Essays Social

Kevin Powell is one of the most prolific and acclaimed American writers, thinkers, activists, and public speakers of the past three decades. His writings are important contributions to our national conversations on race, gender, class, politics, pop culture, celebrity, hip-hop, and the past, present, and future of the United States.

Después de un desastre, sea provocado por el hombre o por la naturaleza, ¿la gente se vuelve más altruista, ingeniosa y valiente? ¿A qué deben él ánimo las nuevas comunidades que surgen entre las ruinas y en momentos de crisis, con sus nuevos propósitos? ¿Qué revela su alegría sobre la posibilidad y el deseo de cambio social, normalmente insatisfecho? Solnit explora este fenómeno a través de algunas calamidades como el terremoto de 1906 en San Francisco, la explosión que casi acabó con Halifax en 1917, el terremoto de Ciudad de México de 1985, el 11-S en Nueva York y el huracán Katrina, que arrasó Nueva Orleans.

Clifford Geertz's first collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), made him a leading voice of anthropology's "symbolic" movement, which believed scholars should read the signs and symbols of a culture from the perspective of its natives. Geertz's approach helped anthropology reinvent itself as a scientific discipline that is still relevant today, making him - in the words of one critic - "a true giant of social and cultural theory."

In the century since the Armenian Genocide, Armenian survivors and their descendants have written of a vast range of experiences using storytelling and activism, two important aspects of Armenian culture. Wrestling with questions of home and self, diasporan Armenian writers bear the burden of repeatedly telling their history, as it remains widely erased and obfuscated. Telling this history requires a tangled balance of contextualizing the past and reporting on the present, of respecting a culture even while feeling lost within it.

Against the Written Word is the most important, most revolutionary book produced since the advent of the printing press; the book that will liberate readers from reading, writers from writing, and booksellers from peddling their despicable wares. This book ushers in a new era of freedom from reading and all its attendant bedfellows such as Enlightenment thinking and the mass alienation wrought by the phonetic alphabet. Against the Written Word will be a tremendous best seller and simultaneously the last book that anyone will listen to.

Esta antología reúne a escritores nacidos en algún lugar de Latinoamérica y que viven en España. Todos han conspirado en el apretado salón del cuento. Contiene, además, un mapa para escapar de los corsés ideológicos que tantos militares, políticos e intelectuales trataron de imponer al continente; un pergamino con veinte itinerarios que recogen distintas formas de huir, de volverse sospechoso en dos países a la vez, en el despegue y en el aterrizaje. Veinte maletas con ropa suficiente para vestir al anfitrión de huésped.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer edits a collection of Alain Locke's influential essays on the importance of the Black artist and the Black imagination.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Compass and learn to improve your communication skills.

In questo saggio dirompente e suggestivo, l’artista tedesca di origine afghana Moshtari Hilal prosegue in forma scritta – ma anche attraverso disegni e fotografie – la sua indagine sugli aspetti sociali e politici delle categorie estetiche. Secondo Hilal, infatti, la “bruttezza” è un fatto sociale, politico, persino economico, indubbiamente legato alla razzializzazione degli individui. Hilal sostiene che la bruttezza, così come la razza, non sia qualcosa che esista sul piano della realtà, ma piuttosto una categoria politico-economica utile a veicolare l’odio nei confronti di corpi e identità non conformi.

Author Joni B. Cole worries that Vlad the Impaler may be a distant cousin. She feuds with a dead medium. She thinks (or overthinks) about insulting birthday cards, power trips, and the real reason writers hate Amazon. And she wishes, really wishes, all those well-meaning people would stop talking about Guatemala. At once irreverent and thought provoking, Cole's collection is a joy ride through eclectic essays that arrive smack on that sweet spot between soul searching and social commentary, between humor and heft.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Es famoso el pesimismo de Schopenhauer, pero también su intachable honestidad. Para él, la filosofía tenía un fin específico: evitar que el ser humano le tema a la muerte. Estos Ensayos selectos agrupan los temas y territorios que más le interesaron: conocimiento, muerte, destino, arte.

In The Practice of Folklore: Essays Toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior.

This book is a culmination of thoughts and reflections triggered by the initial devastating wave of deaths from Covid-19, together with the mishandling of the responses and the manifestation of human fantasies, all of which were quite similar to what occurred during the Spanish flu pandemic at the time of World War I. Research on the history of plagues, wars, tyrants, and human behavior reinforced that there was "nothing new under the sun."

Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.

Con el espectro de la anarquía invocado por la derecha para sembrar el miedo, nunca ha sido más urgente una explicación convincente de la filosofía política conocida como anarquismo. Sobre el anarquismo arroja una luz muy necesaria sobre los fundamentos del pensamiento de Chomsky, específicamente su constante cuestionamiento de la legitimidad del poder atrincherado. El libro reúne algunos de sus ensayos y entrevistas, para proporcionar una breve y accesible introducción a su visión distintivamente optimista del anarquismo.

社会の姿は変われど人間の本質は変わらない。同じことを繰り返し、それが社会の循環をもたらしている。人間だけでなく万物に周期が存在する。

Reinventándonos, los retos de la Covid-19 y la nueva normalidad reúne las visiones de diversos especialistas sobre el impacto generado y el cambio que nos espera en campos como la ciencia, la educación, el deporte, la cultura o incluso en las formas de protegernos contra la violencia. Pero reúne, además, ejemplos de cómo a pesar de todo, y del nulo apoyo del Estado, los peruanos, una vez más, nos reinventamos.

Thoreau built his cabin near Walden Pond in 1845 on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walden which is considered one of his best works, describes Thoreau's two-year experience as a resident of Walden Pond. Focusing on the concept of self-knowledge, he encourages readers to get to know themselves and the world around them.

These are easily the most challenging essays on the planet. Pinwill is an original conceptual thinker with a dry sense of humor and turn of phrase. Whether its politics, national economics, history, theology, or money, his writing all comes from somewhere different. You’ll need to buy his essays to discover whether you love or hate them.