Download or read book Reformatting Politics written by Jodi Dean and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are being used by civil society organizations (CSOs) to achieve their aims through activities and networks that cross national borders. These new ICTs (the internet, mobile phones, satellite radio and television) have allowed these civil society organizations to form extensive networks linking the local and the global in new ways and to flourish internationally in ways that were not possible without them. Reformatting Politics consists of four sections containing essays by some of the top scholars and activists working at the intersections of networked societies, civil society organizations, and information technology. The book also includes a section that takes a critical look at the UN World Summit of Information Society and the role that global governance has played and will play in the use and dissemination of these new technologies. Finally, the contributors aim to influence this important and emerging field of inquiry by posing a set of questions and directions for future research. In sum, Reformatting Politics is a fresh look at the way critical network practice through the use of information technology is reformatting the terms and terrains of global politics.
Download or read book European Public Spheres written by Thomas Risse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the emergence of (and limitations to) a common European public sphere and the advantages and problems surrounding this development.
Download or read book Social Movements and Democracy in the 21st Century written by Dylan Taylor and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-16 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contends that the impasse of the Left today is in part, a result of an anarchist ‘common sense’ among activists. The author argues that the vital dynamics of anarchism and social movements need to be combined with a reappraisal of the Communist party and state. While cynicism towards capitalism and existing political institutions is plentiful, this book argues that the Left appears mired in a reactive politics of resistance, unable to formulate programmes for substantive social change. Drawing insights from the history of the Left, political economy, contemporary critical theory and an in-depth study of Occupy, the author provides concrete suggestions as to how the Left might ‘claim the twenty-first century’ and realise a more equitable social order. Social Movements and Democracy in the 21st Century challenges activists and scholars to rethink social movements and political organisation, and to actively work towards enduring social change. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of social movement studies, Left theory, critical theory, political sociology and Marxism, as well as anyone with an interest in ‘political change’.
Download or read book Plastic Water written by Gay Hawkins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why branded bottles of water have insinuated themselves into our daily lives, and what the implications are for safe urban water supplies. How did branded bottles of water insinuate themselves into our daily lives? Why did water become an economic good—no longer a common resource but a commercial product, in industry parlance a “fast moving consumer good,” or FMCG? Plastic Water examines the processes behind this transformation. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water's simultaneous existence as, among other things, a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water—the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices. The book considers the assemblage and emergence of a mass market for water, from the invention of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle in 1973 to the development of “hydration science” that accompanied the rise of jogging in the United States. It looks at what bottles do in the world, tracing drinking and disposal practices in three Asian cities with unreliable access to safe water: Bangkok, Chennai, and Hanoi. And it considers the possibility of ethical drinking, examining campaigns to “say no” to the bottle and promote the consumption of tap water in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
Download or read book The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy written by Robin Mansell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-03-03 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy offers insights into the boundaries of this field of study, assesses why it is important, who is affected, and with what political, economic, social and cultural consequences. Provides the most up to date and comprehensive collection of essays from top scholars in the field Includes contributions from western and eastern Europe, North and Central America, Africa and Asia Offers new conceptual frameworks and new methodologies for mapping the contours of emergent global media and communication policy Draws on theory and empirical research to offer multiple perspectives on the local, national, regional and global forums in which policy debate occurs
Download or read book The Dialectics of Democracy written by Dimitrios Kivotidis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the democratic form and the struggle for democracy reflects, influences and shapes the struggle for social emancipation. In the context of increased exploitation, rising inequality, and intensified struggle for social justice in the aftermath of the economic crisis, the channelling of populism through liberal democratic institutions has had contradictory effects: giving rise to both Corbyn and Brexit, Sanders and Trump, Syriza and the Golden Dawn, to name but a few. How can we make sense of these developments? In response, this book approaches the idea of democracy from a socialist constitutionalist standpoint and explores institutional forms and principles that challenge and aim at the transformation of the extant social order. This process involves the challenging of well-established ideas of the liberal viewpoint, as well as an unwavering focus on the issue of class rule which enables the highlighting of limitations of -not only mainstream but also heterodox- contemporary approaches to constitutionalism and democracy. Ultimately, democracy is conceived as a process of struggle for creating the conditions, material as well as intellectual, for its actualisation. This significant work of legal and political theory will be of considerable interest to those working in these areas to make sense of contemporary developments, and to further the causes of social justice and social emancipation.
Download or read book Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy written by Lars Trägårdh and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the emergence of the dissident “parallel polis” in Eastern Europe, civil society has become a “new superpower,” influencing democratic transformations, human rights, and international co-operation; co-designing economic trends, security and defense; reshaping the information society; and generating new ideas on the environment, health, and the “good life.” This volume seeks to compare and reassess the role of civil society in the rich West, the poorer South, and the quickly expanding East in the context of the twenty-first century’s challenges. It presents a novel perspective on civic movements testing John Keane’s notion of “monitory democracy”: an emerging order of public scrutiny and monitoring of power.
Download or read book The Fight Over Digital Rights written by Bill D. Herman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-04 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the debate over digital copyright and the new tools of political communication involved in the advocacy around the issue.
Download or read book Interact Or Die written by Joke Brouwer and published by V2_ publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Interaction is a defining characteristic of every living being. Bodies and objects build connections, from networks, and then through interaction, achieve organization, structure, memory and heredity, the only selection criterion for interaction is whether it works, that is, whether it is operational." "Interactivity is on the one hand a method of bringing something into being - a form, a structure, an organization, a body, an institute, a work of art - and on the other hand a way of dealing with it."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Cosmopolitanism and the New News Media written by Lilie Chouliaraki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-07 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Haiti earthquake are only some of the recent examples of the power of new media to transform journalism. Some celebrate this power as a new cosmopolitanism that challenges the traditional boundaries of foreign reporting, yet others fear that the new media simply reproduce old power relations in new ways. It is this important controversy around the role of new media in shaping a cosmopolitan journalism that offers the starting point of this book. By bringing together an impressive range of leading theorists in the field of journalism and media studies, this collection insightfully explores how Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are taking the voice of ordinary citizens into the forefront of mainstream journalism and how, in so doing, they give shape to new public conceptions of authenticity and solidarity. This collection is directed towards a readership of students and scholars in media and communications, digital and information studies, journalism, sociology as well as other social sciences that engage with the role of new media in shaping contemporary social life. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.
Download or read book The Cultural Life of Machine Learning written by Jonathan Roberge and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the work of historians and sociologists with perspectives from media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, and information studies to address the origins, practices, and possible futures of contemporary machine learning. From its foundations in 1950s and 1960s pattern recognition and neural network research to the modern-day social and technological dramas of DeepMind’s AlphaGo, predictive political forecasting, and the governmentality of extractive logistics, machine learning has become controversial precisely because of its increased embeddedness and agency in our everyday lives. How can we disentangle the history of machine learning from conventional histories of artificial intelligence? How can machinic agents’ capacity for novelty be theorized? Can reform initiatives for fairness and equity in AI and machine learning be realized, or are they doomed to cooptation and failure? And just what kind of “learning” does machine learning truly represent? We empirically address these questions and more to provide a baseline for future research. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Download or read book The Changing Faces of Journalism written by Barbie Zelizer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Changing Faces of Journalism: Tabloidization, Technology and Truthiness brings together an array of top scholars who consider how contemporary journalism has wrestled with its changing parameters and who address how notions of tabloidization, technology and truthiness have altered our understanding of journalism.
Download or read book Civil Society Philanthropy and the Fate of the Commons written by Bruce R. Sievers and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2010 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the historical development of civil society and philanthropy in the West and analyzes their role in solving the problems faced by modern liberal democracy
Download or read book NGOs written by Thomas Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first historical account of international NGOs, from the French Revolution to the present, Thomas Davies places the contemporary debate on transnational civil society in context. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, which sees transnational civil society as a recent development taking place along a linear trajectory, he explores the long history of international NGOs in terms of a cyclical process characterized by three major waves: the era to 1914, the inter-war years, and the period since the Second World War. The breadth of transnational civil society activities explored is unprecedented in its diversity, from business associations to humanitarian organizations, peace groups to socialist movements, feminist organizations to pan-nationalist groups. The geographical scope covered is also extensive, and the analysis is richly supported with reference to a diverse array of previously unexplored sources. By revealing the role of civil society rather than governmental actors in the major trans- formations of the past two-and-a-half centuries, this book is for anyone interested in obtaining a new perspective on world history. The analysis concludes in the second decade of the twenty-first century, providing insights into the trajectory of transnational civil society in the post-9/11 and post-financial crisis eras.
Download or read book Networks and States written by Milton L. Mueller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-09-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How institutions for Internet governance are emerging from the tension between the territorially bound nation-state and a transnational network society. When the prevailing system of governing divides the planet into mutually exclusive territorial monopolies of force, what institutions can govern the Internet, with its transnational scope, boundless scale, and distributed control? Given filtering/censorship by states and concerns over national cybersecurity, it is often assumed that the Internet will inevitably be subordinated to the traditional system of nation-states. In Networks and States, Milton Mueller counters this, showing how Internet governance poses novel and fascinating governance issues that give rise to a global politics and new transnational institutions. Drawing on theories of networked governance, Mueller provides a broad overview of Internet governance from the formation of ICANN to the clash at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the formation of the Internet Governance Forum, the global assault on peer-to-peer file sharing, and the rise of national-level Internet control and security concerns. Internet governance has become a source of conflict in international relations. Networks and States explores the important role that emerging transnational institutions could play in fostering global governance of communication-information policy.
Download or read book The Democratic Leader written by John Kane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic leadership is the most familiar form of leadership and yet the least well understood by people in democratic countries. This book explores the tensions and dilemmas that beset such leadership in order to explain why democracies produce simultaneously the strongest and weakest of leaders.
Download or read book Marxism and the Capitalist State written by Rob Hunter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book builds on the recent revival of interest in Marx and Marxism, calling for a renewal and refinement of Marxist state theory. It aims to provoke and encourage new debates and critiques that build on—but also update and extend—the rich tradition of Marxist analyses of the capitalist state, including the well-known debates of the 1970s. The chapters present a dynamic and diverse constellation of arguments and perspectives on a range of topics, from general re-appraisals of the capitalist state to investigations of contemporary challenges—including digitalisation, the ecological crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, social reproduction, and critical political economy. What they share is a commitment to an understanding of the specifically capitalist character of the modern state and its significance for any serious discussion of the causes of our current age of global catastrophe and the overcoming of capitalist social relations.
