Search results for ""Author Susan H. Gillespie""

Facebook claims that it is building a “global community.” Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self.Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate in fact remake the self in their image. Sharing is the outsourcing of one’s experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are stuck ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we go about accumulating more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self becomes diminished—and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social-media companies’ relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising purposes presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Presenting a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it.

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Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and - more than any other subject - music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical works, gives him broad claim as a continuing force in the study of music. This long-awaited collection of twenty-seven essays represents the full range of Adorno's music writing. Nearly half of the essays appear in English for the first time; all of the essays are fully annotated; and the previously translated essays have been corrected and missing text restored, making this volume the definitive resource on Adorno's musical thought.

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Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and - more than any other subject - music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical works, gives him broad claim as a continuing force in the study of music. This long-awaited collection of twenty-seven essays represents the full range of Adorno's music writing. Nearly half of the essays appear in English for the first time; all of the essays are fully annotated; and, the previously translated essays have been corrected and missing text restored, making this volume the definitive resource on Adorno's musical thought.

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Liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic find themselves approaching a state of emergency, beset by potent populist challenges of the right and left. But what exactly lies at the core of widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo? And how can the challenge be overcome? In Democracy in Crisis, Christian Lammert and Boris Vormann argue that the rise of populism in North Atlantic states is not the cause of a crisis of governance but its result. This crisis has been many decades in the making and is intricately linked to the rise of a certain type of political philosophy and practice in which economic rationality has hollowed out political values and led to an impoverishment of the political sphere more broadly. The process began in the 1980s, when the United States and Great Britain decided to unleash markets in the name of economic growth and democracy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, several countries in Europe followed suit and marketized their educational, social, and healthcare systems, which in turn increased inequality and fragmentation. The result has been a collapse of social cohesion and trust that the populists promise to address but only make worse. Looking to the future, Lammert and Vormann conclude their analysis with concrete suggestions for ways politics can once again be placed in the foreground, with markets serving social relations rather than the reverse.

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Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a philosopher, and Oliver Furbeth, a musicologist, here fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. "Music in German Philosophy" includes contributions from a renowned group of ten scholars, including some of today's most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music. The book is prefaced by the editors' original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and foreword to this English-language edition, which places contemplations on music by these German philosophers within a broader intellectual climate.

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