Download or read book Politics on the Edges of Liberalism written by Benjamin Arditi and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-10 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative exploration of ways of thinking and doing politics that challenge liberal assumptions.'Politics on the edges of liberalism' refers to a grey zone where phenomena such as difference, populism, revolution and agitation turn the distinction between the inside and the outside of liberalism into a matter of dispute.Each chapter takes on one of these ideas, discussing the intellectual background animating the politics of the culture wars and its celebration of particularism over the universalism of classical liberal thought. Populism becomes a spectral recurrence rather than an outside of democracy. Agitation reappaers in emancipatory politics, and the idea of revolution is thought through outside the Jacobin view of insurrection, overthrow and total re-foundation.This is truly interdisciplinary inquiry at the cutting edge of contemporary debates in politics, critical theory, philosophy and sociology. The author draws from an impressive range of thinkers such as Kant, Benjamin, Derrida, Freu

Download or read book Societal Dynamics and Fragility written by Alexandre Marc and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Societal Dynamics and Fragility aims to address the social dimensions of fragility. Prepared as a complement to the 2011 World Development Report, this book frames fragility as a problem not only of state capacity, but also of relationships in society. Drawing on analytical work in Liberia, Central African Republic, Yemen, Indonesia (Aceh) and Haiti, it recommends placing social cohesion at the center of development efforts in fragile environments by cultivating an in-depth understanding of the societal dynamics at play in each context and adapting programs to address the sources of division that hinder state building. Specifically, the book advocates a focus on perceptions of injustice at least as much as measurable inequalities, and for creating space to facilitate constructive connections between institutions, especially between customary and state structures as well as often-nascent civil society institutions.

Download or read book Heterotopia and the City written by Michiel Dehaene and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heterotopia, literally meaning ‘other place’, is a rich concept in urban design that describes a space that is on the margins of ordered or civil society, and one that possesses multiple, fragmented or even incompatible meanings. The term has had an impact on architectural and urban theory since it was coined by Foucault in the late 1960s but it has remained a source of confusion and debate since. Heterotopia and the City seeks to clarify this concept and investigates the heterotopias which exist throughout our contemporary world: in museums, theme parks, malls, holiday resorts, gated communities, wellness hotels and festival markets. With theoretical contributions on the concept of heterotopia, including a new translation of Foucault’s influential 1967 text, Of Other Space and essays by well-known scholars, the book comprises a series of critical case studies, from Beaubourg to Bilbao, which probe a range of (post)urban transformations and which redirect the debate on the privatization of public space. Wastelands and terrains vagues are studied in detail in a section on urban activism and transgression and the reader gets a glimpse of the extremes of our dualized, postcivil condition through case studies on Jakarta, Dubai, and Kinshasa. Heterotopia and the City provides a collective effort to reposition heterotopia as a crucial concept for contemporary urban theory. The book will be of interest to all those wishing to understand the city in the emerging postcivil society and post-historical era. Planners, architects, cultural theorists, urbanists and academics will find this a valuable contribution to current critical argument.

Download or read book The Politics of Electoral Reform written by Alan Renwick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-04 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elections lie at the heart of democracy, and this book seeks to understand how the rules governing those elections are chosen. Drawing on both broad comparisons and detailed case studies, it focuses upon the electoral rules that govern what sorts of preferences voters can express and how votes translate into seats in a legislature. Through detailed examination of electoral reform politics in four countries (France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand), Alan Renwick shows how major electoral system changes in established democracies occur through two contrasting types of reform process. Renwick rejects the simple view that electoral systems always straightforwardly reflect the interests of the politicians in power. Politicians' motivations are complex; politicians are sometimes unable to pursue reforms they want; occasionally, they are forced to accept reforms they oppose. The Politics of Electoral Reform shows how voters and reform activists can have real power over electoral reform.

Download or read book Political Institutions written by Josep Maria Colomer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the relationship between the role and complexity of political institutions, and the effect of these factors on their policies, this text explores concepts, questions and insights based on social choice theory.

Download or read book Future Imperfect written by Jason P. Vest and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the first eight cinematic adaptations of Dick's fiction in light of their literary sources.

Download or read book Managing Democracy Managing Dissent written by Rebecca Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2014-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent comprises of twenty essays – written by writers, academics and activists and edited by Corporate Watch researcher Rebecca Fisher – which collectively argue that in today's 'democracy' elite interests are served by the limitations placed upon popular participation in decision-making, by the manipulation of public opinion through propaganda, and from the attempts to co-opt, marginalise and/or repress oppositional politics. This ground-breaking book reveals how despite its inherently anti-democratic nature, global capitalism is dependent upon the manipulation of the concept of democracy to survive. It thus exposes a potential weakness at the heart of capitalism, which activists and campaigners can usefully target in their struggle against oppression and environmental destruction. The volume includes examinations of the inherent contradiction between genuine democracy and corporate capitalism, the use of corporate media, the entertainment industry, and celebrity activists as propaganda vehicles, the attempts to co-opt and neutralise NGOs and social movements, the demonisation and repression of unco-opted dissent, and the imperialist agendas behind so-called 'democracy promotion' interventions..."--Publisher description.

Download or read book Anarchist Modernity written by Sho Konishi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mid-nineteenth century Russian radicals who witnessed the Meiji Restoration saw it as the most sweeping revolution in recent history and the impetus for future global progress. Acting outside imperial encounters, they initiated underground transnational networks with Japan. Prominent intellectuals and cultural figures, from Peter Kropotkin and Lev Tolstoy to Saigo Takamori and Tokutomi Roka, pursued these unofficial relationships through correspondence, travel, and networking, despite diplomatic and military conflicts between their respective nations.Tracing these non-state networks, Anarchist Modernity uncovers a major current in Japanese intellectual and cultural life between 1860 and 1930 that might be described as “cooperatist anarchist modernity”—a commitment to realizing a modern society through mutual aid and voluntary activity, without the intervention of state governance. These efforts later crystallized into such movements as the Nonwar Movement, Esperantism, and the popularization of the natural sciences.Examining cooperatist anarchism as an intellectual foundation of modern Japan, Sho Konishi offers a new approach to Japanese history that fundamentally challenges the “logic” of Western modernity. It looks beyond this foundational construct of modern history writing to understand people, practices, and cultural expressions that have been forgotten or dismissed as products of anti-modern nativist counter urges against the West."

Download or read book Ostrava and Its Jews written by David Lawson and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Ostrava and its Jews encapsulates in a small space (85 square miles) and a short time (ca. 150 years) a miniaturized history of Central Europe. It covers industrialization and massive economic growth, immigration and emigration, intolerance and tolerance, multi-culturalism and nationalism, high culture and social welfare, the Holocaust, communism and the diaspora. The book draws on family histories and eye-witness accounts, many unpublished. In 2005 members of Kingston Synagogue became interested in the origins of a Sefer Torah from Ostrava, housed there many years earlier. This research project, led initially by David Lawson, grew to include the Czech historian Hana Sustkova and Czech genealogist Libuse Salomonovicova. As their research progressed, a lively online community developed, reestablishing contacts between families from Sweden to Australia, and South America to Canada. In effect, resurrecting Jewish Ostrava in virtual and actual reality. The overarching theme is how, in a short time, immigrants-in this case Jews-transformed a small conservative market town into a vibrant, tolerant, caring, economic, and cultural powerhouse; how it was destroyed almost overnight by bigotry and intolerance; and to ask how far the Ostrava story can provide lessons or guidance on 21st century political issues. [Subject: Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, Immigration Studies, History]

Download or read book Precarity and Belonging written by Catherine S. Ramírez and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Precarity and Belonging examines how the movement of people and their incorporation, marginalization, and exclusion, under epochal conditions of labor and social precarity affecting both citizens and noncitizens, have challenged older notions of citizenship and alienage. This collection brings mobility, precarity, and citizenship together in order to explore the points of contact and friction, and, thus, the spaces for a possible politics of commonality between citizens and noncitizens.The editors ask: What does modern citizenship mean in a world of citizens, denizens, and noncitizens, such as undocumented migrants, guest workers, permanent residents, refugees, detainees, and stateless people? How is the concept of citizenship, based on assumptions of deservingness, legality, and productivity, challenged when people of various and competing statuses and differential citizenship practices interact with each other, revealing their co-constitutive connections? How is citizenship valued or revalued when labor and social precarity impact those who seemingly have formal rights and those who seemingly or effectively do not? This book interrogates such binaries as citizen/noncitizen, insider/outsider, entitled/unentitled, “legal”/“illegal,” and deserving/undeserving in order to explore the fluidity--that is, the dynamism and malleability--of the spectra of belonging.

Download or read book The Decline of Democracy in Turkey written by Kürşat Çınar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the roots of the decline of democracy and the rise of hegemonic parties in Turkey, by comparing the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with other comparable cases throughout the world. Offering a novel analysis in the rise of hegemonic parties, this book incorporates the analysis of state-society relations and institutionalist approaches. A hegemonic party is a single political party that dominates the scene in multi-party elections for extended periods of time. Focusing on the cases of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Russia and other countries through the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe, the book proves that hegemony building is possible through the combination of societal and institutional factors at the individual, local, and national levels. Multilingual comparative content analysis, rigorous statistical tests, and in-depth elite-level interviews support this theory, based on an extensive fieldwork analysis. Analysing contemporary as well as historical cases of hegemonic parties, the volume will be of interest to researchers and students in a broad range of areas including democratization, political parties and Turkish politics.

Download or read book The Zelmenyaners written by Moyshe Kulbak and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “masterpiece” of a comic novel following four generations of a Jewish family in Minsk torn asunder by the new Soviet reality (Forward). This is the first complete English-language translation of a classic of Yiddish literature, one of the great comic novels of the twentieth century. The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality. Four generations are depicted in riveting and often uproarious detail as they face the profound changes brought on by the demands of the Soviet regime and its collectivist, radical secularism. The resultant intergenerational showdowns—including disputes over the introduction of electricity, radio, or electric trolley—are rendered with humor, pathos, and a finely controlled satiric pen. Moyshe Kulbak, a contemporary of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, picks up where Sholem Aleichem left off a generation before, exploring in this book the transformation of Jewish life.

Download or read book Population and Politics written by John Gerring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes scale effects across a range of political dimensions, encompassing different political levels using a multi-method approach.

Download or read book The Indigenous World 2006 written by Sille Stidsen and published by IWGIA. This book was released on 2006-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This yearbook covers the period January-December 2005. IWGIA's yearbook is issued every year in May. Its purpose is to provide an update on the state of affairs of indigenous peoples worldwide." "Thanks to the contributions from indigenous and non-indigenous scholars and activists, The Indigenous World 2006 gives an overview of crucial developments in 2005 that have impacted on the indigenous peoples of the world."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Determinants of Democratization written by Jan Teorell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-28 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the determinants of democratization? Do the factors that move countries toward democracy also help them refrain from backsliding toward autocracy? This book attempts to answer these questions through a combination of a statistical analysis of social, economic, and international determinants of regime change in 165 countries around the world in 1972–2006, and case study work on nine episodes of democratization occurring in Argentina, Bolivia, Hungary, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, and Uruguay. The findings suggest that democracy is promoted by long-term structural forces such as economic prosperity, but also by peaceful popular uprisings and the institutional setup of authoritarian regimes. In the short-run, however, elite actors may play a key role, particularly through the importance of intra-regime splits. Jan Teorell argues that these results have important repercussions both for current theories of democratization and for the international community's effort in developing policies for democracy promotion.

Download or read book Democracy and Development written by Axel Hadenius and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-09-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a thorough investigation into the requisites of democracy. Based on data from all 132 sovereign states of the Third World, it first establishes a scale to measure the level of democracy existing in these countries. The author discusses various interpretations of the meaning of political democracy, and emerges with a specification of its essential principles which includes such elements as the holding of elections to central decision-making organs, and the maintenance of certain fundamental political liberties. Theories concerning the requisites of democratic government are then examined in order to explain the manifest differences in the level of democracy among the states of the Third World. The author employs statistical techniques including regression analysis to test theories related to socio-economic conditions, demographic and cultural factors, and institutional arrangements. This book thus provides a uniquely wide-ranging examination both of the elements which constitute democracy, and of the factors which explain its varying prevalence.

Download or read book Small is Democratic written by Dana Ott and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.