Download or read book Real Politics written by Jean Bethke Elshtain and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2000-03-10 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's foremost public intellectuals, Jean Bethke Elshtain has been on the frontlines in the most hotly contested and deeply divisive issues of our time. Now in Real Politics, Elshtain gives further proof of her willingness to speak her mind, courting disagreement and even censure from those who prefer their ideologies neat. At the center of Elshtain's work is a passionate concern with the relationship between political rhetoric and political action. For Elshtain, politics is a sphere of concrete responsibility. Political speech should, therefore, approach the richness of actual lives and commitments rather than present impossible utopias. In her essays, Elshtain finds in the writings of V clav Havel, Hannah Arendt, and Albert Camus a language appropriate to the complexity of everyday life and politics, and she critiques philosophers and writers who distance us from a concrete, embodied world. She argues against those repressive strains within contemporary feminism which insist that families and even sexual differentiation are inherently oppressive. Along the way, she challenges an ideology of victimization that too often loses sight of individual victims in its pursuit of abstract goals. Elshtain reaffirms the quirky and by no means simple pleasures of small-town life as a microcosm of the human condition and considers the current crisis in American education and its consequences for democracy. Beyond exploring the details of political life over the past two decades, Real Politics advocates a via media politics that avoids unacceptable extremes and serves as a model for responsible political discourse. Throughout her diverse and insightful writings, Elshtain champions a civic philosophy that tends to the dignity of everyday life as a democratic imperative of the first order. "Jean Bethke Elshtain is a person of rare intellect. The moral wisdom that pervades these essays reminds us that when all is said and done politics is about the life and death of real people who are anything but abstractions. Her erudition is remarkable, but equally stunning is her eye for the significant. What she is so good at is helping us see the moral and political significance of the everyday." -- Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University " Real Politics serves as a forceful reminder that Jean Elshtain has been dealing with the real world in twenty-five years of powerful essaying. Transcending ideological categories, she writes out of hope that human beings can enjoy those capacities of reason and faith which make them human. It is a pleasure to be reintroduced to her sustained intelligence." -- Alan Wolfe, Boston University

Download or read book The Politics of Everyday Life written by Paul Ginsborg and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ginsborg is never judgemental, though he is devastatingly thorough and occasionally mischievously witty." Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Life as Politics written by Asef Bayat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

Download or read book Avoiding Politics written by Nina Eliasoph and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-08-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nina Eliasoph's vivid portrait of American civic life reveals an intriguing culture of political avoidance. Despite the importance for democracy of open-ended political conversation among ordinary citizens, many Americans try hard to avoid appearing to care about politics. To discover how, where and why Americans create this culture of avoidance, the author accompanied suburban volunteers, activists, and recreation club members for over two years, listening to them talk - and avoid talking - about the wider world, together and in encounters with government, media, and corporate authorities. She shows how citizens create and express ideas in everyday life, contrasting their privately expressed convictions with their lack of public political engagement. Her book challenges received ideas about culture, power and democracy, while exposing the hard work of producing apathy.

Download or read book Cultural Politics of Everyday Life written by John Shotter and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Beginning of Politics written by Kirsi Pauliina Kallio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conventional wisdom according to which children’s lives should be safe from adult concerns tends to situate them categorically outside the political. Thus understood, children become political agents when they reach maturity and eligibility to formal participation. Alternatively, political skills and competences may be seen to develop gradually through political socialization. Both views are challenged in recent scholarship on youthful politics beyond the formal, adult-centered political world. This book considers politics as it appears and unfolds in children and young people’s everyday lives. The collection problematizes several key concepts in the research field and introduces a relational reading of youthful political agency based on social, spatial and political theorization. The chapters engage with youthful realities in Sri Lanka, Palestine, Sweden, New Zealand, the US and the UK, revealing a variety of ways in which children and youth are important political actors in their own right. The book also includes an extensive literary review on the study of children and young people’s politics in the past decade. This book was originally published as a special issue of Space and Polity.

Download or read book Networked Publics and Digital Contention written by Mohamed Zayani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is the adoption of digital media in the Arab world affecting the relationship between the state and its subjects? What new forms of online engagement and strategies of resistance have emerged from the aspirations of digitally empowered citizens in the Middle East and North Africa? Networked Publics and Digital Contention narrates the story of the co-evolution of technology and society in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab uprisings. It explores the emergence of a digital culture of contention that helped networked publics negotiate their lived reality, reconfigure power relations, and ultimately redefine the locus of politics. It broadens the focus from narrow debates about the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings toward a fresh understanding of how changes in media affect the state-society relationship over time. Based on extensive fieldwork, in-depth interviews with Internet activists, and immersive analyses of online communication, this book draws our attention away from the tools of political communication and refocuses it on the politics of communication. An original contribution to the political sociology of media, Networked Publics and Digital Contention provides a unique perspective on how networked Arab publics reimagine citizenship, reinvent politics, and produce change.

Download or read book Everyday Life in British Government written by R. A. W. Rhodes and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As citizens, why do we care about the everyday life of ministers and civil servants? We care because the decisions of the great and the good affect all our lives, for good or ill. For all their personal, political, and policy failings and foibles, they make a difference. So, we want to know what ministers and bureaucrats do, why, and how. We are interested in their beliefs and practices. In his fascinating piece of political anthropology, Rod Rhodes uncovers exactly how the British political elite thinks and acts. Drawing on unprecedented access to ministers and senior civil servants in three government departments, he answers a simple question: 'what do they do?' On the basis of extensive fieldwork, supplemented by revealing interviews, he tries to capture the essence of their everyday life. He describes the ministers' and permanent secretaries' world through their own eyes, and explores how their beliefs and practices serve to create meaning in politics, policy making, and public-service delivery. He goes on to analyze how such beliefs and practices are embedded in traditions; in webs of protocols, rituals, and languages. The story he has to tell is dramatized through in-depth accounts of specific events to show ministers and civil servants 'in action'. He challenges the conventional constitutional, institutional, and managerial views of British governance. Instead, he describes a storytelling political-administrative elite, with beliefs and practices rooted in the Westminster model, which uses protocols and rituals to domesticate rude surprises and cope with recurrent dilemmas.

Download or read book Social Media and Everyday Politics written by Tim Highfield and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From selfies and memes to hashtags and parodies, social media are used for mundane and personal expressions of political commentary, engagement, and participation. The coverage of politics reflects the social mediation of everyday life, where individual experiences and thoughts are documented and shared online. In Social Media and Everyday Politics, Tim Highfield examines political talk as everyday occurrences on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, Instagram, and more. He considers the personal and the political, the serious and the silly, and the everyday within the extraordinary, as politics arises from seemingly banal and irreverent topics. The analysis features international examples and evolving practices, from French blogs to Vines from Australia, via the Arab Spring, Occupy, #jesuischarlie, Eurovision, #blacklivesmatter, Everyday Sexism, and #illridewithyou. This timely book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in media and communications, internet studies, and political science, as well as general readers keen to understand our contemporary media and political contexts

Download or read book Henri Lefebvre written by Chris Butler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While certain aspects of Henri Lefebvre’s writings have been examined extensively within the disciplines of geography, social theory, urban planning and cultural studies, there has been no comprehensive consideration of his work within legal studies. Henri Lefebvre: Spatial Politics, Everyday Life and the Right to the City provides the first serious analysis of the relevance and importance of this significant thinker for the study of law and state power. Introducing Lefebvre to a legal audience, this book identifies the central themes that run through his work, including his unorthodox, humanist approach to Marxist theory, his sociological and methodological contributions to the study of everyday life and his theory of the production of space. These elements of Lefebvre’s thought are explored through detailed investigations of the relationships between law, legal form and processes of abstraction; the spatial dimensions of neoliberal configurations of state power; the political and aesthetic aspects of the administrative ordering of everyday life; and the ‘right to the city’ as the basis for asserting new forms of spatial citizenship. Chris Butler argues that Lefebvre’s theoretical categories suggest a way for critical legal scholars to conceptualise law and state power as continually shaped by political struggles over the inhabitance of space. This book is a vital resource for students and researchers in law, sociology, geography and politics, and all readers interested in the application of Lefebvre’s social theory to specific legal and political contexts.

Download or read book China s New Confucianism written by Daniel A. Bell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be a Westerner teaching political philosophy in an officially Marxist state? Why do Chinese sex workers sing karaoke with their customers? And why do some Communist Party cadres get promoted if they care for their elderly parents? In this entertaining and illuminating book, one of the few Westerners to teach at a Chinese university draws on his personal experiences to paint an unexpected portrait of a society undergoing faster and more sweeping changes than anywhere else on earth. With a storyteller's eye for detail, Daniel Bell observes the rituals, routines, and tensions of daily life in China. China's New Confucianism makes the case that as the nation retreats from communism, it is embracing a new Confucianism that offers a compelling alternative to Western liberalism. Bell provides an insider's account of Chinese culture and, along the way, debunks a variety of stereotypes. He presents the startling argument that Confucian social hierarchy can actually contribute to economic equality in China. He covers such diverse social topics as sex, sports, and the treatment of domestic workers. He considers the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, wondering whether Chinese overcompetitiveness might be tempered by Confucian civility. And he looks at education in China, showing the ways Confucianism impacts his role as a political theorist and teacher. By examining the challenges that arise as China adapts ancient values to contemporary society, China's New Confucianism enriches the dialogue of possibilities available to this rapidly evolving nation. In a new preface, Bell discusses the challenges of promoting Confucianism in China and the West.

Download or read book Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico written by Mark Wasserman and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2000-04-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account of the history of Mexico from Independence to the Revolution traces the struggle of common people to exert control over their everyday lives.

Download or read book Everyday Politics written by Harry C. Boyte and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly a spectator sport, electoral politics have become bitterly polarized by professional consultants and lobbyists and have been boiled down to the distributive mantra of "who gets what." In Everyday Politics, Harry Boyte transcends partisan politics to offer an alternative. He demonstrates how community-rooted activities reconnect citizens to engaged, responsible public life, and not just on election day but throughout the year. Boyte demonstrates that this type of activism has a rich history and strong philosophical foundation. It rests on the stubborn faith that the talents and insights of ordinary citizens—from nursery school to nursing home—are crucial elements in public life. Drawing on concrete examples of successful public work projects accomplished by diverse groups of people across the nation, Boyte demonstrates how citizens can master essential political skills, such as understanding issues in public terms, mapping complex issues of institutional power to create alliances, raising funds, communicating, and negotiating across lines of difference. He describes how these skills can be used to address the larger challenges of our time, thereby advancing a renewed vision of democratic society and freedom in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Postcolonial Politics The Internet and Everyday Life written by M.I. Franklin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking study M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South, in-depth studies of just how non-western communities, at home and living abroad, actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This book’s pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding ‘media diaspora’ incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories, the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline. Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies, Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet ‘after Web 2.0’. The book will be of interest to students of international politics, media and communications, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics, culture, and society.

Download or read book Sustainable Materialism written by David Schlosberg and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of a set of environmental crises, a growing number of environmental and community groups are focusing on more sustainable practices in everyday life. This book focuses on sustainable materialism, and examines the political and social motivations of activists and movement groups involved in this growing and expanding practice.

Download or read book Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe written by S. Penn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases extensive research on gender under state socialism, examining the subject in terms of state policy and law; sexuality and reproduction; the academy; leisure; the private sphere; the work world; opposition activism; and memory and identity.

Download or read book American Genre Painting written by Elizabeth Johns and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American genre painting flourished in the thirty years before the Civil War, a period of rapid social change that followed the election of President Andrew Jackson. It has long been assumed that these paintings--of farmers, western boatmen and trappers, blacks both slave and free, middle-class women, urban urchins, and other everyday folk--served as records of an innocent age, reflecting a Jacksonian optimism and faith in the common man. In this enlightening book Elizabeth Johns presents a different interpretation--arguing that genre paintings had a social function that related in a more significant and less idealistic way to the political and cultural life of the time. Analyzing works by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, David Gilmore Blythe, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others, Johns reveals the humor and cynicism in the paintings and places them in the context of stories about the American character that appeared in sources ranging from almanacs and newspapers to joke books and political caricature. She compares the productions of American painters with those of earlier Dutch, English, and French genre artists, showing the distinctive interests of American viewers. Arguing that art is socially constructed to meet the interests of its patrons and viewers, she demonstrates that the audience for American genre paintings consisted of New Yorkers with a highly developed ambition for political and social leadership, who enjoyed setting up citizens of the new democracy as targets of satire or condescension to satisfy their need for superiority. It was this network of social hierarchies and prejudices--and not a blissful celebration of American democracy--that informed the look and the richly ambiguous content of genre painting.