Contemporary public
debate has been impoverished by two competing trends. On the one hand the
increasing commercialisation of the visual media has meant that in-depth
commentary has given way to the ten-second soundbite. On the other hand
the explosion of scholarly knowledge has led to such a degree of specialisation
that academic discourse has ceased to be comprehensible to everyone else.
As a result writing on politics and culture tends to be either superficial
or incomprehensible and the concept of the ‘public intellectual’ has lost
its currency.
This was not always so—especially in the
field of politics. The high point of the English political pamphlet was
the seventeenth century, when a number of small printer-publishers responded
to the political ferment of the age with an outpouring of widely-accessible
pamphlets and tracts. Indeed Imprint Academic publishes a reprint series
under the banner of ‘The Rota’, offering facsimile editions of works such
as The World’s Mistake in Oliver Cromwell and Gangræna,
or a Catalogue and Discovery of Many of the Errours, Herecies . . .
In recent years the tradition of the political
pamphlet has declined—with publishers (other than think-tanks) rejecting
anything under 100,000 words as uneconomic. The result is that many a good
idea has ended up drowning in a sea of verbosity. However the introduction
of the digital press makes it possible to re-create a more exciting age
of publishing. Imprint Academic is proud to announce Societas: essays
in political and cultural criticism to fill the lacuna in public debate.
The authors are all experts in their own field, either scholarly or professional,
but the essays are aimed at a general audience and contain the minimum
of academic paraphernalia. Each book should take no more than an evening
to read.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY
BOARD
Professor Jeremy Black (University of Exeter)
Professor Robert Grant (University of
Glasgow)
Professor John Gray (London School of
Economics and Political Science)
Professor Robert Hazell (Constitution
Unit, University College London)
Professor Anthony O’Hear (University of
Bradford)
Professor Nicholas Humphrey (London School
of Economics and Political Science)
Dr. Efraim Podoksik (Hebrew University
of Jerusalem)
CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING
2007-8 TITLES
Current
Issue:
Atsuko Ichijo, The
Balancing Act: National Identity and Sovereignty for Britain in Europe
(November 2008)
Forthcoming
Titles:
John Haldane, Seeking
Meaning and Making Sense (January 2009)
Richard Berry, Independent:
The Rise of the Non-Aligned Politician (March 2009)
Tom Rubens, Progressive
Secular Society (May 2009)
Backlist
Titles:
Edzard Ernst, Healing,
Hype or Harm? Complementary or Alternative Medicine
R.A. Sharpe,
Forgiveness:
How Religion Endangers Morality
Austin Williams, The
Enemies of Progress
John Coleman, Froude
Today
Colin Beckley and Elspeth Waters,
Who
Holds the Moral High Ground?
Kieron O'Hara, Joseph
Conrad Today
Mary Midgley (ed.), Earthy
Realism: The Meaning of Gaia
David Hay, Why
Spirituality is Difficult for Westerners
Iain Brassington,
Public
Health and Globalisation
Alfred Sherman, Paradoxes
of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude
Tibor Machan, The
Right Road to Radical Freedom
Dolan Cummings (ed.), Debating
Humanism
John Papworth, Village
Democracy
Richard D. Ryder, Putting
Morality Back Into Politics
Henry Haslam, The
Moral Mind
Kieron O'Hara, The
Referendum Roundabout
Alan and Marten Shipman, Knowledge
Monopolies: The Academisation of Society
Paul Robinson, Doing
Less With Less: Making Britain more secure
Larry Arnhart, Darwinian
Conservatism
Neil MacCormick, Who's
Afraid of a European Constitution?
Alex Deane, The
Great Abdication
J.H. Grainger, Tony
Blair and the Ideal Type
Colin Talbot, The
Paradoxical Primate
Raymond Tallis, Why
the Mind is Not a Computer: A pocket lexicon of neuromythology
Mark Garnett, The
Snake That Swallowed Its Tail: Some contradictions in modern liberalism
Rob Weatherill, Our
Last Great Illusion, A radical psychoanalytical critique of therapy culture
Keith Sutherland, The
Party's Over
William Irwin Thompson, Self
and Society
Bruce Charlton and Peter Andras,
The
Modernization Imperative
Charles Banner and Alexander Deane,
Off
With Their Wigs! Judicial revolution in modern Britain
Ivo Mosley, Democracy,
Fascism and the New World Order
Tibor Machan, The
Liberty Option
Gordon Graham, Universities:
The Recovery of an Idea
Anthony Freeman, God
in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism
Gordon Graham, The
Case Against the Democratic State
Graham Allen MP,
The
Last Prime Minister: Being Honest About the UK Presidency
Occasional
Papers -- topical polemics in complimentary download format:
Fake and Farce: the War in Iraq by Citizen
Zed summary/TOC full
text (download with right mouse button) contact
author
SOCIETAS SUBSCRIPTION
INFORMATION
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Societas
is essentially a bi-monthly serial publication and registered subscribers
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