Continuum Publishing Group

Richard Rorty's new pragmatism; neither liberal nor free.

Many regard Rorty as a liberator of the human mind and a promoter of individual creativity and social tolerance. Grippe (philosophy and religion, Norwalk Community College) points out, however, that Rorty's work in pragmatism contains within it flaws that cause its self-destruction. Grippe argues that Rorty's rejection of essentialism causes the creation of a concept of self that is radically unfettered in its originality, giving rise to the inevitable hostility Rorty counters with what he calls a "solidarity of forbearance." Grippe points out this approach does not support the concept of tolerance, and that struggle arises in which there is no arbiter, given the "free" nature of the self. The result is suppression of both dialog and creativity, argues Grippe, making Rorty's dual project as liberal and free moot. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Rousseau; a guide for the perplexed.

This volume is an introduction to the philosophical writings of Jean- Jacques Rousseau. Contents include discussions of Rousseau's Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, The Social Contract, and the philosophical novel, Emile. The introductory chapter combines an overview of Rousseau's life and the social and cultural settings that influenced his thinking and writing. In a later chapter, the author interprets passages from Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts to indicate that the essay was not necessarily about science and art, but was primarily concerned with their effects as cultural institutions on the societies in which they flourish. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Rousseau and the ethics of virtue.

Delaney (philosophy, Niagra U.) puts Rousseau's complex and sometimes regressive ideas about ethics into an historical perspective. This allows Delaney to find significant parallels between Rousseau's thought and that of Aristotle while others have opined that the roots of the failure of the Enlightenment can be found in its abandonment of Aristotelian tradition. He also finds significant parallels with the ethical and therefore political moral philosophy between Rousseau and his contemporaries, proving that Rousseau stood as a link between Aristotle and the philosophers of his own place and time. Delaney's reasoning is very persuasive, and his text is remarkably accessible. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Russell and Wittgenstein on the nature of judgement.

In his almost daily letters to his companion Ottoline Morrell, English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) detailed work during 1913 on his Theory of Knowledge, and also on the nearly daily criticisms of its central thesis as well as its peripheral matters by his student and protege Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), whom he had publicly hoped would correct — but not refute! — Russell's ideas. The manuscript was not published, and he never mentioned the ideas in them again. Carey (philosophy, City U. of New York-Lehman College) juxtaposes the letters and the manuscript to make sense of what the two philosophers were agreeing and disagreeing about, and how. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Sartre dictionary.

This dictionary explains terms, titles, influences, and intellectual contemporaries related to Jean-Paul Sartre. It includes terminology used by Sartre and scholars and those by other philosophers that are related to his ideas. His major philosophical works, biographies, novels, short stories, and plays are also summarized and evaluated. Among the topics: bad faith, nihilism, Camus, Kant, Being and Nothingness, Heidegger, Beauvoir, and Nausea. Entries are brief for most terms, to a few pages for works or his important ideas and influences. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Sartre's phenomenology.

When Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness, he combined elements of the phenomenological tradition with ideas from Gestalt and behaviorist psychology to examine consciousness, its relationship to the body, and to the external world and other minds. He believed the mind and its states are by-products of introspection, created in the act that purports to discover them. Reisman (philosophy, East Tennessee State U.) reconstructs Sartre's answers to essential questions such as how we are able to perceive ourselves as persons, physical objects with mental states. He tracks development from initial sensations of self-consciousness to the fully-formed human being and analyzes Sartre's account of the transition from one's original apprehension of another consciousness to the perception of other persons. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Scared to death; from BSE to global warming — how scares are costing us the earth. (reprint, 2007)

Booker (a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, UK) and North (a political analyst on eureferendum.com) argue that Western society, and Britain in particular, routinely falls prey to societal scares that all share common characteristics in that they are based on what appears to be sound scientific evidence, inspire obsessive media coverage, and provoke massive and costly government interventions inappropriate to the actual threat level. They support their argument by providing case studies of such scares. These include food scares connected to salmonella in eggs, listeria in cheese, mad cow disease, E. coli, and the 1999 discovery of dioxin in chicken feed in Belgium. They also address non-food scares concerning ritualized child sexual abuse, the dangers of driving too fast, lead in automobile fuel, second-hand smoke, asbestos, and global warming ("the most destructive scare of them all"). Finally, they discuss organophosphorous chemicals as an actual public health disaster that the British government moved effectively in preventing from becoming a scare, thereby shielding itself from political embarrassment and legal liability. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Schools and religions; imagining the real.

Stern (director, Centre for Educational Studies, University of Hull, UK) draws on the work of Martin Buber and Vygotskyan social constructs as well as a wide range of cross-cultural studies in his short but very dense book on the teaching of religion in the schools. Stern covers the place of the school within society and the need to include a study of various beliefs, both from a sociological and religious standpoint, with an emphasis on dialogue and inclusion. He then expands this to the possible results of such an education in the local, national and international community. There is a discussion of his philosophical sources and a bibliography. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Scientific discourse; multiliteracy in the classroom.

In a primary school classroom, scientific inquiry intersects with other forms of literacy, whether in the form of visual text or physical action. In this study, Hanauer (composition and TESOL, Indiana U. of Pennsylvania) evaluates how this diverse approach results in growth in scientific knowledge an also in basic written and visual literacy. As a result of his findings, Hanauer redefines the concept of scientific inquiry in subject classrooms as scientific simulation which incorporates scientific inquiry methods within a pedagogy that directs students to pre-established outcomes. Here he describes his theoretical foundations and the process of moving from mere letter recognition to constructions of meaning, relates these to changes in pedagogy that have developed science inquiry rather than rote memorization, the work of researching scientific inquiry in the elementary classroom, the tasks and genres of scientific inquiry, the development of scientific knowledge and the links to theories of scientific discourse. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Second language identities.

Block (languages, Institute of Education, U. of London) takes on the concept of identity as it relates to second language learning, first placing his work in the context of currently popular approaches to identity in the social sciences, in particular work inspired by poststructuralist thought and authors such as Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Chris Weedon, Judith Butler, and Stuart Hall. He then examines how the subject, which has been given short shrift in second language acquisition studies, is now coming to the fore in such contexts as adult migration, foreign-language classrooms, and study-abroad programs. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Second language processing; an analysis of theory, problems, and possible solutions.

Drawing on theories of input processing and input enhancement, Lee (Spanish and Latin American studies, U. of New South Wales, Australia) and Benati (second language acquisition, U. of Greenwich, UK) examine a variety of grammatical items that generally present processing problems for second language learners. They then devise structured input activities to enhance the input, and develop additional input enhancement techniques to address the processing problems. The text includes case studies involving Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, which focus on adjective agreement, future tense, past tense, and subjunctive. Through the case studies, the authors investigate whether enhanced structured input activities lead to students making greater improvements in learning a second language. For graduate-level students and academics in second language acquisition and applied linguistics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Seventeenth-century literature and culture.

Daems explores the contexts of arts and culture, politics and religion, and science and philosophy as they apply to the genres of 17th century literature; and he examines the prose poetry, and drama of the time noting that they often questioned the state of the culture and belief that previously had been unquestioned. As an example, comedies outlined the contemporary concerns of the culture: that it was becoming more materialistic and mercenary. They also challenged long-held traditional ideas of class and gender identity. He also discusses literary criticism of the time from perspectives of feminism, gender identity, and other viewpoints. The book includes a useful chronology of key historical and cultural events, a glossary of literary terms, and a section dedicated to further reading and resources. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Sexuality and the erotic in the fiction of Joseph Conrad.

Despite the assent of Conrad (1857-1924) to a love rival's assertion that "the love motif played no fundamental part" in his novels, Hawthorn (modern British literature, Norwegian U. of Science and Technology) is among those critics who makes a cogent case for the "absence" of hetereo- and homoerotic themes being in the eyes of innocent readers rather than the texts. Based on close readings of Conrad's life, letters, critical studies, and fiction including Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, An Outcast of the Islands, and Nostromo, he brings out heretofore closeted characters whose sexuality intersects with colonial power relations between European men and exotic Others. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Sexual desire; a philosophical investigation. (reprint, 1994)

Until the late 19th century, says Scruton (philosophy, Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Virginia) sexual desire was subsumed as a generally unmentioned aspect of erotic love, and since then it has been considered an animal aspect of humans, and so relegated to biology. He suggests that philosophy has more thoroughly avoided addressing it than can be explained by mere neglect. Among his topics are the individual object, sexual phenomena, love, sex and gender, and the politics of sex. First published by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson in Britain in 1986 and Phoenix in the US in 1994. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespeare's consuls, cardinals, and kings; the real history behind the plays.

A novelist and playwright as well as critic and scholar, Riley discusses the people and events that Shakespeare adapted into characters and scenes for his plays. He considers a selection of history plays set in England and ancient Rome. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespeare's cues and prompts.

Levith (English, Skidmore College, New York) identifies examples in Shakespeare's plays of echoes — maybe deliberate and maybe not — of other contemporary plays, Latin classics, quasi-mythic narratives, and other sources. They include Merchant of Venice and Marlowe's Faustus, Midsummer Night's Dream and the Theseus myth, and Shakespeare as his own prompt. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespeare inside; the Bard behind bars.

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" is a program that produces the plays of Shakespeare performed by prison inmates. Although she was nervous about interviewing the actors, Scott-Douglass (English, California State University at Fullerton) became involved in chronicling the project. While she outlines the rationale behind the project, most of the book is a narrative of the experience, her interaction with the actors and how Shakespeare affects them all. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shakespeare thinking.

The series is devoted to breaking down the barrier between the academic and the popular appreciation of Shakespeare's work. Davis (English, U. of Liverpool) argues that the plays contain a mental template for evolutionary creation, a linguistic equivalent of the structuring work of DNA. As in DNA, he says, there are patterns in the drama and poems that are not meant to be read or explained, but to be activated in a life form. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Small-scale social survey methods.

Researchers with limited resources or who are in the process of proposing a larger study will find this a concise and efficient guide. Gillham (psychology, U. of Strathclyde, etc.) provides a solid foundation in the basics of small-scale studies, including using sampling efficiently (including probability, random or non-random methods), gaining access to the relevant group, choosing appropriate survey topics and questions, getting relationship between questions and answers, conducting trials, designing questionnaires and interview schedules, running a pilot and the main study, performing descriptive data analysis as well as statistical and content analysis, interpreting the results, and writing up the report for the intended audience. He makes very effective use of tables and other methods to get his point across and provides very helpful examples. His references include recommended further reading. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Socratic method; Plato's use of philosophical drama.

Taking a new approach to the Socratic method, Benson Cain (philosophy, Oklahoma State U.) creates a psychological model of Socrates's character and conduct as he is portrayed dramatically in Plato's dialogues. Although Socrates allowed for three types of discourse (refutation, truth-seeking and persuasion), Benson Cain wisely relies almost exclusively on persuasion, arguing it best explains the dialectical arguments. As she works through her model and examples from the texts, she finds psychological clues in the presentation of the teacher, the use of endoxa, and even Socratic interlocutors. She explores the protreptic function, ambiguity and argumentation in the epistemic function, and signs of conflicts in the desire for power over knowledge and its representation. By the concluding chapter we are convinced that Plato and Socrates conducted a very curious type of theater and that this is a refreshing and original approach that coming direct from the texts. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A sociology of educating, 5th ed.

This classic text, now in its fifth edition, is intended for readers embarking on a career in education, experienced teachers with little or no exposure to sociology in their previous training, and educationalists with limited previous exposure. Intended as a progress report, the volume's goal is to stimulate "...sociologically informed thinking about educating rather than to provide any final conclusion or necessarily `true' message," according to author Meighan. The author describes the field of sociology and uses it as a framework for discussions on students, teachers, parental roles in education, research in the classroom, education ideologies, conflict, social class, educational policies as they pertain to racial and ethnic minorities, and more. The book includes a subject index and a name index. Chapters conclude with summaries, further reading recommendations, and a discussion and activities section. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Sociology of knowledge and education.

Moore (sociology of education, U. of Cambridge, UK) offers scholars a collection of ten papers written over the past two decades, the majority within the last ten years. The essays are arranged thematically, rather than in simple chronological order, into sections on the production of knowledge and the regulation of knowledge. The first considers issues in epistemology, sociology of knowledge, and social theory in relation to key concerns in the sociology of education and debates about educational knowledge. The second section focuses on the ways in which the category of "production" and views of the economy and "the world of work" have been constructed in various forms that have had significant implications for the regulation and control of education. A final chapter summarizes key issues raised in the text and assesses challenges and future directions for the sociology of education. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)