An abridged edition to include: The Problem - Religious Affiliation & Social Stratification - The Spirit of Capitalism - Luther's Conception of the Calling - Task of the Investigation - The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of Protestantism - The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism - Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism - EndnotesBy Max Weber. Translated by Talcott Parsons.
NY. .Charles Scribners. 1958. THIS BOOK CONTAINS MARK-UP
Edited By Sean E. Anderson and Gregory J. Howard
When ti first appeared in 1993, the Journalof CriminalJustice and Popular Culture was breaking ground in more ways than one. At that point,the idea of electronicpublication was still innovative in itself, but more adventurous still was the whole notion of a serious academic journal devotedto the interaction of criminal justice and popular culture. Historically, criminologists and criminal justice scholars had usually viewed themselves a s objective social scientists whose highest goal was to analyze the problems of crime and deviance in terms of rigorous quantitative or qualitative research, which often meant denouncing the vulgarand harmfulmyths presented by the m e d i aa n dpopular culture. From the 1970s, however, newer scholarship, influenced by media research and particularly the cultural studies movement, showed how impos- sible it was to frame problems without paying due attention to the role of popular culture, which performed s o crucial a role in shaping the social and political attitudes not merely of the "uninformed masses," but also of legisla- tors, experts and policymakers.
Harrow and Heston Publishers Guilderland. New York. 1998. 144p.
By Shirley Hazzard
From the introduction: “Nations from time to time assume that it is allowable and inevitable for them to fall upon each other on some pretext or other.“ So the historian Jakob Burckhardt wrote, more than a century ago, at the onset of the Franco-Prussian War—warning that “the most ominous thing is not the present war, but the era of wars upon which we have entered.” In the same fateful year of 1870, Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand: “Within a century, shall we see millions of men kill each other at one go?* The acceleration and incoherence of social and economic change, the transformations wrought by scientific discovery, the growth of populations, and of their enfranchised discontent—all these raised, in the minds of reflective men and women, a sense of moving toward some dread culmination, propelled by factors never before present in human etpcrience. Over these apprehensions, the discrepancy between the narrow thinking of statesmen and the huge scale of the mounting crisis cast—as it does today—the shadow of a prodigious incongruity.”
NY. Viking Penguin. 1990. 196p.
United States. White House Office
From the Executive Summary: "The 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking charges OSTP to (1) review agency scientific integrity policy effectiveness and (2) to develop a framework for regular assessment and iterative improvement of agency scientific integrity policies and practices (Framework). This document builds on the review published in January 2022 by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) entitled 'Protecting the Integrity of Government Science', which identified good agency practices on scientific integrity and areas in need of consistency across agencies. This Framework includes key resources for agencies as they work to develop and improve scientific integrity policies, practices, and culture. The Framework reflects input from the interagency Scientific Integrity Task Force and other key Federal officials, and includes considerations from public input. [...] The goal of this Framework is to assist agencies across the Federal Government as they take next steps together to strengthen, implement, and institutionalize scientific integrity policy, practice, and culture. Figure 1 illustrates the process by which agencies can take to use the components of this Framework with the goal of making iterative improvements over time."
White House: www.whitehouse.gov/. 2023. 68p.
By Matthew Arnold. Edited by J. Dover Wilson
From the cover: Manifesting the special intelligence of a literary critic of original gifts, Culture and Anarchy is still a living classic. It is addressed to the flexible and the disinterested, to those who are not committed to the findings of their particular discipline, and it assumes in its reader a critical intelligence that will begin its work with the reader himself. Arnold employs a delicate and stringent irony in an examination of the society of his time: a rapidly expanding industrial society, just beginning to accustom itself to the changes in its institutions that the pace of its own development called for. Coming virtually at the end of the decade (1868) and immediately prior to W. E. Forster’s Education Act, Culture and Anarchy phrases with a particular cogency the problems that find their centre in the questions: what kind of life do we think individuals in mass societies should be assisted to lead? How may we best ensure that the quality of their living is not impoverished? Arnold applies himself to the detail of his time: to the case of Mr Smith ‘who feared he would come to poverty and be eternally lost’, to the Reform agitation, to the commercial values that working people were encouraged to respect, and to the limitations of even the best Rationalist intelligence. The degree of local reference is therefore high, but Professor Dover Wilson’s introduction and notes to this edition supply valuable assistance to a reader fresh to the period. And they are informed by the respect and perceptive affection that Professor Dover Wilson brings to the work of Matthew Arnold as a whole.
London. Cambridge University Press. 1963. 270p.
By United States. Congress. House. Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence
From the Introduction: "The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the country, with almost every household feeling its effects. The United States' death toll from this virus has surpassed one million people. Although concrete data is hard to lock down, millions of Americans are suffering from the long-term effects directly attributed to this virus. [...] This Committee is uniquely positioned to assist in answering the questions surrounding the origins of COVID 19. This unclassified report attempts to add to the discourse of COVID-19 origins with the understanding that information held by the United States Intelligence Community (IC) that has yet to be shared with this Committee could be useful in making a final determination of the question of whether the origin of this pandemic was natural or lab-related. [...] U.S. officials have pushed China to be more transparent about what it knows. However, as explained below, the U.S. government has itself withheld relevant information, namely, information regarding Chinese research activities and goals. Indeed, because of its access to nonpublic, classified intelligence, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has unique capabilities in obtaining relevant information and in determining the origins of COVID-19. Unfortunately, its efforts to date have fallen short, both in its own assessments and in what it has been willing to share with Congress and the public. The classified version of this Committee report was prepared with access to some, but not all, of the IC's classified reporting. The IC has largely refused our requests for additional information. This unclassified summary of the underlying classified report necessarily omits vital information in order to comply with our obligations regarding classified information."
United States. Congress. House. Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 2022. 22p.
By Alvin W. Gouldner.
From the Preface: Social theorists today work within a crumbling social matrix of paralyzed urban centers and battered campuses. Some may put cotton in their ears, but their bodies still feel the shock waves. It is no exaggeration to say that we theorize today within the sound of guns. The old order has the picks of a hundred rebellions thrust into its hide.
While I was working on this study, one of the popular songs of the time was "Come on Baby, Light My Fire.” It is characteristic of our time that this song, which during the Detroit riots was used as an ode to urban conflagration, was also subsequently made into a singing commercial by a Detroit auto manufacturer. One wonders: Is this “repressive tolerance,” or is it, more simply, that they just do not understand? It is this context of social contradictions and conflicts that is the historical matrix of what I have called “The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology.” What I shall be examining here is the reflection of these conflicts in the idiom of social theory.
The present study is part of a larger work plan, whose first product was Enter Plato, and whose objective is to contribute to an historically informed sociology of social theory. The plan envisages a series of studies called "The Social Origins of Western Social Theory,” and I am now at work on two other volumes in it. One of these is on the relation of the nineteenth century Romantic movement to social theory, and another is a study in which I hope to connect the various analytic threads, presenting a more systematic and generalized sociological theory about social theories.
NY. Avon Books. 1970. 518p. CONTAINS MARK-UP
By Oliver Sacks
This is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients, survivors of the great sleeping-sickness epidemic which swept the world in the 1920s, and the astonishing, explosive ‘awakening’ effect they experienced 40 years later through a new drug L-DOPA administered by Dr Sacks. The stories he tells of these remarkable individuals are moving, often courageous and sometimes tragic. Through them he also explores the most general questions of health, disease, suffering, care and the human condition. Now hailed as a medical classic, Awakenings was first published in 1973 and won the Hawthomden Prize of that year. It has since inspired a TV documentary, radio and stage plays, including Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska, and a major feature film. For this revised edition the author has written much new material, including a section about Awakenings on stage and screen.
London. Pan Books. 1973. 424p.
By Robert Nozick
In this brilliant and widely acclaimed book, winner of the 1975 National Book Award, Robert Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions of our age—liberal, socialist, and conservative.
[“Nozick’s] faculties of reasoning and imagination are rare; his learning is enormous and interconnected. . . . His ability to surround a subject, to anticipate objection, to see through weakness and pretense, to extract all the implications of a contention, to ask a huge number of relevant questions about a seemingly settled matter, to enlarge into full significance what has only been sketched by others, is amazing.” —George Kateb. The American Scholar
“No contemporary philosopher possesses a more imaginative mind, broader interests, or greater dialectical abilities than Robert Nozick.” —Harper’s
“A brilliant and important book, bound to contribute notably both to theory and, in time, to the good of society.”—W. V. Quine. Harvard University
NY. Basic Books. 1974. 376p. CONTAINS MARK-UP
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele.
This book “is a solid indictment of how the rulemakers in Washington and the dealmakers on Wall Street have changed the rules of the game to favor the privileged, the powerful, and the influential — at the expense of everyone else.. Expanding on an unforgettable series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, this book is the culmination of two years of research by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. Assembling over 100,000 pages of documents and interviewing men and women at all levels of the work force across the nation, Barlett and Steele have managed to tell the story we all suspected in language so clear—and graphics so dramatic—that every reader will see how the lives of all of us have been touched by public acts and private greed. America: What Went Wrong? is a gripping portrayal of the painful dismantling of the American middle class.
Universal Press Syndicate. 1992. 246p.
This paper provides a framework for policymakers to tailor more effective negotiation and transitional justice strategies to address root causes, break cycles of violence, and strengthen the rule of law in settings affected by violent extremism. This paper draws on an earlier paper authored by me and Mark Freeman of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (also published here on SSRN), the three case studies commissioned for that first paper (ISIS in Iraq, Al Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria), and three newly-commissioned case studies on negotiations with violent extremist groups (Libya and the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, and Afghanistan and the Taliban). All six case studies can be found on the website of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (https://www.ifit-transitions.org).
Barcelona: Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), 2020. 204p.
By Daniel Allington
The purpose of this report is to explore the role that conspiracy theories, especially as disseminated through social media, may play in the process of radicalisation, and to make recommendations about how to minimise their occurrence. As it will show, there is clear evidence: • That conspiracy theories are disseminated through social networking and media sharing platforms • That conspiracy theories have historically played an important role in radicalisation, terrorism, persecution and genocide • That belief in conspiracy theories is psychologically associated with bigotry, extremism and willingness to break the law • That the perpetrators and alleged perpetrators of many recent mass shooting events were motivated by belief in conspiracy theories • That conspiracy theories have played a key role in recent political violence in the USA, including the insurrection of 6 January 2021 • That actions taken by social networking and media sharing platforms are inadequate to solve the problems associated with conspiracy theories, in part because the platforms themselves are designed in a way that serves to nurture and protect conspiracy beliefs
London: Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), 2021. 48p.
By Marc-André Argentino, Blyth Crawford, Florence Keen, Hannah Rose
This report provides an overview of domestic extremism in the United States. It examines the various groups and movements that gained momentum under the administration of former President Donald Trump, the key discourses and motivations of those that were a part of the 6 January insurrection, and how these have evolved in the first 100 days of the Biden administration. • Through analysis of the MAGA movement and some of its various components, including the Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and QAnon, this report reveals a country contending with a persistent domestic extremist threat which, despite Trump’s defeat, is unlikely to dissipate any time soon. • The 100 days that followed the inauguration of President Biden revealed a number of common narratives under which previously distinct groups have begun to converge, including anti-government ideologies, COVID conspiracy theories, election misinformation, racism, antisemitism, misogyny and transphobia. This report considers how these have evolved, and how they may continue to be a threat in the coming months and years. • The authors applied a mixed methods approach, leveraging data scientific methods and digital ethonography, in an effort to better understand MAGA-related groups, movements, and narratives both prior to and after Biden’s inauguration.
London: ICSR King’s College London , 2021. 94p.
By William Assanvo, Baba Dakono, Lori-Anne Théroux-Bénoni and Ibrahim Maïga
This report analyses the links between violent extremism, illicit activities and local conflicts in the Liptako-Gourma region. Addressing regional instability in the long term requires empirical data that helps explain the local dynamics that fuel insecurity. This is the first of two reports, and is based on interviews conducted in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The second report assesses the measures aimed at bringing stability to the region.
Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2019. 24p.
By Alexandra Abello Colak (and others)
More than a year on from the declaration of the pandemic in Colombia, COVID-19 has claimed more than 100,000 lives. Of these, 12.9% have been recorded in Antioquia1, the department with the second highest number of confirmed cases, and more than 5,000 people have died in its capital, Medellín, the second largest city in the country. But while the loss of life is one of the most horrific direct consequences of the pandemic, it is certainly not the only one. The global health crisis and the measures implemented to contain the spread of the virus have had profound economic, social and institutional impacts which need to be analysed in each context in order to understand the magnitude of the challenge that an appropriate, proportionate response to the pandemic in each city supposes. This report examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on some of the most populated and most vulnerable communities in Medellín. Monitoring conducted between April 2020 and February 20212 provides the basis for a contextualised analysis of what, to date, the pandemic has meant for broad sectors of the population. On the strength of this analysis, we argue that the public health crisis caused by COVID-19 has not only deepened and exacerbated historical problems which affect the lives and well-being of people; it has also led to a progressive and generalised surge in human insecurity in the city, which calls for a concerted, comprehensive, multidimensional, participatory strategy which acknowledges the differential impacts that the pandemic has had on different groups and can help mitigate the rise in threats and risks to human security.
London: London School of Economics, 2021. 39p.
By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
The history of the U.S. criminal justice system is marked by racial inequality and sustained by present day policy. Large racial and ethnic disparities exist across the several stages of criminal legal processing, including in arrests, pre-trial detention, and sentencing and incarceration, among others, with Black, Latino, and Native Americans experiencing worse outcomes. The historical legacy of racial exclusion and structural inequalities form the social context for racial inequalities in crime and criminal justice. Racial inequality can drive disparities in crime, victimization, and system involvement. Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy synthesizes the evidence on community-based solutions, noncriminal policy interventions, and criminal justice reforms, charting a path toward the reduction of racial inequalities by minimizing harm in ways that also improve community safety. Reversing the effects of structural racism and severing the close connections between racial inequality, criminal harms such as violence, and criminal justice involvement will involve fostering local innovation and evaluation, and coordinating local initiatives with state and federal leadership. This report also highlights the challenge of creating an accurate, national picture of racial inequality in crime and justice: there is a lack of consistent, reliable data, as well as data transparency and accountability. While the available data points toward trends that Black, Latino, and Native American individuals are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and given more severe punishments
compared to White individuals, opportunities for improving research should be explored to better inform decision-making.
Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2022. 343p.
By Terry-Ann Craigie, Ames Grawert, and Cameron Kimble
America is approaching a breaking point. For more than four decades, economic inequality has risen inexorably, stunting productivity, weakening our democracy, and leaving tens of millions struggling to get by in the world’s most prosperous country. The crises that have rocked the United States since the spring — the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting mass unemployment, and a nationwide uprising for racial justice — have made the inequities plaguing American society more glaring than ever. This year’s intertwined emergencies have also driven home a reality that some would rather ignore: that the growing gap between rich and poor is a result not just of the market’s invisible hand but of a set of deeply misguided policy choices. Among them, this groundbreaking report reveals, is our entrenched system of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration reflects and exacerbates so many dimensions of this country’s divides — in income and health, in voice and power, in access to justice, and most importantly, over race. The number of people incarcerated in America today is more than four times larger than it was in 1980, when wages began to stagnate and the social safety net began to be rolled back. We’ve long known that people involved in the criminal justice system — a group that’s disproportionately poor and Black — face economic barriers in the form of hiring discrimination and lost job opportunities, among other factors. This report demonstrates that more people than previously believed have been caught up in the system, and it quantifies the enormous financial loss they sustain as a
result; those who spend time in prison miss out on more than half the future income they might otherwise have earned.
New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2020. 44p.
By Scot Wortley, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah Huibin Lin and The Canadian Association of Black lawyers (CABL)
Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and the various stay-at-home orders in countries around the world, millions of people took to the streets to protest this and other brutal killings of Black men and women by police officers in the United States. [...] Canada also has a well-documented history of police misconduct and to the extent that members of certain communities are more likely to have been stopped and searched by police - one of the findings of this report - then significant differences in perceptions of the police and courts seem inevitable. [...] Race and Criminal Injustice is an important examination of perceptions of the criminal justice system in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and follows earlier research by the same authors that found that perceptions of the police and the courts differed significantly by racial group. [...] The results suggest that one-third of the Black respondents (34%) had been stopped by the police in the past two years, compared to 28% of White respondents and 22% of Chinese respondents. [...] Respondents were next asked: “If a man and a woman – with the same criminal history or record – committed the same crime, who would get the longer sentence in court: the man, the woman, or do you think they would get the same sentence?” A slight majority of White (51.3%) and Asian respondents (50.7%) respondents believe that a man and woman would get the same sentence, compared to only 33.3% of Bl.
Toronto: Ryerson University Faculty of Law, 2021. 90p.
By Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union
Human Rights Watch / ACLU joint submission regarding the United States’ record under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
It has been nearly 30 years since the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Yet progress towards compliance remains elusive—indeed, grossly inadequate—in numerous key areas including reparative justice; discrimination in the US criminal legal system; use of force by law enforcement officials; discrimination in the regulation and enforcement of migration control; and stark disparities in the areas of economic opportunity, education, and health care. Racism and xenophobia persist as powerful and pervasive forces in American society. The ICERD is an important part of the solution: to confront these global problems effectively, the US needs to confront discrimination head on and proactively and swiftly engage in efforts to meet its international obligations. This report and its detailed appendix offer an initial roadmap for the US government to fulfill its obligations under the treaty.
New York: Human Right Watch and ACLU, 2022. 98p.
By Jaquelyn L. Jahn, Jessica T. Simes, Tori L. Cowger & Brigette A. Davis
Systemic racism in police contact is an important driver of health inequities among the U.S. urban population. Hyper-policing and police violence in marginalized communities have risen to the top of the national policy agenda, particularly since protests in 2020. How did pandemic conditions impact policing? We assess neighborhood racial disparities in arrests after COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Boston, Charleston, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco census tracts (January 2019-August 2020). Using interrupted time series models with census tract fixed effects, we report arrest rates across tract racial and ethnic compositions. In the week following stay orders, overall arrest rates were 66% (95% CI: 51-77%) lower on average. Although arrest rates steadily increased thereafter, most tracts did not reach pre-pandemic arrest levels. However, despite declines in nearly all census tracts, the magnitude of racial inequities in arrests remained unchanged. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, arrest rates declined significantly in areas with higher Black populations, but absolute rates in Black neighborhoods remain higher than pre-pandemic arrest rates in White neighborhoods. These findings support urban policy reforms that reconsider police capacity and presence, particularly as a mechanism for enforcing public health ordinances and reducing racial disparities.
Boston: Boston University, 2021. 29p.
