creatively explored - through insight, literature, poetry and song - what life is about and how it should be lived. This book is the result. Here, she cuts through all the things in life that we waste our energies on. She explores the depth of life in ways that allow for doubt, absence and uncertainty while also making room for mystery and understanding beyond rational limitations. As she reflects on how we relate (or not) to each other, to the environment and to the 'more-than-me-ness' of life, she offers real inspiration for us all.

When the renowned social scientist Erik Olin Wright passed away in 2019 at the height of his intellectual powers, he left behind an unfinished project intended to forge a connection between class analysis and real utopias. In taking up this project, the essays in this volume pay tribute to his generative theory, crystalline thinking, inspirational teaching, and personal generosity. - "Friends of the late Erik Olin Wright celebrate his life and work with essays about his lifelong preoccupations with analytical Marxism and the transformation of capitalist societies. The result is a beautiful book that glows with intelligence, optimism, and love." FRANCES FOX PIVEN - "Erik Wright succumbed to cancer while he was advancing a decades-long project of envisioning real utopias-designs for a workable socialism. The essays in this superb volume recount this monumental undertaking and also advance it in significant ways." VIVEK CHIBBER - "Erik Olin Wright devoted his brilliant mind to the challenging task of rethinking and reimagining socialism after the fall of the Soviet Union and China's turn towards full-blown capitalism. In this tribute to his work, progressive intellectuals and activists bring forward and deepen Wright's trail-blazing Real Utopias Project amidst the current deep crisis of capitalism." WALDEN BELLO - "These rich and compelling essays testify to the power and actuality of Erik Olin Wright's thought, as well as to his dialogism, mentorship, and influence. A terrific read and a fitting tribute to a brilliant scholar and beloved comrade." NANCY FRASER

Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task-most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian. Erik Olin Wright's major new work is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.