"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

Beijing 2008: Preparing for Glory - Chinese Challenge in the 'Chinese Century' brings together international scholars with an interest in sport and politics and sinologists with an interest in China - past, present and future - to explore global reaction to the Beijing Olympics - China's anticipated moment of glory on the world stage. The Beijing Olympics was, first and foremost, a political act of assertion. It was also a statement of national intent, the culmination of ideological effort going back to 1949 and the outcome of political, social, cultural and economic change. From the moment of the birth of the 'New China' sport has been viewed as a means of internal and external projection illustrating the capacity of the system and people to more than hold their own with those of other nations. In short, sport has been the chosen 'stage' on which the Chinese perform in pursuit of world recognition, respect and esteem. This assertion is not hard to understand. China's 'century of humiliation' at the hands of first the West and then Japan remains a traumatic experience. Beijing 2008 wass to assist the restoration of China's national self-esteem. He Zhenliang, Chairman of the IOC Commission for the Culture of Olympic Education, has remarked pointedly that the most significant outcome of the Beijing Games will be the elevation of the self-confidence and sense of pride of the Chinese people. Beijing 2008 was an act of political self-renewal on the world stage. This Collection demonstrates that sport is inseparable from politics. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

What is the conscious mind? What is experience? In 1968, David Armstrong asked “What is a man?” and replied that a man is “a certain sort of material object”. This book starts from his question but proceeds along a different path. The traditional mind-brain identity theory is set aside, and a mind-object identity theory is proposed in its place: to be conscious of an object is simply to be made of that object. Consciousness is physical but not neural. This groundbreaking hypothesis is supported by recent empirical findings in both perception and neuroscience, and is herein tested against a series of objections of both conceptual and empirical nature: the traditional mind-brain identity arguments from illusion, hallucinations, dreams, and mental imagery. The theory is then compared with existing externalist approaches including disjunctivism, realism, embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind. Can experience and objects be one and the same?

A comprehensive proposal for a conceptual framework for describing conscious experience in dreams, integrating philosophy of mind, sleep and dream research, and interdisciplinary consciousness studies. Dreams, conceived as conscious experience or phenomenal states during sleep, offer an important contrast condition for theories of consciousness and the self. Yet, although there is a wealth of empirical research on sleep and dreaming, its potential contribution to consciousness research and philosophy of mind is largely overlooked. This might be due, in part, to a lack of conceptual clarity and an underlying disagreement about the nature of the phenomenon of dreaming itself. In Dreaming, Jennifer Windt lays the groundwork for solving this problem. She develops a conceptual framework describing not only what it means to say that dreams are conscious experiences but also how to locate dreams relative to such concepts as perception, hallucination, and imagination, as well as thinking, knowledge, belief, deception, and self-consciousness. Arguing that a conceptual framework must be not only conceptually sound but also phenomenologically plausible and carefully informed by neuroscientific research, Windt integrates her review of philosophical work on dreaming, both historical and contemporary, with a survey of the most important empirical findings. This allows her to work toward a systematic and comprehensive new theoretical understanding of dreaming informed by a critical reading of contemporary research findings. Windt's account demonstrates that a philosophical analysis of the concept of dreaming can provide an important enrichment and extension to the conceptual repertoire of discussions of consciousness and the self and raises new questions for future research.

This book explains in great detail and exceptional clarity the issues related to the Rapture of the Church, the government of the Antichrist, the "Great Tribulation," and all the apocalyptic judgments that God will pour out upon the world in the latter days. The Rapture of the Church will bring about the global collapse of the economic, political, and religious institutions around the world. Humanity will look for a leader who can put the world back together, offer them peace and security. So by popular acclamation, the world will host a false prince of peace the Bible calls the Antichrist. He will elate the masses by telling them what they want to hear. The Antichrist will push humanity to the deepest levels of degradation, vice, immorality, crime, war, violence, and rebellion against God. He will corrupt the social and moral order, and as a result, billions of people will die. He will plunge the world into spiritual darkness and lead humanity astray. We cannot begin to imagine the horror and the endless suffering humanity will experience through the chaos wrought by the Antichrist. The Bible says that the Antichrist's empire "shall devour the whole earth, trample it and break it in pieces" (Daniel 7:23). In reference to this dreadful period of human suffering, the Lord Jesus said, "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall" (Matthew 24:21). This will be a period characterized by widespread wars, which will bring death to billions of people. During this period, 25 and 33 percent of the world population will die in two major wars. If these two conflicts were to take place in our time, 3.56 billion of the world population would die.

The author of numerous previous books of broad appeal and scholarly acclaim on subjects ranging from sociological theory to religious ethics in government and economic systems, and the coauthor of a vastly influential treatise on The Social Construction of Reality, Berger unfolds in Redeeming Laughter a new perspective on a classic domain. Berger's comic terrain is at once noble and amusing, the terrain of Erasmus and Swift. Like his predecessors', Berger's writing in these pages is bolstered with exemplary learning and wry observation.

(2nd Edition: July 6, 2012) In The Chinese Dream, a groundbreaking book about the rising middle class in China, Forbes columnist and China expert Helen Wang challenges us to recognize that some of our fears about China are grossly misplaced. As a result of China's new capitalist paradigm, a burgeoning middle class-calculated to reach 800 million within the next fifteen years-is jumping aboard the consumerism train and riding it for all it's worth-a reality that may provide the answer to America's economic woes. And with China's increasing urbanization and top-down governmental approach, it now faces increasing energy, environmental, and health problems-problems that the U.S. can help solve. Through timely interviews, personal stories, and a historical perspective, China-born Wang takes us into the world of the Chinese entrepreneurial middle class to show how a growing global mindset and the realization of unity in diversity may ultimately provide the way to creating a saner, safer world for all.