This collection brings together Daniel Bell's best work in essay form. It deals with a variety of topics: technology and culture, religion and personal identity, intellectuals and their societies, and the uses and abuses of doctrines of social class. The Winding Passage demonstrates the author's continuing concern with the salient issues of our times, while its inspiration draws upon an older, humanistic sociological tradition.

Daniel Bell assesses the impact of Christian resistance to capitalism in Latin America, and the implications of theological debates that have emerged from this. He uses postmodern critical theory to investigate capitalism, its effect upon human desire and the Church's response to it, in a thorough account of the rise, failure and future prospects of Latin American liberation theology.

This comprehensive examination of general education by Daniel Bell scrutinizes the experiences of Columbia College, Harvard, and The College of the University of Chicago. These three basic models of general education in the country are set against a background of social change which includes a detailed analysis of structural changes in American society, the universities and the secondary schools and what Bell has called the emerging "postindustrial" society.Bell attacks the distinction bet...

This provocative and timely primer on the just war tradition connects just war to the concrete practices and challenges of the Christian life. Daniel Bell explains that the point is not simply to know the just war tradition but to live it even in the face of the tremendous difficulties associated with war. He shows how just war practice, if it is to be understood as a faithful form of Christian discipleship, must be rooted in and shaped by the fundamental convictions and confessions of the...

In this addition to the award-winning Church and Postmodern Culture series, respected theologian Daniel Bell compares and contrasts capitalism and Christianity, showing how Christianity provides resources for faithfully navigating the postmodern global economy.Bell approaches capitalism and Christianity as alternative visions of humanity, God, and the good life. Considering faith and economics in terms of how desire is shaped, he casts the conflict as one between different discipli...

There is a growing anxiety about the basic health of society. Everywhere we see the fraying of the social fabric, the decline of families, the absence of consensus on unifying moral principles, and the disappearance of community and voluntary associations. Around the world, politicians and intellectuals of all political persuasions seek to restore civil society by cultivating stronger public ethics and social institutions. In The Essential Civil Society Reader Don Eberly, one of t...

This anthology of hard-to-find primary documents provides a solid overview of the foundations of American media studies. Focusing on mass communication and society and how this research fits into larger patterns of social thought, this valuable collection features key texts covering the media studies traditions of the Chicago school, the effects tradition, the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, and mass society theory. Where possible, articles are reproduced in their entirety to pres...

An entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers—and what they can teach us about today’s most pressing political questions in China and beyondChina’s most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese political thinking and practice ever since and, remarkably, their influence on the country’s leaders is only growing today. Yet these timeless debates—which are very likely...

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearAn inside view of Chinese academia and what it reveals about China’s political systemOn January 1, 2017, Daniel Bell was appointed dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University—the first foreign dean of a political science faculty in mainland China’s history. In The Dean of Shandong, Bell chronicles his experiences as what he calls “a minor b...

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the politicalAll complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chine...

In The Politics of Affective Relations, editors Daniel Bell and Hahm Chaihark refine our understanding of the East Asian conception of the self by examining how that conception was formulated, reproduced, and utilized throughout history. Sparked by a strong dissatisfaction with the state over many discourses regarding East Asian politics, this volume moves beyond the simplistic exchange of polemics regarding "Asian Values" and reaches a more nuanced understanding of "relationality...

This audiobook narrated by Wyntner Woody provides an inside view of Chinese academia and what it reveals about China's political systemOn January 1, 2017, Daniel Bell was appointed dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University—the first foreign dean of a political science faculty in mainland China's history. In The Dean of Shandong, Bell chronicles his experiences as what he calls "a minor bureaucrat," offering an ...