Socio-cultural criticism is the continuous assessment and evaluation of developments within democratic society and hence a vital ingredient of democracy itself. Departing from the French Revolution, this study focuses upon a tradition of European criticism. On the whole, critics accepted that technological advance was irreversible but they opposed the assumption that this implied general progress. Instead, they stressed the negatives: class conflict, erosion of tradition, mechanization of life, fragmentation of society, loss of cultural differentiation. The approach is exclusively text-orientated. The result is a multi-coloured mosaic depicting an image of what has moved, confused or dismayed the European mind over a period of a century and a half. The intensity of concern has shaped our contemporary thought, awareness and outlook.

Idleness. Apathy. Restlessness. Procrastination. These are symptoms, of what early Christian theologians called despondency (acedia), a spiritual sickness rooted in a lack of care or effort. A condition as old as the ancients, despondency thrives in today¿s culture of leisure, anxiety, and digital distraction. Time and Despondency is a penetrating synthesis of ancient theology, spiritual memoir, and self-help practicality. It envisions despondency as the extension of a broken relationship with the experience of time. Driven by the fear of death and the anxiety of living, despondency drives us to abandon the present moment, forsaking the only temporal realm in which we have true fellowship with Christ. The remedies offered by time-honored Christian thinkers for this predicament constitute not only an antidote to despondency but also stepping stones back to the present moment. In regaining the sacredness of time, we re-encounter the Resurrection of Christ in the dark and restless moments of our lives.

First published in 1998, this volume takes an international approach to women’s evolving perspectives on self-employment, with a particular focus on women in India. Author Uschi Kraus-Harper draws on ten years of research and interviews, visits and observations, gathering women’s stories from around the world. This book deeply explores women’s situations, empowerment, changing perceptions of enterprise, the effects of poverty and gender and what success really means. It is about poor women and their relation to self-employment. It is also about why change has come to some women and not to others.

The Second Form of Despondency by Christian D. Larson presents a compassionate understanding of the varied forms and impacts of despondency. It also offers hopeful strategies for overcoming this state and reclaiming joy and positivity in life. Revive your inner joy with The Second Form of Despondency. Order your copy today and start your journey towards emotional wellbeing.

If you are struggling with depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness, or know someone who is, you are not alone. There is a way out. There is hope. There is life.This book is raw, unedited emotion written by Aaron when he was going through some of the hardest parts of his life. He has now released it to show those who are fighting the internal war personally that someone out there does understand exactly how confusing, disturbing, disruptive, messy the brutallity of anxiety and depression are. How hopeless, and often hate-filled and lonely it all seems. If you struggle with depression, or know someone who does, you are encouraged to read this book to maybe, hopefully, get some better understanding and insight as Aaron shares his life through poetry, short stories, and auto-biography, so that you may better understand the underlying message: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

"Can't Kim be happy?" This is the question asked of Kim Korson--a female Woody Allen--at her first (and last) shrink appointment, and her chief dilemma in this fresh-voiced, hilarious take on what it means to be a malcontent. "Go find your happy place!" Kim Korson's befuddled husband exclaims one day, as his disgruntled wife is listing about the house (as malcontents are wont to do.) It sounds simple enough--only Kim can't. Because she doesn't have one. I Don't Have a Happy Place is an exploration of Kim's oftentimes irrational, at times self-induced, and nearly perpetual state of unhappiness, told through a series of humorous, autobiographical essays.

Pastor John Piper shows how to sever the clinging roots of sin that ensnare us, including anxiety, pride, shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust in Battling Unbelief. When faith flickers, stoke the fire. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it offers some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us, until we believe that God is more desirable than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Only the power of God’s superior promises in the gospel can emancipate our hearts from servitude to the shallow promises and fleeting pleasures of sin. Delighting in the bounty of God’s glorious gospel promises will free us for a less sin-encumbered life, to the glory of Christ. Rooted in solid biblical reflection, this book aims to help guide you through the battles to the joys of victory by the power of the gospel and its superior pleasure.

Depression is difficult to define. It is commonly described as a chemical imbalance, a subjective experience of despondency, or even a semiotic construct. The various theories of depression--biochemical, psychological, cultural--often reflect one's philosophical anthropology. How one defines the human person is telling in how one defines mental disorder. Philosophy and the sciences tend to offer reductive explanations of what it means to be human, and such approaches rarely consider that we may be spiritual beings and so fail to entertain a theological approach. Peter J. Bellini invites us to reimagine the person in light of the image of God in Christ, the divine enfleshed in human weakness. The Cerulean Soul responds to real challenges in the sciences and philosophy and offers a relational theological anthropology shaped by a cruciform framework that assumes and affirms human contingency, limitation, and fallenness. With reference to Christ's incarnation, Bellini reveals how depression is inexorably tied to our relationship with God as his created beings: original, fallen, and renewed. Despondency serves as a biosocial and spiritual marker for our human weakness, brokenness, and spiritual struggle for meaning and wholeness. Further, it is a call to grow, to be restored, and to be made holy in the image of God in Christ. What emerges is a therapeia of the imago for depression that fills the gaps in our present attempts to determine the malady's etiology and treatment. Taking the missio Dei of union with the risen Christ as its goal, The Cerulean Soul opens up the perennial problem of human despondency to an eschatological trajectory of hope and peace, redemption and transformation, given freely in Christ through the healing and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Christoformity, informed by the subversive kingdom of God, gives new form to all persons, abled and disabled.

The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor after the postmetaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. In this book Rahel Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent work in the analytical tradition to reconceive alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and others, which manifests in feelings of helplessness and the despondent acceptance of ossified social roles and expectations. A revived approach to alienation helps critical social theory engage with phenomena such as meaninglessness, isolation, and indifference. By severing alienation's link to a problematic conception of human essence while retaining its social-philosophical content, Jaeggi provides resources for a renewed critique of social pathologies, a much-neglected concern in contemporary liberal political philosophy. Her work revisits the arguments of Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, placing them in dialogue with Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor.