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The article is a review of the book "Social Change: Theory, History, and Politics" written by Esteban Torres and published by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). The author analyzes the evolution of theories on social change and highlights the importance of understanding Latin American social thought. The book is divided into different historical periods and highlights the influence of modern philosophy and the figure of Marx in the thinking of social change. The author also mentions the influence of European sociological currents and the autonomous reconstruction of Latin America as a response to a crisis in the classical theoretical and sociological apparatus. The period of weakening of European social thought during World War II and the Cold War is discussed, as well as how the United States became the main pole of intellectual and sociological irradiation. The author emphasizes that the theory that will conquer the world intellectually will come from Latin America. A globalist constellation of Latin American origin is mentioned, which will expand the modern vision of the economy and the State. A higher unity is mentioned that will contain theories without declaring the end of national society. The advent of military dictatorships in Latin America and the maximum penetration of the United States in the continent are mentioned as a break in the history of social sciences in the region. A new post-dictatorial constellation is discussed, which will be permeable to a new intellectual dependence. The author highlights the influence of ideas from France in Latin America and how the post-dictatorial process will impact the vision of social change in the region. Three intellectual currents identified by the author within the postmodern constellation are mentioned: modern politicist, modern culturalist, and antimodern subjectivist. The imitative reception in Latin America of the sociologies of the Self from France is criticized, and the idea of a free individual embodied in the figure of the intellectual is mentioned. There is a discussion of an abandonment of society as a unit of transformation at a time when the different national spheres of the global society became more global and interdependent, and more unequal and unjust. A renewed interest in theories of the world system and the sociologies of globalization in the region is mentioned, but the need to build a theory centered on society that overcomes the limitations detected in the first Latin American globalist constellation is emphasized. [Extracted from the article]

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"Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China: Government Views versus Local Perspectives" by Wei Wang and Lisong Jiang explores the transformation of the traditional ethnic identity of the Kam people in contemporary China. The authors argue that government policy has been the main force shaping ethnic culture and identity in China, and that Kam ethnicity has become a ceremonial and commercialized phenomenon. The book provides a historical account of Kam origins, examines local government efforts to brand and market Kam identity, and explores the perspectives of Kam villagers on ethnic identity and reconstruction. While the book offers rich detail from interviews with officials and villagers, it does not engage extensively with existing English-language scholarship on ethnicity in China. [Extracted from the article]

"The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays" by Elliott Oring is a book that explores various aspects of folklore and humor. The book is divided into two parts, with the first five chapters focusing on jokes and the remaining four chapters addressing more theoretical topics. Oring raises questions about the nature of Jewish jokes, the study of dirty jokes, and the theories of humor, such as the Semantic Script Theory and the General Theory of Verbal Humor. He also examines the concept of memes and their application to folklore, as well as the formulation of laws in folkloristics. The book concludes with a discussion on the study of tradition and its relation to culture. Overall, the book offers a thought-provoking exploration of folklore and humor from a scientific perspective. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the concept of power and its attainment and exercise throughout history. It explores the idea that some individuals have a pathological drive for power, which can lead to extreme and psychopathic behaviors. The author argues that understanding and engaging with these motivations is crucial, especially in the current political climate. The article also emphasizes the importance of education in countering individuals who seek to exploit others for power. [Extracted from the article]

Travis Kong's book, "Sexuality and the Rise of China: The Post-1990s Gay Generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China," offers a comprehensive analysis of the lives of 90 gay Chinese men from these regions. Kong explores various aspects of their lives, including relational politics, tongzhi commons, love, homosexuality, and homonationalism. He highlights the differences and similarities in social conditions and Western influences that have shaped the identities of the post-90s gay men generation. The book provides valuable insights into the evolving socio-economic and political ideologies in these regions and their impact on the lives of young gay men. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cmiel fully drafted this chapter; while Peters heavily revises it, Cmiel's darker themes are most prominent. After Cmiel's untimely death in 2006, his close friend John Durham Peters, a media theorist first and historian second, spent about 13 years completing the book. In a movingly personal postscript ending the book, Peters recounts his labors to complete the project according to Cmiel's vision. The most central containers are knowledge and image, Cmiel and Peters propose. [Extracted from the article]

The author points to the fact that CSR "has yielded deep insights into the cognitive foundations of religious belief and behavior", and it is of particular interest that these approaches see religion as being, as Maiden puts it, "rooted in ordinary features of human cognitive architecture" (1). Maiden uses a "dual-processing" model: "So-called dual-processing theories of human cognition thus distinguish two different modes of thought: (1) implicit, intuitive, and nonconscious cognition on the one hand and (2) explicit, reflective, and conscious cognition on the other" (6). All in all, Brett Maiden has done biblical scholarship a favour by demonstrating that the study of ancient Israelite religion may benefit from a real dialogue with cognitive science and the study of cultural evolution. [Extracted from the article]

Mhola - The Utopia of Peace: An Ethnographic Exploration of the Sungusungu Movement in Tanzania Of greatest contemporary interest is the masterful treatment of how the Sungusungu institution has evolved and changed as it has been alternatively carried by Sukuma as they dispersed across the country, adopted by non-Sukuma, and imposed by various legal reforms of the police over the past 40 years. The Sungusungu social movement is analyzed through the lens of peasant resistance, democratic and civil society emergence, ethnic movements, and vigilantism. [Extracted from the article]

Rather than offer some sort of overview of Bourdieusian research in this vein, as one might expect from the Kuhnian title, Robbins thus endeavours to excavate the phenomenological lineage in which Bourdieu sits and the way in which he took it forward. This seems to be in part because Robbins adopts the language of "correlations" and "juxtapositions" from Lyotard (rather than "correspondences" and "homologies" from Bourdieu). At the beginning of Part II, reiterating the disclaimer in the Introduction, Robbins stressed that he was not trying to unpack any direct influence of Schutz, Gurwitsch or Merleau-Ponty on Bourdieu but merely to suggest how Bourdieu "embodied the tensions" at work in the phenomenologists' writings. [Extracted from the article]

Chapter 4 turns to trace the extension of silk weaving to the south and the impact of this move on both tax and tribute silk production and the creation of new variations in silk design. For thousands of years, silk in China has been celebrated as noble material for clothing and as inspirational medium for weavers and artists. BuYun Chen's I Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China i is the first book-length work that delineates the plural and contradictory practices that made up fashion in Tang China (618-907). [Extracted from the article]

The article informs about the graphic novel "Call Me Bill," an historical YA work focusing on the life of Bill Armstrong, a gender nonconforming sailor in the late 1800s. Topic include It explores Bill's journey from being born as Maggie Armstrong in New Jersey, her struggles with societal expectations, and her transformation into Bill as a sailor, incorporating primary sources to provide an authentic portrayal of gender nonconformity 150 years ago.

In the opening chapters, Graeber and Wengrow convincingly argue that many of the foundational questions of European political philosophy have become canonized in ways detrimental to our intellectual understanding of the human past in a global context. "Our standard historical meta-narrative about the ambivalent progress of human civilization, where freedoms are lost as societies grow bigger and more complex-was invented largely for the purpose of neutralizing the threat of indigenous critique" (Graeber & Wengrow, 2021:32). Like most authors who ambitiously address the grand questions of what it means to be human, Graeber and Wengrow occasionally veer into the speculative. [Extracted from the article]

Nevertheless, although he makes clear that his critique is not tantamount to wholesale rejection, Stauffer alleges a couple weaknesses of their approach, namely, that it downplays Hobbes's capacity for originality and distracts from Hobbes's arguments. Whether or not Stauffer is correct that Hobbes initiated a sweepingly rationalizing - and ultimately dispiriting - cultural transformation, Stauffer makes the best possible argument for a broadly Straussian thesis about Hobbes. Stauffer explores four themes: Hobbes's critique of the classical tradition, his natural philosophy, his critique of religion, and his political philosophy. [Extracted from the article]

The bifocal stance theory (BST) focuses on cultural evolution without alluding to associated processes in linguistic evolution and language use. The authors briefly comment on language acquisition but leave underexplored the applicability of BST to linguistic evolution, to changes of language representations, and to possible consequences for constructing social identity, based on, for example, collective resilience processes within language communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]