Books about Fragmentation from Amazon.com

Drawing on his 20 years of pioneering research and work with some 400 top companies, Robert offers today's executives guidance in strategy formulation, implementation, and deployment Filled with examples drawn from the experiences of today's commercial leaders and interviews with CEOs of companies in a variety of industries, this updated edition of a revolutionary and inspiring best seller offers a sure-fire process of strategic thinking that's been tested and refined in the "war rooms" of America's most successful corporations..
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This monumental book examines Afghan society in conflict, from the 1978 communist coup to the fall of Najibullah, the last Soviet-installed president, in 1992. This edition, newly revised by the author, reflects developments since then and includes material on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. It is a book that now seems remarkably prescient. Drawing on two decades of research, Barnett R. Rubin, a leading expert on Afghanistan, provides a fascinating account of the nature of the old regime, the rise and fall of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and the troubled Mujahidin resistance. He relates all these phenomena to international actors, showing how the interaction of U.S. policy and Pakistani and Saudi Arabian interests has helped to create the challenges of today. Rubin puts into context the continuing turmoil in Afghanistan and offers readers a coherent historical explanation for the country's social and political fragmentation..
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1992 American Academy of Religion Award.

These seven essays by noted historian Caroline Walker Bynum exemplify her argument that historians must write in a "comic" mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion. Exploring a diverse array of medieval texts, the essays show how women were able to appropriate dominant social symbols in ways that revised and undercut them, allowing their own creative and religious voices to emerge. Taken together, they provide a model of how to account for gender in studying medieval texts and offer a new interpretation of the role of asceticism and mysticism in Christianity.

In the first three essays, Bynum focuses on the methodological problems inherent in the writing of history. She shows that a consideration of medieval texts written by women and the rituals attractive to them undermines the approaches of three 20th-century intellectual figures - Victor Turner, Max Weber, and Leo Steinberg - and illustrates how other disciplines can enrich historical research. These methodological considerations are then used in the next three essays to examine gender proper. While describing the "experiential" literary voices of medieval women, Bynum underlines the corporality of women's piety and focuses on both the cultural construction and the intractable physicality of the body itself. She also examines how the acts and attitudes of men affected the cultural construction of categories such as "female," "heretic," and "saint" and shows that the study of gender is the study of how roles and possibilities are conceptualized by both women and men. In the final essay, Bynum elucidates how medieval discussions of bodily resurrection and the obsession with material details enrich modem debates over questions of self-identity and survival..
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Jewish Sacred Music and Jewish Identity explores complex issues of religious pluralism and the preservation of Jewish identity in the context of American culture today, drawing on the perspective of the Cantor's office. Featured among other entries are the collected writings of Cantor William Sharlin, well-known and influential scholar, cantor, composer of synagogue music, and former professor at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles. Now cantor emeritus at Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, where he has served since 1954, Cantor Sharlin is a link between the traditions of the past and the transformations of the present, and a long-time observer of music's role as both preserver and innovator of Jewish worship. The essays presented here are sure to engage readers interested in the place of music in religion, and those concerned with the state of religion in the post-modern world.

That which has been written about Jewish sacred music is primarily descriptive, largely unconcerned with the impact of the changing nature of synagogue song on Jewish religion and identity. Indeed, for all that has been written about the Americanization of Judaism--from ritual changes to the emphasis on social ethics--critical analysis of developments in synagogue music has been largely ignored. This volume presents a much-needed social-theoretical approach to Jewish sacred music in the post-modern synagogue, and concludes that music, far more than an aid to ritual, is a prime indicator of the state of American Judaism today, and will play a crucial role in its future transformation.

Jewish Sacred Music and Jewish Identity will appeal to Jewish professionals--cantors, rabbis, and educators--as well as those interested in the broader fields of Jewish studies, contemporary religion, musicology, and American religious diversity. This book is a useful text in courses on Judaism, American religion, and sacred music. It provides a unique perspective on the state of American Judaism through the eyes of the cantorate. Rather than a historical survey of Jewish sacred music in America--a topic discussed in other volumes--this book presents the insights and personal philosophies of cantors working in the contemporary synagogue. In addition, its substantial glossary amounts to a primer in Judaism, making this book useful even for those unfamiliar with the Jewish religion..
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Balkan. Somewhere between a tragedy and a myth, a place and a condition, the term is perhaps best understood as a metaphor It has been used and abused in academia by proponents of opposing political views. Multiculturalism has appropriated it, as have postmodernism and postcommunism. It is used pejoratively to refer to excessive specialization and nostalgically to refer to Europe’s lost people—its wild warriors and passionate geniuses. This book explores the idea of the Balkan as metaphor and the meaning of Balkan identity in the context of contemporary culture. Focusing on Balkanism both as a body of knowledge and as the critical study of that discourse, this book does for the Balkans what Edward Said’s Orientalism did for "the Orient."

The sixteen authors, most of whom were born and educated in the Balkans, apply the Western academic tools of postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and critical multiculturalism to topics as varied as the rhetoric of Balkanization, the war in Kosovo, Western demonization and erotization of the Serbs, Balkan film, human rights legislation, Byzantinism, the vampire as an image of Balkan violence, envy of the political and moral capital of victimhood, the tendency of the Balkan psyche toward depression, Serbian machismo and homosexuality, and wartime rape. The book both lays the groundwork for a new field of study and serves as an act of resistance against the many forms of representation that break the Balkans into fragments such as NATO army bases and digital maps in order to wire them into the global market..
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In his fourth book about the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Howard P. Boyd presents a fascinating study of the natural forces that created this unique ecosystem and a timely review of human development in the region.

Following a concise introduction to Pine Barrens ecology, Boyd delves into distinctive abiotic factors (physical processes and characteristics such as geological evolution, soils, climate, water, and wildfires) and biotic factors (plants and animals), emphasizing their interrelationships. He lists hundreds of species of Pinelands flora and fauna, surveys threatened and endangered species, explores man's industrial and agricultural industries and their impacts, and offers an important discussion of the dangers current human activity presents to the survival of the ecosystem.

Howard Boyd's passion for the Pine Barrens--along with his ability to make natural science compelling and comprehensible for lay readers--has never been more evident than in this exploration of the vast ecological area with which his name has become enduringly linked. The Ecological Pine Barrens of New Jersey is a must-read for ecologists, environmentalists, educators, students, and any individual with a serious interest in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and its future survival..
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