This impassioned critique of contemporary mass culture argues that the media, particularly television as the spearhead of electronic communications technology, contributes to the pervasive demoralization of the American public. By stimulating the public with an endless stream of enticing, essentially unattainable illusions, the media produce what William K. Shrader calls the experiential bind, a phenomenon rooted in the incongruity between the two juxtaposed realms of vicarious and firsthand experience. The internalized bind causes a chronically irritated self-ideal discrepancy, producing morbid guilt. This condition is familiar to mental health specialists, and is frequently invoked to explain the erratic and socially destructive behavior patterns of the mentally ill.

Following a brief introduction, Chapter 1 describes the experiential bind and the media's imagery of unreality. This imagery is analyzed from two essential aspects: (1) the imagery of fantasy, which predominates in prime time network entertainment programming on television and in the majority of Hollywood movies; and (2) the imagery of doom, which predominates on television news programs shown in large cities across America every evening of the week. Chapter 2 is an elaboration of psychodynamic considerations, specifically, how both aspects of unreality affect such human characteristics as self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and narcissism. Chapter 3 continues with societal reverberations, including loss of community involvement and rampant consumerism. Chapter 4 turns to rehabilitation and prevention, drawing on Shrader's experience as a clinical psychologist and therapist-counselor. Chapter 5 is concerned with the emergence of a technological society and its contribution to materialism in America. The final chapter presents concluding thoughts, involving especially the author's theme that hedonistic materialism is America's Achilles Heel. Media Blight and the Dehumanizing of America is suitable for the general reader, and will be particularly useful to scholars of social/behavioral and clinical psychology, and mass communications.

A leading Democrat challenges his party to return to liberal values and evidence-based science Democrats were the party of intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and faith in scientific and liberal empiricism. They once took pride in understanding how to read science critically, exercising healthy skepticism toward notoriously corrupt entities like the drug companies that brought us the opioid crisis, and were outraged by the phenomenon of "agency capture" and the pervasive control of private interests over Congress, the media, and the scientific journals. During the COVID pandemic, these attitudes have taken a back seat to blind faith in government mandates and countermeasures driven by pharmaceutical companies and captive federal agencies, promoted by corporate media, and cynically exploiting the fears of the American people. A Letter to Liberals is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s, challenge to "lockdown liberalism's" embrace of policies that are an affront to once cherished precepts. Kennedy invites readers to look at the data in order to answer questions such as: Did COVID vaccines really save millions and end the pandemic? Why were the lowest COVID death rates in countries and states that relied on therapeutic drugs, and in countries with the lowest vaccination rates? Did vaccines prevent infection or transmission as officials promised? Why do COVID vaccines appear to show "negative efficacy"--making the vaccinated more susceptible to COVID. Why does the most reliable data suggest that COVID vaccines do not lower the risk of death and hospitalization. Should government technocrats be partnering with media and social media titans to censor and suppress the questioning of government policies? And why have so many liberals abandoned fundamental Constitutional principles in their headlong rush to embrace pandemic policies pushed by captured bureaucrats, feckless politicians, a compromised news media, and Big Pharma? In his November 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci, which sold over 1,000,000 copies, Kennedy made predictions that have matured from "conspiracy theories" to proven facts. Among these: Masks Are Ineffective and Dangerous Social Distancing Was Not Science-Based School Closures Were Not Science-Based Lockdowns Were Counterproductive Vaccinating Children Causes More Harm and Death Than It Averts Officials Wrongly Used PCR Tests to Justify the Countermeasures COVID-19 May Have Come from Wuhan Lab Natural Immunity is Superior to Vaccine Immunity Kennedy throws down the gauntlet for the kind of vigorous scientific debate that liberals have long stood for and strives to ensure that unbiased honesty and well-researched thought is brought to bear on one of the most important and still unfolding chapters in human history.

A thorough treatment of a central part of the moral issue concerning abortion. The book is confined to certain cases of abortion, namely those which involve (a) an unmistakable lethal attack on (b) a creature which would naively be supposed a young human being. A consideration of our problem must take up the "liberal" arguments, that despite appearances, it is not a grave wrong to destroy such an individual, even though it is somehow of value. The book is constructed around the work of Ronald Dworkin and kindred writers.

Originally published in 1985, this book examines the concept of death against the background of dramatic changes in medical technology. The book argues that 'brain death' can be precisely defined and that a biological concept of death such as 'brain death' can be philosophically well-grounded. It examines traditional criteria for death and various formulations of the concept of death in both medical literature and philosophical texts. Definitions of 'brain death' - some of which have become statute law - are critically examined. The author also examines ethical and social policy questions which arise out of attempts to redefine the boundaries of life.

This book presents an innovative cross-disciplinary report on research across the humanities and social sciences about the relationship between pornography and its consumers. For policy makers and the wider public it can be difficult to obtain a clear understanding of the current state of knowledge on pornography and its relationships with audiences, due to the often-contradictory nature of research spanning the various and politically diverse academic disciplines. The cross-disciplinary expertise of the author team has engaged in an extensive examination of the findings of academic research in the area in order to explain, in a clear and accessible style, the most important conclusions about the relationship of pornography to Healthy Sexual Development. This short and accessible overview is suitable for students and scholars in Psychology, Sexual Health, Film Studies, Sex Education, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Sociology, Media Studies and Cultural Studies.

"...provides good coverage of the empirical literature." -Journal of Communication "...well written and presents a wide diversity of approaches to pornography." -CHOICE

What are the implications of caring about the things we research? How does that affect how we research, who we research with and what we do with our results? Proposing what Joan C. Tronto has called a 'paradigm shift' in research thinking, this book invites researchers across disciplines and fields of study to do research that thinks and acts with care. The authors draw on their own and others' experiences of researching, the troubles they encounter and the opportunities generated when research is approached as a caring practice. Care ethics provides a guide, from starting out, designing and conducting projects to thinking about research legacies. It offers a way in which research can help repair harms and promote justice.

Aggression in Pornography focusses on the issue of violence in mainstream pornography and examines what we know, what we think we know, and what are some surprising research findings and insights about the place of violence within pornography today. The authors first review the modern pornography industry, theoretical claims about pornography as violence, and the ways in which aggression has been defined and measured in previous research. Next, they review the findings of empirical research on violent content in pornographic materials and the potential effects of such content on audiences . The main part of the book relies on systematically collected empirical data, as the authors analyze the content of hundreds of pornographic videos as well as more than a hundred interviews with men and women who regularly watch pornography. These analyses provide surprising insights regarding the prevalence of and trends in violent content within mainstream pornography, the popularity of violent and non-violent content among viewers, and variations in aggression by race and sexual orientation. As such, Aggression in Pornography will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and media and film studies, as well as to wider audiences who are interested in today's pornography industry and to policymakers looking to devise empirically driven policies regarding this industry and its potential effects.

The research for this book was prompted by a combination of events, in particular the election of Mary Robinson to the Presidency and the X Case which rocked Irish society. The book is an exploration of the dynamics between the courts, the legislators and the Irish citizens in relation to certain socio-sexual questions: divorce, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. Spanning 73 years since the creation of the Irish State, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland questions the nature of the moral order regulating Irish society and the concept of democracy underlying it. It examines the fragile balance struck between tradition and modernity.

This collection of original pieces brings together critical perspectives on the intersection of ethnic and gender identities as spatialized forms of embodied social practice, tackling important recent themes such as whiteness, masculinity, the body, sexuality, diaspora and globalization. Designed to bring these debates to students in a way that bridges contemporary theory with vivid case material, this is a lively and wide-ranging text of relevance to a range of social sciences.

Abortion is arguably the most controversial and divisive moral issue of modern times, but up until now the debate has taken place almost exclusively within a Western cultural, religious and philosophical context. For the past three decades in the West arguments both for and against abortion have been mounted by groups of all kinds, from religious fundamentalists to radical feminists and every shade of opinion in between. Rather than mutual understanding, however, the result has been the polarisation of opinion and the deepening of entrenched positions. In the face of this deadlock a new perspective is urgently required. Buddhism is an ancient tradition which over the centuries has refined its distinctive beliefs and values in the course of a long interaction with the major cultures of Asia. As Buddhism continues to engage the attention of the West, the time is now opportune for its views on abortion to be heard. This is the first book to explore the abortion question from a range of Buddhist cultural and ethical perspectives. The approach is interdisciplinary and will be of relevance to those working in fields such as law, ethics, medicine, philosophy, religion, the social sciences and women's studies.

New York Times Bestseller How far are Americans willing to go to force each other to fall in line? According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies in right-wing authoritarianism. We've heard that some 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic. But what if the true authoritarian threat to America doesn't come from the political right, but from the supposedly anti-fascist left? There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of leftists-college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising-have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition. The authoritarian Left is aggressively insistent that everyone must conform to its values, demanding submission and conformity. The dogmatic Left is obsessed with putting people in categories and changing human nature. Everyone who opposes it must be destroyed. Ben Shapiro looks at everything from pop culture to the Frankfurt school, social media to the Founding Fathers, to explain the origins of our turn to tyranny, and why so many seem blind to it. More than a catalog of bad actors and intemperate acts, The Authoritarian Moment lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping into all American ideology - and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future.

Sexuality is a basic feature of human life. Gender, sexual and romantic attraction, sexual excitement, and sexual desire and fantasies all move in various degrees through our daily awareness. However, despite this pervasiveness, there is much disagreement surrounding the nature of such things and experiences. This book explores just these issues in an attempt to get clear about this enigmatic aspect of our existence. Through a series of interrelated essays, internationally acclaimed philosopher James Giles takes the reader on a fascinating journey to the depths of experiential, social, biological, and evolutionary aspects of sexual life. Presenting his arguments and ideas in a clear and easy to follow language, Giles criticizes several popular views, clearing the way for his own unique vision of human sexuality. Often controversial, always engaging, these pages will prove to be absorbing reading for anyone who has ever pondered the nature of sexuality and why it fills our lives in the way it does.

The Tudor and Stuart eras have been described as England's golden age, in large part because of the flowering of its literary and dramatic culture. Ironically, repressive government controls over freedom of expression existed side-by-side with some of the greatest literary accomplishments of the age, and many of the same issues we wrestle with today were being hotly debated in Renaissance England. This reference book provides a means for students and scholars to combine the highly popular topics of censorship and Renaissance studies. The 92 entries in this book highlight the major issues which could provoke the wrath of the censor, the ways in which works were modified in response to censorship, and the fate of the authors who roused the censor's ire. Entries are arranged alphabetically by title of the censored work. Each provides basic factual information, including the name of the author, the publication date, the date of censorship, the type of work, and the offending issue; a discussion of the work's historical context; a synopsis of the contents; an examination of how the work was censored; and a brief bibliography. Although there is a wealth of information on censorship in the twentieth century, this is one of the few reference books to address censorship during the Renaissance.

This open access book offers insights in short- and long-term experiences from families with bone marrow transplantations between minor siblings. It is based on the first extended qualitative study with 17 families about experiences with recent transplants and experiences with transplants up to 20 years in the past. It covers reflections of donors, recipients and other family members, as well as family interactions. Transplantation of bone marrow from one sibling to another who is ill with a blood cancer (such as Leukemia) is a life-saving therapy. Young children however are not in a position to give consent themselves. How should they be adequately included, depending to their age? Which ethical questions are raised for the parents both at the time of treatment and afterwards, and for the medical professionals in clinical and regulatory contexts? For an in-depth discussion of the findings the books brings together a group of leading scholars from the fields of bioethics, family sociology and philosophy of medicine.

This book explores how technologies of media, medicine, law and governance enable and constrain the mobility of bodies within geographies of space and race. Each chapter describes and critiques the ways in which contemporary technologies produce citizens according to their statistical risk or value in an atmosphere of generalised security, both in relation to categories of race, and within the new possibilities for locating and managing bodies in space. The topics covered include: drone warfare, the global distribution of HIV-prevention drugs, racial profiling in airports, Indigenous sovereignty, consumer lifestyle apps and their ecological and labour costs, and anti-aging therapies. Security, Race, Biopower makes innovative contributions to multiple disciplines and identifies emerging social and political concerns with security, race and risk that invite further scholarly attention. It will be of great interest to scholars and students in disciplinary fields including Media and Communication, Geography, Science and Technology Studies, Political Science and Sociology.

The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Second Edition addresses both the physiological and the psychological aspects of human behavior. Carefully crafted, well written, and thoroughly indexed, the encyclopedia helps users-whether they are students just beginning formal study of the broad field or specialists in a branch of psychology-understand the field and how and why humans behave as we do.

The work is an all-encompassing reference providing a comprehensive and definitive review of the field. A broad and inclusive table of contents ensures detailed investigation of historical and theoretical material as well as in-depth analysis of current issues. Several disciplines may be involved in applied ethics: one branch of applied ethics, for example, bioethics, is commonly explicated in terms of ethical, legal, social, and philosophical issues. Editor-in-Chief Ruth Chadwick has put together a group of leading contributors ranging from philosophers to practitioners in the particular fields in question, to academics from disciplines such as law and economics.

The 376 chapters are divided into 4 volumes, each chapter falling into a subject category including Applied Ethics; Bioethics; Computers and Information Management; Economics/Business; Environmental Ethics; Ethics and Politics; Legal; Medical Ethics; Philosophy/Theories; Social; and Social/Media.
Concise entries (ten pages on average) provide foundational knowledge of the fieldEach article will features suggested readings pointing readers to additional sources for more information, a list of related websites, a 5-10 word glossary and a definition paragraph, and cross-references to related articles in the encyclopediaNewly expanded editorial board and a host of international contributors from the US, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Sweden, and the United KingdomThe 376 chapters are divided into 4 volumes, each chapter falling into a subject category including Applied Ethics; Bioethics; Computers and Information Management; Economics/Business; Environmental Ethics; Ethics and Politics; Legal; Medical Ethics; Philosophy/Theories; Social; and Social/Media
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This second edition, translated into Spanish, streamlines some of the editing from the first addition, and more importantly, includes material from Pope Francis's encyclical, Laudato Si', and his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. A Catechism for Business presents the teachings of the Catholic Church as they relate to more than one hundred specific and challenging moral questions as they have been asked by business leaders. Andrew V. Abela and Joseph E. Capizzi have assembled the relevant quotations from recent Catholic social teaching as responses to these questions. Questions and answers are grouped together under major topics such as marketing, finance and investment. The book's easy-to-use question and answer approach invites quick reference for tough questions and serves as a basis for reflection and deeper study in the rich Catholic tradition of social doctrine.

In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stances on capital punishment-in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia.

Career criminal William Furman shot and killed a homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. Because it was a "black-on-white" crime in the racially troubled South, it also was an open-and-shut case. The trial took less than a day, and the nearly all-white jury rendered a death sentence. Aided by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Furman's African-American attorney, Bobby Mayfield, doggedly appealed the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1972 overturned Furman's sentence by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruling that Georgia's capital punishment statute, and by implication all other state death-penalty laws, was so arbitrary and capricious as to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Furman effectively, if temporarily, halted capital punishment in the United States. Every death row inmate across the nation was resentenced to life in prison. The decision, however, did not rule the death penalty per se to be unconstitutional; rather, it struck down the laws that currently governed its application, leaving the states free to devise new ones that the Court might find acceptable. And this is exactly what happened. In the coming years, the Supreme Court would uphold an avalanche of state legislation endorsing the death penalty. Capital punishment would return stronger than ever, with many more defendants sentenced to death and eventually executed.

Oshinsky demonstrates the troubling roles played by race and class and region in capital punishment. And he concludes by considering the most recent Supreme Court death-penalty cases involving minors and the mentally ill, as well as the impact of international opinion. Compact and engaging, Oshinsky's masterful study reflects a gift for empathy, an eye for the telling anecdote and portrait, and a talent for clarifying the complex and often confusing legal issues surrounding capital punishment.

This book is based on a case study about Stella, l'amie de Maimie a Montreal sex workers' rights organization, founded by and for sex workers. It explores how a group of ostracized female-identified sex workers transformed themselves into a collective to promote the health and well-being of women working in the sex industry. Weighed down by the old and tenacious whore symbol, the sex workers at Stella had to find a way to navigate the criminality of sex work and sex workers, in order to do advocacy and support work, and create safer spaces for sex workers to engage in such advocacy. This book focuses on sex workers, but the advocacy challenges and strategies it outlines can also apply to the lives of other marginalized groups who are often ignored, pitied, or reviled, but who are seldom seen as fully human.

Challenging Reproductive Control and Gendered Violence in the Americas: Intersectionality, Power, and Struggles for Rights utilizes an intersectional Chicana feminist approach to analyze reproductive and gendered violence against women in the Americas and the role of feminist activism through case studies including the current state of reproductive justice in Texas, feminicides in Latin America, raising awareness about Ni Una Mas and anti-feminicidal activism in Ciudad Juarez, and reproductive rights in Latin America amidst the Zika virus. Each of these contemporary contexts provides new insights into the relationships between and among feminist activism; reproductive health; the role of the state, local governments, health organizations, and the media; and the women of color who are affected by the interplay of these discourses, mandates, and activist efforts.

This book offers a vision of politics that govern the womb; from antiquity ('be fertile and replenish the earth'), through the ages (hysterectomy, to extirpate women's 'hysteria'), up to the present time (abortion wars; assisted reproduction), and into the future (reprogenetics; the artificial womb). It explores how the womb has served humanity, either tacitly or explicitly, through the ages and examines how women have accepted and still perceive the rules created by men as natural - including the new anti-abortion laws in the USA - because 'that is the way things are.' The book also explores how the emerging of assisted reproduction technologies and novel genetic tools (reprogenetics) will pose additional challenges to womb bearers, as all women will be made to reproduce with IVF. What is more, the advent of the artificial womb is in sight; the gender and social implications of this development would be enormous. Certainly not just another organ, the womb has been and remains a powerful tool that cannot be left to the decisions of half of the population. This book engages a wide audience, including women and men, professionals and laypersons who are interested in gender, politics, legislation, women's health, and ethics.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can't be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people's life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. This book provides an analysis of AI's deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right. Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimisation. He sets out an anti-fascist approach to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people's councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting collective freedom. Academically rigorous, yet accessible to a socially engaged readership, this unique book will be of interest to all who wish to challenge the social logic of AI by reasserting the importance of the common good.

Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash. In this book, Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to the expanded reach of the Mexican state and the Catholic Church over their bodies and reproductive lives. By analyzing the moral politics of clinical encounters in Mexico City's public abortion program, Lawful Sins offers a critical account of the relationship among reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, and public healthcare. With timely insights on global struggles for reproductive justice, Singer reorients prevailing perspectives that approach abortion rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies.