LSU Faculty Published Books

Follow

• 

  Why TV is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control

  2005
  Eileen R. Meehan

  For more than five decades, we've been told by pundits, commentators, advertisers, scholars, and politicians that television is both a window on the world and a mirror reflecting our culture. We've been led to believe that it shows us the world's events through news programs and, through entertainment programs, reflects the preferences, values, beliefs, and understandings shared by most Americans. We're told that if you don't like what you see on TV, don't blame the industry, blame yourself. This book dispels the myth that the television industry is just giving viewers the programming they want to see and, thus, we as viewers are 'responsible' for the existence of shows like Fear Factor and yet another Survivor. In fact, Eileen Meehan explains, viewers exert no demand in the market for ratings, advertising slots, program production, or telecasting. She also counters the idea that TV programs reflect our culture directly. Introducing us to the political economy of television, Meehan covers programming, corporate strategies, advertising, the misnomer of 'competition' among networks, and organizations that seek more industry accountability. She tells us why TV isn't our fault_and who's really to blame.

• 

  Reinventing Social Work: Reflections on the Metaphysics of Social Practice

  2005
  Brij Mohan

  The main purpose of this book is to educate both faculty and students about the nature and paradox of contemporary social practice - dynamics of diversity, discourse and development. Aspects and issues involve social constructs that are used and abused in the problem solving processes. From poverty and powerlessness to violence and terror we find human ingenuity's attempt to solve problems which persist. A strategic rethinking is therefore in order to see that knowledge, resources and opportunities are not lost in vain. The point of this work is meaningful, enduring resolution of human alienation and social misery. The analyses proffered here seek a unified response to uplift the human condition (at the expense of fragmented approaches and ineffective social interventions). A new theory of social work is one the intended outcomes of this study. This book will be of great interest to most social scientists, especially students and educators of social work, sociology, social policy, and social development who value critical self-refection as a vehicle of social transformation. There is no other book in the field that rivals this critical-analytical inter-disciplinary work. need to understand the meaning of their professional choices.

• 

  Dilemmas of Russian Capitalism: Fedor Chizhoz and Corporate Enterprise in the Railroad Age

  2005
  Thomas C. Owen

  Fedor Chizhov built the first railroad owned entirely by Russian stockholders, created Moscow's first bank and mutual credit society, and launched the first profitable steamship line based in Archangel. In this valuable book, Thomas Owen vividly illuminates the life and world of this seminal figure in early Russian capitalism.
  
  Chizhov condemned European capitalism as detrimental to the ideal of community and the well-being of workers and peasants. In his strategy of economic nationalism, Chizhov sought to motivate merchants to undertake new forms of corporate enterprise without undermining ethnic Russian culture. He faced numerous obstacles, from the lack of domestic investment capital to the shortage of enlightened entrepreneurial talent. But he reserved his harshest criticism for the tsarist ministers, whose incompetence and prejudice against private entrepreneurship proved his greatest hindrance.
  
  Richly documented from Chizhov's detailed diary, this work offers an insightful exploration of the institutional impediments to capitalism and the rule of law that plagued the tsarist empire and continue to bedevil post-Soviet Russia.

• 

  Life-Span Communication

  2005
  Loretta L. Pecchioni

  This innovative text emphasizes how communicative processes develop, are maintained, and change throughout the life span. Topics covered include language skills, interpersonal conflict management, socialization, care-giving, and relationship development. Core chapters examine specific communication processes from infancy through childhood and adolescence into middle age and later life.
  
  In its exploration of the role of communication in human development, this volume:
  *overviews the theoretical and methodological issues related to studying communication across the life span;
  *discusses foundations of communication: cognitive processes and language;
  *examines communication in relational contexts and communication competencies;
  *considers communication in leisure and the media with relevance to the life-span perspective; and
  *presents the implications of the life-span perspective for future research.
  
  This text is intended to be used in life-span communication courses and in interpersonal communication courses with a life-span focus, at an advanced or graduate level. It may also be used in courses on family communication, aging, and language development. It will serve as a supplemental text for courses in psychology, family studies, personal relationships, linguistics, and language studies.
  

• 

  Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki

  2005
  William F. Pinar

  Ted T. Aoki, the most prominent curriculum scholar of his generation in Canada, has influenced numerous scholars around the world. Curriculum in a New Key brings together his work, over a 30-year span, gathered here under the themes of reconceptualizing curriculum; language, culture, and curriculum; and narrative. Aoki's oeuvre is utterly unique--a complex interdisciplinary configuration of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and multiculturalism that is both theoretically and pedagogically sophisticated and speaks directly to teachers, practicing and prospective.
  
  Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki is an invaluable resource for graduate students, professors, and researchers in curriculum studies, and for students, faculty, and scholars of education generally.

• 

  The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy

  2005
  John Protevi

  The first ever dictionary of continental philosophy to be published. With over 450 clearly written definitions and articles by an international team of specialists, this authoritative dictionary covers the thinkers, topics and technical terms associated with the many fields known as 'continental' philosophy'. Special care has been taken to explain the complex terminology of many continental thinkers. Researchers, students and professional philosophers alike will find the dictionary an invaluable reference tool.Key features include:*in-depth entries on major figures and topics*over 190 shorter articles on other figures and topics*over 250 items on technical terms used by continental thinkers, from abjection [Kristeva] to worldhood [Heidegger]*coverage of related subjects that use continental terms and methods*extensive cross-referencing, allowing readers to relate and pursue ideas in depth.Entries include: Major Figures and Topics: Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Irigaray, Kant, NietzscheEpistemology, Feminism, German Idealism, Marxism, Phenomenology, Poststructuralism, Time, etc.Other figures and topics covered include: Adorno, Althusser, Arendt, Badiou, Barthes, Bergson, Butler, Haraway, Habermas, Kristeva, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Schelling, Schiller, Weber, Weil, Wittgenstein, Zizek, etc;African Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Death, Ecocriticism, Embodiment, Environmental Philosophy, Modernity, Philosophy of Nature, NeoThomism, Postcolonial Theory, Psychology, Race Theory, Sex / sexuality, Space, Speech Act Theory, Structuralism, Subject, 'Young Hegelians', etc.
  

• 

  Lieux propices. L'énonciation des lieux/le lieu de l'énonciation dans les contextes francophones interculturels

  2005
  Adelaide Russo

  Dans un monde où les forces de la mondialisation exercent une influence croissante, la notion de "lieu" représente une aporie fructueuse, un lieu propice d'analyse et de questionnement pour mieux comprendre la littérature et la pensée de notre époque. L'objectif de ce volume est l'analyse dynamique du "lieu" (au sens propre et figuré) en tant que réseau d'interrelations qui met en cause la constitution et la perception récentes de l'identité dans les contextes interculturels francophones mondiaux. Nous abordons donc la francophonie dans sa diversité, sa spécificité et sa généralité problématique. Les lieux en question peuvent être à la fois synonymes d'appartenance et/ou d'altérité, indicatifs de l'attachement à un locus amoenus et, simultanément, de la nécessité d'arpenter le monde pour mieux le comprendre. La diversité des optiques, des stratégies de lecture et des conclusions des auteurs publiés contribue à établir des dialogues inattendus.

• 

  Pricing Derivatives: The Financial Concepts Underlying the Mathematics of Pricing Derivatives

  2005
  Ambar Sengupta

  A fresh, fundamentals-based approach for accurate derivative pricing

  Pricing Derivatives presents a specialized approach to accurately pricing derivatives by stressing the conceptual foundations underlying the mathematics. Noted mathematics professor and investing consultant Ambar Sengupta provides a sound understanding of the essential topics of derivative pricing and outlines methodologies for arriving at exact pricing formulas based on the fundamental relationship between price and probability.

  Short, to-the-point chapters present original ideas and approaches for pricing derivative products, supplying professional money managers and institutional investors with the foundation they need to: Integrate both the theoretical and mathematical foundations of pricing derivatives Establish optimal prices in terms of the no-arbitrage principle Derive model-independent pricing formulas for options, futures, forwards, and other key derivatives

  Experience has shown that derivative traders must focus on conceptual, as opposed to trading, issues if they are to improve trading accuracy and profitability. Pricing Derivatives presents conceptually sound approaches for pricing derivatives and shows how to use them to compute specific pricing formulas.

  Pricing Derivatives unveils a fundamentally clear-cut approach to accurate derivative pricing. Based upon author Ambar Sengupta's years of consulting experience working with derivatives traders to hone their trading performance, it steers around the mechanics of popular financial models to focus on the conceptual foundations and underlying mathematics of pricing derivatives as well as other financial instruments.

  Exploring the relationshipbetween price and probability, Pricing Derivatives demonstrates methods for determining model-independent pricing formulas and applying them to specific market models for more distinct and applicable pricing formulas.

• 

  Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy

  2005
  James Stacey Taylor

  This volume brings together original essays addressing the theoretical foundations of the concept of autonomy, as well as essays investigating the relationship between autonomy and moral responsibility, freedom, political philosophy, and medical ethics. Written by prominent philosophers currently in these areas, the book represents cutting-edge research on the nature and value of autonomy and will be essential reading for a broad range of philosophers as well as psychologists.

• 

  Stakes and Kidneys: Why Markets in Human Body Parts are Morally Imperative

  2005
  James Stacey Taylor

  It is well known that the numbers of organs that become available each year for transplantation fall far short of the numbers that are actually required. In this boldly argued book James Stacey Taylor contends that, given both this shortage and the desperate poverty that some people endure, it is morally imperative that the current methods of organ procurement be supplemented by a legal, regulated market for human transplant organs purchased from live vendors.Taylor pays particular attention to outlining the implications that recognizing the moral legitimacy of these market transactions in human body parts and reproductive capacities have for public policy.

• 

  Mechanics of Composite Materials with MATLAB

  2005
  George Z. Voyiadjis

  This is a book for people who love mechanics of composite materials and ? MATLAB . We will use the popular computer package MATLAB as a matrix calculator for doing the numerical calculations needed in mechanics of c- posite materials. In particular, the steps of the mechanical calculations will be emphasized in this book. The reader will not ?nd ready-made MATLAB programs for use as black boxes. Instead step-by-step solutions of composite material mechanics problems are examined in detail using MATLAB. All the problems in the book assume linear elastic behavior in structural mechanics. The emphasis is not on mass computations or programming, but rather on learning the composite material mechanics computations and understanding of the underlying concepts. The basic aspects of the mechanics of ?ber-reinforced composite materials are covered in this book. This includes lamina analysis in both the local and global coordinate systems, laminate analysis, and failure theories of a lamina.
  

• 

  The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery

  2003
  Carville Earle

  The geography of contemporary U.S. political economy--the relocation of firms toward the sunbelt and abroad; the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt; and the rise of footloose producer services, NAFTA-inspired trade flows--has roots that run deep into our past. This innovative history by one of our most distinguished historical geographers traces their growth back to the seventeenth-century origins of liberalism, republicanism, and the regular financial crises by then endemic in capitalist societies. The problem the English and then the Americans faced was overcoming these crises while avoiding the political extremes of royal absolutism and later of socialism, communism, and fascism. The English way alternated between the doctrinaire ideologies and geographies of republicanism and liberalism. In 1776, by mixing elements of both, Americans created entirely new ideological alloys. Henceforth, policy regimes alternated between Democrats and Republicans and their distinctive fusions of liberal and republican ideology. Democrats combined publicanism's tenets of equality, diversified and volatile regions, and consumer revolution with liberalism's tenets of free trade, geographical consolidation, and dispersion (New Deal 'liberalism'). Republicans mixed liberalism's biases toward elites, regional specialization and stability, and producer revolution with republicanism's tilt toward nationalism, expansionism, and demographic concentration (Reagan's America). Muddying liberal and republican ideologies and geographies in ways that tempered their extremes, Americans would add one more twist. Thrice, upon the birth of the first, second, and third republics, they enlarged the geographical jurisdictions of the federal government, extended the domains of U.S. power, and redefined the nature of the state. Carville Earle defines these enlargements as the distributive and partisan 'sectional state' of the 1790s, the regulatory and redistributive 'national state' of the 1880s, and the neoliberal 'transnational state' of the 1980s. In tandem with the American dynamic of crisis-and-recovery, the author argues that these three 'states' have fashioned a dynamic and dialectical series of geographies that, as tools of ideology, have done much more to ensure the growth and viability of the U.S. economy, polity, and society.

• 

  Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts

  2002
  Evan M. Berman

  Known for its brevity and student-friendly approach, Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts remains one of the most popular introductory books on statistics for public policy and public administration students, using carefully selected examples tailored specifically for them. The Fourth Edition continues to offer a conceptual understanding of statistics that can be applied readily to the real-life challenges of public administrators and policy analysts. The book provides examples from the areas of human resources management, organizational behavior, budgeting, and public policy to illustrate how public administrators interact with and analyze data.

• 

  Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods: A Comparative Study

  2000
  Evangelos Triantaphyllou

  Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas in many disciplines. The central problem is how to evaluate a set of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. Although this problem is very relevant in practice, there are few methods available and their quality is hard to determine. Thus, the question `Which is the best method for a given problem?' has become one of the most important and challenging ones. This is exactly what this book has as its focus and why it is important. The author extensively compares, both theoretically and empirically, real-life MCDM issues and makes the reader aware of quite a number of surprising `abnormalities' with some of these methods. What makes this book so valuable and different is that even though the analyses are rigorous, the results can be understood even by the non-specialist. Audience: Researchers, practitioners, and students; it can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in business and engineering.