Socialist Thought: A Documentary History - Hardcover

Fried, Albert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231082649 ISBN 13: 9780231082648

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Nearly five centuries after the first wave of Catholic missionaries arrived in the New World to spread their Christian message, contemporary religious workers in the Bolivian highlands have begun to encourage Aymara Indians to return to traditional ritual practices. All but eradicated after hundreds of years of missionization, the "old ways" are now viewed as local cultural expressions of Christian values. In order to become more Christian, the Aymara must now become more Indian. This groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation," which upholds the beliefs and practices of a supposedly pristine Aymara culture as indigenous expressions of a more universal Christianity. Addressing essential questions in cultural anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial studies, and globalization studies, Catechizing Culture is a sophisticated documentation of the widespread shift from the politics of class to the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism.

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Review:

"A detailed and encompassing discussion." -- Emma Cervone, Current Anthropology

Synopsis:

In "Socialist Thought" Fried and Sanders set socialism within its historical context from pre-revolutionary France to the present by using major turning points such as 1789, when the French Revolution launched socialism, to establish a chronological framework. The authors contend that though its roots can be traced to the Bible, socialism truly came into being at the end of the 18th century, the age of democratic ideas, as a response to the Industrial Revolution and an attempt to change the consciousness of society and its material organization. The readings, emphasizing utopian socialists and Marx, demonstrate that socialist aspirations throughout history have been as varied as the individuals expressing them. Over the past three centuries, socialists have embraced both anti-authoritarianism and totalitarianism, class struggle and co-operation, revolution and democracy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0231082649
• ISBN 13: 9780231082648
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 619