Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity.

What determines our behaviors as human beings at the individual and organizational level? Although it often feels as though either our biology or our personality (or both) guides our decisions about issues large and small, increasing evidence suggests that ... culture trumps everything. This book investigates the powerful ways in which a variety of factors, to include behavioral norms, alternative corporate models, habit patterns, connectedness, trust, language, and time perspective, impact the creation of "quintessence" in organizations. It is this quintessence -- or lack thereof -- that ultimately determines the success and sustainability of organizations. As leaders, we get the organizations we deserve, as a direct result of the cultures we nourish (or neglect). If we want to ensure the best possible outcomes for ourselves and our organizations, we must focus on developing the cultures that foster success for all stakeholders, because ... culture trumps everything.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has traditionally been cast as a dreamer and a mystic, concerned with the ideals of transcendentalism rather than the realities of contemporary science and technology. In Laura Dassow Walls's view Emerson was a leader of the secular avant-garde in his day. He helped to establish science as the popular norm of truth in America and to modernize American popular thought. In addition, he became a hero to a post-Darwinian generation of Victorian Dissenters, exemplifying the strong connection between transcendentalism and later nineteenth-century science.In his early years as a minister, Emerson read widely in natural philosophy (or physics), chemistry, geology, botany, and comparative anatomy. When he left the church, it was to seek the truths written in the book of nature rather than in books of scripture. While visiting the Paris Museum of Natural History during his first European tour, Emerson experienced a revelation so intense that he declared, "I will be a naturalist." Once he was back in the United States, his first step in realizing this ambition was to deliver a series of lectures on natural science. These lectures formed the basis for his first publication, Nature (1836), and his writings ever after reflected his intense and continuing interest in science.Walls finds that Emerson matured just as the concept of "the two cultures" emerged, when the disciplines of literature and science were divorcing each other even as he called repeatedly for their marriage. Consequently, Walls writes, half of Emerson's thought has been invisible to us: science was central to Emerson, to his language, to the basic organization of his career. In Emerson's Life in Science, she makes the case that no study of literary history can be complete without embracing science as part of literature. Conversely, she maintains, no history of science is complete unless we consider the role played by writers of literature who helped to install science in the popular imagination.

In this ethnographic study, the author takes an agnostic stance towards the truth value of conspiracy theories and delves into the everyday lives of people active in the conspiracy milieu to understand better what the contemporary appeal of conspiracy theories is. Conspiracy theories have become popular cultural products, endorsed and shared by significant segments of Western societies. Yet our understanding of who these people are and why they are attracted by these alternative explanations of reality is hampered by their implicit and explicit pathologization. Drawing on a wide variety of empirical sources, this book shows in rich detail what conspiracy theories are about, which people are involved, how they see themselves, and what they practically do with these ideas in their everyday lives. The author inductively develops from these concrete descriptions more general theorizations of how to understand this burgeoning subculture. He concludes by situating conspiracy culture in an age of epistemic instability where societal conflicts over knowledge abound, and the Truth is no longer assured, but "out there" for us to grapple with. This book will be an important source for students and scholars from a range of disciplines interested in the depth and complexity of conspiracy culture, including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Communication Studies, Ethnology, Folklore Studies, History, Media Studies, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. More broadly, this study speaks to contemporary (public) debates about truth and knowledge in a supposedly post-truth era, including widespread popular distrusts towards elites, mainstream institutions and their knowledge.

Winner • National Council of Teachers of English - George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language The “philosopher of truth” (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker) returns with a clear-eyed and timely critique of our culture’s narcissistic obsession with thinking that “we” know and “they” don’t. Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet—where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them—has contributed to the rampant spread of “intellectual arrogance.” In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us. Interweaving the works of classic philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell and imposing them on a cybernetic future they could not have possibly even imagined, Lynch delves deeply into three core ideas that explain how we’ve gotten to the way we are: • our natural tendency to be overconfident in our knowledge; • the tribal politics that feed off our tendency; • and the way the outrage factory of social media spreads those politics of arrogance and blind conviction. In addition to identifying an ascendant “know-it-all-ism” in our culture, Lynch offers practical solutions for how we might start reversing this dangerous trend—from rejecting the banality of emoticons that rarely reveal insight to embracing the tenets of Socrates, who exemplified the humility of admitting how little we often know about the world, to the importance of dialogue if we want to know more. With bracing and deeply original analysis, Lynch holds a mirror up to American culture to reveal that the sources of our fragmentation start with our attitudes toward truth. Ultimately, Know-It-All Society makes a powerful new argument for the indispensable value of truth and humility in democracy.

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

FINALIST FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • A collection of essays and stories documenting the lived theology and spirituality we need to hear in order to lean into a more freeing, loving, and liberating faith—from the hosts of the beloved Truth’s Table podcast “The liberating work of Truth’s Table creates breathing room to finally have those conversations we’ve been needing to have.”—Morgan Harper Nichols, artist and poet Once upon a time, an activist, a theologian, and a psychologist walked into a group chat. Everything was laid out on the table: Dating. Politics. The Black church. Pop culture. Soon, other Black women began pulling up chairs to gather round. And so, the Truth’s Table podcast was born. In their literary debut, co-hosts Christina Edmondson, Michelle Higgins, and Ekemini Uwan offer stories by Black women and for Black women examining theology, politics, race, culture, and gender matters through a Christian lens. For anyone seeking to explore the spiritual dimensions of hot-button issues within the church, or anyone thirsty to deepen their faith, Truth’s Table provides exactly the survival guide we need, including: • Michelle Higgins’s unforgettable treatise revealing the way “racial reconciliation” is a spiritually bankrupt, empty promise that can often drain us of the ability to do real justice work • Ekemini Uwan’s exploration of Blackness as the image of God in the past, present, and future • Christina Edmondson’s reimagination of what a more just and liberating form of church discipline might look like—one that acknowledges and speaks to the trauma in the room These essays deliver a compelling theological re-education and pair the spiritual formation and political education necessary for Black women of faith.

All too often Christians, and even Christian leaders, don’t know how to deal with skeptical challenges of the Bible and the Christian faith. Few churches address the historical questions about the Bible and the theological questions concerning the God who, believers claim, has inspired the Bible. Too often Christian scholarship has been kept at arm’s length and even viewed with suspicion by the church. Speaking and writing in this kind of environment, Bart Ehrman—professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and author of four New York Times bestsellers—has found a captive audience. Ehrman’s popularity is due in large part to the fact that he is talking about things most people never learned about in church. Some have long given up on Christianity, and Ehrman is only reinforcing their decision to depart from their Christian upbringing. Others are trying to reconcile their faith with rational arguments and find Ehrman’s books both interesting and disturbing if not appealing. Truth in a Culture of Doubt takes a closer look at the key arguments skeptical scholars such as Ehrman keep repeating in radio interviews, debates, and in his their popular writings. If you are looking for insightful responses to critical arguments from a biblical perspective, easily accessible and thoughtfully presented, this book is for you. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive response to Ehrman’s popular works. It is presented in such a way that readers can either read straight through the book or use it as a reference when particular questions arise. Responding to skeptical scholars such as Ehrman, Truth in a Culture of Doubt takes readers on a journey to explain topics such as the Bible’s origins, the copying of the Bible, alleged contradictions in Scripture, and the relationship between God and evil. Written for all serious students of Scripture, this book will enable you to know how to respond to a wide variety of critical arguments raised against the reliability of Scripture and the truthfulness of Christianity.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. This boldly original book traces the evolution of documentary film and photography as they migrated onto digital platforms during the first decades of the twenty-first century. Kris Fallon examines the emergence of several key media forms—social networking and crowdsourcing, video games and virtual environments, big data and data visualization—and demonstrates the formative influence of political conflict and the documentary film tradition on their evolution and cultural integration. Focusing on particular moments of political rupture, Fallon argues that the ideological rifts of the period inspired the adoption and adaptation of newly available technologies to encourage social mobilization and political action, a function performed for much of the previous century by independent documentary film. Positioning documentary film and digital media side by side in the political sphere, Fallon asserts that “truth” now lies in a new set of media forms and discursive practices that implicitly shape the documentation of everything from widespread cultural spectacles like wars and presidential elections to more invisible or isolated phenomena like the Abu Ghraib torture scandal or the “fake news” debates of 2016.

We re becoming a culture that says there is no truth to be found about God. We also think that tolerance is about accepting every view as equally true but, realistically, with an exception excluding the Christian faith. Christians are rapidly becoming the target of secular media and aggressive atheist propaganda, marginalizing not just Christian beliefs, but also Christian people. False ideas within the body of Christ and the influence of culture crack our foundation of faith. Many women need to go back to the basis of their beliefs and strengthen confidence in their beliefs and in God. The goal of this study is to help every Christian effectively converse on truth by following basic steps: 1) See the need for these conversations, 2) Know what you believe, 3) Listen to discover the cultural view, 4) Learn to ask questions, 5) Respond to false beliefs, and 6) Engage in a lifestyle of total truth. Features Leader material (guides to questions and discussion with small group)Personal Study segments include 6 weeks of homework with additional free downloadable videos 6-session "Bible Study Book "with group and personal component, leader helps Benefits A trusted teacher, Mary Jo Sharp holds a Masters in Christian Apologetics from Biola University and is the first woman to become a Certified Apologetics Instructor through the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist ConventionBiblical truth that s reliableThis study can be used by a group of any size in a church or another setting, small group in a home, or as an individual userFor those who are seeking, new believers, or seasoned Christians who desire to see how the truth of Scripture is proven and can be trusted Author: A former atheist from the Pacific Northwest who thought religion was for the weak-minded, Mary Jo is now a Christian author and apologist. She holds a Masters in Christian Apologetics from Biola University and is the first woman to become a Certified Apologetics Instructor through the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. A clear communicator with a teacher's heart, she finds great joy in discussing the deep truths of her Savior. She enjoys conversing with people of differing views, and has even engaged in formal debates with Muslims. Mary Jo s first Bible study with LifeWay was "Why Do You Believe That?""