Download or read book Fragmented Citizens written by Stephen M. Engel and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping historical and political account of how our present-day policy debates around citizenship and equality came to be The landmark Supreme Court decision in June 2015 legalizing the right to same-sex marriage marked a major victory in gay and lesbian rights in the United States. Once subject to a patchwork of laws granting legal status to same-sex couples in some states and not others, gay and lesbian Americans now enjoy full legal status for their marriages wherever they travel or reside in the country. For many, the Supreme Court’s ruling means that gay and lesbian citizens are one step closer to full equality with the rest of America. In Fragmented Citizens, Stephen M. Engel contends that the present moment in gay and lesbian rights in America is indeed one of considerable advancement and change—but that there is still much to be done in shaping American institutions to recognize gays and lesbians as full citizens. With impressive scope and fascinating examples, Engel traces the relationship between gay and lesbian individuals and the government from the late nineteenth century through the present. Engel shows that gays and lesbians are more accurately described as fragmented citizens. Despite the marriage ruling, Engel argues that LGBT Americans still do not have full legal protections against workplace, housing, family, and other kinds of discrimination. There remains a continuing struggle of the state to control the sexuality of gay and lesbian citizens—they continue to be fragmented citizens. Engel argues that understanding the development of the idea of gay and lesbian individuals as ‘less-than-whole’ citizens can help us make sense of the government’s continued resistance to full equality despite massive changes in public opinion. Furthermore, he argues that it was the state’s ability to identify and control gay and lesbian citizens that allowed it to develop strong administrative capacities to manage all of its citizens in matters of immigration, labor relations, and even national security. The struggle for gay and lesbian rights, then, affected not only the lives of those seeking equality but also the very nature of American governance itself. Fragmented Citizens is a sweeping historical and political account of how our present-day policy debates around citizenship and equality came to be.
Download or read book Fragmented by Design written by Endsley Terrence Jones and published by Palmerston & Reed. This book was released on 2000-06-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With almost 100 municipalities, the largest of which is also its own county, the structure of local government in St. Louis is indeed unique and is one of the most frequently discussed and debates topics in the region. Critics claim its duplicated services are a wasteful use of resources while supporter praise the convenience afforded by numerous small city governments. Written by local political science scholar, E. Terrence Jones, Fragmented By Design is the first book to fully chronicle the development of this structure and its implications for the St. Louis region.
Download or read book Latino Immigrants in the United States written by Ronald L. Mize and published by Polity. This book was released on 2012-02-06 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely and important book introduces readers to the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States - Latinos - and their diverse conditions of departure and reception. A central theme of the book is the tension between the fact that Latino categories are most often assigned from above, and how those defined as Latino seek to make sense of and enliven a shared notion of identity from below. Providing a sophisticated introduction to emerging theoretical trends and social formations specific to Latino immigrants, chapters are structured around the topics of Latinidad or the idea of a pan-ethnic Latino identity, pathways to citizenship, cultural citizenship, labor, gender, transnationalism, and globalization. Specific areas of focus include the 2006 marches of the immigrant rights movement and the rise in neoliberal nativism (including both state-sponsored restrictions such as Arizona’s SB1070 and the hate crimes associated with Minutemen vigilantism). The book is a valuable contribution to immigration courses in sociology, history, ethnic studies, American Studies, and Latino Studies. It is one of the first, and certainly the most accessible, to fully take into account the plurality of experiences, identities, and national origins constituting the Latino category.
Download or read book Fragmented State Power and Forced Migration written by Eeva Nyk Nen and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing extensively on international and European law, international and national case law, as well as academic writings, this study offers a comprehensive and critical analysis on the issue of non-state actors in refugee law.
Download or read book Extending Citizenship Reconfiguring States written by Michael P. Hanagan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1999 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extending Citizenship, Reconfiguring States presents a thematically unified analysis of changing citizenship practices over two centuries-from the eve of the French Revolution to contemporary China.
Download or read book Why America Needs a Left written by Eli Zaretsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.
Download or read book Affluence and Freedom written by Pierre Charbonnier and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.
Download or read book Alter Globalization written by Geoffrey Pleyers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?
Download or read book Metamorphoses written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 747 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies. This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies.
Download or read book Why Cities Look the Way They Do written by Richard J. Williams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to think cities look the way they do because of the conscious work of architects, planners and builders. But what if the look of cities had less to do with design, and more to do with social, cultural, financial and political processes, and the way ordinary citizens interact with them? What if the city is a process as much as a design? Richard J. Williams takes the moment construction is finished as a beginning, tracing the myriad processes that produce the look of the contemporary global city. This book is the story of dramatic but unforeseen urban sights: how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city results in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories have been repurposed as creative hubs in a precarious postindustrial economy. It is also the story of how popular urban clichés and the fictional portrayal of cities powerfully shape the way we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us. Thought-provoking and original, Why Cities Look the Way They Do will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the contemporary city, shedding new light on humanity’s greatest collective invention.
Download or read book Citizen and Subject written by Mahmood Mamdani and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant--apartheid--as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. The result is a groundbreaking reassessment of colonial rule in Africa and its enduring aftereffects. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.
Download or read book Can Governments Earn Our Trust written by Donald F. Kettl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some analysts have called distrust the biggest governmental crisis of our time. It is unquestionably a huge problem, undermining confidence in our elected institutions, shrinking social capital, slowing innovation, and raising existential questions for democratic government itself. What’s behind the rising distrust in democracies around the world and can we do anything about it? In this lively and thought-provoking essay, Donald F. Kettl, a leading scholar of public policy and management, investigates the deep historical roots of distrust in government, exploring its effects on the social contract between citizens and their elected representatives. Most importantly, the book examines the strategies that present-day governments can follow to earn back our trust, so that the officials we elect can govern more effectively on our behalf.
Download or read book Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society written by Arne Hintz and published by Polity. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digitization has transformed the way we interact with our social, political and economic environments. While it has enhanced the potential for citizen agency, it has also enabled the collection and analysis of unprecedented amounts of personal data. This requires us to fundamentally rethink our understanding of digital citizenship, based on an awareness of the ways in which citizens are increasingly monitored, categorized, sorted and profiled. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society offers a new understanding of citizenship in an age defined by data collection and processing. The book traces the social forces that shape digital citizenship by investigating regulatory frameworks, mediated public debate, citizens' knowledge and understanding, and possibilities for dissent and resistance.
Download or read book Strangers at Our Door written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Refugees from the violence of wars and the brutality of famished lives have knocked on other people's doors since the beginning of time. For the people behind the doors, these uninvited guests were always strangers, and strangers tend to generate fear and anxiety precisely because they are unknown. Today we find ourselves confronted with an extreme form of this historical dynamic, as our TV screens and newspapers are filled with accounts of a 'migration crisis', ostensibly overwhelming Europe and portending the collapse of our way of life. This anxious debate has given rise to a veritable 'moral panic' - a feeling of fear spreading among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. In this short book Zygmunt Bauman analyses the origins, contours and impact of this moral panic - he dissects, in short, the present-day migration panic. He shows how politicians have exploited fears and anxieties that have become widespread, especially among those who have already lost so much - the disinherited and the poor. But he argues that the policy of mutual separation, of building walls rather than bridges, is misguided. It may bring some short-term reassurance but it is doomed to fail in the long run. We are faced with a crisis of humanity, and the only exit from this crisis is to recognize our growing interdependence as a species and to find new ways to live together in solidarity and cooperation, amidst strangers who may hold opinions and preferences different from our own.
Download or read book Time and Social Theory written by Barbara Adam and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time is at the forefront of contemporary scholarly inquiry across the natural sciences and the humanities. Yet the social sciences have remained substantially isolated from time-related concerns. This book argues that time should be a key part of social theory and focuses concern upon issues which have emerged as central to an understanding of today's social world. Through her analysis of time Barbara Adam shows that our contemporary social theories are firmly embedded in Newtonian science and classical dualistic philosophy. She exposes these classical frameworks of thought as inadequate to the task of conceptualizing our contemporary world of standardized time, computers, nuclear power and global telecommunications.
Download or read book Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens written by Matthew Dean Hindman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace.
