Driving Modernity

Driving Modernity
Author: Massimo Moraglio
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785334492

On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan–Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which—alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility—Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.

Driving toward Modernity

Driving toward Modernity
Author: Jun Zhang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501738410

In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.

The Third World

The Third World
Author: Alireza Salehi-Nejad
Publisher: Titan Inc.
Total Pages: 18
Release: 2011-04-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1312693967

Mao Zedong had developed the Three Worlds Theory; however, after the dissolution of Soviet Union, Third World has been used interchangeably with least developed countries and somehow conveys poverty. Nevertheless, the term Third World has also been used to describe some rich countries with very high Gross Domestic Product or even high Human Development Index; therefore, poverty is not always economical, and roots within society. The nature of society is rooted in culture, which is set of ideas, norms, and values; and structure, which is the fundamental organization of society into its institutions, groups, statuses, and roles. While evaluating the difference between “real culture” and “ideal culture”, lead us to understand that cultural values are not always consistent, even within the same society. Global poverty dates back to centuries of plunder and confiscation of land and riches from the indigenous people under the flag of colonialism and exploitation. Over years, exploitation has led the current economic system being funded by the poor through theft of land and natural resources, unfair debt settlement, and unjust taxes on labor and consumption. Social inequality – in sense of distribution of material possessions, money, power, prestige, relationship – whether within societies or among them is a topic at the heart of sociology. The theory of a “Culture of Poverty” describes the combination of factors that perpetuate patterns of inequality and poverty in society. This theory states that living in conditions of prevalent poverty leads to the development of a culture or subculture adapted to those conditions, and characterized by prevalent feelings of vulnerability, dependency, marginality, and feebleness. The myth of the Culture of Poverty, intensifying Cultural Poverty, Cycle of poverty or development trap, insufficiency of materialist information society, necessity of knowledge society, and other key factors in crafting the third world are discussed in this book. “The Third World; Country or People” takes a systematic approach to the analysis of human lives and interactions and evaluates various fields including anthropology, economics, political science, ethnic studies, area studies, gender studies, cultural studies.

How To Become A Modernized Country: China Modernization Report Outlook (2001-2016)

How To Become A Modernized Country: China Modernization Report Outlook (2001-2016)
Author: Chuanqi He
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811206279

Modernization is a complex phenomenon in the world, and is termed as a development goal in some countries and regions. This book, the first of its kind, discusses how a country can become modernized. It takes a new approach to addressing core issues in the era of globalization from a Chinese perspective. It analyzes how to become a developed and modernized country, why are some countries developed while others are not, how many countries will rise and how many will fall, will China become a new modernized country in the 21st century, and so on. The author presents a summary of 15 annual reports of China Modernization Report from 2001 to 2016. The themes covered include: basic principles of modernization (modernization science, modernization theory and modernization evaluation), level-related modernization (world, international, national, regional and urban modernization), field-relative modernization (economical, social, cultural and ecological modernization) and sector-specified modernization (agricultural, industrial and service modernization) etc.The book further discusses the principles and methods of world modernization, as well as the trends in modernization in the world and the modernization strategy in China, based on theoretical studies and research by a Chinese team for more than 16 years. This research covered 131 countries and 96% of the world's population, with a time span of 300 years (from 1750 to 2050).

Theorizing Society in a Global Context

Theorizing Society in a Global Context
Author: A. Krossa
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2012-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137003189

Using Europe as an example, this book readdresses and updates the concept of 'society', exploring society in the context of both globalization and conflict theory to develop a new theory of society for our times.

Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture

Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture
Author: Keith L. Johnson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2012-11-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830864571

The 2012 Wheaton Theology Conference was convened around the formidable legacy of Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi resistant Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This collection, focusing on the man's views of Christ, the church and culture, contributes to a recent awakening of interest in Bonhoeffer among evangelicals.

Joining God in the Great Unraveling

Joining God in the Great Unraveling
Author: Alan J. Roxburgh
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725288508

The awareness that the churches shaped out of the European Reformations are in an advanced process of unraveling is becoming increasingly sensed by many. This book proposes a way of addressing this unraveling based on the experiences and knowledge of people who have always had to struggle with the unraveling of their own communities and worlds. It takes us outside the circular conversations of the Euro-tribal churches into dialogue with people who have been marginalized to see how they have learned to reenter their formative stories to discover ways of remaking themselves in the unraveling. The book then turns these discoveries into ways the churches can engage their own massive unraveling.

Debating Biopolitics

Debating Biopolitics
Author: Piasentier, Marco
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2022-08-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1800887973

Emerging out of the theoretical and practical urge to reflect on key contemporary debates arising in biopolitical scholarship, this timely book launches an in-depth investigation into the concept and history of biopolitics. In light of tumultuous political dynamics across the globe and new developments in this continually evolving field, the book reconsiders and expands upon Michel Foucault’s input to biopolitical studies.

Consuming Landscapes

Consuming Landscapes
Author: Thomas Zeller
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1421444836

What we see through our windshields reflects ideas about our national identity, consumerism, and infrastructure. For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to be transformed by them. In Consuming Landscapes, Thomas Zeller explores how what we see while driving reflects how we view our societies and ourselves, the role that consumerism plays in our infrastructure, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century. Zeller breaks new ground by comparing the driving experience and the history of landscaped roads in the United States and Germany, two major automotive countries. He focuses specifically on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the United States and the German Alpine Road as case studies. When the automobile was still young, an early twentieth-century group of designers—landscape architects, civil engineers, and planners—sought to build scenic infrastructures, or roads that would immerse drivers in the landscapes that they were traversing. As more Americans and Europeans owned cars and drove them, however, they became less interested in enchanted views; safety became more important than beauty. Clashes between designers and drivers resulted in different visions of landscapes made for automobiles. As strange as it may seem to twenty-first-century readers, many professionals in the early twentieth century envisioned cars and roads, if properly managed, as saviors of the environment. Consuming Landscapes illustrates how the meaning of infrastructures changed as a result of use and consumption. Such changes indicate a deep ambivalence toward the automobile and roads, prompting the question: can cars and roads bring us closer to nature while deeply altering it at the same time?

Circus, Science and Technology

Circus, Science and Technology
Author: Anna-Sophie Jürgens
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2020-06-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 303043298X

This book explores the circus as a site in and through which science and technology are represented in popular culture. Across eight chapters written by leading scholars – from fields as varied as performance and circus studies, art, media and cultural history, and engineering – the book discusses to what extent the engineering of circus and performing bodies can be understood as a strategy to promote awe, how technological inventions have shaped circus and the cultures it helps constitute, and how much of a mutual shaping this is. What kind of cultural and aesthetic effects does engineering in circus contexts achieve? How do technological inventions and innovations impact on the circus? How does the link between circus and technology manifest in representations and interpretations – imaginaries – of the circus in other media and popular culture? Circus, Science and Technology examines the ways circus can provide a versatile frame for interpreting our relationship with technology.