Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)More to come so consider this just an appetizer...until I can, and even if I can't, get cookin'. Then again, some opinions may be best served half-baked. And as will become my usual disclaimer for opinion, it's all TIOLI (Take It Or Leave It.)
We all have our story. In today's world it seems, everyone thinks they are telling it, usually without even knowing what it is. Even among the impoverished cell phones can become more than chirping, tittering magaphones. Since there seems to be no end in sight to this failure of insight, "The Cartesian Anxiety" (Wieck, K. (1995). Sensemaking In Organizations. Sage Publications), the belief that "the eternity of being on a way that lacks an absolute destination" will continue to leave us vulnerable to rumor, gossip, fear-mongers, demagogues, theocrats, "the guiding hand of Providence" (S. Weil), and the soft-soft porn politics of those whose best story is a palindrome, "famous being famous." Paris Hilton would have made an equally good running mate, maybe better, since she was transparent, remains so about her talents, and doesn't need masculine props other than men's desire an women's disgust. Her narrative, while most entertaining, isn't so gonzo as to find her shooting wolves from helicopters.
The opening quote is worth some pondering for those on the way to becoming interested in a great read:
"Fugitives that we are, renegades fleeing a dry,
three dimensional logic, why should we care for truth...?
We yearn to escape into the infinity, into the vertigo
of the imagination. Let us become chimeras, then, and
let us satiate our thirst with the sacramental wine of
fairy-tales and legends."
- M.Karagatsis 1942, The Lost Island
(a fantastic Novella, tr. Mika Provata)
Click Here to see more reviews about: Myths, Stories, and Organizations: Premodern Narratives for Our Times
Each chapter of the book takes as its starting point a myth, a legend, a story or a fable and explores its contemporary relevance for a world of globalization, organizations and consumerism.Each contributor is inspired by a relatively short but rich text which is then used as a springboard for an analysis of contemporary social and organizational realities.The idea behind this book is that by looking at contemporary society through the prism of pre-modern narratives, certain features emerge in sharp relief, while others are found to be entrenched in societies across the ages. The texts that have inspired the authors of this collection differ-some are myths, some are stories, one is a children's tale.The origins of these texts differ, from the scriptural to the folkloric, from high art to oral tradition.What all the texts have in common is a distinct and compelling plot, a cast of recognizable characters with an ability to touch us and speak to us through the ages, and above all, a powerful symbolic aura, one that makes them identifiable landmarks in storytelling tradition.The driving force behind this project was each author's love for their narratives. It is not an exaggeration to say that the book is a true labor of love. The chapters are introduced by the editor and are arranged in four parts, each with its own introduction. The chapters in each part spring from stories that share a narrative character, and are labeled as Knowledge Narratives, Heroic Narratives, Tragic Narratives and Reflective Narratives. The book offers a set of probing, original and critical inquiries into the nature of human experience knowledge and truth, the nature of leadership, power and heroic achievement, postmodernity and its discontents, and emotion, identity and the nature of human relations in organizations. Different chapters deal, among pother things, with the nature of leadership in the face of terrorism, friendship, women's position in organizations, the struggle for identity, the curse of insatiable consumption and the ways the hero and heroine are constructed in our times.
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