The following is a review of a book which tries to be about building a nonviolent alternative society, an idea that, unfortunately, seems to have special appeal to technically trained people, who have rebellion in their hearts. The book is Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. After dealing briefly with the book...
Tag - book review
During the last four years several hundred scientists and technologists from the United States have visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The duration of stay of recent visitors in the PRC has usually been from 2 to 4 weeks. In spite of the brevity of their visits, American scientists have returned with...
Did someone say the "energy crisis" is over? The panic may have passed with the fall in gasoline prices from last year's high, but in the near future new price increases are likely to be announced. This will not be a particularly surprising turn of events to those who have a good grasp of what's happening in the...
In a similar fashion, the theories put forth by the sociobiologists and their predecessors help to support maintenance of the status quo and to convince people that revolutionary changes in social relationships (e.g. class structure and sex roles) are impossible. One way we see this done is by the rapid incorporation...
The authors find that the conventional reasons given for the rise of (male) professionals are myths. The professional takeover of health care in both epochs occurred before there was any real scientific superiority of the practicing professionals. If anything, the medical craft practiced by (female) lay healers...
The authors focus separately on women of the upper and upper-middle class, and on working-class women. And they are clearer about the effects of the medical system as it applied to affluent women [probably because wealthy women were more directly affected by the medical system]. In addition, Ehrenreich and English...
Michael T. Klare's War Without End is a chilling and well-documented history of American military strategy in the 1960's and the forms it will take in the future. A strong political and economic analysis frames the wealth of information packed into this book, to show the values and motivations underlying military...
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York Herder and Herder, 1970) is a critical book for all those who are seeking alternative lifestyles in the teaching of science life styles which are grounded in and have bearing on the social, political and economic reality of the contemporary world. It is a book for...
The oppressive set of myths that make up a large part of this ideology can survive only so long as women remain ignorant of their physiology, of the commonness of their psychological suffering, and of the role that the ideology itself plays in influencing them to accept their oppression (indeed in often preventing...