Society and the Absurd

Shlomo G. Shoham is a world renowned criminologist, recipient of the Selinglueck Award from the American Society of Criminology in 1977 and the Israel Prize Laureate for 2003. He has published some 90 books in 20 languages and 2000 articles in 30 languages in the areas of criminology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, theology and art. He has developed an interdisciplinary personality theory which is most suitable for the explanation of deviance and alienation.

• CONTENTS: A Fragile Peace: Could a 'Race to the Bottom' Have Been Avoided?; The Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Retrospective; Ending the Conflict: Can the Parties Afford It?; Domestic Israeli Politics and the Conflict; Foundering Illusions: The Demise of the Oslo Process; Islamic Perspectives on the Oslo Process; From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?; Why Did Oslo Fail?: Lessons for the Future; The Oslo Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown; The Middle East Peace Process -- Where to Next?; A Fragile Peace: Are There Only Lessons of Failure?; The Contributors; Index.

"Society and the Absurd portrays the norms of madness as well as legally expectable behavior and the reality of those who reject normative standards. It stresses that every man can achieve truth and self-determination by recognizing that the outside norms are totally lacking justification. This confrontation at last is now available to those who read this succinct scholarly and forthright treatise..." -- Harold Laswell and Lawrence Freedman, The University of Chicago."Prof. Shoham is at once avant-garde and traditional, revolutionary and sensitive to everything sound and yet not hackneyed in the established body of academic usages. This book is likely to play an important role in the world-wide effort to take the true measure of and deal effectively with the human condition..." -- Zigmund Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds.