PDF Outlines of Man's True Interest Download
- Author: Thomas Charles Boone
- Publisher:
- ISBN:
- Category : Conduct of life
- Languages : en
- Pages : 454
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My Kurdish background has sparked an interest in the study of identity and ethnicity that has always been present in me. My childhood experiences have been affected by various ethnic stories, narratives and wartime memories. I was born and raised in an area close to the Iraqi border and not far from the Turkish border. This border position might have helped me to reach a more vivid picture and understanding of such concepts as identity and ethnicity. Another reason for my interest in identity and ethnicity is related to the background of my studies in other geographical locations, mostly in Iran and its rural and deprived societies. These studies kept me in close contact with the ethnic groups that settle in underdeveloped and low-income areas, an encounter and a relationship that ultimately helped me to arrive at an understanding of the various dimensions and aspects of the question of ethnicity. The third reason for studying and researching identity and ethnicity is the requirement to distinguish these ethnicities from one another, as well as the flaws and shortcomings that have long existed in centre-oriented policies leading to an unfair distribution of wealth and power among the different geographical regions of a country. Additionally, the importance of peace in the geography and history of Iran, particularly at this pivotal time, further inspired me to conduct a study on identity and ethnicity with a focus on peace. Studies for this research focused more on the elite members of these ethnic groups than on ordinary people. The study makes a concerted effort to answer issues like how these people view themselves and their ethnicities, how they use that understanding to create a sense of otherness and distinction from other identities, and how they see themselves in the current political and social structure of Iranian society, and what they presume about ideas like convergence, political cooperation, mother tongue, as well as the central and peripheral ethnicities.
The time is post-World War II; the place is the United States and sporadically several "at-risk" foreign countries. The story is about a young scientist, Richard, who believes that the origins of violence and warfare can be found in the early life experiences of individuals. To test this belief, Richard insists he must have firsthand research experience, which means traveling to foreign countries to observe local populations under stress and to study their children. In the process, he meets many intriguing people and inadvertently gets entangled in a potentially dangerous espionage operation. William Charlesworth has created a story embodying two problems: on epistemological, the other biobehavioral. The first is the problem of acquiring the truth of something firsthand as a valid substitute for learning though potentially unreliable intermediaries such as the popular media. The second problem is the question of whether the origins of violence lie in normal resource competition between individuals rather than in some form of innate human pathology. While conducting research to deal with these problems, Charlesworth's scientist encounters individuals whose survival behavior challenges the value of posing both problems.