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In an age of rising groupthink, reactionary populism, social conformity, and democratic deficit, political judgment in modern society has reached a state of crisis. In The Specter of Babel, Michael J. Thompson offers a critical reconstruction of the concept of political judgment that can help resuscitate critical citizenship and democratic life. At the center of the book are two arguments. The first is that modern practical and political philosophy has made a postmetaphysical turn that is unable to guard against the effects of social power on consciousness and the deliberative powers of citizens. The second is that an alternative path toward a critical social ontology can provide a framework for a new theory of ethics and politics. This critical social ontology looks at human sociality not as mere intersubjectivity or communication, but rather as constituted by the shapes that our social-relational structures take as well as the kinds of purposes and ends toward which our social lives are organized. Only by calling these into question, Thompson boldly argues, can we once again attempt to revitalize social critique and democratic politics.
In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the cybernetic society, a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative mana...
From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Raising Cain, It’s a Boy! is the first major parenting book to chart every stage of a boy’s life. This upbeat, authoritative, and reassuring guide–written by psychologist Michael Thompson, Ph.D., a leading international expert on boys’ development, and journalist Teresa H. Barker–shows how a boy’s inner life progresses through infancy, childhood, and adolescence. What do boys actually need? How exactly does a healthy boy look and act? It’s a Boy! has the answers, providing expert advice on the developmental, psychological, social, and academic life of boys from infancy through the teen years. Exploring the many ways in which boys...
The remarkable casebook of one of Britain's top forensic scientists. As one of the UK's leading forensic scientists, Mike Silverman has helped to identify and convict dozens of murderers, rapists, armed robbers, burglars and muggers, thanks to the evidence they -- or their victims -- unwittingly left behind at the scenes of their crimes. Mike Silverman started his career in the days when fingerprints were still kept on card files and DNA profiling was just a pipe dream, so "Written in Blood" is more than just a casebook -- it is also a definitive history of the development of forensic science over the course of the past thirty-five years. From collecting blood samples at gangland executions to investigating forensic science failings, including in the murders of Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor, Mike Silverman's unique career provides a fascinating insight into the ways forensic science is used to help solve real-life crimes. Packed with genuine crime scene photographs and original sketches, "Written in Blood" is the ultimate insider's account of the fascinating world of forensic science."
Since the early days of the American republic, political thinkers have maintained that a grossly unequal division of property, wealth, and power would lead to the erosion of democratic life. Yet over the past thirty-five years, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike have redrawn the tenets of American liberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in our current mainstream political discourse, in which the politics of economic inequality are rarely discussed. In this impassioned book, Michael J. Thompson reaches back into America's rich intellectual history to reclaim the politics of inequality from the distortion of recent American conservatism. He begins by tracing the development of the id...
Worldwide, Population Ecology is the leading textbook on this titled subject. Written primarily for students, it describes the present state of population ecology in terms that can be readily understood by undergraduates with little or no background in the subject. Carefully chosen experimental examples illustrate each topic, and studies of plants and animals are combined to show how fundamental principles can be derived that apply to both species. Use of complex mathematics ia avoided throughout the book, and what math is necessary is dealt with by examination of real experimental data rather than dull theory. The latest edition of this leading textbook. Adopted as an Open University set text.
A 90 year history of the Knights of Columbus, Kentucky State Council.
How do objects that are worth little to nothing become valuable? Who is behind the creation of value, and which types of people find value and comfort in transient, durable, and rubbish objects? When his highly influential Rubbish Theory, first published in 1979, Michael Thompson launched the discipline of waste studies. It remains the most comprehensive analysis on the culture of waste to date. Thompson argues that there are two mutually exclusive cultural categories that are socially imposed on the world of objects: a transient category and a durable category. However, he identifies a region of flexibility, wherein a transient object that declines in value and life span can linger in a val...
Does Marxism possess an ethical impulse? Is there a moral foundation that underpins the Marxist critique of capitalism and the vision for social progress? The essays collected in Constructing Marxist Ethics: Critique, Normativity, Praxis argue that there is such an ethical grounding for Marxist theory. The essays, each from different vantage points, construct what a Marxian ethics should look like: what kind of values should be at the heart of the Marxian enterprise. Contributors are: Dan Albanese, Paul Blackledge, Bob Cannon, Tony Burns, Ian Fraser, Ruth Groff, Wadood Hamad, Christoph Henning, Peter Hudis, Lauren Langman, George E. McCarthy, Sean Sayers, Michael J. Thompson, and Lawrence Wilde.