Dance of the Avatar: Embodying Gender and Culture through Dance
Author: Imre Lázár, M.D Ph.D.
Head of Medical Humanities Research Group, Inst. of Behavioral Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary |
"The author is an outstanding representant of the Hungarian anthropology, especially medical anthropology. He uses living traditions as an interface between the old myths, symbolically coded cultural messages, and the similar metaphors and codes of the present globalized civilization. He is familiar with the relevant concepts of modern sociology, culture, and several relevant disciplines. So the book represents a huge multidisciplinary network with many important points and crossroads." - Reviewed by Ferenc Túry, Professor, Institute of Behavioral Science, Semmelweis University, Hungary. To read the review in its entirety, click here.
"In his book, Imre Lázár investigates the importance of dance using a novel research attitude taking an exciting and exotic point of view. At firsts he acts as if simply investigating 20th century folklore, but through an interesting account of history and experience,he soon arrives to the idea that dance can give mankind a new “body,” filling us with a new spiritual imagination." - Reviewed by József Zelnik, Writer, Ethnographer, founding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. To read the review in its entirety, click here. |
Initiation and Preservation: Modes of Cultural Philosophy
Author: Arûnas Sverdiolas
Vilnius University Lithuania, Vilnius, ðv. Ignoto, Lithuania |
"In the flood of essays, books, courses, and conferences, one more text on Culture would seem redundant. And yet the text by Sverdijolas is in a class by itself. A result of protracted studies of materials throughout the entire Western tradition, the author deciphers the uncontestable compositions of various cultural modes co-present in this tradition. In doing so, he makes a bold statement that in contemporary context, there cannot be any other philosophy apart from cultural philosophy. In this sense, the author explicates diverse modes of thinking, showing their essential features, their comparisons and reappearances in different historical periods and contexts. While philosophy is cultural, it does not become closed to most diverse life worlds. The author must be credited with vast erudition and the mastery of interpretation of texts –an interpretation that discloses textual depths previously glossed over, even if essential. I would surmise that the method used by Sverdijolas is ground breaking for philosophical and cultural studies. Having read many texts throughout a long career as a teacher, I can state that the text of Sverdijolas is not just a book –it is a BOOK." - Reviewed by Algis Mickunas, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Ohio University.
*To read the review in its entirety, click here. New Eastern Europe - Reviewed by Leonidas Donskis, member of the editorial board of New Eastern Europe, a philosopher, writer, political theorist, commentator, historian of ideas and a professor of politics at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania). |
International Perspectives on Race (and Racism): Historical and Contemporary Considerations in Education
and Society
Editor: Diane Brook Napier
Retired Professor of Comparative and International Education, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA |
"International Perspectives on Race (and Racism): Historical and Contemporary Considerations in Education and Society provides a most welcome and impressive addition to the literature on addressing racism through education. The comprehensive collection edited by an international scholar in the field, Diane Brook Napier with her vast experience in researching post-colonial educational reform and democratic transformation in Africa, Latin American and other areas around the world, brings together the work of scholars from all parts of the globe: North, South and Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. This volume makes an important contribution to the field of comparative and international education, and will no doubt become a valued text for university classes on anti-racist education.”
- Reviewed by Dr. Suzanne Majhanovich, Emerita/Adjunct Research Professor, Western University, Ontario, Canada |
Parenthood and Parenting in Croatia: A Developmental and Socio-Cultural Perspective
Editors: Katica Lacković-Grgin
Department of Psychology, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia Zvjezdan Penezić Department of Psychology, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia |
Parenthood and Parenting in Croatia: A Developmental and Socio-cultural Perspective is an impressive and extensive book edited by the pioneer of research on parenthood and parenting in Croatia Katica Lackovic-Grgin and her coworker and former student Zvjezdan Penezic. Because Croatia has undergone major political and socio-economical changes in the last three decades, examining parenting in its context enables better understanding of contextual influences on parenting processes. The book consists of nine chapters which represent an illustrative sample of issues around which Croatian scholars in the field of parenting focused their attention on. They range from fertility motivation and generativity to different stages of parenting (parenting adolescents, parenting in late adulthood and grandparenting) to parenting in challenging circumstances (single-parenting and parenting in post-war society). Except one chapter based on original empirical data, all other chapters are systematic research reviews in which results of empirical studies conducted in Croatia are compared with research findings from other countries and placed within the relevant theoretical framework. The two introductory chapters, written by Lackovic-Grgin, bring her original theoretical reasoning on socio-cultural influences and life-span changes in parenting and parenthood. This theorizing contributes to extant theories on parenting, its determinants, and its impact on child development. The Parenthood and parenting in Croatia clearly shows that parental role and parent-child relationships in Croatia are both similar to and different from parenting in other parts of the world. The book enables the reader to get thorough understanding of the specificities of parent-child relationships, self-perceptions of parenting and their correlates in the context of Croatia. I would recommend this book to everyone interested in parenting from a cross-cultural perspective. - Reviewed by Gordana Kerestes
Professor of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia |
The Limits of Civilization
Author: Andrew Targowski
Western Michigan University |
"This book is the culmination of a lifetime of thought by a great civilizationalist about some of the most difficult challenges now facing the human race. Ranging across diverse fields of theoretical inquiry, Targowski's arguments need to be confronted and addressed urgently by all those trying to make sense out of the difficulties of the present, in order to work effectively for a more hopeful future." - Reviewed by David J. Rosner, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Metropolitan College of New York, President, International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations
This book has also been reviewed by Joseph Drew, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Comparative Civilization Review. To read the review, click here. |
Science for Living- 5 Science Topics of Common Interest to Religion and Society
Author: Raghavan Jayakumar Lawrence Livermore National Lab, CA, USA
|
"A well thought out and intelligently written thesis." Reviewed by A.D.
Turnbull, General Atomics, San Diego CA
To read the review in its entirety, click here. |
Time, Life, and Civilization
Author: Abir U. Igamberdiev, Ph.D.
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, Department of Biology, Canada |
"No doubt, the issue of time and life has a deep implication for both where we came from and where we may be going to go. The author Igamberdiev picks up the agenda of incompleteness as a connecting thread for addressing the whole panorama covering even the fate of our civilization. From the physical point of view, our attention to incompleteness starts with calling attention to the precondition of evolution via the uncertainty of quantum measurement, that is effectively crystalized in the author’s internal quantum state recognizing that the incompleteness of embedded set of symbols is the formal cause of evolution. This perspective is mathematically equivalent to continuous proof of Gödel’s theorem of incompleteness as generating mathematical statements carrying arbitrary Gödel numbers. The attempted exercise comes to eventually culminate in the vindication of Charles Peirce’s fallibilism. One remarkable and also rare message discernible from the author’s attempt is how we can live with fallibilism in a positive and productive sense." - Reviewed by Koichiro Matsuno, Professor, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan
This book was also reviewed by Lev V. Beloussov, Professor of Embryology, Moscow State University. To read the review, click here. |
