Download or read book American Communities Between the Popular and the Political written by Lukas Etter and published by Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the political relevance of the topic of community and the apparent volatility of its meanings, it is necessary to take time and create spaces for contemplation. How can theories of community be usefully applied to various forms of cultural production? How do notions of communitas affect representations as well as critiques of society and social developments? Based on a selection of papers given at the biennial conference of the Swiss Association for North American Studies in late 2016, this collection approaches discourses on literary texts and other cultural products from such angles as age studies, popular seriality, sustainability, and ecocriticism. While focused on community in contemporary American Studies, the articles in this collection also take into account some of the developments and issues surrounding community at a moment of heightened sensitivity towards this topic beyond academia.
Download or read book The Tribal Moment in American Politics written by Christine K. Gray and published by AltaMira Press. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the “tribal moment in American politics,” which occurred from the 1950s to the mid- to late-1970s, American Indians waged civil disobedience for tribal self-determination and fought from within the U.S. legal and political systems. The U.S. government responded characteristically, overall wielding its authority in incremental, frequently double-edged ways that simultaneously opened and restricted tribal options. The actions of Native Americans and public officials brought about a new era of tribal-American relations in which tribal sovereignty has become a central issue, underpinning self-determination, and involving the tribes, states, and federal government in intergovernmental cooperative activities as well as jurisdictional skirmishes. American Indian tribes struggle still with the impacts of a capitalist economy on their traditional ways of life. Most rely heavily on federal support. Yet they have also called on tribal sovereignty to protect themselves. Asking how and why the United States is willing to accept tribal sovereignty, this book examines the development of the “order” of Indian affairs. Beginning with the nation’s founding, it brings to light the hidden assumptions in that order. It examines the underlying deep contradictions that have existed in the relationship between the United States and the tribes as the order has evolved, up to and into the “tribal moment.”
Download or read book Our Towns written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BEST SELLER • The basis for the HBO documentary now streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
Download or read book American Communities Between the Popular and the Political written by Lukas Etter and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Next America written by Paul Taylor and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use. Today's Millennials -- well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty-somethings -- are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they'd hoped. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put stresses on our social safety net, and presented our elected leaders with a daunting challenge: How to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future. Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40 -- both unprecedented milestones. But other rapidly-aging economic powers like China, Germany, and Japan will have populations that are much older. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. If we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order, we can keep our economy second to none. But doing so means we have to rebalance the social compact that binds young and old. In tomorrow's world, yesterday's math will not add up. Drawing on Pew Research Center's extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we're headed -- toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.
Download or read book Democracy Remixed written by Cathy J. Cohen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Democracy Remixed, award-winning scholar Cathy J. Cohen offers an authoritative and empirically powerful analysis of the state of black youth in America today. Utilizing the results from the Black Youth Project, a groundbreaking nationwide survey, Cohen focuses on what young Black Americans actually experience and think--and underscores the political repercussions. Featuring stories from cities across the country, she reveals that black youth want, in large part, what most Americans want--a good job, a fulfilling life, safety, respect, and equality. But while this generation has much in common with the rest of America, they also believe that equality does not yet exist, at least not in their lives. Many believe that they are treated as second-class citizens. Moreover, for many the future seems bleak when they look at their neighborhoods, their schools, and even their own lives and choices. Through their words, these young people provide a complex and balanced picture of the intersection of opportunity and discrimination in their lives. Democracy Remixed provides the insight we need to transform the future of young Black Americans and American democracy.
Download or read book The Increasingly United States written by Daniel J. Hopkins and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a campaign for state or local office these days, you’re as likely today to hear accusations that an opponent advanced Obamacare or supported Donald Trump as you are to hear about issues affecting the state or local community. This is because American political behavior has become substantially more nationalized. American voters are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about what’s happening in Washington, DC, than in similar messages whether they are in the South, the Northeast, or the Midwest. Gone are the days when all politics was local. With The Increasingly United States, Daniel J. Hopkins explores this trend and its implications for the American political system. The change is significant in part because it works against a key rationale of America’s federalist system, which was built on the assumption that citizens would be more strongly attached to their states and localities. It also has profound implications for how voters are represented. If voters are well informed about state politics, for example, the governor has an incentive to deliver what voters—or at least a pivotal segment of them—want. But if voters are likely to back the same party in gubernatorial as in presidential elections irrespective of the governor’s actions in office, governors may instead come to see their ambitions as tethered more closely to their status in the national party.
Download or read book Rude Republic written by Glenn C. Altschuler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did politics and public affairs mean to those generations of Americans who first experienced democratic self-rule? Taking their cue from vibrant political campaigns and very high voter turnouts, historians have depicted the nineteenth century as an era of intense and widespread political enthusiasm. But rarely have these historians examined popular political engagement directly, or within the broader contexts of day-to-day life. In this bold and in-depth look at Americans and their politics, Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin argue for a more complex understanding of the "space" occupied by politics in nineteenth-century American society and culture. Mining such sources as diaries, letters, autobiographies, novels, cartoons, contested-election voter testimony to state legislative committees, and the partisan newspapers of representative American communities ranging from Massachusetts and Georgia to Texas and California, the authors explore a wide range of political actions and attitudes. They consider the enthusiastic commitment celebrated by historians together with various forms of skepticism, conflicted engagement, detachment, and hostility that rarely have been recognized as part of the American political landscape. Rude Republic sets the political parties and their noisy and attractive campaign spectacles, as well as the massive turnout of voters on election day, within the communal social structure and calendar, the local human landscape of farms, roads, and county towns, and the organizational capacities of emerging nineteenth-century institutions. Political action and engagement are set, too, within the tide of events: the construction of the mass-based party system, the gathering crisis over slavery and disunion, and the gradual expansion of government (and of cities) in the post-Civil War era. By placing the question of popular engagement within these broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, the authors bring new understanding to the complex trajectory of American democracy.
Download or read book The Vanishing Neighbor The Transformation of American Community written by Marc J. Dunkelman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-08-04 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping new look at the unheralded transformation that is eroding the foundations of American exceptionalism. Americans today find themselves mired in an era of uncertainty and frustration. The nation's safety net is pulling apart under its own weight; political compromise is viewed as a form of defeat; and our faith in the enduring concept of American exceptionalism appears increasingly outdated. But the American Age may not be ending. In The Vanishing Neighbor, Marc J. Dunkelman identifies an epochal shift in the structure of American life—a shift unnoticed by many. Routines that once put doctors and lawyers in touch with grocers and plumbers—interactions that encouraged debate and cultivated compromise—have changed dramatically since the postwar era. Both technology and the new routines of everyday life connect tight-knit circles and expand the breadth of our social landscapes, but they've sapped the commonplace, incidental interactions that for centuries have built local communities and fostered healthy debate. The disappearance of these once-central relationships—between people who are familiar but not close, or friendly but not intimate—lies at the root of America's economic woes and political gridlock. The institutions that were erected to support what Tocqueville called the "township"—that unique locus of the power of citizens—are failing because they haven't yet been molded to the realities of the new American community. It's time we moved beyond the debate over whether the changes being made to American life are good or bad and focus instead on understanding the tradeoffs. Our cities are less racially segregated than in decades past, but we’ve become less cognizant of what's happening in the lives of people from different economic backgrounds, education levels, or age groups. Familiar divisions have been replaced by cross-cutting networks—with profound effects for the way we resolve conflicts, spur innovation, and care for those in need. The good news is that the very transformation at the heart of our current anxiety holds the promise of more hope and prosperity than would have been possible under the old order. The Vanishing Neighbor argues persuasively that to win the future we need to adapt yesterday’s institutions to the realities of the twenty-first-century American community.
Download or read book Politics in States and Communities written by Thomas R. Dye and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1969 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively written, thought-provoking book which uses a clear, accessible approach to political conflict in American states and communities. It explores the what and the why behind current issues including illegal immigration, term limits, the fight against tobacco, campaign finance, sexual harassment, welfare reform, crime in the states, police and law enforcement, state correctional policies, the death penalty, abortion, affirmative action and more. This book compares the public policy and government management strategies of state and local governments, while focusing on the sources and nature of conflict. Coverage demonstrates how communities and states in America play an important role in the political life of the nation. For anyone wanting to learn more about State, Local, State and Local Government and Urban Politics.
Download or read book Strangers in Their Own Land written by Arlie Russell Hochschild and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump "A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.
Download or read book Why We Vote written by David E. Campbell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book The Politics of Asian Americans written by Pei-te Lien and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the perspectives of mass politics, this book challenges popular misconceptions about Asian Americans as politically apathetic, disloyal, fragmented, unsophisticated and inscrutable by showcasing results of the 2000-01 Multi City Asian American Political Survey.
Download or read book Race Politics and Community Development in U S Citites written by James Jennings and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As U.S. cities compete for economic resources, many city leaders adopt business-friendly policies, which boost opportunities for big businesses and institutions in their area. This progrowth strategy proposes to generate jobs for residents and higher tax revenues for local government. As a result, according to the logic of progrowth, economic benefits will trickle down to improve the living conditions in working-class and impoverished neighborhoods. In spite of this strategy, poverty rates among urban Latinos and Blacks is staggering, even in cities that have pursued neoliberal policies. These progrowth strategies seem to have had little or no impact on resolving problems like poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and the alienation of youth from communities of color. Community development has been and continues to be a response to these kinds of problems. But local political struggles can determine the direction of community development towards neighborhood empowerment and representation of neighborhood interests, versus, community development on behalf of progrowth policies. This issue of the ANNALS examines the interplay between progrowth politics, community development, and race. It goes well beyond a broad brushstroke of the topic and examines several specific cities and how they have implemented these strategies - and their impact on impoverished populations and race relations. By using concrete examples, the authors discuss how community development fits - or does not fit - within the framework of progrowth policies and politics. The volume covers several important themes: · Community development is not politically neutral and must be discussed within a broad political, economic, and even global context. · Local politics play a major role in determining the direction, nature, and possibilities of community development. · A high level and sustained community participation is crucial for the representation of low-income urban neighborhoods in cities pursing progrowth policies. · Race remains a fundamental issue I city politics and influences the political interplay between progrowth strategies and community development. Utilizing information and analysis across several disciplines, this issue offers important research for students, scholars, and practitioners in areas of political science, economics, sociology, urban studies, and race relations.
Download or read book The Big Sort written by Bill Bishop and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009-05-11 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist reveals the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided in this groundbreaking book. Armed with startling demographic data, Bill Bishop demonstrates how Americans have spent decades sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities—not by region or by state, but by city and neighborhood. With ever-increasing specificity, we choose the communities and media that are compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. In The Big Sort, Bishop explores how this phenomenon came to be, and its dire implications for our country. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
Download or read book Steadfast Democrats written by Ismail K. White and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the last half century, there has been a marked increase in ideological conservatism among African Americans, with nearly 50% of black Americans describing themselves as conservative in the 2000s, as compared to 10% in the 1970s. Support for redistributive initiatives has likewise declined. And yet, even as black Americans shift rightward on ideological and issue positions, Democratic Party identification has stayed remarkable steady, holding at 80% to 90%. It is this puzzle that White and Laird look to address in this new book: Why has ideological change failed to push black Americans into the Republican party? Most explanations for homogeneity have focused on individual dispositions, including ideology and group identity. White and Laird acknowledge that these are important, but point out that such explanations fail to account for continued political unity even in the face of individual ideological change and of individual incentives to defect from this common group behavior. The authors offer instead, or in addition, a behavioral explanation, arguing that black Americans maintain political unity through the establishment and enforcement of well-defined group expectations of black political behavior through a process they term racialized social constraint. The authors explain how black political norms came about, and what these norms are, then show (with the help of survey data and lab-in-field experiments) how such norms are enforced, and where this enforcement happens (through a focus on black institutions). They conclude by exploring the implications of the theory for electoral strategy, as well as explaining how this framework can be used to understand other voter communities"--
Download or read book Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania 1774 1800 written by Kenneth Owen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania challenges the ways we understand popular sovereignty in the American Revolution. Whereas previous histories place undue focus on elite political thought or analysis based on class, this study argues that it was ordinary citizens that cared most about the establishment of a proper, representative, publicly legitimate political process. Popular activism constrained the options available to leaders and created a system through which the actions of government were made more representative of the will of the community. Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania analyzes political developments in Pennsylvania from 1774, when Americans united in opposition to Britain's Intolerable Acts, through to 1800 and the election of Thomas Jefferson. It looks at the animating philosophy of the Pennsylvania state constitution of 1776, a 'radical manifesto' which espoused a vision of popular sovereignty in which government was devolved from the people only where necessary. Even when governmental institutions were necessary, their legitimacy rested on being able to clearly demonstrate that they operated on popular consent, expressed in a variety of forms of popular mobilization.
