Von Laue contends that the world's frantic attempt to catch up with the West militarily, economically, and politically was the cause of many countries falling prey to totalitarian regimes and military strife.

This book is rooted in an epistemological approach to sociology in which the boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies are acknowledged and built on. It argues that knowledge is organised in conceptual spaces linked to paradigms and programmes which in turn are linked to ethnocentred knowledge processes; that until recently Western approaches, including Post-Colonial, French Social Science and American approaches, have dominated non-Western theories; and that Western theories have sometimes seemed incapable of explaining phenomena produced in other societies. It goes on to argue that the blurring of boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies is very important; and that such a Post-Western approach will mean co-production and co-construction of common knowledge, the recognition of ignored or forgotten scientific cultures and a "global change" in sociology which imposes theoretical and methodological detours, displacements, reversals and conversions. The book brings together a wide range of Western and Chinese sociologists who explore the consequences of this new approach in relation to many different issues and aspects of sociology.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year Winner of the AATSEEL Prize for Best Book in Cultural Studies Winner of the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies Winner of the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize Winner of the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize The Soviet Union was a notoriously closed society until Stalin’s death in 1953. Then, in the mid-1950s, a torrent of Western novels, films, and paintings invaded Soviet streets and homes, acquiring heightened emotional significance. To See Paris and Die is a history of this momentous opening to the West. At the heart of this history is a process of translation, in which Western figures took on Soviet roles: Pablo Picasso as a political rabble-rouser; Rockwell Kent as a quintessential American painter; Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway as teachers of love and courage under fire; J. D. Salinger and Giuseppe De Santis as saviors from Soviet clichés. Imported novels challenged fundamental tenets of Soviet ethics, while modernist paintings tested deep-seated notions of culture. Western films were eroticized even before viewers took their seats. The drama of cultural exchange and translation encompassed discovery as well as loss. Eleonory Gilburd explores the pleasure, longing, humiliation, and anger that Soviet citizens felt as they found themselves in the midst of this cross-cultural encounter. The main protagonists of To See Paris and Die are small-town teachers daydreaming of faraway places, college students vicariously discovering a wider world, and factory engineers striving for self-improvement. They invested Western imports with political and personal significance, transforming foreign texts into intimate belongings. With the end of the Soviet Union, the Soviet West disappeared from the cultural map. Gilburd’s history reveals how domesticated Western imports defined the last three decades of the Soviet Union, as well as its death and afterlife.

Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." —The Washington Post Book World Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

DIVA new and more concrete understanding of the inseparability of colonialism and modernity that also explores how the rhetoric of modernity disguises the logic of coloniality and how this rhetoric has been instrumental in establishing capitalism as the econ/div

The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term “Cold War Culture” is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether — or to what extent — the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.

Western civilization and world history are often seen as different, or even mutually exclusive, routes into historical studies. This volume shows that they can be successfully linked, providing a tool to see each subject in the context of the other, identifying influences and connections. Western Civilization in World History takes up the recent debates about the merits of the well-established 'Western civ' approach versus the newer field of world history. Peter N. Stearns outlines key aspects of Western civilization - often assumed rather than analyzed - and reviews them in a global context.