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Brutal battles in the icy wastes of the Eastern Front are lit at night by burning magnesium flares. This gripping novel of war, and the timeless ethos of the warrior, follows Arno Greif, a Swedish volunteer in the German Army. Come with him, from the heady advances of 1941 through to the bitter fighting in the ruins of the Reich in 1945. Burning Magnesium has clear echoes not just of Junger's Storm of Steel but also of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914. Author Lennart Svensson plunges his readers deep into both the operational details of World War Two combat and the mind of the fighting man. By several near miraculous quirks of Fate, Arno survives the war, but the psychological and spiritual impact stays with him in the years that follow. Vivid flashbacks and a myriad of well-researched details repeatedly hurl both Arno and the reader back into his wartime world of attack and counter-attack, clattering tanks, the chink of empty brass cases, bloodstained snow and the screams of dying men. Written without sentimentality or judgement, Burning Magnesium gives a long-overdue human dimension to the men who fought for Germany in the most brutal and decisive theatre of the Second World War.
We are pleased to introduce this inaugural volume in the PSCIE Series—Beyond the Comparative: Advancing Theory and Its Application to Practice—which expands on the life work of University of Pittsburgh Professor Rolland G. Paulston (1929-2006). Recognized as a stalwart in the field of comparative and international education, Paulston’s most widely recognized contribution is in social cartography. He demonstrated that mapping comparative, international, and development education (CIDE) is no easy task and, depending on the perspective of the mapper, there may be multiple cartographies to chart. The 35 contributors to this volume, representing a range of senior and junior scholars from v...
Examines emerging theoretical and methodological approaches to the field of sociology of education. These perspectives draw on notions of social justice, diversity, multiculturalism, and detracking.
In his book, pending between history and sociology, on engineers in thirteen countries of the western part of Europe, Professor Rolf Torstendahl approaches the development from around 1850 up to the present situation from different angles. - One examines the educational patterns and the author shows how widely different types of formation of engineers existed in Britain, France and Germany in the early period. They were paradigmatic for other countries. Differences remain but patterns have gradually become similar. - From another angle the author makes professional organisations of engineers a main object of study, and they vary from alumni associations to powerful lobby organisations. - A third approach in the book is to examine engineers versus sociological theories of professionalism on the one hand and theories of managerialism on the other. In the last chapter the author also discusses topics like technocracy and the responsibility of engineers.
Recipient of Choice Magazine's 1996 Outstanding Academic Book Award Author Raymond Morrow outlines and recounts the development of the major tenets of critical theory, exemplifying them through the works of two of their most influential, recent adherents: Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens. Beginning with a comprehensive yet meticulous explication of critical theory and its history, the author next discusses it within the context of a research program; his work concludes with an examination of empirical methods. Emphasizing the connections between critical theory, empirical research, and social science methodology, Morrow's volume offers refreshing insights on traditional and current material.
In the controversy over political correctness, the canon, and the curriculum, the role of Western tradition in a post-modern world is often debated. To clarify what is at stake, Vassilis Lambropoulos traces the ideology of European culture from the Reformation, focusing on a key element of Western tradition: the act of interpretation as a distinct practice of understanding and a civil right. Championed by Protestants insisting on independent interpretation of scripture, this ideal of autonomy ushered in the era of modernity with its essentialist philosophy of universal man and his aesthetic understanding of the world. After explaining the dominance of European culture through the combined ar...
Zhidong Hao's fascinating book, Intellectuals at a Crossroads, examines groups of contemporary Chinese intellectuals, their successes, failures, identity contradictions, and ethical dilemmas. Three categories of intellectuals are studied: organic intellectuals who serve specific interests, from government and business to working class movements; critical intellectuals who defy authority with continued social criticism; and "unattached" intellectuals who are fast being professionalized. Using a historical-comparative approach enhanced with demographic and rare interview data, the book bridges the traditional with the modern and the Chinese with the foreign by exploring how these intellectuals are adapting to their roles and influencing political, economic, and social change in the "new" China.
People’s work orientations and attitudes to paid work are highly important for the welfare of any country. Still, little is currently known about how such attitudes are distributed among different countries, men and women, classes, occupations, age groups and so on. Even less is known about how work orientations have changed during the dramatic social transformations of economies and labour markets during recent decades. What happened, for example, to work orientations in Iceland when the country went bankrupt? The answer is quite surprising. Or, is it true that work is losing its position in people’s lives in Western world? What is the relationship between people’s attitudes to work and the way they actually behave on the labour market? This timely book deals with these questions – and more – presenting fresh knowledge on changes in work orientations in many countries. It is based on genuine theoretical arguments and thorough empirical studies, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It is a great source of new knowledge on work orientations and changes in attitudes to work.
Pierre Bourdieu is one of the world's most important social theorists and is also one of the great empirical researchers in contemporary sociology. However, reading Bourdieu can be difficult for those not familiar with the French cultural context, and until now a comprehensive introduction to Bourdieu's oeuvre has not been available. David Swartz focuses on a central theme in Bourdieu's work—the complex relationship between culture and power—and explains that sociology for Bourdieu is a mode of political intervention. Swartz clarifies Bourdieu's difficult concepts, noting where they have been misinterpreted by critics and where they have fallen short in resolving important analytical issues. The book also shows how Bourdieu has synthesized his theory of practices and symbolic power from Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, and how his work was influenced by Sartre, Levi-Strauss, and Althusser. Culture and Power is the first book to offer both a sympathetic and critical examination of Bourdieu's work and it will be invaluable to social scientists as well as to a broader audience in the humanities.