Cultural Realism

Cultural Realism
Author: Alastair Iain Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691213143

Cultural Realism is an in-depth study of premodern Chinese strategic thought that has important implications for contemporary international relations theory. In applying a Western theoretical debate to China, Iain Johnston advances rigorous procedures for testing for the existence and influence of "strategic culture." Johnston sets out to answer two empirical questions. Is there a substantively consistent and temporally persistent Chinese strategic culture? If so, to what extent has it influenced China's approaches to security? The focus of his study is the Ming dynasty's grand strategy against the Mongols (1368-1644). First Johnston examines ancient military texts as sources of Chinese strategic culture, using cognitive mapping, symbolic analysis and congruence tests to determine whether there is a consistent grand strategic preference ranking across texts that constitutes a single strategic culture. Then he applies similar techniques to determine the effect of the strategic culture on the strategic preferences of the Ming decision makers. Finally, he assesses the effect of these preferences on Ming policies towards the Mongol "threat." The findings of this book challenge dominant interpretations of traditional Chinese strategic thought. They suggest also that the roots of realpolitik are ideational and not predominantly structural. The results lead to the surprising conclusion that there may be, in fact, fewer cross-national differences in strategic culture than proponents of the "strategic culture" approach think.

Selves and Other Texts

Selves and Other Texts
Author: Joseph Margolis
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780271038650

Extending his well-known investigations into the nature and logic of art and history in the cultural world, Joseph Margolis here offers a sustained account of how selves and the cultural phenomena they generate (language, history, action, art) can be viewed as just as "real" as the physical nature from which they are emergent, while not being reducible to it. The book starts off with a review of prominent philosophies of art over the past half-century, focusing especially on Beardsley, Goodman, and Danto, so as to highlight the need for carefully distinguishing between the metaphysical and epistemological features of physical nature and human culture. The second part of the book builds on the first part's analyses of artworks to propose a theory of selves as "self-interpreting texts." Selves and Other Texts aims to develop new ways of understanding the conceptual inseparability of our analysis of physical nature and our analysis of ourselves.

Cultural Realism and Virtualism Design Model

Cultural Realism and Virtualism Design Model
Author: Ming-Feng Wang
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2020-01-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9811522715

The book proposes a new Cultural Realism and Virtualism design model for cultural and creative products based on Laozi’s philosophy and analysis of symbolism, metaphysics, three-layered culture, reverse-triangular cultural space and Zen aesthetics. It studies peoples that speak Austronesian languages and offers a detailed comparison of their homogeneous and heterogeneous cultures of color, clothing, housing, boats, birds, symbols, dance and ancestry, and provides insights into the cultural features of deconstruction and construction of color, style, form, shape and function, to compose cultural and creative products using complex, variable, fuzzy evaluation; and structural variation and color evaluation methods. It then uses case studies to show that the products created with the new model not only fulfilled their purpose, but also successfully entered the markets. This book helps qualify decision-making processes, improve accuracy of design scheme evaluation and enhance efficiency in product development, and as such appeals to those in the cultural and creative industry, researchers, designers and those who are interested in product design.

Burdens of Freedom

Burdens of Freedom
Author: Lawrence M. Mead
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1641770414

Burdens of Freedom presents a new and radical interpretation of America and its challenges. The United States is an individualist society where most people seek to realize personal goals and values out in the world. This unusual, inner-driven culture was the chief reason why first Europe, then Britain, and finally America came to lead the world. But today, our deepest problems derive from groups and nations that reflect the more passive, deferential temperament of the non-West. The long-term poor and many immigrants have difficulties assimilating in America mainly because they are less inner-driven than the norm. Abroad, the United States faces challenges from Asia, which is collective-minded, and also from many poorly-governed countries in the developing world. The chief threat to American leadership is no longer foreign rivals like China but the decay of individualism within our own society. The great divide is between the individualist West, for which life is a project, and the rest of the world, in which most people seek to survive rather than achieve. This difference, although clear in research on world cultures, has been ignored in virtually all previous scholarship on American power and public policy, both at home and abroad. Burdens of Freedom is the first book to recognize that difference. It casts new light on America's greatest struggles. It re-evaluates the entire Western tradition, which took individualism for granted. How to respond to cultural difference is the greatest test of our times.

Controversy in Marketing Theory: For Reason, Realism, Truth and Objectivity

Controversy in Marketing Theory: For Reason, Realism, Truth and Objectivity
Author: Shelby D. Hunt
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 131529088X

In this book distinguished theorist and author Shelby D. Hunt analyzes the major controversies in the "philosophy debates" raging throughout the field of marketing. Using an historical approach, Hunt argues against relativism and for scientific realism as a philosophy for guiding marketing research and theory. He also shows how the pursuit of truth and objectivity in marketing research are both possible and desirable. Specific controversies analyzed in the book include: Does positivism dominate marketing research? Does positivism imply quantitive methods? Is relativism an appropriate foundation for marketing research? Does relativism imply pluralism, tolerance, and openness? Should marketing pursue the goal of objective research? An ideal companion to Hunt's classic text, Foundations of Marketing Theory, this volume will be equally useful on its own in any graduate level course on marketing theory.

Realism and Social Science

Realism and Social Science
Author: R. Andrew Sayer
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2000-02-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780761961246

Realism and Social Science offers an authoritative guide to critical realism and an assessment of its virtues in comparison with other leading traditions in social science. It is illustrated throughout with relevant and accessible examples.

Framing the Victorians

Framing the Victorians
Author: Jennifer Green-Lewis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801432767

A wide-ranging exploration of the complex and often conflicting discourse on photography in the nineteenth century, Framing the Victorians traces various descriptions of photography as art, science, magic, testimony, proof, document, record, illusion, and diagnosis. Victorian photography, argues Jennifer Green-Lewis, inspired such universal fascination that even two so self-consciously opposed schools as positivist realism and metaphysical romance claimed it as their own. Photography thus became at once the symbol of the inadequacy of nineteenth-century empiricism and the proof of its totalizing vision. Green-Lewis juxtaposes textual descriptions with pictorial representations of a diverse array of cultural activities from war and law enforcement to novel writing and psychiatry. She compares, for example, the exhibition of Roger Fenton's Crimean War photographs (1855) with W. H. Russell's written accounts of the war published in the Times of London (1884 and 1886). Nineteenth-century photography, she maintains, must be reread in the context of Victorian written texts from and against which it developed. Green-Lewis also draws on works by Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, as well as published writing by Victorian photographers, in support of her view that photography provides an invaluable model for understanding the act of writing itself. We cannot talk about realism in the nineteenth century without talking about visuality, claims Green-Lewis, and Framing the Victorians explores the connections.

Philosophical Papers: Volume 3, Realism and Reason

Philosophical Papers: Volume 3, Realism and Reason
Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1983-04-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521313940

This is the third volume of Hilary Putnam's philosophical papers, published in paperback for the first time. The volume contains his major essays from 1975 to 1982, which reveal a large shift in emphasis in the 'realist' position developed in his earlier work. While not renouncing those views, Professor Putnam has continued to explore their epistemological consequences and conceptual history. He now, crucially, sees theories of truth and of meaning that derive from a firm notion of reference as inadequate.

Ethics for A-Level

Ethics for A-Level
Author: Mark Dimmock
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783743913

What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is ‘simulated’, can it be immoral? This accessible and wide-ranging textbook explores these questions and many more. Key ideas in the fields of normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics are explained rigorously and systematically, with a vivid writing style that enlivens the topics with energy and wit. Individual theories are discussed in detail in the first part of the book, before these positions are applied to a wide range of contemporary situations including business ethics, sexual ethics, and the acceptability of eating animals. A wealth of real-life examples, set out with depth and care, illuminate the complexities of different ethical approaches while conveying their modern-day relevance. This concise and highly engaging resource is tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies, with a clear and practical layout that includes end-of-chapter summaries, key terms, and common mistakes to avoid. It should also be of practical use for those teaching Philosophy as part of the International Baccalaureate. Ethics for A-Level is of particular value to students and teachers, but Fisher and Dimmock’s precise and scholarly approach will appeal to anyone seeking a rigorous and lively introduction to the challenging subject of ethics. Tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies.