Modernity

For my selection of critiques I have chosen Talal Asad’s On Suicide Bombing (2007), Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2004), and Reza Aslan’s No God but God (2005). Written in the post September 11th world and published after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, all three of these texts developed in a volatile political world, one that juxtaposed American foreign policy goals with identity politics, as well as a distinct American social milieu, whose sole source of education about the Middle…

Background On February 5, 1931, the South China Morning Post, in an article titled “Risky Cosmetics”, reported on a new Ordinance in Singapore to prohibit the sale and import of cosmetics containing lead. The article described, in English, that several Chinese women in Singapore of “fairly good social position” had been blinded or paralysed by lead-laced face powder, while others had given birth to babies with birth defects or even stillborn infants. The poisonous powder had allegedly been…

Marx’s Alienation vs. Weber’s Dehumanization Consequences of Rationalization For many years, Karl Marx and Max Weber – despite their similarities and differences in theories – both share a similar vision of a capitalist society. Marx’s theory of alienation resemblance much to Weber’s theory of dehumanizing consequences of rationalization, that is, both theories suggest that individuals are estranged from themselves, others, and from society. What is alienation? By alienation, for Karl Marx…

After the Civil War the Southern economy which relied on slavery was destroyed. New South boosters came in during the industrial era and worked to improve the South by building railroads and factories. Southerners also began shipping out raw materials such and timber and coal. Just as before the war a majority of the South was poor. In books such as Rick Bragg’s Ava’s Man and Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls by Victoria Byerly the lives of the working class poor in the New South were described in…

climate. Greenhouse gases cover the Earths atmosphere and trap in solar energy causing the planet to warm. Together the people of the world can make a difference and help to save our planet. (EPA) Work Cited Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Translated by Mark Ritter. London: Sage,1992 Jarvis, D. S. L., Ulrich Beck, Globalization and the Rise of the Risk Society: A Critical Exegetic Analysis (July 18, 2008). Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Research Paper. Web.…

Dostoevsky’s extended criticism of the world in his novel “Notes from the underground”, explores a dark truth about the human condition. The inevitably of suffering and the absence of consciousness is Dostoevsky’s example of the human condition that he perceives to be tragic but rather truthful. The protagonist whom represents the worldview of the Dostoevsky, tends to escape the 19th-century capitalist society of Russia by living underground and doing nothing. In this sense the retrospect of a…

Abstract: The most striking feature of Indian English novel is the appearance of women novelists who gave new dimension to Indian English novel. In the beginning of the 1980’s, Indian English Literature received an international status. After independence, women writing have acquired an importance more than even before. They have started questioning the age old oppression and colonization. Indian women writers in English fiction have been presenting women as the centre of concern in their…

In the final stanza, the poet evokes the dream of modernity, of cities. But as the poet describes nature as the “emerald country,” in reference to its green colour, a metaphor for the price mankind has to pay for modernisation, and a reminder that this dream is as empty and full of deception as the magic…

Individualism A: Romantic During the period of the late 1700s through 1800s grew a time known as the Romantic Era. It was a time where culture began to form itself as what was recognized to them as modern. There was a rise of political, economic, and social climate. In this period the styles, values, and conflicts of the individual formed. Although many believe Romanticism is about romance and adventure, there is more to it than just that. This period is also about emotion and spontaneity the…

In John Horne’s “Sport Mega-Events and the Shaping of Urban Modernity in East Asia”, the mobility of the human body across a space-time continuum is considered the quintessential component to connect transnational subjectivity. Particularly, transnational competitions, such as sporting mega-events involve many nations. Events such as this provide an opportunity for each nation to enrich their economy, promote their “nationhood”, and display their national pride to the world. Nonetheless, this…