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 i...

The Prodigal Son is a trilogy of dramas, ambitious as Sophocles', each of its own the first since Milton's "Samson" to attempt the scale and evocative power of ancient myth.The Prodigal Son, the first, restates the Biblical parable in starkly contemporary fashion-the prodigal, having dissipated seven years, now diseased and the lone attendant in a house of prostitution, attempts passage into his father's heart through a substitute, Komos, who possesses the youth a...

Matt Dawson and David L. Swartz discuss The Academic Trumpists on the New Books in Sociology podcastReviewed by Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Ed

Power is the central organizing principle of all social life, from culture and education to stratification and taste. And there is no more prominent name in the analysis of power than that of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Throughout his career, Bourdieu challenged the commonly held view that symbolic power—the power to dominate—is solely symbolic. He emphasized that symbolic power helps create and maintain social hierarchies, which form the very bedrock of political life. By the time ...

In 1974 nearly 3,000 evangelicals from 150 nations met at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Amidst this cosmopolitan setting — and in front of the most important white evangelical leaders of the United States — members of the Latin American Theological Fraternity spoke out against the American Church. Fiery speeches by Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar revealed a global weariness with what they described as an American style of coldly efficient mission wedded...

In 1973, nearly a decade before the height of the Moral Majority, a group of progressive activists assembled in a Chicago YMCA to strategize about how to move the nation in a more evangelical direction through political action. When they emerged, the Washington Post predicted that the new evangelical left could "shake both political and religious life in America." The following decades proved the Post both right and wrong—evangelical participation in the political sphere ...

Åren 1947 1967 förändrades Sverige i snabb takt. Den tekniska utvecklingen och den ekonomiska tillväxten saknade motstycke och lade grunden inte bara för ett ojämförligt välstånd utan också för djupa sociala och kulturella förskjutningar. Allt som hade tagits för givet utmanades. Radikalism fick ett egenvärde. Avantgardet blev mainstream.Med texter av bland andra Yvonne Hirdman, Kalle Lind, Birgitta Holm.

In 1973, nearly a decade before the height of the Moral Majority, a group of progressive activists assembled in a Chicago YMCA to strategize about how to move the nation in a more evangelical direction through political action. When they emerged, the Washington Post predicted that the new evangelical left could "shake both political and religious life in America." The following decades proved the Post both right and wrong—evangelical participation in the political sphere ...

Pyschological anthropology is a vital area of contemporary social science, and one of the field's most important and innovative thinkers is Melford E. Spiro. This volume brings together sixteen essays that review Spiro's theoretical insights and extend them into new areas. The essays center on several general problems: In what ways is it meaningful to speak of a social act as having "functions"? What elements and processes of human personality are universal, and why? What is the relationsh...

After a vision in which he beheld himself as a leader in the revitalization of native medicine and culture, medicine man Russell WIllier began to share his healing practices and world view with three anthropologists. In this volume they describe how WIllier treats chronic, stress-related condition and physiological dysfunctions with herbal remedies, sweat-lodge therapy, religious ceremony, and other techniques.Cry of the Eagle also discusses the process by which the anthro...

Church planting and revitalization is a unique ministry. Filled with its own challenges, pastors and church leaders have often struggled in their labors. Thankfully, the apostle Paul imparted his wisdom to his young disciple Titus through a brief, power-packed letter full of encouragement and instruction. In like manner, this collection of writings from seasoned pastors, planters, and church revitalizers contains hundreds of years of combined wisdom and experience. Old and new pastors alik...

With Bibles and baptism, a movement was born.From renegade gatherings of Christian believers in the 1500s to a global communion of more than 2.1 million members, the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement has been marked by faithfulness and failure, continuity and conflict, radicalism and reformation. In this engaging history, Radicals and Reformers traces the origins and development of the Anabaptist and Mennonite movements from their beginnings in Europe through their spread across the gl...