Where The Meanings Are Routledge Revivals

First published in 1990, this collection of essays in literary criticism, feminist theory and race relations was named one of the top twenty-five books of 1988 by the Voice Literary Supplement. The title covers such subjects as black literature; the reconstruction of culture, changing arts, letters and sciences to include the topics of women and gender; and, the nature of family and the changing roles of women within society. As such, Catharine Stimpson employs a transdisciplinary approach, to encourage greater understanding of the differences among women, and thus socially-constructed differences in general. Where the Meanings Are tells of some of the arguments within feminism during the re-designing and designing of cultural spaces, as post-modernism began to change the boundaries of race, class, and gender. It will therefore be of great value to students and general readers with an interest in the relationship between gender and culture, sex and gender difference, feminist theory and literature.

First published in Great Britain in 1948, this book examines the definition of goodness as being distinct from the question of What things are good? Although less immediately and obviously practical, Dr. Ewing argues that the former question is more fundamental since it raises the issue of whether ethics is explicable wholly in terms of something else, for example, human psychology. Ewing states in his preface that the definition of goodness needs to be confirmed before one decides on the place value is to occupy in our conception of reality or on the ultimate characteristics which make one action right and another wrong. This book discusses these issues.

First published in 1978, this reissue presents a seminal philosophical work by professor Putnam, in which he puts forward a conception of knowledge which makes ethics, practical knowledge and non-mathematic parts of the social sciences just as much parts of 'knowledge' as the sciences themselves. He also rejects the idea that knowledge can be demarcated from non-knowledge by the fact that the former alone adheres to 'the scientific method'. The first part of the book consists of Professor Putnam's John Locke lectures, delivered at the University of Oxford in 1976, offering a detailed examination of a 'physicalist' theory of reference against a background of the works of Tarski, Carnap, Popper, Hempel and Kant. The analysis then extends to notions of truth, the character of linguistic enquiry and social scientific enquiry in general, interconnecting with the great metaphysical problem of realism, the nature of language and reference, and the character of ourselves.

First published in 1967, this is a study which tackles the central problem of meaning, within Ezra Pound's The Cantos. It deals with the question of important critical issues, as well as of interpretation and understanding. Students of modern poetry will derive great benefit from this vigorous and lucid analysis of Pound's masterpiece. Noel Stock's finding is radical: that The Cantos is not a really a poem at all, but rather notes towards a poem. It is a collection of fragments of varying quality - some of extraordinary power and beauty - but in no sense formed into a work of art.

Leading British, American and European philosophers contribute to this collection of essays, first published in 1976, in political philosophy. They are essays which have to do in different ways with better societies than the ones we have, and with ways of getting them. They exemplify what can fairly be called real political philosophy. Its past makers have been Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Mill and Marx, and it consists in advocacy of certain social ends and of certain means, rather than uncommitted inquiry or comment. The advocacy is of a kind, of course, which depends on analysis and argument. The book will be of interest not only to those who are primarily concerned with philosophy, but students of politics as well.

First published in 1990, this is a reissue of Professor Hilary Putnam’s dissertation thesis, written in 1951, which concerns itself with The Meaning of the Concept of Probability in Application to Finite Sequences and the problems of the deductive justification for induction. Written under the direction of Putnam’s mentor, Hans Reichenbach, the book considers Reichenbach’s idealization of very long finite sequences as infinite sequences and the bearing this has upon Reichenbach’s pragmatic vindication of induction.

First published in 1976, Keywords is neither a defining dictionary, nor a specialist glossary. It is the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary: a shared body of words and meanings concerned with the practices and institutions described as 'culture' and 'society'. In a series of connecting essays, Raymond Williams investigates how these 'keywords' have been formed, altered, redefined, influenced, modified, confused and reinforced as the historical contexts in which they were applied changed to give us their current meaning and significance. Keywords extends Raymond Williams' previous work to study the actual language of cultural transformation.

First published in 1979, this book makes a detailed study of Rastafarianism. It traces the expansion of Rastafarian culture from its origins and development in Jamaica through to the growth of Rastafarian life in Britain. It looks at Rastafarian culture in England in the late 1970s based on the author’s intimate experiences and communications with followers of the movement.