Enthusiasm seeks to contribute to a culturally and historically nuanced understanding of how emotions secure and ratify the truth of convictions. More than just pure affective intensity, enthusiasm is about something: a certainty, clarity, or truth. Neither as clearly negative as fanaticism nor as general as passion, enthusiasm specifically entails belief. For this reason, the book takes its starting point in religion, the social arena in which the concept was first debated and to...

How should we understand promises as public, private, or political commitments? What are the conditions for promise-making in religiously diverse societies with competing jurisdictions and sovereignties? Making Promises addresses how promises are made meaningful not only through law, but also through appeals to transcendent powers across diverse traditions.Each contribution in this volume takes a closer look at specific kinds of promises: oaths, treaties, and covenants. The...

Christmas is not a holiday just for Christians anymore, if it ever was. Embedded in calendars around the world and long a lucrative merchandising opportunity, Christmas enters multicultural, multi-religious public spaces, provoking both festivity and controversy, hospitality and hostility.The Public Work of Christmas provides a comparative historical and ethnographic perspective on the politics of Christmas in multicultural contexts ranging from a Jewish museum in Berlin t...

Christmas is not a holiday just for Christians anymore, if it ever was. Embedded in calendars around the world and long a lucrative merchandising opportunity, Christmas enters multicultural, multi-religious public spaces, provoking both festivity and controversy, hospitality and hostility.The Public Work of Christmas provides a comparative historical and ethnographic perspective on the politics of Christmas in multicultural contexts ranging from a Jewish museum in Berlin t...

From assaults on historical figures such as John A. Macdonald to cancel culture and charges that Canada is a genocidal nation-state, the country that every generation and every immigrant built is now facing routine and corrosive attacks.How did this happen?In this new book, twenty critical thinkers provide answers: we are awash in relentless grievance narratives and utopians who expect Canada’s history to be perfect. The rise of critical theory, identity politics, and ideol...

Heritage has burgeoned over the past quarter of a century from a small élite preoccupation into a major popular crusade. Everything from Disneyland to the Holocaust Museum, from the Balkan wars to the Northern Irish troubles, from Elvis memorabilia to the Elgin Marbles bears the marks of the cult of heritage. In this acclaimed 1998 book David Lowenthal explains the rise of this obsession with the past and examines its power for both good and evil.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Comparative Law: A Very Short Introduction aims to offer a concise introduction to Comparative Law—its objectives, methods, concepts and uses. After an overview of the fundamental definitions, key concepts and basic lexicon of the discipline, the book proposes an analysis of the most successful techniques adopted in legal comparison for mapping the world's legal systems and for explaining legal change and diffusion of ...

The idea that conservatism amounts to little more than being in favour of free market capitalism and a small state—widely held for decades—is seriously mistaken.Award-winning political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is to return to a genuine conservatism that is distinct from the hollow promises of contemporary economic and social liberalism. He explains how this great Anglo-American conservative tradition – rooted in empiricism, faith and the...

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was an English cleric whose ideas, as expounded in his most famous work the Essay on the Principle of Population, caused a storm of controversy. In this Very Short Introduction, Donald Winch explains and clarifies Malthus's ideas, assessing the profound influence he has had on modern economic thought. Concentrating on his writings, Winch sheds light on the context in which he wrote and why his work has remained controversial. Looking at M...

In ten original studies, former students and colleagues of Maurice Careless, one of Canada’s most distinguished historians, explore both traditional and hitherto neglected topics in the development of nineteenth-century Ontario. Their papers incorporate the three themes that characterize their mentor’s scholarly efforts: metropolitan-hinterland relations; urban development; and the impact of ’limited identities’ — gender, class, ethnicity and regionalism — that shaped the lives of Old Onta...

In an increasingly polarized age, culture wars are everywhere. They are often dismissed as superficial or confected disagreements designed to distract us from more important issues. Is this true, or are they actually more fundamental than that?In this thoughtful and passionate intervention, renowned theologian and moral philosopher Nigel Biggar argues that the 'culture wars' are in fact political and moral debates that cut to the very quick of some of the most substantial questions...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Democracy refers to both ideal and real forms of government. The concept of democracy means that those governed — the demos — have a say in government. But different conceptions of democracy have left many out. Naomi Zack provides here a fresh treatment of the history of this idea and its key conceptions. In the ancient world, direct and representative democracy in Athens and Rome privileged elites, as did dem...