The Prophets of Doom explores eleven thinkers who not only dared to contradict the dominant linear and progressive view of history, but also predicted many of the political and social maladies through which we are living.
Using artist statements, theoretical writings, statistical data, historical analysis and insider testimony, British art critic Alexander Adams examines the origins, aims and spread of artivism (activism through art). His findings suggest the perception of artivism as a grassroots humanitarian movement could not be more misleading.
The Past is a Future Country shows how a resistant class of intelligent, religious conservatives will band together to preserve enclaves of our currently failing civilization — a failing civilization caused by a rejection of traditional values and an epidemic of narcissists who compete to signal their individuality and moral superiority.
2021 marks Bob Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. The essays in this book explore the Nobel laureate's masks, collectively reflecting upon their meaning through time, change, movement, and age.
This book guides the reader through a journey that connects the dots on the various fronts of the culture wars. There is a thread that links together the expressions of group and identity conflicts in today's West: from Left to Right, from SJWs to Trumpites, from feminism to the manosphere, and from critical race theorists to white nationalists.
This book surveys the origins, uses and manifestations of iconoclasm in history, art and public culture. It is one of the first books to examine the outbreak of iconoclasm in Europe and North America in the summer of 2020 in the context of previous outbreaks.
In After #MeToo, Gerard Casey provides a critical assessment of the #MeToo movement, situating it in the context of the radical feminism of which it is just the latest manifestation. He argues that if there is such a thing as the patriarchy, it is singularly and spectacularly ineffectual.
In Culture War Alexander Adams examines a series of pressing issues in today's culture: censorship, Islamism, Feminism, identity politics, historical reparations and public arts policy.
The Icelandic Adventures of Pike Ward is the entertaining and intrepid diary of a Devon fish merchant who became an Icelandic knight. It is a frank and funny account of one year in his life, from mixing in Reykjavík society to bargaining for fish on the remote coasts of the north and east.
The sixth volume in the series Michael Oakeshott: Selected Writings. From the 1920s to the 1980s Oakeshott filled dozens of notebooks with his private reflections, both personal and intellectual. Their contents range from aphorisms to miniature essays, forming a unique record of his intellectual trajectory over his entire career.
The pieces collected in this volume are not presented as amounting to an overall account or theory of our cultural condition. They are offered merely as examples of serious criticism, of what we need if we are to begin to think more profitably about our condition.
This book argues that the belief in a 'rape culture' is seriously distorting our discussion of sexual violence.
The Decision Trap questions a dogma of our time: the assumption that genetic education empowers citizens and increases their autonomy.
Church-going, Going, Gone! is concerned less with teaching than with learning. It provides atheists, agnostics and believers-in-exile, as well as those who have given little thought to belief, with a framework for collaborating as learners, working toward equality, peace and reconciliation, and dedicated to unselfish and imaginative social action.
This book suggests that modern day anti-racism can be argued as having taken over from old-fashioned racism as the dominant racialising force in British society.
In this book Angus Kennedy asks if the explosion of culture, and the breaking down of distinctions between high and low culture, has emancipated us or left us adrift without cultural moorings. Is it true that all cultures are equal? Is cultural diversity a good thing? Is it unacceptably elitist to insist on the highest standards of judgment?
This group of essays follows a similar eclectic pattern to that found in Tom Rubens' previous essay-collections published by Imprint Academic. The author's aim is to appeal widely but also succinctly: in a way that will stimulate readers to develop their own thoughts on, and consult more extensive treatments of, the subjects in question.
This book explores the role of leisure in modern life. It was written in the belief that leisure sets us apart as a species, that what is "useless" by commercial standards is probably the best thing we have going for us, and that leisure is under attack, in high danger of being lost, and has been for some time.
This book focuses on externalist approaches to art. It is the first fruit of a workshop held in Milan in September 2009, where leading scholars in the emerging field of psychology of art compared their different approaches using a neutral language and discussing freely their goals.
This second collection of essays for the Societas series by Tom Rubens continues the author's discussion of contemporary issues contained in "Progressive Secular Society" (Imprint Academic 2008).
In this wide ranging volume of philosophical essays John Haldane explores some central areas of social life and issues of intense academic and public debate.
Clinical psychologist Richard Ryder approaches three iconic celebrities -- Horatio Nelson, Adolph Hitler, and Diana Princess of Wales -- as though they were his patients and presents a short psycho-biography of each.
A series of essays on the evolution of culture, dealing with topics including the city and consciousness, evolution of the afterlife, literary and mathematical archetypes, machine consciousness and the implications of 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq.
Bob Dylan is one of the most significant figures in popular culture. In this book, the authors provide a multi-faceted analysis of his political art.
The fourteen essays in this book develop a conception of human culture, which is humane and traditionalist.
This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon.
In Bed with Madness is 'a well-argued, powerful and profound indictment of contemporary culture', stylishly written – a reviewer said he would have bought it just for its humour!
The Greek Inheritance traces the conflict between Greek values and those of the repressive, religious or capitalist order throughout the millennia. The book is challenging and well-written with a light, humorous touch.
Universalism in its old forms has, just like door-to-door milkmen, gone for good. But the search for some universally accepted ethical standards cannot be abandoned. Looking into our world from the classical Greek point of view, Yannis Andricopoulos wonders whether we cannot place Justice again at the heart of our morality.
This book argues that the novelist Joseph Conrad's work speaks directly to us in a way that none of his contemporaries can. Conrad's scepticism, pessimism, emphasis on the importance and fragility of community, and the difficulties of escaping our history are important tools for understanding the political world in which we live.
Siegfried J. Schmidt is closely associated in Germany with the cross-disciplinary research programme of Radical Constructivism. In Histories & Discourses he carries out a change of perspective from media and communication studies to studies of culture and the philosophy of language.
This book answers three questions: How did John Grote develop and contribute to modern Cambridge and British philosophy? What is the significance of these contributions to modern philosophy in general and British Idealism and language philosophy in particular? How were his ideas and his idealism incorporated into the modern philosophical tradition?
This book looks at ways in which stories are presented and understood; and how story-tellers - and their listeners - may wittingly or unwittingly confuse fact with fiction. This book explores the parallels between four stories (the Trojan war, Moses, King Arthur, and Jesus).
Jo Richardson explores the extent to which modes of discourse reflect antipathy towards gypsies and travellers, and control and shape the treatment of this minority group by the rest of society. The focus is housing policy, but her discussion has a wide application.
Jonathan Tokeley was contentiously convicted of 'smuggling' Egyptian antiquities in a landmark trial - one of a series which had devastating consequences for the antiquities market. This book is both a philosophical analysis and a demonstration - in one country, Egypt - of the Cultural Heritage Crusade's horrific consequences.
This is a different kind of book about psychedelics. Rather than describing psychedelic experiences, it presents four future-oriented ideas 'coming over the psychedelic horizon', which illustrate the potential benefits of psychedelics for humanity.
This book shows how modern management practices have all but destroyed politics, education, culture and religion — modern management is the cause of our national malaise.
This text is a compilation of essays on changes in culture and the media and the dangers of their manipulation.
Using theatre as a measure society's health, this book shows that Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Christendom and our own contemporary society all follow the same pattern: prosperity thrives on the conviction that the material world alone constitutes true 'reality’; but that very conviction leads to a rejection of the supernatural.