Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book, written by the author of the celebrated volume Six Guns and Society, explains why the myth of the Wild West is popular around the world. It shows how the cultural icon of the Wild West speaks to deep desires of individualism and liberty and offers a vision of social contract theory in which a free and equal individual (the cowboy) emerges from the state of nature (the wilderness) to build a civil society (the frontier community). The metaphor of the Wild West retained a commitment to some limited government (law and order) but rejected the notion of the fully codified state as too oppressive (the corrupt sheriff). Compelling and magnificently suggestive, the book unpacks one of the core icons of our time.
Emile Durkheim: Endless ‘Frontiers’
Emile Durkheim: Endless ‘Frontiers’
Durkheim was born in France in 1858 and died in 1917. He was a university professor in France all his life, the first professor to teach social science. He wanted to advance the science of sociology, and he founded the first social science journal in France. He wanted to use social science to improve social life, to make it more equal and civil. He admired industrial production just like Marx and Weber, but he was far more optimistic about the market. He agreed the industrial market would create class division if it operated by laissez-faire. But he argued that this market could be made civil and decent through government regulation and control. Government should be used to prevent ...
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