Bertolt Brecht once worried that how we feel about the victims of a social problem can get in the way of the beauty and attraction of the problem itself. In this book, Walter Benn Michaels explores the same dilemma through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Michaels focuses on the work of several artists, mostly born in the 1970s and thus raised in a world where artistic ambition has been identified with a critique of autonomous form and of meaning as a function of intention. Michaels shows that these artists engage but also push beyond this critique of autonomy and intentionality, producing works that embody a new commitment to form and meaning. The explanation for this commitment, he argues, is these artists consciousness of making art in an economy riven by structural conflict, especially an unprecedented rise in inequality. For them, he argues, the relationship of the art work to the worldto its subject and to its beholderfunctions as an emblem of the relation between classes (rather than identities or subject positions). This book will join the short shelf of essential writings about the medium of photography."

A complete set of tools for analyzing any social problem.

Written from a distinctly Canadian point of view, Understanding Social Problems, Fourth Canadian Edition, examines how the structure and culture of societies contribute to social problems and their consequences. This text has strong pedagogical features and is comprehensive in its coverage, progressing from micro to macro levels of analysis. It focuses first on problems of health care, drug use, and crime, and then broadens to the widening concerns of population, health and welfare, science and technology, large-scale inequality and environmental problems. Known for its inclusive approach, Understanding Social Problems, Fourth Canadian Edition, explores powerful stories of real life people struggling with the challenges society and its problems have thrust upon them.

A complete set of tools for analyzing any social problem.

This hands-on, social problems "workbook" contains a 25 essays with accompanying exercises that address contemporary social problems and encourage critical and creative thinking about those problems. It features essays that are original, timely, and authoritative and that focus on issues that are personally relevant to today's society. The essays are written by experts in the specific areas in which they write and incorporate their own research findings and experiences into their essays and exercises. The introduction contains a sociological "tool kit" for analyzing problems in the introductory chapter along with an introduction to the various sociological approaches for addressing social problems. social institutions, social inequalities, social deviance, global social problems and social movement and change. For anyone interested in the field of social problems.

PRODUCT ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN CENGAGE UNLIMITED. UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS, progresses from micro to macro analysis, focusing first on health care, drugs and alcohol, families, and crime and then looking at the larger issues of poverty and inequality, population growth, aging, environmental problems, and global conflict.