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Synopsis
Like the McCarthy era of the 1950s, there is a strong current of paranoid social thought as the end of the century approaches. Conspiracy theories abound, not only in extremist ideologies and groups, but in commerce, science, and economics-arenas where a paranoid style is least expected. A curiosity about paranoia at its most reasonable is at the root of this volume.
Some pieces develop conversations that reveal the post-Cold War situations of countries such as Italy, Russia, Slovenia, and the United States where conspiratorial explanations of national dramas seem to make sense. Other pieces tackle paranoia as a style of debate in such diverse realms as science, psychotherapy, and popular entertainment, where conspiracy theories emerge as a compelling way to address the inadequacies of rational expertise and organization in the face of immense changes that undermine them. Like all of the volumes in the Late Edition series, Paranoia Within Reason offers a provocative challenge to our ways of understanding the ongoing watershed changes that face us.
Booknews
Anthropologists and other social scientists enlarge on interviews to illuminate the idea of paranoia as a mode of contemporary social thought. Among their topics are quantum teleportation and the Willies, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1996, ethnographic flashes and two quasi-aphorisms, three Russian entrepreneurs, National Socialism in London's East End, legacies of the Gulf War, Waco and millennialism, and working and riding out paranoia in the late 20th century. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)