Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 298
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-78348-514-7 • Hardback • December 2015 • $184.00 • (£142.00)
978-1-78348-515-4 • Paperback • November 2015 • $62.00 • (£48.00)
978-1-78348-516-1 • eBook • November 2015 • $58.50 • (£45.00)
Jeff Lewis is Professor and Co-director of the Human Security and Disasters Research Program at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is author of Language Wars, Bali’s Silent Crisis, Cultural Studies, Crisis in the Global Mediasphere and Global Media Apocalypse.
Dedication / Acknowledgements / Introduction / 1. The Cultural Animal / 2. Savage Lovers: Language, Communalism and Violent Simplicity / 3. Symbolic Revolutions: Agriculture, Climate Change and the Beginnings of War / 4. Violent Complexity: Writing, God and the Ancient Enlightenment / 5. What is Enlightenment? Liberalism, Rom antic Science and the First Mass Media / 6. In the Age of Agitation: Modern Media, Violent Consumers and Imaginings of State / 7. Web of Worlds: Nature, Love and the Internet / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index
Expertly guiding readers through difficult transdisciplinary terrain, Jeff Lewis illuminates the deep cultural roots of human violence in a deeply erudite and compassionate way. Most importantly, he leaves us with the hope for the possibility of those fundamental social transformations that are the necessary for the further evolution of our species. This book is essential reading in the age of the anthropocene!
— Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Global Politics, University of Hawai'i-Manoa
An original approach to the problem of contemporary violence, combining a new theoretical framework, historical analyses, and significant case studies.
Presents a history of human violence and its expression in the vast weave of stories, myths, religious parables, philosophy, science and the proliferating narratives of the modern mediasphere.
Explains these contemporary conditions of violence in terms of a cultural volition driven by the continued amplification of humans’ sexual, economic and social desires.