by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, & John L. Esposito (1998)
The essays collected in this book place this issue in its historical context and offer case studies of Muslim societies from North Africa to Southeast Asia. These fascinating studies shed light on the impact of the Islamic resurgence on gender issues in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Oman, Bahrain, the Philippines, and Kuwait. Taken together, the essays reveal the wide variety that exists among Muslim societies and believers, and the complexity of the issues under consideration. They show that new things are happening for women across the Islamic world, and are in many cases being initiated by women themselves. The volume as a whole militates against the stereotype of Muslim women as repressed, passive, and without initiative, while acknowledging the very real obstacles to women's initiatives in most of these societies.
Balint Vazsonyi
Is America on a slow-motion trip toward socialism even as much of the rest of the world moves away from it? Hungarian-born historian and world-renowned concert pianist Balint Vazsonyi knows first-hand what it means to live under an authoritarian regime and makes a powerful case that America is going down the same road.
Ellen G. Friedman, Corinne Squire
Morality USA traces our ethical conundrum to rapid social change and events that have acted as moral breaks with the past. The Holocaust, the Kennedy and King assassinations, the civil rights and antiwar movements of the sixties, feminist and gay rights campaigns, Watergate, the Hill-Thomas hearings, and the Clinton sex scandals have progressively eroded confidence in moral universals. Stripped of grand moral narratives, people are left with mere cost-benefit analyses of their ethical options or with only a personal sense of right and wrong, a privatized moral order.
Marie Fleming
In this comprehensive analysis of Jurgen Habermas's philosophy and social theory, Marie Fleming takes strong issue with Habermas over his understanding of rationality and the lifeworld, emancipation, history, and gender. The point of Fleming's critique of Habermas is not to dispute universalism, but to build on the key universalist principles of inclusiveness and equality. Her intention is to show that Habermas's theory of modernity is so structured that it cannot achieve its universalist aims. Contending that his theory is not universalist enough, she claims that universalism has to be reconceived as a radical, critical, and historical project.
Julia S. O'Connor and Gregg M. Olsen
This collection of essays looks at power resources theory (PRT), a ground-breaking approach to political theory that builds upon the existing strengths of Marxist theorizing while addressing its weaknesses. Rather than simply asserting that all social policies in all capitalist societies exist to maintain capitalism and serve the long-term interests of the capitalist class, PRT examines the nature and impact of social policies and the level and types of social inequality in a variety of advanced capitalist nations. The editors have compiled essays that examine the PRT approach, as well as essays that offer critical analysis of PRT. As existing summations of state theory literature largely omit PRT, this anthology is essential reading for anyone interested in social policy and radical approaches to social welfare.