Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche's Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one's ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expressions born from the social decay of exhausted dreams and projects of modernity, Jack Fong assembles Nietzsche's existential sociological imagination to empower actors to emancipate the self from such duress. Illuminating the merits of creating new meaning for life affirmation by overcoming struggle with one's will to power, Fong reveals Nietzsche's horizons for actualized and empowered selves, selves to be liberated from convention, groupthink, and cultural scripts that exact deference from society's captive audiences.

This collection draws insights from an interdisciplinary group of scholars who specialize in diverse methods ranging from ethnography, archival research, and oral histories, to quantitative data analysis and experiments used in the social sciences and humanities to reflect on the empirical, methodological, and practical implications of conducting research beyond one's national borders. The goal of this book is to help researchers contemplate existing orientations that dominate current research processes and consider the need for transnational multidisciplinary practices that remain aware of the inequalities which continually inform research practices. With this focus, this collection is also a resourceful initiative that seeks to share experiences as well as extract key ideas and approaches likely to overlap or resonate in different disciplines.

Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche's Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one's ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expressions born from the social decay of exhausted dreams and projects of modernity, Jack Fong assembles Nietzsche's existential sociological imagination to empower actors to emancipate the self from such duress. Illuminating the merits of creating new meaning for life affirmation by overcoming struggle with one's will to power, Fong reveals Nietzsche's horizons for actualized and empowered selves, selves to be liberated from convention, groupthink, and cultural scripts that exact deference from society's captive audiences.

This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Cafe, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in "death talk" over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a "death identity" and reveals how Cafe attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants' embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of myriad "others," Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafes end up building community while being inspired toward living more fulfilling lives. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, they end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a good death. According to Fong, participants in this phenomenon offer us a sublime way to confront the facticity of our own demise-by gathering as one.

The Karen Revolution for self-determination has the distinction of being one of the world's longest-running struggles for freedom, having begun in 1949 and continuing to this very moment. This sociological work makes visible how ethnopolitical, petropolitical, geopolitical, and ecosystemic issues affect the political economy of a people experiencing ethnic cleansing. From the inception of its self-determination struggle in 1949, readers will be taken on a historical journey with the Karen, finally "arriving" in the 21st century. Along the way, the author exposes readers to the anatomy of how Karen revolutionary dynamics attempt to shield the Karen people against internal colonization committed by the various military regimes of Burma, and how these complex dynamics engaged by Karen revolutionaries-in a novel reformulation and reading that transcends oversimplified economisitic indicators of progress-constitute development. A study of revolution that moves beyond the simplicity of a clashing dualism exemplified by Aung San Suu Kyi pitted against the military regime, this text is for readers desiring to examine how other significant players such as the Karen, a proud people living in systemic crisis, construct nation and aspire toward democracy in the labyrinthine ethnopolitical terrain of Burma.