Books published by Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC

Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, this book aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. It cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible.

An argument against the idea of the indigenous chief as a liberal political figure. Across Africa, it is not unusual for proponents of liberal democracy and modernization to make room for some aspects of indigenous culture, such as the use of a chief as a political figure. Yet for Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, no such accommodation should be made. Chiefs, he argues, in this thought-provoking and wide-ranging pamphlet, cannot be liberals--and liberals cannot be chiefs. If we fail to recognize this, we fail to acknowledge the metaphysical underpinnings of modern understandings of freedom and equality, as well as the ways in which African intellectuals can offer a distinctive take on the unfinished business of colonialism.

In precarious and tumultuous times, schemes of social support, including cash transfers, are increasingly indispensable. Yet the inadequacy of the nation-state frame of membership that such schemes depend on is becoming evermore evident, as non-citizens form a growing proportion of the populations that welfare states attempt to govern. In Presence and Social Obligation, James Ferguson argues that conceptual resources for solving this problem are closer to hand than we might think. Drawing on a rich anthropology of sharing, he argues that the obligation to share never depends only on membership, but also on presence: on being "here." Presence and Social Obligation strives to demonstrate that such obligatory sharing based on presence can be observed in the way that marginalized urban populations access state services, however unequally, across the global South. Examples show that such sharing with non-nationals is not some sort of utopian proposal but part of the everyday life of the modern service-delivering state. Presence and Social Obligation is a critical yet refreshing approach to an ever-growing way of being together. --

Uses the American game of baseball to show how the US maintains and advances its dominance over other nations. This book explains that the American approach to global relations is best understood as a competition - one in which the US, through the reshaping of economic theory and the global economy, imposes its own rules on a game played to win.

An Experiment in Modal Anthropology.

This is the long-awaited fifth edition of Marshall Sahlins' classic series of bon mots, ruminations, and musings on the ancients, anthropology, and much else in between.

As the People's Republic of China has grown in economic power, so too have concerns about what its sustained growth and expanding global influence might mean for the established global order. Explorations of this changing dynamic in daily reporting as well as most recent scholarship ignore the part played by forces emanating from the global capitalist system in the PRC's failures as well as its successes. China scholar Arif Dirlik reflects in Complicities on a wide range of concerns, from the Tiananmen Square tragedy to the spread of Confucius Institutes across more than four hundred campuses worldwide, including nearly one hundred in the United States. Eschewing popular stereotypes and simple explanations, Dirlik's discussion stresses foreign complicity in encouraging the PRC's imperial ambitions and disdain for human rights. Eager for economic gain, the United States, Europe, and other Western countries have been complicit in supporting the PRC's authoritarian capitalism. Such support has been a key factor in nourishing the PRC's hegemonic aspirations. Infatuation with the PRC's incorporation in global capitalism has been important to Communist Party leaders' ability to suppress all memory and mention of Tiananmen, and their continuing abuse of human rights. More recently, the PRC's focus has migrated to "soft power" as a means of expanding global influence, with organizations like the Confucius Institutes exploiting foreign educational institutions to promote the political aims of the state.

Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an "instrument of knowledge," an attempt to transform the way we see the world by unleashing the unconscious as a radical, new means of constructing reality. Born out of the crisis of civilization brought about by World War I, it presented a sustained challenge to scientific rationalism as a privileged mode of knowing. In certain ways, surrealism's critique of white, Western civilization anticipated many later attempts at producing alternate non-Eurocentric epistemologies. With Making Trouble, sociologist and cultural historian Derek Sayer explores what it might mean to take surrealism's critique of civilization seriously. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Sayer first establishes surrealism as an important intellectual antecedent to the study of the human sciences today. He then makes a compelling and well-written argument for rethinking surrealism as a contemporary methodological resource for all those who still look to the human sciences not only as a way to interpret the world, but also to change it.

Academics would not think of pursuing research without being aware of what colleagues in the field were achieving in their own work. Why should faculty not profit similarly with respect to their teaching? When they do so, teaching becomes more interesting for faculty and learning becomes more engaging and effective for students. In this pamphlet, Judith Shapiro issues a clarion call for the renewal of teaching--one based on the indispensability of community. A communal approach to teaching also brings into clearer focus the advantages of a residential liberal arts education and puts the contributions of virtual, on-line forms of communication into their proper perspective. This is must-have reading for everyone in higher education.

Brings together researchers whose work is deeply informed by the conceptual frameworks of anthropology-frameworks that are comparative as well as field-based. This book also provide analytical provocations that can help reframe some of the most important shifts in technology and society in the first half of the twenty-first century.

Drawing on reports in the media and conversations, the author shows that the Confucius Institutes are a threat to the principles of academic freedom and integrity at the foundation of our system of higher education.

What is ethics? Is it a system of transcendent moral imperatives, or can it be produced by ordinary people in everyday life? This title address these questions in a series of thought-provoking reflections that draw their inspiration from diverse sources, ranging from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea to cinematic depictions of the Ten Commandments.

How can economics become genuinely quantitative? This is the question that French sociologist Gabriel Tarde tackled at the end of his career. This title offers an introduction to the work of that forgotten genius of nineteenth-century social thought.

For decades, Israel and Palestine have been locked in ongoing conflict over land that each claims as its own. In 2011, the author lived in Ramallah in Palestine's occupied West Bank and taught in nearby Jerusalem. In this book, he offers a personal take on the conflict.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this work, the author seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure from the anthropocentric model and its rigid dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct phenomena.

In the mid-sixteenth century, Jesuit missionaries working in what is now Brazil were struck by what they called the inconstancy of the people they met, the indigenous Tupi-speaking tribes of the Atlantic coast. This title situates the Jesuit missionaries' accounts of the Tupi people in historical perspective.

Reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. Attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Theophile Gautier and E M Forster, it influenced movements as diverse as futurism and Dada.

Adapting the discontinuous and multitonal critical procedures of works like Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Laura Riding's "Anarchism Is Not Enough", this book subjects literary studies to a patacritical investigation. It argues that aesthetics is a science of exceptions, and that any given critical practice is also an exception from itself.

The $60 million Human Terrain System (HTS), an intelligence gathering program that embeds social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, dramatically illustrates the approach. This pamphlet critiques HTS, showing how the history of anthropology can be used to illuminate the problems of turning 'culture' into a military tool.

What can you say after you say that the world - or at least human life on it - looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity, the bases of human language, are possible? This title discusses about the relation between cosmos and consciousness.

Pasta and pizza, in all their infinitely delicious and universally appealing varieties, are inextricably connected to Italian identity. This book tells the story of how cuisine born in the south of Italy during the Arab conquest became a foundation for the creation of a nation.

The apparent resurgence of hostility toward Jews has been a theme in discussions of Europe; at the same time, adversities faced by continent's Muslim population have received increasing attention. This book offers a historical and cultural clarification of key terms in these problems.

After a playoff loss, Houston head coach, Jeff Van Gundy alleged that Yao Ming, his Chinese star center, was the victim of phantom calls. This book shows how this incident can be seen as a pivotal moment in the globalization of the NBA. It also explains how allegations of phantom calls challenge the fiction that America is a post-racial society.

Evolutionary psychology claims to be the authoritative science of "human nature." But do the answers that evolutionary psychologists provide about language, sex, and social relations add up? The author thinks not. In this book, she offers a sustained and accessible critique of the myths of human nature fabricated by evolutionary psychologists.