Contributions from scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies--stemming from research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas collected to represent a form of historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science that seeks to understand social phenomena by dialogically engaging global and local perspectives.

Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the ExchequerThis book aims to show that Adam Smith (1723-90), the author of The Wealth of Nations, was not the promoter of ruthless laissez-faire capitalism that is still frequently depicted. Smith's "e;right-wing"e; reputation was sealed after his death when it was not safe to claim that an author may have influenced the French revolutionaries. But as the author, also, of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which he probably regarded as his more important book, Smith sought a non-religious grounding for morals, and found it in the principle of sympathy, which should lead an impartial spectator to understand others' problems. This book locates Smith in the Scottish Enlightenment; shows how the two books are perfectly consistent with one another; traces Smith's influence in France and the United States; and draws out the lessons that Adam Smith can teach policy makers in the 21st Century. Although Smith was not a religious man, he was a very acute sociologist of religion. The book accordingly explains the Scottish religious context of Smith's time, which was, as it remains, very different to the English religious context.The whole book is shot through with Iain McLean's love for the Edinburgh of his birth, and for the Scottish Enlightenment. It begins and ends with poems by Smith's great admirer Robert Burns.

In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah. Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality. In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.

Religion no longer plays a dominant role in the everyday consciousness of modern Western society. Few people recognize the underlying role of religious beliefs and practices in their life choices. Stephen Strehle shows the significance and ongoing influence of religion in contemporary life by revealing the sacred roots of modern political ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He discusses the role of the church in government, probing into the sources of democratic, federal, and egalitarian ideas on the continent of Europe during the Reformation. The separation of church and state in America and the diminished power of the Church of England were the culmination of secular forces evolving since the Enlightenment. This secular view of life represents the basic mentality of the culture and the government in general; yet there is much to contradict it. The last half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge of grassroots movements from all sides of the political/religious spectrum. These included the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Moral Majority of the 1980s, both of which provided an effective challenge to a simple separation of the two realms. Strehle explores some of the most cherished political ideals of modern society, including equality and democracy, liberty and natural rights, progress and capitalism, federalism and mixed government. He does not dismiss the vital contribution of other possible sources of inspiration from the world of religion or undermine the well-established place of “secular” sources. But he does show that certain ideas associated with the religious community have left an indelible mark upon significant aspects of the emerging American landscape.

In a major work on economic and social policy, two prominent economists lead a debate to redistribute wealth. The book lays out the underlying logic of this proposal in detail, followed by responses by both critics and supporters.

This book deals with the fascinating debate over the concept of justice proposed by two contemporary thinkers, namely, John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Justice means what is just, but how do we know what is just? What would be the viable criterion to legitimize justice? Is justice objective or subjective? Is justice a matter of ontological issue or an issue of realization? What would be the paradigm of justice? These are some important issues discussed in the book. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This comprehensive analysis of the complex relationship of black political thought identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

Unashamedly polemical, this reissue of Freedom & Equality, first published in 1986, presents a strong and persuasively argued case for democratic socialism. In contrast to many recent books justifying conservatism and varieties of Marxism, Keith Dixon defends the two great principles underpinning democratic socialism – freedom and equality. He aims both to restore the idea of freedom to its proper place in the political vocabulary of the left and to defend a stark version of freedom as absence of constraint. Only this version of freedom, he argues, is consistent with the proper defence of civil liberties. Dixon also defends radical egalitarianism from its critics, who either repudiate its full force or reject it out of hand. He believes that freedom and equality are potentially realizable socialist goals, that democratic socialism is not necessarily linked with fraternalism, and – above all – that it should be based upon a firm and consistent conception of individuality.