Why It’s OK to Own a Gun explores the right to self-defense, but also looks beyond it to what gun ownership fundamentally means in American life. Guns can provide a source of meaning that doesn’t depend on how much money you have or how important your job is. Guns can offer a sense of shared identity that’s not hung up on intellectual credentials or ideological orthodoxy. For many responsible gun owners, owning a gun is a way of positively reclaiming one’s own agency in the world.
It’s true that guns matter to only a minority of Americans, but the same could be said for many important political liberties. Like freedom of religion and freedom of expression, guns should be on the list of basic rights. In fact, they are: as some in America’s founding generation anticipated, gun rights have offered a bulwark for republican freedom. Because there is nothing morally wrong with any of these values, owning a gun is OK.
Key Features:
- Discusses the grounds of the political rights of gun ownership
- Connects the debate over guns with the sociology of gun ownership
- Describes genuinely worthwhile features of a way of life that’s unfamiliar to many readers
- Considers empirical and normative aspects of the gun debate
- Thinks about individual rights in the context of state power
Why It’s OK to Own a Gun explores the right to self-defense, but also looks beyond it to what gun ownership fundamentally means in American life. Guns can provide a source of…
We tend to applaud those who think for themselves: the ever-curious student, for example, or the grownup who does their own research. Even as we’re applauding, however, we ourselves often don’t think for ourselves. This book argues that’s completely OK.
In fact, it’s often best just to take other folks’ word for it, allowing them to do the hard work of gathering and evaluating the relevant evidence. In making this argument, philosopher Jonathan Matheson shows how 'expert testimony' and 'the wisdom of crowds' are tested and provides convincing ideas that make it rational to believe something simply because other people believe it. Matheson then takes on philosophy’s best arguments against his thesis, including the idea that non-self-thinkers are free-riding on the work of others, Socrates’ claim that 'the unexamined life isn’t worth living,' and that outsourcing your intellectual labor makes you vulnerable to errors and manipulation. Matheson shows how these claims and others ultimately fail -- and that when it comes to thinking, we often need not be sheepish about being sheep.
Key Features
- Discusses the idea of not thinking for yourself in the context of contemporary issues like climate change and vaccinations
- Engages in numerous contemporary debates in social epistemology
- Examines what can be valuable about thinking for yourself and argues that these are insufficient to require you to do so
- Outlines the key, practical takeaways from the argument in an epilogue
We tend to applaud those who think for themselves: the ever-curious student, for example, or the grownup who does their own research. Even as we’re applauding, however, we…
Why trust science? Why should science have more authority than "other ways of knowing?" Is science merely a social construct? Or even worse: a tool of oppression? This book boldly takes on these and other explosive questions—lodged by ideologues on the left and the right—and offers readers a well researched defense of science and a polemic addressed to its detractors.
Why It’s OK to Trust Science critically examines the recent history of critiques of science, including those in academia from scholars like Bruno Latour, Simon Schaffer, and Thomas Kuhn. It then presents case studies drawn from recent advances in the field of dinosaur paleontology, showing how science generates objective knowledge, even during revolutionary episodes. The book next looks at how that same objective knowledge can be gained even when researching extremely complex issues, using climate science to distinguish between genuine skepticism –upon which science depends–from dogmatic denial.
The book is for anyone who needs thoughtful, razor sharp responses to the detractors of science—whether they be anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, profit-seeking businessmen, or published relativists in the knowledge-making industries.
Key Features:
- Highly readable and accessible without oversimplifying the complexities of scientific research
- Exposes the many flaws of the "undertermination thesis"—the argument that indefinitely many hypotheses are compatible with any body of evidence
- Explores whether moral and other value-laden questions can be answered by science
- Includes three appendixes online: (1) Summary of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; (2) Rorty on Losing the World; (3) 21 Facts in Support of Human-Caused Climate Change
Why trust science? Why should science have more authority than "other ways of knowing?" Is science merely a social construct? Or even worse: a tool of oppression? This book boldly…
This book offers readers a pitch-side view of the ethics of fandom. Its accessible six chapters are aimed both at true sports fans whose conscience may be occasionally piqued by their pastime, and at those who are more certain of the moral hazards involved in following a team or sport.
Why It’s OK to Be a Sports Fan wrestles with a range of arguments against fandom and counters with its own arguments on why being a fan is very often a good thing. It looks at the ethical issues fans face, from the violent or racist behavior of those in the stands, to players’ infamous misdeeds, to owners debasing their own clubs. In response to these moral risks, the book argues that by being critical fans, followers of a team or individual can reap the benefits of fandom while avoiding many of the ethical pitfalls. The authors show the value in deeply loving a team but also how a condition of this value is recognizing that the love of a fan comes with real limits and responsibilities.
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Key Features
- Provides an accessible introduction to a key area of the philosophy of sport
- Closely looks at some of the salient ethical concerns around sports fandom
- Proposes that the value of community in partisan fandom should not be underestimated as a key feature of the good life
- Examines how the same emotions and environments that can lead to violence are identical to those that lead to virtuous loyalty
- Argues for a fan’s responsibility in calling out violence or racist behavior from their fellow fans
This book offers readers a pitch-side view of the ethics of fandom. Its accessible six chapters are aimed both at true sports fans whose conscience may be occasionally piqued by…
The downsides of monogamy are felt by most people engaged in long-term relationships, including restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a circumscribed understanding of intimacy. Yet, a "happily ever after" monogamy is assumed to be the ideal form of romantic love in many modern societies: a relationship that is morally ideal and will bring the most happiness to its two partners.
In Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous, Justin L. Clardy deeply questions these assumptions. He rejects the claim that non-monogamy among honest, informed and consenting adults is morally impermissible. He shows instead how polyamorous relationships can actually be exemplars of moral virtue. The book discusses how social and political forces sustain and reward monogamous relationships. The book defines non-monogamy as a privative concept; a negation of monogamy. Looking at its prevalence in the United States, the book explains how common criticisms of non-monogamy come up short. Clardy argues, as some researchers have recently shown―monogamy relies on continually demonizing non-monogamy to sustain its moral status. Finally, the book concludes with a focus on equality, asking what justice for polyamorous individuals might look like.
The downsides of monogamy are felt by most people engaged in long-term relationships, including restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a…
The essays collected in this volume represent many years of Professor Nauert's research and teaching on the history of Renaissance humanism, and more particularly on humanism north of the Alps. Much of the early work involved the significant but often-overlooked history of humanism at the University of Cologne, notoriously the most anti-humanist of the German universities. Later essays deal with the most famous humanist of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and natural philosophy, a broad term covering many subjects now associated with natural science, is the topic of three of the pieces published here. Taken as a whole, the book presents a detailed study of intellectual development among European elites.
The essays collected in this volume represent many years of Professor Nauert's research and teaching on the history of Renaissance humanism, and more particularly on humanism…
Every year, millions of students in the United States and around the world graduate from high school and college. Commencement speakers―often distilling the hopes of parents and four years of messaging from educators―tell graduates that they must do something grand, ambitious, or far-reaching. Change the world. Disrupt the status quo. Every problem in the world is your problem, awaiting your solutions.
This book is an antidote to that advice. It provides a clear-eyed assessment of three types of people who tend to believe and promote a commencement speaker’s view of the world: the moralizer, who imposes unnecessary social costs by inappropriately enforcing morality; the busybody, who thinks the stranger and close friend merit equal shares of our benevolent attention; and the pure hearted, who equates acting with good intentions with just outcomes. The book also provides a bold defense of living an ordinary life by putting down roots, creating a good home, and living in solitude. A quiet, peaceful life can be generous and noble. It’s OK to mind your own business.
Every year, millions of students in the United States and around the world graduate from high school and college. Commencement speakers―often distilling the hopes of parents and…
This book explores the dick pic in popular culture. Drawing from a range of disciplines, cultural analyses, lived experiences and theoretical approaches, this book explores the polysemous nature of dick pics.
It looks at historical and contemporary theorisations of the penis/phallus, sexualisation and sexual objectification of the male body arguments, contemporary public discourses concerning the dick pic, and men’s lived experiences of sexting and dick pic sending. Made possible by advances in mobile and digital technologies, the dick pic is often regarded as a harmful endemic, particularly in the wake of increased recognitions of sexual violence against women. However, very little has been done to explore dick pics outside of violence, pathological, and moral panic framings, such as the erotic possibilities and understandings of the dick pic, and the way certain discourses continue to work to shape and frame how we engage and understand the dick pic in contemporary culture.
This will be key reading for scholars and students in Women’s and Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Masculinity and Sociology.
This book explores the dick pic in popular culture. Drawing from a range of disciplines, cultural analyses, lived experiences and theoretical approaches, this book explores the…
Nazi Occultism provides a serious scholarly study of a topic that is often marred by sensationalism and misinformation.
The Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier (1960) gave rise to the idea that a secret society with wide powers, the ‘Thule society,’ was the hidden and ignored centre of Nazism. The influence of this very real small group is, however, only a fantasy, a myth. The author, a historian specializing in neo-Nazism, looks
back on this speculative construction, its origins, its ideological tinkering and the practices which have succeeded in forming a sort of radical and sulphurous counterculture which has created a fascination with esotericism and Nazism and the SS. To better understand it, he also paints a portrait of some of the authors who contributed to this extremist subculture, such as the Italian esotericist Julius Evola, the Argentine anthropologist Jacques-Marie de Mahieu, Chilean neo-Nazi Miguel Serrano and the writer Jean-Paul Bourre.
This book will appeal to scholars, researchers and activists as well as general readers with an interest in the history of Nazism and the occult.
Stéphane François is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Mons, Belgium. He is also an associate member of the CNRS, France, and a researcher in the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (Societies, Religions, Secularism Group).
Nazi Occultism provides a serious scholarly study of a topic that is often marred by sensationalism and misinformation.
The Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier (1960)…
This textbook provides an accessible introduction to the field of translation for students of other disciplines and readers who are not translators. It provides students outside the translation profession with a greater awareness of, and appreciation for, what goes into translation. Providing readers with tools for their own personal translation-related needs, this book encourages an ethical approach to translation and offers an insight into translation as a possible career.
This textbook covers foundational concepts; key figures, groups, and events; tools and resources for non-professional translation tasks; and the types of translation that non-translators are liable to encounter. Each chapter includes practical activities, annotated further reading, and summaries of key points suitable for use in classrooms, online teaching, or self-study. There is also a glossary of key terms.
De-mystifying Translation: Introducing Translation to Non-translators is the ideal text for any non-specialist taking a course on translation and for anyone interested in learning more about the field of translation and translation studies.
This textbook provides an accessible introduction to the field of translation for students of other disciplines and readers who are not translators. It provides students outside…
Focusing on the fundamental reasons underlying the lasting crisis of the Yemeni Civil War, this book frames contemporary Yemen and assesses prospects beyond the conflict, identifying the factors which will determine its future internal and international characteristics.
Building on Helen Lackner’s profound experience in Yemen, this volume discusses Yemen’s history and state formation, the main political institutions emerging since the Republic of Yemen was established and their role in the war, including the significance of current fragmentation. The volume goes on to discuss climate change, including the water scarcity issue, in the context of resource constraints to economic development and the role of migration. Rural and urban life, as well as the impact of international development and humanitarian aid, are also covered, together with Yemen’s international relations – its interaction with its neighbours as well as Western states. Looking forward, it suggests the type of policies able to give Yemenis the conditions needed for a reasonable standard of living.
Thanks to analysis of determining events, the book will appeal to politicians, diplomats, humanitarian organizations, security analysts, researchers on the Middle East and those generally interested in Yemen. It will also be an essential text for students of international relations, political economy, failing states, development studies and contemporary Middle Eastern history.
Focusing on the fundamental reasons underlying the lasting crisis of the Yemeni Civil War, this book frames contemporary Yemen and assesses prospects beyond the conflict,…
This book unmasks the sexual offender by providing clear, comprehensible information about the motivations, techniques, and dynamics of sexual offenders and their behavior. It not only explores the biases and myths that the reader may rely upon to understand deviance but also explains pathways to offending, the distorted thinking and relating that offenders engage in, and the ways offenders manipulate and exploit others. Sexual offenders are surrounded by mythology, fascination, and revulsion. People who commit sexual offenses present difficult and complicated issues interpersonally, as well as in treatment and management; denial, victim-blaming, aggression, and blatant chronic deception are inherent in interactions with them. Unfortunately, the failure to truly understand their motives and techniques helps provide excuses for and further camouflage of their deviance. The first part of the text explores the presumptions commonly adopted about sexual offenders and shows how misinformation supports the inappropriate behavior of the sexual offender. The second section focuses on exposing the sexual offender using straightforward language and tangible examples. A final, third section includes safety and management strategies for dealing with sex offenders for those both inside and outside the realms of law enforcement and offender supervision. This book is intended for anyone interested in learning about sexual offenders. It is useful for both professionals and non-professionals, including students, paralegals, victim advocates, and others involved in the criminal justice system or mental health field.
This book unmasks the sexual offender by providing clear, comprehensible information about the motivations, techniques, and dynamics of sexual offenders and their behavior. It not…
Join industry insiders Bill Kinder and Bobbie O’Steen as they guide readers on a journey through every stage of production on an animated film, from storyboards to virtual cameras and final animation.
With unprecedented access to the Pixar edit suite, this authoritative project highlights the central role film editors play in some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful movies of all time. Exclusive interviews with animation editors and other creative leads are supported by footage from deep inside Pixar’s vault. Nearly 90 minutes of video segments include never-before-seen works in progress, deleted scenes, and demonstrations to shed light on how these beloved stories are crafted. The challenges and essential contributions of editors in animation have never been examined in such depth and detail.
In addition to exploring method and craft, this book provides important context for the editor in film history, the evolution of technology, and Pixar’s uniquely collaborative studio culture. A must-read for students of digital filmmaking methods, filmmakers in all aspects of production, and fans of Pixar movies, this uniquely educational, historical, and entertaining book sheds light on how beloved stories are crafted from the perspective of crucial members of the filmmaking team.
Join industry insiders Bill Kinder and Bobbie O’Steen as they guide readers on a journey through every stage of production on an animated film, from storyboards to virtual cameras…
This fourth edition of the bestselling textbook, now available in print, eBook, and audiobook, has been fully updated, continuing to provide a concise introduction to the key concepts of semiotics in accessible and jargon-free language.
Demystifying what is a complex, highly interdisciplinary field, key questions covered include: what are signs and codes? What can semiotics teach us about representation and reality? What tools does it offer for analysing texts and cultural practices? The fourth edition of Semiotics: The Basics focuses in particular on its application to communication and cultural studies. It has been extensively revised and extended, with an entirely new section on cognitive semiotics, many more illustrations, and a new glossary.
With updates to theory, further examples, and suggestions for review and further reading, this must-have resource is both the ideal introductory text and an essential reference guide for students at all levels of language and communication, media, and cultural studies.
This fourth edition of the bestselling textbook, now available in print, eBook, and audiobook, has been fully updated, continuing to provide a concise introduction to the key…
This book is devoted to the phenomenon of removal of people declared "public enemies" from group photographs in Stalin’s Russia.
The book is based on long-term empirical research in Russian archives and includes 57 photographs that are exceptional in terms of historical interest: all these images bear traces of editing in the form of various marks, such as blacking-out, excisions or scratches. The illustrative materials also include a group of photographs with inscriptions left by officers of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD. To approach this extensive visual material, Denis Skopin draws on a wealth of Stalin-era written sources: memoirs, diaries and official documents. He argues that this kind of political iconoclasm cannot be confused with censorship nor vandalism. The practice in question is more harrowing and morally twisted, for in most cases the photos were defaced by those who were part of victim’s intimate circle: his/her colleagues, friends or even close family members.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in history of photography, art history, visual culture, Russian studies and Russian history and politics.
This book is devoted to the phenomenon of removal of people declared "public enemies" from group photographs in Stalin’s Russia.
This book investigates the narrativity of some of the most popular survival horror video games and the gender politics implicit in their storyworlds. In a thorough analysis of the genre that draws upon detailed comparisons with the mainstream action genre, Andrei Nae places his analysis firmly within a political and social context.
In comparing survival horror games to the dominant game design norms of the action genre, the author differentiates between classical and postclassical survival horror games to show how the former reject the norms of the action genre and deliver a critique of the conservative gender politics of action games, while the latter are more heterogeneous in terms of their game design and, implicitly, gender politics.
This book will appeal not only to scholars working in game studies but also to scholars of horror, gender studies, popular culture, visual arts, genre studies, and narratology.
This book investigates the narrativity of some of the most popular survival horror video games and the gender politics implicit in their storyworlds. In a thorough analysis of the…
This book examines the French theatricalization of India from 1770 to 1865 and how a range of plays not only represented India to the French viewing public but also staged issues within French culture including colonialism, imperialism, race, gender, and national politics.
Through examining these texts and available performance history, and incorporating historical texts and cultural theory, David Hammerback analyses these works to illustrate a complex of cultural representations: some contested Orientalism, some participated in Western colonialist discourses, while some can be placed somewhere between these two markers of ideology in Western culture and the arts. He also assesses the works which participated in shaping the theatrical face of Western hegemony, ones directly participating in Orientalism as delineated by Edward Said and others.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, French literature, history and cultural studies.
This book examines the French theatricalization of India from 1770 to 1865 and how a range of plays not only represented India to the French viewing public but also staged issues…
Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt?
In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat—and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar’s examination forcefully echoes vegetarians’ concerns about the meat industry’s impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world’s problems to tackle, in what ways, and to what extents, and hence people can decline to take up this particular form of activism without doing anything wrong.
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Key Features
- First book-length defense of meat-eating written for a popular audience
- Punchy, accessible introduction to the multifaceted debate over the ethics of eating meat
- Includes pioneering new examinations of humane labeling practices
- Shows why appeals to universalized patterns of behavior can’t vindicate vegetarians’ claims that there’s a duty to avoid meat
- Develops a novel theory of ethical activism with potential applications to a wide range of other issues
Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their…
Your parents may have said this to you when you were deep into a video-gaming marathon. Or maybe your roommate said it to you when you were lounging on the couch scrolling through Instagram. You may have even said it to yourself on days you did nothing. But what is so bad about slacking? Could it be that there’s nothing bad about not making yourself useful?
Against our hyper-productivity culture, Alison Suen critically interrogates our disapproval of slackers—individuals who do the bare minimum just to get by. She offers a taxonomy of slackers, analyzes common objections to slacking, and argues that each of these objections either fails or carries problematic assumptions. But while this book defends slacking, it does not promote the slacker lifestyle as the key to something better (such as cultural advancement and self-actualization), as some pro-leisure scholars have argued. In fact, Suen argues that slacking is unique precisely because it serves no noble cause. Slacking is neither a deliberate protest to social ills nor is it a path to autonomy. Slackers just slack. By examining the culture of hyper-productivity, Suen argues that it is in fact OK to be a slacker.
Key Features
- Demonstrates the uniqueness of slacking, via a critical examination of six distinct "pro-leisure" philosophical accounts.
- Articulates a taxonomy of slackers, as well as in-depth examinations of Hollywood slackers and slackers in academia.
- Examines common objections to slacking (like the freeloading problem), and offers a rebuttal to each of them.
- Offers an understanding of our productivity culture from an existential perspective.
"Stop slacking off!"
Your parents may have said this to you when you were deep into a video-gaming marathon. Or maybe your roommate said it to you when you were lounging on the…
Political protests, debates on college campuses, and social media tirades make it seem like everyone is speaking their minds today. Surveys, however, reveal that many people increasingly feel like they’re walking on eggshells when communicating in public. Speaking your mind can risk relationships and professional opportunities. It can alienate friends and anger colleagues. Isn’t it smarter to just put your head down and keep quiet about controversial topics?
In this book, Hrishikesh Joshi offers a novel defense of speaking your mind. He explains that because we are social creatures, we never truly think alone. What we know depends on what our community knows. And by bringing our unique perspectives to bear upon public discourse, we enhance our collective ability to reach the truth on a variety of important matters.
Speaking your mind is also important for your own sake. It is essential for developing your own thinking. And it’s a core aspect of being intellectually courageous and independent. Joshi argues that such independence is a crucial part of a well-lived life.
The book draws from Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and a range of contemporary thinkers to argue that it’s OK to speak your mind.
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Key Features
- Shows that we have not just a right but a moral duty to publicly share what we know.
- Argues that discussing your unique ideas with others is essential for developing as a critical thinker.
- Explores the value of intellectual honesty and independence in the writings of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche and connects their thinking to contemporary problems.
- Argues that avoiding cultural blind spots today is important for the fate of future generations.
Political protests, debates on college campuses, and social media tirades make it seem like everyone is speaking their minds today. Surveys, however, reveal that many people…
