"Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor in many of the violent conflicts in the present day. Reflecting on Islam in Indonesia, the wo…
Statistics is interesting and useful because it provides strategies and tools for using data to gain insight into real problems. As the continuing revolution in computing automates most of the tiresome details, an emphasis on statistical concepts and on insight from data becomes both more practical for students and teachers and more important for users who must supply what is not automated. No …
The knowledge that the African continent gave civilization the Arts and Sciences, Religion and Philosophy is des- tined to produce a change in the mentality both of the White and Black people. 2. There are three persons in the drama of Greek philosophy: (a) Alexander the Great; (b) Aristotle's School and; (c) The Ancient Roman Government who are responsible for a false tradition about Africa an…
Should we talk? This book treats this question, and many others, as beingempirical in nature: if we were to live through a given situation in 1000 par-allel lives, where in one half we talked and in the other half we didn’t talk,in which of the halves would we fare better?The results of such a thought experiment vary betweenRachel,Dimitri,andSteve– or any other conversation that we may ex…
‘The music industry’ is commonly understood as a singular entity that is often portrayed as a place of shared concerns and goals. However, as many observers and academics have pointed out, this singular term is misleading and the very idea of a united place belies the reality which is ridden with tension and full of competing interests and industries (see Sterne, 2014). It is withi…
The court of Star Chamber remains notorious even now: commentators sometimes invoke its name to suggest that a judicial body or legal action is not quite lawful, something secretive and illegitimate. The court provoked concern in its own time, too, though its vilification deepened after its death. With roots in the mid fourteenth century, St…
We don’t usually think of speaking as similar to chewing, licking and sucking, but, like speaking, all of these actions involve movements of the mouth, tongue and lips in some kind of controlled way. So, perhaps this connection is not as improbable as it first sounds. It is an example of the type of observation that can lead to interesting speculations about the origins of spoken language. Th…
When we examine power in social worlds – even in a place as seemingly mundane as a farm – our eye is inevitably drawn towards visible expressions of power. For critical social theorists, activists and practitioners, a farm makes a particular kind of empowered world visible. We can see it in the way that farmers treat animals, cultivate fields, and i…
In 1948 an animated public information film called Your Very Good Health explained the benefits of Britain’s soon-to-be-introduced National Health Service (NHS).1 It portrayed two different categories of hospital patient. The central character, Charley, says he is ‘on the panel’ as he cycles through an optimistic impression of a new town.2The narrator asks him to imagine that he fell off …