Author: Barbara A. Misztal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511341410
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
A sociological account of civil courage and creative behaviour through the study of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465031102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals. Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society -- and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

Author: Todd C. Ream
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830854819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the midst of a divisive culture, public intellectuals speaking from an evangelical perspective have a critical role to play—within the church and beyond. Representing the church, higher education, journalism, and the nonprofit sector, these world-class scholars and practitioners cast a vision for intellectuals who promote human flourishing.

Author: Keith E. Maskus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139444330
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 952

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Book Description
Distinguished economists, political scientists, and legal experts discuss the implications of the increasingly globalized protection of intellectual property rights for the ability of countries to provide their citizens with such important public goods as basic research, education, public health, and environmental protection. Such items increasingly depend on the exercise of private rights over technical inputs and information goods, which could usher in a brave new world of accelerating technological innovation. However, higher and more harmonized levels of international intellectual property rights could also throw up high roadblocks in the path of follow-on innovation, competition and the attainment of social objectives. It is at best unclear who represents the public interest in negotiating forums dominated by powerful knowledge cartels. This is the first book to assess the public processes and inputs that an emerging transnational system of innovation will need to promote technical progress, economic growth and welfare for all participants.

Author: Barbara A. Misztal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521847186
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Creativity and civil courage are major dimensions of an intellectual's authority and contribute towards the enrichment of democracy. This book develops a sociological account of civil courage and creative behaviour in order to enhance our understanding of the nature of intellectuals' involvement in society. Barbara A. Misztal employs both theoretical-analytic and empirical components to develop a typology of intellectuals who have shown civil courage and examines the biographies of twelve Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Elie Wiesel, Andrei Sakharov and Linus C. Pauling, to illustrate acts of courage which have embodied the values of civil society. She advances our understanding of the nature of intellectuals' public involvement and their contribution to social well-being. In the current climate of fear and insecurity, as governments are forced to deal with issues of increasing complexity, this is a pioneering sociological book with a highly original approach.

Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620973642
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Selected by Newsweek as one of “14 nonfiction books you’ll want to read this fall” Fifty years after it first appeared, one of Noam Chomsky’s greatest essays will be published for the first time as a timely stand-alone book, with a new preface by the author As a nineteen-year-old undergraduate in 1947, Noam Chomsky was deeply affected by articles about the responsibility of intellectuals written by Dwight Macdonald, an editor of Partisan Review and then of Politics. Twenty years later, as the Vietnam War was escalating, Chomsky turned to the question himself, noting that "intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments" and to analyze their "often hidden intentions." Originally published in the New York Review of Books, Chomsky's essay eviscerated the "hypocritical moralism of the past" (such as when Woodrow Wilson set out to teach Latin Americans "the art of good government") and exposed the shameful policies in Vietnam and the role of intellectuals in justifying it. Also included in this volume is the brilliant "The Responsibility of Intellectuals Redux," written on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which makes the case for using privilege to challenge the state. As relevant now as it was in 1967, The Responsibility of Intellectuals reminds us that "privilege yields opportunity and opportunity confers responsibilities." All of us have choices, even in desperate times.

Author: Madhavi Sunder
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030014671X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
A law professor draws from social and cultural theory to defend her idea that that intellectual property law affects the ability of citizens to live a good life and prohibits people from making and sharing culture.

Author: Richard M. Zinman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585463220
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Whether intellectuals are counter-cultural escapists corrupting the young or secular prophets leading us to prosperity, they are a fixture of modern political life. In The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy and Politics, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman bring together a wide variety of noted scholars to discuss the characteristics, nature, and role of public thinkers. By looking at scholarly life in the West, this work explores the relationship between thought and action, ideas and events, reason and history.

Author: Vito Tanzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108420931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
A sweeping historical account of the crises of income inequality and crony capitalism from a world-renowned public economist.