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Diversity in the United States: A Cultural History of the Past
Century is a cultural history of diversity in the United States
over the past one hundred years. Diversity-defined here as
Americans of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds-is
currently very much in the national conversation. The book explores
diversity in a historical context, bringing a much-needed
perspective on what is a passionate theme in contemporary American
society. Told chronologically and divided into five twenty-year
eras, the book sheds new light on the important role that diversity
has played in our national identity. The subject is parsed through
the voices of intellectuals and journalists who have weighed in on
its many different dimensions. The primary argument of the work is
that the concept of diversity has functioned as a key site of both
congruence and division in the United States for the past one
hundred years, providing a sense of who we are as a people while at
the same time exposing inequities based on race, ethnicity, and
religion. Both an academic audience and the many readers of
non-fiction will find the book to be a valuable and insightful
resource.
Age Friendly: Ending Ageism in America is a rallying call to make
the United States a more equitable and just nation in terms of age.
"Age friendliness" means being inclusive towards older people as
workers, consumers, and citizens, something that can't be said to
exist today. The United States and, especially, Big Business, are
notoriously age-unfriendly places, a result of our obsession with
youth. Virtually all aspects of everyday life in America will be
impacted by the doubling or tripling of the number of older people
over the next two decades, more reason to adopt age friendliness as
a cause. Age Friendly shows how large companies are in an ideal
position to address the aging of America and, in the process,
benefit from making their organizations more age friendly. Because
of its economic power and commitment to diversity in the workplace,
Big Business-specifically the Fortune 1000-has the opportunity and
responsibility to take a leadership role in changing the narrative
of aging in America. The book shows that age friendliness offers
the possibility of bridging gaps not just between younger and older
people, but those based on income, class, race, gender, politics,
and geography. More than anything else, Age Friendly presents a
bold and counterintuitive idea-aging is a positive thing for
businesses, individuals, and society as a whole-and we should
embrace it rather than fear it. While ageism is a pervasive force
in America that, like racism and gender discrimination, runs
contrary to our democratic ideals, there is some good news. An age
friendly movement is spreading in America and around the world as a
growing number of cities and towns strive to better meet the needs
of their older residents. Aa well, a concerted effort is being made
to convince Big Business that an intergenerational workforce is in
the best interests of not just older employees but the companies
themselves. Age brings experience, perspective, and wisdom-just the
right skill set for both short- and long-term decision-making. The
aging of America also presents major implications for businesses in
terms of marketing to older consumers. Baby boomers are still the
key to the economy despite marketers' focus on youth, much in part
to their collective wealth and propensity to consume. Age friendly
marketing thus makes much sense due to "the longevity economy,"
i.e., the billions of dollars that older consumers spend each year
and the goldmine that looms in the future as they become an even
bigger percentage of the population. Finally, Age Friendly
discusses how more corporations are pursuing social responsibility
in addition to maximizing profits-an ideal opportunity for
corporations to demonstrate good citizenship by supporting age
friendliness on a local, state, or national level.
Age Friendly: Ending Ageism in America is a rallying call to make
the United States a more equitable and just nation in terms of age.
"Age friendliness" means being inclusive towards older people as
workers, consumers, and citizens, something that can't be said to
exist today. The United States and, especially, Big Business, are
notoriously age-unfriendly places, a result of our obsession with
youth. Virtually all aspects of everyday life in America will be
impacted by the doubling or tripling of the number of older people
over the next two decades, more reason to adopt age friendliness as
a cause. Age Friendly shows how large companies are in an ideal
position to address the aging of America and, in the process,
benefit from making their organizations more age friendly. Because
of its economic power and commitment to diversity in the workplace,
Big Business-specifically the Fortune 1000-has the opportunity and
responsibility to take a leadership role in changing the narrative
of aging in America. The book shows that age friendliness offers
the possibility of bridging gaps not just between younger and older
people, but those based on income, class, race, gender, politics,
and geography. More than anything else, Age Friendly presents a
bold and counterintuitive idea-aging is a positive thing for
businesses, individuals, and society as a whole-and we should
embrace it rather than fear it. While ageism is a pervasive force
in America that, like racism and gender discrimination, runs
contrary to our democratic ideals, there is some good news. An age
friendly movement is spreading in America and around the world as a
growing number of cities and towns strive to better meet the needs
of their older residents. Aa well, a concerted effort is being made
to convince Big Business that an intergenerational workforce is in
the best interests of not just older employees but the companies
themselves. Age brings experience, perspective, and wisdom-just the
right skill set for both short- and long-term decision-making. The
aging of America also presents major implications for businesses in
terms of marketing to older consumers. Baby boomers are still the
key to the economy despite marketers' focus on youth, much in part
to their collective wealth and propensity to consume. Age friendly
marketing thus makes much sense due to "the longevity economy,"
i.e., the billions of dollars that older consumers spend each year
and the goldmine that looms in the future as they become an even
bigger percentage of the population. Finally, Age Friendly
discusses how more corporations are pursuing social responsibility
in addition to maximizing profits-an ideal opportunity for
corporations to demonstrate good citizenship by supporting age
friendliness on a local, state, or national level.
The role of the built environment on global warming is seen to be
of increasing relevance. In this book, contributors of
international repute offer a wide perspectivet on the subject. This
new paperback edition offers insights and techniques regarding
design and management of buildings and urban settlement and
discusses the issues of accountability and responsibility.
The role of the built environment on global warming is seen to be
of increasing relevance. In this book, contributors of
international repute offer a wide perspectivet on the subject. This
new paperback edition offers insights and techniques regarding
design and management of buildings and urban settlement and
discusses the issues of accountability and responsibility.
This book argues that we have moved into a new cultural period,
automodernity, which represents a social, psychological, and
technological reaction to postmodernity. In fact, by showing how
individual autonomy is now being generated through technological
and cultural automation, Samuels posits that we must rethink
modernity and postmodernity. Part of this rethinking entails
stressing how the progressive political aspects of postmodernism
need to be separated from the aesthetic consumption of differences
in automoderntiy. Choosing culturally relevant studies of The
Matrix, Grand Theft Auto, Eminem and Jurassic Park, he interprets
these medias through the lens of eminent theorists like Slavoj
Zizek, Frederic Jameson, and Henry Jenkins. Ultimately, he argues
that what defines postmodernity is the stress on social
construction, secular humanism, and progressive social movements
that challenge the universality and neutrality of modern reason.
Analyzes diverse contemporary reactions to the depiction of the
Holocaust and other cultural traumas in museums, movies, television
shows, classroom discussions, and bestselling books. This work also
describes several effective pedagogical strategies dedicated to
overcoming student resistances to critical analysis and social
engagement.
"Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance" analyzes diverse
contemporary reactions to the depiction of the Holocaust and other
cultural traumas in museums, movies, television shows, classroom
discussions, and bestselling books. Samuels scrutinizes roles
played by historical trauma and the popular media in the shaping of
ethnic identity as it becomes increasingly pertinent against the
backdrop of globalization.
In concentrating on the multiple ways the Holocaust is
represented and received in different media, Samuels locates four
central defense mechanisms that people employ in order to be able
to cope with important ethical lessons regarding historical
traumas: identification, idealization, assimilation, and
universalization. Building upon these defense mechanisms, the book
is able to set out effective pedagogical strategies dedicated to
overcoming student resistances to critical analysis and social
engagement.
"If there was a book like Brought to You By when I came into the
advertising business, it would have saved me ten years of hard
knocks. I plan to buy it by the box load and hand it out as my gift
to any young person who expresses interest in getting into the
advertising business." -- Jerry Della Femina, President, Jerry
Della Femina & Partners "The most exciting and comprehensive
explanation of how a single medium rose to be one of the most
definitive forces in our culture." -- John Gerzema, Managing
Director, Fallon NYC "A fun-filled journey of reminiscences for
those of us old enough to remember the early days of TV
advertising. Samuel also provides a powerful analogy that puts the
roles of regulation, freedom, and the profit motive of the Internet
in perspective." -- Paul J. Groncki, Ph.D., VP, Director of
Marketing Research, J.P. Morgan
"Incredibly thought-provoking for anyone interested in the
shaping of our commercial culture." -- Megan Kent, Executive
Director, Brand Planning, Bozell Worldwide
"All scholars interested in how and why advertisers used
commercials to advance a triumphant and optimistic American Way
will find Brought to You By an exciting read." -- Lary May,
Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota
"This important book examines and credits, warts and all, the
undeniable engine behind our country's thirst for growth and belief
in endless possibilities-- the television commercial." -- Mark R.
Morris, Chairman, Bates North America "For the general reader or
the specialist seeking to understand the commercial roots of our
experience economy, I cannot imagine a more perceptive guide." --
John F. Sherry, Jr., Professor of Marketing, Northwestern
University "Fascinating reading, capturing a pivotal moment in the
shaping of the most powerful generation in history, baby boomers."
-- Benny Sommerfeld, Business Development Manager, Volvo Cars
N.A.
Aging is a preoccupation shared by beauty bloggers, serious
journalists, scientists, doctors, celebrities-arguably all of adult
America, given the pervasiveness of the crusade against it in
popular culture and the media. We take our youth-oriented culture
as a given but, as Lawrence R. Samuel argues, this was not always
the case. Old age was revered in early America, in part because it
was so rare. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, according to
Samuel, that the story of aging in America became the one we are
most familiar with today: aging is a disease that science will one
day cure, and in the meantime, signs of aging should be prevented,
masked, and treated as a source of shame. By tracing the story of
aging in the United States over the course of the last half
century, Samuel vividly demonstrates the ways in which getting
older tangibly contradicts the prevailing social values and
attitudes of our youth-obsessed culture. As a result, tens of
millions of adults approaching their sixties and seventies in this
decade do not know how to age, as they were never prepared to do
so. Despite recent trends that suggest a more positive outlook,
getting old is still viewed in terms of physical and cognitive
decline, resulting in discrimination in the workplace and
marginalization in social life. Samuels concludes Aging in America
by exhorting his fellow baby boomers to use their economic clout
and sheer numbers to change the narrative of aging in America.
What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century,
many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking
to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s,
Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool,
promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to
access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That
the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in
the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the
commercial realm.Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant
men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices
from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street,
"Freud on Madison Avenue" tells the story of how midcentury
advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta
Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the
father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest
Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and
psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of
these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their
decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret
desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated
postwar American culture and commerce.Though popular, these
qualitative research and persuasion tactics were not without
critics in their time. Some of the tools the motivation researchers
introduced, such as the focus group, are still in use, with
"consumer insights" and "account planning" direct descendants of
Freudian psychological techniques. Looking back, author Lawrence R.
Samuel implicates Dichter's positive spin on the pleasure principle
in the hedonism of the Baby Boomer generation, and he connects the
acceptance of psychoanalysis in marketing culture to the rise of
therapeutic culture in the United States.
Future Trends: A Guide to Decision Making and Leadership in
Business is the first and only book to link a decision-making and
leadership platform to trends pointing to the future. By
identifying sixty global, long-term trends and detailing how
businesspeople can leverage them in both the short- and long-term,
the book provides readers with a powerful body of knowledge
unavailable anywhere else. In Future Trends, consultant and
futurist Larry Samuel: *Identifies sixty significant and
opportunistic global, long-term trends; *Details how businesspeople
can leverage each trend in both the short- and long-term via a
decision-making and leadership platform; *Helps readers be
recognized as a trusted source and "go-to" person in their
respective field by becoming more fluent in the future; *Takes a
360-degree, holistic view of tomorrow by examining cultural,
economic, political, social, scientific, and technological trends;
*Steers clear from here-today-gone-tomorrow things and experiences
that comprise most glimpses into the emerging cultural landscape
Future Trends is divided into six sections covering Cultural
Trends, Economic Trends, Political Trends, Social Trends,
Scientific Trends, and Technological Trends. Each section includes
ten trends that indicate where the world is heading. Many futurists
focus on technology, forgetting the fact that the ways in which
people actually live their lives are shaped by many other factors.
Future Trends thus takes a 360-degree, holistic view of tomorrow,
offering readers a fuller understanding of life on Earth over the
next couple of decades.
“Psychology has stepped down from the university chair into the
marketplace” was how the New York Times put it in 1926. Another
commentator in 1929 was more biting. Psychoanalysis, he said, had
over a generation, “converted the human scene into a neurotic.”
Freud first used the word around 1895, and by the 1920s
psychoanalysis was a phenomenon to be reckoned with in the United
States. How it gained such purchase, taking hold in virtually every
aspect of American culture, is the story Lawrence R. Samuel tells
in Shrink, the first comprehensive popular history of
psychoanalysis in America. Arriving on the scene at around the same
time as the modern idea of the self, psychoanalysis has both shaped
and reflected the ascent of individualism in American society.
Samuel traces its path from the theories of Freud and Jung to the
innermost reaches of our current me-based, narcissistic culture.
Along the way he shows how the arbiters of culture, high and low,
from public intellectuals, novelists, and filmmakers to Good
Housekeeping and the Cosmo girl, mediated or embraced
psychoanalysis (or some version of it), until it could be
legitimately viewed as an integral feature of American
consciousness.
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