Tag: Modernity

Free Download Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age by Uluğ Kuzuoğlu
English | November 28th, 2023 | ISBN: 0231209398 | 324 pages | True PDF | 37.28 MB
In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing system. The Chinese characters, they argued, were too cumbersome to learn, blocking the channels of communication, obstructing mass literacy, and impeding scientific progress. What had sustained a civilization for more than two millennia was suddenly recast as the root cause of an ongoing cultural suicide. China needed a new script to survive in the modern world.

Free Download The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity, and Secularization By Achin Vanaik
1997 | 374 Pages | ISBN: 1859840167 | PDF | 22 MB
A searching analysis of Indian communalism on the 50th anniversary of Indian Independence. Furies of Indian Communalism is a powerful and rigorous analysis of the growing phenomenon of Hindu communalism, which currently threatens to tear India apart. Placing the politics of Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim hatred in a global context, Vanaik explains the specific nature and modernity of communalism, distinguishing it both from fascism and from merely religious extremism. In defending both the reality and the desirability of the secularization of Indian state and society, Vanaik engages in a rich and subtle examination of the relationship between religion and culture, critically appraising the contributions of Emile Durkheim, Charles Taylor and Anthony Giddens to questions of identity and modernity. Whilst rejecting simplistic readings of religion as nothing but ideology, Vanaik is scathing about the postmodernists and cultural essentialists who assert the inescapable centrality of religion to Indian culture and society. Moving beyond purely theoretical considerations, he assesses India’s political future, the possible obstacles to the development of communalism, and the forces that exist on the Left that might be brought into alliance to halt the march of chauvinism.

Free Download Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity By John R. Hall
2009 | 296 Pages | ISBN: 0745645089 | PDF | 3 MB
For most of us, "Apocalypse" suggests the cataclysmic end of the world. Yet in Greek "apocalypse" means "revelation," and the real subject of the Book of Revelation is how the sacred arises in history at a moment of crisis and destiny. With origins in ancient religions, the apocalyptic has been a transformative force from the time of the Crusades, through the Reformation, the French Revolution and modern communism, all the way to the present day "Islamic Jihad" and "War on Terror." In Apocalypse, John R. Hall explores the significance of apocalyptic movements and the role they have played in the rise of the West and "The Empire of Modernity." This brilliant cross-disciplinary study offers a novel basis for rethinking our social order and its ambivalent relations to sacred history. Apocalypse will attract general readers seeking new understandings of the world in challenging times. Scholars and students will find a compelling synthesis that draws them into conversation with others interested in religion, theology, culture, philosophy, and phenomenology, as well as sociology, social theory, western civilization, and world history.

Free Download Jennifer Robinson, "Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (Questioning Cities)"
English | 2006 | ISBN: 0415304881, 0415304873 | PDF | pages: 222 | 2.2 mb
With the urbanization of the world’s population proceeding apace and the equally rapid urbanization of poverty, urban theory has an urgent challenge to meet if it is to remain relevant to the majority of cities and their populations, many of which are outside the West.

Free Download Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity By Edward Dimendberg
2004 | 327 Pages | ISBN: 067401314X | PDF | 61 MB
Film noir remains one of the most enduring legacies of 1940s and ’50s Hollywood. Populated by double-crossing, unsavory characters, this pioneering film style explored a shadow side of American life during a period of tremendous prosperity and optimism. Edward Dimendberg compellingly demonstrates how film noir is preoccupied with modernity–particularly the urban landscape.The originality of Dimendberg’s approach lies in his examining these films in tandem with historical developments in architecture, city planning, and modern communications systems. He confirms that noir is not simply a reflection of modernity but a virtual continuation of the spaces of the metropolis. He convincingly shows that Hollywood’s dark thrillers of the postwar decades were determined by the same forces that shaped the city itself. Exploring classic examples of film noir such as The Asphalt Jungle, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Naked City alongside many lesser-known works, Dimendberg masterfully interweaves film history and urban history while perceptively analyzing works by Raymond Chandler, Edward Hopper, Siegfried Kracauer, and Henri Lefebvre. A bold intervention in cultural studies and a major contribution to film history, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity will provoke debate by cinema scholars, urban historians, and students of modern culture–and will captivate admirers of a vital period in American cinema.

Free Download The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of Modernity by Dalia Judovitz
English | 2001 | ISBN: 0472067427 | 248 Pages | PDF | 10.0 MB
What is the body? How was it culturally constructed, conceived, and cultivated before and after the advent of rationalism and modern science? This interdisciplinary study elaborates a cultural genealogy of the body and its legacies to modernity by tracing its crucial redefinition from a live anatomical entity to disembodied, mechanical and virtual analogs.

Free Download Passage to Modernity: An Essay on the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture by Louis Dupre
English | 1993 | ISBN: 0300055315 | 310 Pages | PDF | 15.9 MB
Did modernity begin with the Renaissance and end with post-modernity? In this book a distinguished scholar challenges both these assumptions. Louis Dupré discusses the roots, development, and impact of modern thought, tracing the fundamental principles of modernity to the late fourteenth century and affirming that modernity is still an influential force in contemporary culture.

Free Download The Paradoxes of Japan’s Cultural Identity: Modernity and Tradition in Japanese Literature, Art, Politics and Religion
by Roy Starrs
English | 2023 | ISBN: 9048559758 | 324 Pages | True PDF | 2.24 MB

Free Download Elmo Gonzaga, "Monsoon Marketplace: Capitalism, Media, and Modernity in Manila and Singapore"
English | ISBN: 1531505279 | 2023 | 272 pages | EPUB, PDF | 11 MB + 8 MB
Provides vivid accounts of commercial and leisure spaces that captivated the public imagination in the past but have since been destroyed, forgotten, or refurbished.

Free Download Julia R. Brown, "Women Photographers and Mexican Modernity: Framing the Twentieth Century"
English | ISBN: 1032313560 | 2024 | 200 pages | PDF | 24 MB