Religion and Sports in American Culture explores the relationship between religion and modern sports in America. Whether found in the religious purpose of ancient Olympic Games, in curses believed to plague the Chicago Cubs, or in the figure of Tim Tebow, religion and sports have been and are still tightly intertwined. While there is widespread suspicion that sports are slowly encroaching on the territory historically occupied by religion, Scholes and Sassower assert that sports are not replacing religion and that neither is sports a religion. Instead, the authors look at the relationship between sports and religion in America from a post-secular perspective that looks at both discourses as a part of the same cultural web. In this way each institution is able to maintain its own integrity, legitimacy, and unique expression of cultural values as they relate to each other. Utilizing important themes that intersect both religion and sports, Scholes and Sassower illuminate the complex and often publicly contentious relationship between the two.  Appropriate for both classroom use and for the interested non-specialist, Religion and Sports in American Culture brings pilgrimage, sacrifice, relics, and redemption together in an unexpected cultural continuity.

Religion and Sports in American Culture

Politics & Social Sciences

Sassower, Raphael

Scholes, Jeffrey

Sociology

Routledge

Cultural Collisions

In Cultural Collisions Raphael Sassower brings postmodernism face to face with technoscience and considers the viability of public works, such as the Superconducting Supercollider, in a postmodern age. Contending that technoscientific projects are contingent upon economic and political support, and not simply upon their scientific feasibility, Sassower illuminates the cultural context of postmodern technoscience vis-a-vis an examination of postmodernism and the philosophy of late 20th century science.

Cultural Collisions: Postmodern Technoscience

Philosophy

In Cultural Collisions Raphael Sassower brings postmodernism face to face with technoscience and considers the viability of public works, such as the Superconducting Supercollider, in a postmodern age. Contending that technoscientific projects are contingent upon economic and political support, and not simply upon their scientific feasibility, Sassower illuminates the cultural context of postmodern technoscience vis-a-vis an examination of postmodernism and the philosophy of late 20th century science.

Confronting Disaster: An Existential Approach to Technoscience

Contemporary society is rife with instability. Human's active and invasive invesitgation of genetics has raised and given life to the one-time science fiction specter, the clone. The scarcity of natural energy sources had led to greater manipulation of atomic or nuclear energy and as a result greater danger. And the promises of globalization have, in some cases, delivered but in many other ways they have created greater social and economic gaps. Raphael Sassower addresses growing popular anxiety around these and other issues inConfronting Disaster: An Existential Approach to Techoscience.

Social Sciences

Lexington Books

Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images

In order to better understand the conditions of the twenty-first century Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello revisit the twentieth century in Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images. Sassower and Cicotello revisit some of the most significant periods in art and politics in the twentieth century paying close attention to the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

Cicotello, Louis

Arts & Photography

In order to better understand the conditions of the twenty-first century Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello revisit the twentieth century in Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images. Sassower and Cicotello revisit some of the most significant periods in art and politics in the twentieth century paying close attention to the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

War Images: Fabricating Reality

In this book, the authors explore images of war and their effect on society. The authors keep in mind that the experience of being at war is much different from the experience of viewing a war image. Thus it is our responsibility to engage war images critically and personally, because lives are at stake and the future of world peace lies in the balance. The iconic image of any war and its ideological underpinning must be more fully appreciated.This book suggests that consumers of war images must simultaneously pay attention to the details of any given image (and thereby uncover its ideology), while exploring other, alternative images related to the same war, in order to consider other perspectives. The effectiveness of the visual language is such that it demands a careful and critical analysis, such as the one that offered here. The emphasis on the pragmatic reading of images has more to do with the power of images to convey, most commonly, a single idea or value, rather than to engage the observer with an inconsistent or contradictory set of ideas and values. This is where pastiche and collage come into play as compositional strategies through which many images are juxtaposed against each other so as to break the uniformity of an artwork, poster, or photograph.The aesthetic experience, however intense, is not a war experience, and the one could never substitute the other. The visual landscape itself is open to ideological manipulation-selection, framing, focus-so that we end up having to deal with theories and ideas even when we refuse to deal with them at first, for they end up determining and informing what images find their way into our cultural memory.

Photography & Video

In this book, the authors explore images of war and their effect on society. The authors keep in mind that the experience of being at war is much different from the experience of viewing a war image. Thus it is our responsibility to engage war images critically and personally, because lives are at stake and the future of world peace lies in the balance. The iconic image of any war and its ideological underpinning must be more fully appreciated. This book suggests that consumers of war images must simultaneously pay attention to the details of any given image (and thereby uncover its ideology), while exploring other, alternative images related to the same war, in order to consider other perspectives. The effectiveness of the visual language is such that it demands a careful and critical analysis, such as the one that offered here. The emphasis on the pragmatic reading of images has more to do with the power of images to convey, most commonly, a single idea or value, rather than to engage the observer with an inconsistent or contradictory set of ideas and values. This is where pastiche and collage come into play as compositional strategies through which many images are juxtaposed against each other so as to break the uniformity of an artwork, poster, or photograph. The aesthetic experience, however intense, is not a war experience, and the one could never substitute the other. The visual landscape itself is open to ideological manipulation-selection, framing, focus-so that we end up having to deal with theories and ideas even when we refuse to deal with them at first, for they end up determining and informing what images find their way into our cultural memory.

Popper's Legacy: Rethinking Politics, Economics, and Science

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Carleton University Press

Karl Popper has had an extraordinary influence on scientific and social thought. Widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century, he was also a highly influential social and political philosopher, a proponent and defender of the open society. Popper's Legacy examines all aspects of his work, in particular his moral and psychological insights. Once Popper's scientific legacy is couched in political and moral terms, it becomes apparent that his concern for individual autonomy does not come at the expense of institutional guidelines and social conventions. Instead, these guidelines turn out to be essential sanctions for individual freedom. Popper envisions the conduct of the scientific community as paralleling the conduct of any democratically established community, where critical rationality guides the words and actions of all participants and leadership can be changed without violence. Raphael Sassower reveals the debt many intellectual movements - such as feminism, and postmodernism - owe to Popper.

McGill-Queen's University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sassower, Raphael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sassower, Raphael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sassower, Raphael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Religion and Sports in American Culture

Cultural Collisions: Postmodern Technoscience

Cultural Collisions

Confronting Disaster: An Existential Approach to Technoscience

Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images

Political Blind Spots: Reading the Ideology of Images

War Images: Fabricating Reality

War Images: Fabricating Reality

Popper's Legacy: Rethinking Politics, Economics, and Science

Popper's Legacy: Rethinking Politics, Economics, and Science