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This chapter tells the story of how Fromm created the template both for liberal “traditional” public sociology and the radical “organic” public sociology of C. Wright Mills and the 1960s radicals. The story of Fromm’s Man for Himself’s (1947) influence on David Riesman and The Sane Society (1955) shaping of the New Left are told in the context of the 1950s debates about conformity, alienation and consumerism.

This chapter looks at the influence of Chinese culture on the Hong Kong classroom. It begins by describing the three schools of Chinese philosophy: Legalism, Daoism and Confucianism. Their effects on how teachers develop their strategies for classroom management are discussed. Also, four cultural features of the interpersonal relationships in the Hong Kong classroom are summarized as (1) hierarchical human relationships; (2) collectivism and conformity; (3) Chinese practices of childhood socialization; and (4) the social game of "face". Lastly, the yin and yang doctrine is adopted for understanding the complexity of the classroom and the teaching roles of teachers.

This chapter presents Irving Howe's 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” in which he attacks American intellectuals, particularly Lionel Trilling, for their complacency and complicity regarding the Cold War. Howe begins by commenting on the views of economist Joseph Schumpeter about the intellectuals before proceeding with a discussion of the New Deal and its two central policies, social legislation and state intervention in economic life. He then examines how American intellectuals view capitalism and argues that stratification, war economy, the growth of a mass society and mass culture are all aspects of the same historical process. Howe also reflects on conservatism in America, along with cultural conformism and the avant-garde. He ends his essay by offering his own thumbnail definition of the humanist vision of intellectual life.

Chapter five is dedicated to the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade which requests that WTO members follow relevant international standards when enacting ‘technical regulations,’ ‘standards,’ ‘conformity assessment,’ or any combination. These relevant international standards are discussed as is the requirement, when no international standards exists, that the ‘technical regulations,’ ‘standards,’ and ‘conformity assessment’ are applied in a nondiscriminatory manner and are the least restrictive means to reach a legitimate objective.

The fourth chapter chronicles how one participant, Brittany, rejected her presumed White biological identity and opted, instead, to pass for Black. Compelled to leave her Black peers in the core city and live with her father in the suburban community because her custodial parent, her mother, feared that her daughter is becoming Black, Brittany defied hegemonic normality and was consigned to a non privileged social space, not so much by her peers but by the adults at the school, as they describe her, “she talks like a Black girl.”

The fifth chapter presents the narrative of a middle class Black girl, Keyshia, who is the former BFF of the Black girl, Nadine, whose narrative is presented in chapter three. Unlike her former friend whose Black identity is never challenged, this student sees herself as not quite “Black enough.” In response to this perception, she appears to embrace her lower class Black friend by stealing her boyfriend and opting to disengage from her usual stellar academic performance, a change so profound that everyone notices, but no one intervenes or offers support.

The sixth chapter, following Chloe, details how a biracial student misrecognizes the violence embodied in socially approved normalcy and fails to connect her social problems to the structural violence endemic to the race and gender subordination documented in this book. Statusitis and her insatiable quest for hegemonic normalcy, especially regarding her hair, leads her to a kind of depression that is so severe she often finds it impossible to go to school.

The seventh chapter follows Ally as it reveals how a tall, self-identified, slightly overweight “good” White girl, longs to embody and reflect the idealized, hegemonic, gender-specific image affiliated with (elite) White women: beautiful, blond, petite and very thin. Her desire to embody elite Whiteness is so strong that she developed an eating disorder and was compelled to spend time in an appropriate clinic. Her unhealthy relationship with food continued during the study and was manifested in her inability to watch others eat, including her friends in the school cafeteria.

The conclusion of Downed by Friendly Fire briefly revisits the claims of symbolic and structural violence made in the earlier chapters, harvesting the narratives of the study participants for evidence of how each of them resists or embodies (or sometimes both embodies and resists) the imagined banality of normalcy. Moreover, it is where the authors makes the final case for the excavation, resuscitation and rehabilitation of violence—by another name.

In Chapter 3, the previous focus upon place is narrowed to that of ‘home’, an element of Being-in-the-world that is granted particular significance throughout Woolf’s writings. Heideggerian understandings of ‘not-Being-at-home’, ‘thrownness’, and ‘theyness’ are drawn upon in order to explore Woolf’s representations of women in the private space as ‘homeless at home.’ From her autobiographical accounts, to her essays and her fiction, Woolf emphasises the ways in which the physical spaces of the home – including its objects, and architectural features such as doors and rooms – are representative of the social order. Reflecting a recurrent preoccupation throughout her writings, Woolf also explores the sense of homelessness and deep unease experienced by social ‘outsiders’ such as Septimus Smith in Mrs Dalloway, and Louis and Rhoda in The Waves, each of whom unveil, question and reject society’s call for conformity and compliance.

This introductory chapter provides readers with a survey of 1950s and 1960s film and television (and their music), as well as an overview of the ongoing reconstruction of the Fifties and Sixties in contemporary media culture. After explaining the conceptual difference between the 1950s/Fifties and 1960s/Sixties, a brief discussion of All in the Family and its music helps to illuminate issues of nostalgia and the recycling of past culture today. Consideration of a variety of films helps to introduce the social and political themes addressed in media culture that are explored throughout the book; these themes include anxiety, suburbia, conformity, and gender. Finally, specific aspects of the visuals and scores of On the Beach (1959), The Children’s Hour (1961), The Ugly American (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Best Man (1964), and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) elucidate the central idea of “anxiety muted.”

Chapter 1 analyzes the first thirty-five years of Featley’s life, exploring how many of the features that underpin the major themes of Featley’s career—and which remerged throughout his life—were formed and nurtured during Featley’s early years in Oxford, Paris, and Cornwall. There he emerges as an ambitious young divine in pursuit of preferment; a shrewd minister, who attempted to position himself within the ecclesiastical spectrum; and a budding polemicist, whose polemical exchanges were motivated by a pastoral desire to protect the English Church. In these ways, Featley’s early years position him well for influence within the center of the ecclesiastical establishment.

Chapter 1 discusses Daniel Defoe’s writings on Dissent and the Succession during the last years of Queen Anne and the opening years of the reign of George I. His relationship with his Dissenting co-religionists had always been a complicated one, especially over the issue of Occasional Conformity. Although thinking it indefensible that Dissenters be forced out of public office by the Corporation and Test Acts, Defoe believed equally firmly that no conscientious Dissenter should engage in Occasional Conformity to get round the law. In 1702 he was imprisoned for publishing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, an ironical attack on High-Church opponents of Occasional Conformity which fooled readers on both sides. In 1713, he again risked using irony for polemical purposes, intervening dramatically in the growing public debate over who should succeed Queen Anne in the event of her death. Between February and April, he published a linked set of three ironical pamphlets putting forward (clearly spurious) arguments why it would be better if the Pretender succeeded, rather than the Elector George. The issues raised by the Protestant succession were central to Defoe’s political philosophy, as can be seen again in his Memoirs of the Church of Scotland (1717) where he argued that the principles that had animated Scottish Covenanters in their armed resistance to Charles II were the same as those which justified the Glorious Revolution and on which the Hanoverian Succession was founded.

Dissenters within Britain had to face a range of challenges when it came to their relationship with the state. While the Toleration Act (1689) allowed Dissenters in England willing to subscribe to the doctrinal components of the Thirty-Nine Articles and swear allegiance to the monarch freedom of worship, they, like their counterparts elsewhere, still laboured under a series of legal restrictions that rendered them second-class citizens. Attempts were made throughout the period to remove these legal restrictions and organizations, such as the London-based Dissenting Deputies, were eventually successful in repealing the Test and Corporation Acts. The length of time that this took reflects the uncertainty about how easily the state could combine a desire for order with a divergence of opinions, religious or otherwise, within it.

The fourth chapter shows the Marlborough-Godolphin partnership challenged by Nottingham for control of grand strategy. The expansion of the war into Portugal, Spain, the Mediterranean, and the Americas makes Godolphin anxious about over-extension of resources. He also has to bring about the union of England with a violently nationalist Scotland to fulfil the queen’s desire and safeguard the Protestant succession. Marlborough is prevented by the Dutch from following up his success in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire comes under threat from France. But Godolphin’s rigorous management of the Treasury gains the confidence of the City, thus lowering the interest rates for public credit, enabling him to pay subsidies to the Allies, exercise control over strategy, and fund Marlborough’s secret plan to save Vienna. With the aid of Robert Harley, Marlborough and Godolphin use the parliamentary contest over Occasional Conformity to divide the Tory opposition.

The fifth chapter shows the Marlborough-Godolphin partnership in full operation, as Godolphin aims to defeat the economy of France while Marlborough conquers the French army in the field. Nottingham resigns and is replaced as Secretary of State by Harley. Financed by Godolphin’s remittances, Marlborough marches his army into Germany and wins a decisive victory against the French at Blenheim. But he then makes a tour of German courts, leaving Godolphin to face Parliament alone in England. Godolphin sets a standard of ministerial responsibility by defending his advice to the queen to pass the Scots Act of Security. As the High Tories threaten to bring him down by tacking the Occasional Conformity bill to the Land Tax, the Whigs offer to support the war and Union. Godolphin’s association with one of the Whig leaders, Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax, and the marriage of Marlborough’s daughter into the Montagu family furthers the alliance.