In daily life we consciously attempt to reconcile what with why, factual knowledge with understanding. Currently, it is commonplace to presume that understanding is limited to the production of facts, which we place into narratives of understanding. We exist in a world of facts with no why to find, living in a culture that vacillates between identity and tolerance, authoritarianism and anarchism. Neglected is the importance of seeking good judgments in daily life, that is, of being wise. This book analyzes the millennial shift from seeking Truth to asserting subjective meanings, so that we can escape that sordid condition. It is necessary to challenge current dominant modes of thought and interpretation in order to live intelligently and peacefully. Western Civilization and the Enlightenment are historically associated with seeking to understand, with the goal of being right with an intelligible and therefore meaningful reality. That goal remains worthy of our efforts.

Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context. This book describes a research paradigm shared by Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and demonstrates how this paradigm can be put into practice. Relationships don’t just shape Indigenous reality, they are our reality. Indigenous researchers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony that is Indigenous research. Indigenous research is the ceremony of maintaining accountability to these relationships. For researchers to be accountable to all our relations, we must make careful choices in our selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis and finally in the way we present information.

Physicist Richard Carlson and biblical scholar Tremper Longman address the long-standing problem of how to relate scientific description of the beginnings of the universe with the biblical creation passages found in Genesis. Experts in their respective fields, these two authors provide a way to resolve seeming conflicting descriptions.

This book reinterprets the rise of the natural and social sciences as sources of political authority in modern America. Andrew Jewett demonstrates the remarkable persistence of a belief that the scientific enterprise carried with it a set of ethical values capable of grounding a democratic culture - a political function widely assigned to religion. The book traces the shifting formulations of this belief from the creation of the research universities in the Civil War era to the early Cold War years. It examines hundreds of leading scholars who viewed science not merely as a source of technical knowledge, but also as a resource for fostering cultural change. This vision generated surprisingly nuanced portraits of science in the years before the military-industrial complex and has much to teach us today about the relationship between science and democracy.

From a rationale of multiculturalism and a based on systemic approach grounded in the Arab-Islamic tradition, this book integrates history, education, science, and feminism to understand the implications of culture in social change, cultural identity, and cultural exchange.

Published in partnership with the International Association of School Librarianship, this work gathers together the latest and most important research on the topics of social justice and cultural competency in school libraries. Education systems today are expected to advance national goals related to fairness, equity, and social cohesion. Comprising articles written and collected in the journal of the International Association of School Librarianship and new articles written especially for this anthology, this book documents both empirical research and promising practices to help school librarians and teachers work together to promote social justice and develop learners' and educators' cultural competence. Both coeditors are experienced in working with authors from around the world and have participated in the development of effective and ethical standards and guidelines for school library practitioners. Brief real-life case studies of school librarians and teachers in action showcase efforts to improve the lives of marginalized or under-served students. School librarians inside and outside of the United States, school library educators and policymakers, and academic librarians building school librarianship collections will find this guide valuable.

Today, there is growing interest in conservation and anthropologists have an important role to play in helping conservation succeed for the sake of humanity and for the sake of other species. Equally important, however, is the fact that we, as the species that causes extinctions, have a moral responsibility to those whose evolutionary unfolding and very future we threaten. This volume is an examination of the relationship between conservation and the social sciences, particularly anthropology. It calls for increased collaboration between anthropologists, conservationists and environmental scientists, and advocates for a shift towards an environmentally focused perspective that embraces not only cultural values and human rights, but also the intrinsic value and rights to life of nonhuman species. This book demonstrates that cultural and biological diversity are intimately interlinked, and equally threatened by the industrialism that endangers the planet's life-giving processes. The consideration of ecological data, as well as an expansion of ethics that embraces more than one species, is essential to a well-rounded understanding of the connections between human behavior and environmental wellbeing. This book gives students and researchers in anthropology, conservation, environmental ethics and across the social sciences an invaluable insight into how innovative and intensive new interdisciplinary approaches, questions, ethics and subject pools can close the gap between culture and conservation.