Books by Brian J. McVeigh

How have figures of speech configured new concepts of time, space, and mind throughout history? Brian J. McVeigh answers this question in A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries by exploring ';meta-framing:' our ever-increasing capability to ';step back' from the environment, search out its familiar features to explain the unfamiliar, and generate ';as if' forms of knowledge and metaphors of location and vision. This book demonstrates how analogizing and abstracting have altered spatio-visual perceptions, expanding our introspective capabilities and allowing us to adapt to changing social circumstances.

In this analysis, Brian J. McVeigh confronts both the demonizers and apologists of Japan. He argues that far from being unique, Japanese nationalism becomes demystified once "management" and "mysticism" - the same processes and practices that operate in other national states - are taken into account.

Written to be read as both a political and philosophical commentary and anthropological investigation, this work has theoretical implications for comparative studies of political systems, particularly regarding the relation between self-deception and the ideological manufacture of legitimacy.

In this dismantling of the myth of Japanese "quality education", McVeigh investigates the consequences of what happens when statistical and corporatist forces monopolize the purpose of schooling and the boundary between education and employment is blurred.

One third of Japan's women workers are 'office ladies' - low status, low security secretaries, who are trained at Junior Colleges. The author, who taught at such a College, discusses life there, and their cultural and sociopolitical role.

In this adventurous new study, Brian J. McVeigh demonstrates how nominally conflicting impressions of Japan can be reconciled by a greater understanding of the state - revealing flaws in current intellectual discourse.