Research Catalog

Title

The trouble with culture : how computers are calming the culture wars / F. Allan Hanson.

Author

Hanson, F. Allan, 1939-

Publication

Albany : State University of New York Press, ©2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 192 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

"In this book, anthropologist F. Allan Hanson reveals an entirely unanticipated but vital link between two of the most widely discussed features of contemporary American society: the computer revolution and the culture wars. Hanson argues that the culture wars stem from a divergence in the evolutionary paths of society and culture. Societies have evolved significantly over the last few millennia from small bands of farmers or hunter-gatherers into huge, internally diverse nation-states, while cultures - the closed systems of meanings and symbols that kept small, face-to-face societies together - have failed to keep pace. If cultures became more open, Hanson contends, then the maladaptive rupture between society and culture would be healed and the clashes that currently beset us would be greatly diminished. Interweaving analysis with concrete case studies of common law, education, and other areas of contemporary life, Hanson demonstrates how the widespread use of computers is, in fact, encouraging more originality and open-mindedness, with the potential to ease polarization and calm the culture wars."--Jacket.

Subject

• Information technology > Social aspects
• Culture
• Classification > Social aspects
• Indexing > Social aspects
• Cultuurverandering
• Computers
• Classificatie
• Informationstechnik > Kultur
• Kultur > Informationstechnik
• Informationstechnik > Soziales

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-188) and index.

Contents

Culture gone bad -- Cultural contradiction and compartmentalization -- Fixing the trouble with culture: relativism, postmodernism, and automation -- The human rage to classify -- Classification and the common law -- Automated classification and indexing -- The automated mode in principle -- The automated mode in practice -- The new superorganic -- Opening culture, expanding individuals.

ISBN

• 0791470172
• 9780791470176
• 0791470180
• 9780791470183

LCCN

• 2006020753
• 99819318228

OCLC

• ocm70174992
• 70174992
• SCSB-8806954

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library