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Difference, the key term in deconstruction, has broken free of its rigorous philosophical context in the work of Jacques Derrida, and turned into an excuse for doing theory the easy way. Celebrating variety for its own sake, Antony Easthope argues, cultural criticism too readily ignores the role of the text itself in addressing the desire of the reader. With characteristic directness, he takes to task the foremost theorists of the current generation one by one, including Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, Dona Haraway, Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler. In a final tour de force, he contrasts what he calls the two Jakes, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, to bring out the way their respective theories need each other. The book is vintage Easthope: wide-ranging, fearless, witty and a radical challenge to complacency wherever it is to be found

This book examines the relevance of some major aspects and assumptions of contemporary social and cultural theory to one society that has a very different history and conception of its self-identity from the Western ones in which the modern social sciences have almost exclusively arisen. Japan presents arguably the biggest challenge to the preoccupations and epistemiology of much conventional sociological and cultural thinking. The issue is approached through the concept of "postmodernity", which has only recently been applied to Japan. The value of this construction is explored through an exa

The main arguments for significant black/white differences in intelligence are identified, & their prima facie plausibility is considered. The empirical meaningfulness of "intelligence" is defended, & results are applied to the idea that whites owe blacks compensation for performance deficits. Reasons that discussion of these topics is currently taboo are discussed. AA

The experiences of women engineers working in the BBC Television Service at Alexandra Palace, London, during the 1940s and 1950s, give insights into gender discrimination in broadcasting. These women first joined as radio engineers when the BBC was recruiting women during World War II, then transferred to television between 1946 and 1947. In interviews recorded in the 1990s, they talk about incidents of bullying and exclusion by men on crews who were hostile to women doing engineering jobs. Other memories are about being demoted from positions on camera and sound to vision mixing when the BBC Staff Association negotiated new grading for cameramen with BBC management at the expense of its female members. As the Television Service became established, women were eased out of skilled and responsible jobs when men returning from the war regained their positions in broadcast engineering.