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An Analysis of Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History

An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

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An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

Clifford Geertz has been called ‘the most original anthropologist of his generation’ – and this reputation rests largely on the huge contributions to the methodology and approaches of anthropological interpretation that he outlined in The Interpretation of Cultures. The centrality of interpretative skills to anthropology is uncontested: in a subject that is all about understanding mankind and which seeks to outline the differences and the common ground that exists between cultures interpretation is the crucial skillset. For Geertz however standard interpretative approaches did not go deep enough and his life’s work concentrated on deepening and perfecting his subject’s interpretative skills. Geertz is best known for his definition of ‘culture ’ and his theory of ‘thick description ’ an influential technique that depends on fresh interpretative approaches. For Geertz ‘cultures’ are ‘webs of meaning’ in which everyone is suspended. Understanding culture therefore is not so much a matter of going in search of law but of setting out an interpretative framework for meaning that focuses directly on attempts to define the real meaning of things within a given culture. The best way to do this for Geertz is via ‘thick description:’ a way of recording things that explores context and surroundings and articulates meaning within the web of culture. Ambitious and bold Geertz’s greatest creation is a method all critical thinkers can learn from. | An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

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An Analysis of David Graeber's Debt The First 5 000 Years

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An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

Most studies of slavery are underpinned by ideology and idealism. Eugene Genovese's ground-breaking book takes a stand against both these influences arguing not only that all ideological history is bad history – a remarkable statement coming from a self-professed Marxist – but also that slavery itself can only be understood if master and slave are studied together rather than separately. Genovese's most important insight which makes this book a fine example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving is that the best way to view the institution of American slavery is to understand why exactly it was structured as it was. He saw slavery as a process of continual renegotiation of power balances as masters strove to extract the maximum work from their slaves while slaves aimed to obtain acknowledgement of their humanity and the ability to shape elements of the world that they were forced to live in. Genovese's thesis is not wholly original; he adapts Gramsci's notion of hegemony to re-interpret the master-slave relationship – but it is an important example of the benefits of asking productive new questions about topics that seem superficially at least to be entirely obvious. By focusing on slave culture rather than producing another study of economic determinism this massive study succeeds in reconceptualising an institution in an exciting new way. | An Analysis of Eugene Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll The World the Slaves Made

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An Analysis of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow

An Analysis of Michel Foucault's What is an Author?

An Analysis of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

An Analysis of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat neurologist Oliver Sacks looked at the cutting-edge work taking place in his field and decided that much of it was not fit for purpose. Sacks found it hard to understand why most doctors adopted a mechanical and impersonal approach to their patients and opened his mind to new ways to treat people with neurological disorders. He explored the question of deciding what such new ways might be by deploying his formidable creative thinking skills. Sacks felt the issues at the heart of patient care needed redefining because the way they were being dealt with hurt not only patients but practitioners too. They limited a physician’s capacity to understand and then treat a patient’s condition. To highlight the issue Sacks wrote the stories of 24 patients and their neurological clinical conditions. In the process he rebelled against traditional methodology by focusing on his patients’ subjective experiences. Sacks did not only write about his patients in original ways – he attempt to come up with creative ways of treating them as well. At root his method was to try to help each person individually with the core aim of finding meaning and a sense of identity despite or even thanks to the patients’ condition. Sacks thus redefined the issue of neurological work in a new way and his ideas were so influential that they heralded the arrival of a broader movement – narrative medicine – that placed stronger emphasis on listening to and incorporating patients’ experiences and insights into their care. | An Analysis of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

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An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Michael E. Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy is a fine example of critical thinking skills in action. Porter used his strong evaluative skills to overturn much of the accepted wisdom in the world of business. By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the accepted argument that the best policy for firms to become more successful was to focus on expanding their market share he was able to establish that the credibility of the argument was flawed. Porter did not believe such growth was the only way for a company to be successful and provided compelling arguments as to why this was not the case. His book shows how industries can be fragmented with different firms serving different parts of the market (the low-price mass market and the expensive high-end market in clothing for example) and examines strategies that businesses can follow in emerging mature and declining markets. If printing is in decline for example there may still be a market in this industry for high-end goods and services such as luxury craft bookbinding. Porter also made excellent use of the critical thinking skill of analysis in writing Competitive Strategy. His advice that executives should analyze the five forces that mold the environment in which they compete – new entrants substitute products buyers suppliers and industry rivals – focused heavily on defining the relationships between these disparate factors and urged readers to check the assumptions of their arguments. Porter avoided technical jargon and wrote in a straightforward way to help readers see that his evaluation of the problem was strong. Competitive Strategy went on to be a highly influential work in the world of business strategy. | An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

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An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

An Analysis of Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation

An Analysis of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

An Analysis of Abraham H. Maslow's A Theory of Human Motivation

An Analysis of Hans J. Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations

An Analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

An Analysis of Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death

An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Despite having no formal training in urban planning Jane Jacobs deftly explores the strengths and weaknesses of policy arguments put forward by American urban planners in the era after World War II. They believed that the efficient movement of cars was of more value in the development of US cities than the everyday lives of the people living there. By carefully examining their relevance in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jacobs dismantles these arguments by highlighting their shortsightedness. She evaluates the information to hand and comes to a very different conclusion that urban planners ruin great cities because they don’t understand that it is a city’s social interaction that makes it great. Proposals and policies that are drawn from planning theory do not consider the social dynamics of city life. They are in thrall to futuristic fantasies of a modern way of living that bears no relation to reality or to the desires of real people living in real spaces. Professionals lobby for separation and standardization splitting commercial residential industrial and cultural spaces. But a truly visionary approach to urban planning should incorporate spaces with mixed uses together with short walkable blocks large concentrations of people and a mix of new and old buildings. This creates true urban vitality. | An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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An Analysis of Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger’s 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance is a key text in the history of psychology – one that made its author one of the most influential social psychologists of his time. It is also a prime example of how creative thinking and problem solving skills can come together to produce work that changes the way people look at questions for good. Strong creative thinkers are able to look at things from a new perspective often to the point of challenging the very frames in which those around them see things. Festinger was such a creative thinker leading what came to be known as the “cognitive revolution” in social psychology. When Festinger was carrying out his research the dominant school of thought – behaviorism – focused on outward behaviors and their effects. Festinger however turned his attention elsewhere looking at “cognition:” the mental processes behind behaviors. In the case of “cognitive dissonance” for example he hypothesized that apparently incomprehensible or illogical behaviors might be caused by a cognitive drive away from dissonance or internal contradiction. This perspective however raised a problem: how to examine and test out cognitive processes. Festinger’s book records the results of the psychological experiments he designed to solve that problem. The results helped prove the existence for what is now a fundamental theory in social psychology. | An Analysis of Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

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An Analysis of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

An Analysis of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

The history of anthropology is to a large extent the history of differing modes of interpretation. As anthropologists have long known examining analyzing and recording cultures in the quest to understand humankind as a whole is a vastly complex task in which nothing can be achieved without careful and incisive interpretative work. Edward Evans-Pritchard’s seminal 1937 Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande is a model contribution to anthropology’s grand interpretative project and one whose success is based largely on its author’s thinking skills. A major issue in anthropology at the time was the common assumption that the faiths and customs of other cultures appeared irrational or illogical when compared to the “civilized” and scientific beliefs of the western world. Evans-Pritchard sought to challenge such definitions by embedding himself within a tribal culture in Africa – that of the Azande – and attempting to understand their beliefs in their proper contexts. By doing so Evans-Pritchard proved just how vital context is to interpretation. Seen within their context he was able to show the beliefs of the Azande were far from irrational – and magic actually formed a coherent system that helped mould a functional community and society for the tribe. Evans-Pritchard’s efforts to clarify meaning in this way have proved hugely influential and have played a major part in guiding later generations of anthropologists from his day to ours. | An Analysis of E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

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An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the European Union – the nationalism that was such a potent force in the history of the 20th-century has made a comeback in recent years. Now more than ever it seems important to understand what it is how it works and why it is so attractive to so many people. A fine place to start any such exploration is with Ernest Gellner's seminal Nations and Nationalism a ground-breaking study that was the first to flesh out the counter-intuitive – but enormously influential – thesis that modern nationalism has little if anything in common with old-fashioned patriotism or loyalty to one's homeland. Gellner's intensely creative thesis is that the nationalism we know today is actually the product of the 19th-century industrial revolution which radically reshaped ancient communities encouraging emigration to cities at the same time as it improved literacy rates and introduced mass education. Gellner connected these three elements in an entirely new way contrasting developments to the structures of pre-industrial agrarian economies to show why the new nationalism could not have been born in such communities. He was also successful in generating a typology of nationalisms in an attempt to explain why some forms flourished while others fizzled out. His remarkable ability to produce novel explanations for existing evidence marks out Nations and Nationalism as one of the most radical stimulating – and enduringly influential – works of its day. | An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

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