Download or read book The Politics of Presence written by Anne Phillips and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1998-10-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most hotly-contested debates in contemporary democracy revolves around issues of political presence, and whether the fair representation of disadvantaged groups requires their presence in elected assemblies. Representation as currently understood derives its legitimacy from a politics of ideas, which considers accountability in relation to declared policies and programmes, and makes it a matter of relative indifference who articulates political preferences or beliefs. But what happens to the meaning of representation and accountability when we make the gender or ethnic composition of elected assemblies an additional area of concern? In this innovative contribution to the theory of representation - which draws on debates about gender quotas in Europe, minority voting rights in the USA, and the multi-layered politics of inclusion in Canada - Anne Phillips argues that the politics of ideas is an inadequate vehicle for dealing with political exclusion. But rejecting any essentialist grounding to group identity or group interest, she also argues against any either/or choice between ideas and political presence. The politics of presence then combines with contemporary explorations of deliberative democracy to establish a different balance between accountability and autonomy. Series description Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in applied political theory. The series contains work of outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject matter. The series editors are David Miller and Alan Ryan. `the latest, thoughtful contribution in Anne Phillip's ongoing enquiry into issues of equality, gender and democracy...an excellent contribution to democratic theory'. Political Studies

Download or read book Creating Political Presence written by Dario Castiglione and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For at least two centuries, democratic representation has been at the center of debate. Should elected representatives express the views of the majority, or do they have the discretion to interpret their constituents’ interests? How can representatives balance the desires of their parties and their electors? What should be done to strengthen the representation of groups that have been excluded from the political system? Representative democracy itself remains frequently contested, regarded as incapable of reflecting the will of the masses, or inadequate for today’s global governance. Recently, however, this view of democratic representation has been under attack for its failure to capture the performative and constructive elements of the process of representation, and a new literature more attentive to these aspects of the relationship between representatives and the represented has arisen. In Creating Political Presence, a diverse and international group of scholars explores the implications of such a turn. Two broad, overlapping perspectives emerge. In the first section, the contributions investigate how political representation relates to empowerment, either facilitating or interfering with the capacity of citizens to develop autonomous judgment in collective decision making. Contributions in the second section look at representation from the perspective of inclusion, focusing on how representative relationships and claims articulate the demands of those who are excluded or have no voice. The final section examines political representation from a more systemic perspective, exploring its broader environmental conditions and the way it acquires democratic legitimacy.

Download or read book The Politics of Presence written by Anne Phillips and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1995-10-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a ground-breaking contribution to the widespread and controversial debate about how disadvantaged groups should be represented in politics. - ;One of the most hotly-debated debates in contemporary democracy revolves around issues of political presence, and whether the fair representation of disadvantage groups requires their presence in elected assemblies. Representation as currently understood derives its legitimacy from a politics of ideas, which considers accountability in relation to declared policies and programmes, and makes it a matter of relative indifference who articulates political preferences or beliefs. What happens to the meaning of representation and accountability when we make the gender or ethnic composition of elected assemblies an additional area of concern? In this innovative contribution to the theory of representation - which draws on debates about gender quotas in Europe, minority voting rights in the USA, and the multi-layered politics of inclusion in Canada - Anne Phillips argues that the politics of ideas is an inadequate vehicle for dealing with political exclusion. But eschewing any essentialist grounding the group identity or group interest, she also argues against any either/or choice between ideas and political presence. The politics of presence then combines with contemporary explorations of deliberative democracy to establish a different balance between accountability and autonomy. -

Download or read book Unconditional Equals written by Anne Phillips and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals.

Download or read book The Politics of Hiding Invisibility and Silence written by Rhys Dafydd Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is absence? What is presence? How are these two phenomena related? Is absence merely not being present? This book examines these and other questions relating to the role of absence and presence in everyday politics. Absence and presence are used as political tools in global events and everyday life to reinforce ideas about space, society, and belonging. Between Absence and Presence contains six empirically-focussed chapters introducing case study locations and contexts from around the world. These studies examine how particular groups’ relationships with places and spaces are characterized by experiences that are neither wholly present nor wholly absent. Each author demonstrates the variety of ways in which absence and presence are experienced – through silence, forgetting, concealment, distance, and the virtual – and constituted – through visual, aural, and technological. Such accounts also raise philosophical questions about representation and belonging: what must remain absent, and what is allowed to be present? Who decides, and how? Whose voices are heard? Recognizing the complexity of these questions, Between Absence and Presence provides a significant contribution in reconciling theorizations of absence with everyday life. This book was published a sa special issue of Space and Polity.

Download or read book The End of Representative Politics written by Simon Tormey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Fewer people are voting or joining political parties, and our interest in parliamentary politics is declining fast. Even oppositional and radical parties that should be benefitting from public disenchantment with politics are suffering. But different forms of political activity are emerging to replace representative politics: instant politics, direct action, insurgent politics. We are leaving behind traditional representation, and moving towards a politics without representatives. In this provocative new book, Simon Tormey explores the changes that are underway, drawing on a rich range of examples from the Arab Spring to the Indignados uprising in Spain, street protests in Brazil and Turkey to the emergence of new initiatives such as Anonymous and Occupy. Tormey argues that the easy assumptions that informed our thinking about the nature and role of parties, and ‘party based democracy’ have to be rethought. We are entering a period of fast politics, evanescent politics, a politics of the street, of the squares, of micro-parties, pop-up parties, and demonstrations. This may well be the end of representative politics as we know it, but an exciting new era of political engagement is just beginning.

Download or read book The Politics of Rage written by Dan T. Carter and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2000-02-01 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining biography with regional and national history, Dan T. Carter chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of George Wallace, a populist who abandoned his ideals to become a national symbol of racism, and later begged for forgiveness. In The Politics of Rage, Carter argues persuasively that the four-time Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate helped to establish the conservative political movement that put Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 and gave Newt Gingrich and the Republicans control of Congress in 1994. In this second edition, Carter updates Wallace’s story with a look at the politician’s death and the nation’s reaction to it and gives a summary of his own sense of the legacy of “the most important loser in twentieth-century American politics.”

Download or read book Digital Political Radical written by Natalie Fenton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital, Political, Radical is a siren call to the field of media and communications and the study of social and political movements. We must put the politics of transformation at the very heart of our analyses to meet the global challenges of gross inequality and ever-more impoverished democracies. Fenton makes an impassioned plea for re-invigorating critical research on digital media such that it can be explanatory, practical and normative. She dares us to be politically emboldened. She urges us to seek out an emancipatory politics that aims to deepen our democratic horizons. To ask: how can we do democracy better? What are the conditions required to live together well? Then, what is the role of the media and how can we reclaim media, power and politics for progressive ends? Journeying through a range of protest and political movements, Fenton debunks myths of digital media along the way and points us in the direction of newly emergent politics of the Left. Digital, Political, Radical contributes to political debate on contemporary (re)configurations of radical progressive politics through a consideration of how we experience (counter) politics in the digital age and how this may influence our being political.

Download or read book A Seat at the Table written by Kelly Dittmar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presence of women in Congress is at an all-time high -- approximately one of every five members is female -- and record numbers of women are running for public office for the 2018 midterms. At the same time, Congress is more polarized than ever, and little research exists on how women in Congress view their experiences and contributions to American politics today. Drawing on personal interviews with over three-quarters of the women serving in the 114th Congress (2015-17), the authors analyze how these women navigate today's stark partisan divisions, and whether they feel effective in their jobs. Through first-person perspectives, A Seat at the Table looks at what motivates these women's legislative priorities and behavior, details the ways in which women experience service within a male-dominated institution, and highlights why it matters that women sit in the nation's federal legislative chambers. It describes the strategies women employ to overcome any challenges they confront as well as the opportunities available to them. The book examines how gender interacts with political party, race and ethnicity, seniority, chamber, and district characteristics to shape women's representational influence and behavior, finding that party and race/ethnicity are the two most complicating factors to a singular narrative of women's congressional representation. While congresswomen's perspectives, experiences, and influence are neither uniform nor interchangeable, they strongly believe their presence matters in myriad ways, affecting congressional culture, priorities, processes, debates, and outcomes.

Download or read book Vibrant Matter written by Jane Bennett and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.

Download or read book Faithful Presence written by Bill Haslam and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two-term governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam reveals how faith--too often divisive and contentious--can be a redemptive and unifying presence in the public square. As a former mayor and governor, Bill Haslam has long been at the center of politics and policy on local, state, and federal levels. And he has consistently been guided by his faith, which influenced his actions on issues ranging from capital punishment to pardons, health care to abortion, welfare to free college tuition. Yet the place of faith in public life has been hotly debated since our nation's founding, and the relationship of church and state remains contentious to this day--and for good reason. Too often, Bill Haslam argues, Christians end up shaping their faith to fit their politics rather than forming their politics to their faith. They seem to forget their calling is to be used by God in service of others rather than to use God to reach their own desires and ends. Faithful Presence calls for a different way. Drawing upon his years of public service, Haslam casts a remarkable vision for the redemptive role of faith in politics while examining some of the most complex issues of our time, including: partisanship in our divided era; the most essential character trait for a public servant; how we cannot escape "legislating morality"; the answer to perpetual outrage; and how to think about the separation of church and state. For Christians ready to be salt and light, as well as for those of a different faith or no faith at all, Faithful Presence argues that faith can be a redemptive, healing presence in the public square--as it must be, if our nation is to flourish.

Download or read book State Feminism and Political Representation written by Joni Lovenduski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-24 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can women maximise their political influence? Does state feminism enhance the political representation of women? Should feminism be established in state institutions to treat women's concerns? Written by experts in the field, this 2005 book uses an innovative model of political influence to construct answers to these and other questions in the long-running debate over the political representation of women. The book assesses how states respond to women's demands for political representation both in terms of their inclusion as actors and the consideration of their interests in the decision making process. Debates on the issue vary from country to country, depending on institutional structures, women's movements and other factors, and this book offered the first comparative account of the subject. The authors analyse eleven democracies in Europe and North America and present comprehensive research from the 1960s to the present.

Download or read book Liberty and Security written by Conor Gearty and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

Download or read book A Problem of Presence written by Matthew Engelke and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Friday Masowe apostolics of Zimbabwe refer to themselves as "the Christians who don’t read the Bible." They claim they do not need the Bible because they receive the Word of God "live and direct" from the Holy Spirit. In this insightful and sensitive historical ethnography, Matthew Engelke documents how this rejection of scripture speaks to longstanding concerns within Christianity over mediation and authority. The Bible, of course, has been a key medium through which Christians have recognized God’s presence. But the apostolics perceive scripture as an unnecessary, even dangerous, mediator. For them, the materiality of the Bible marks a distance from the divine and prohibits the realization of a live and direct faith. Situating the Masowe case within a broad comparative framework, Engelke shows how their rejection of textual authority poses a problem of presence—which is to say, how the religious subject defines, and claims to construct, a relationship with the spiritual world through the semiotic potentials of language, actions, and objects. Written in a lively and accessible style, A Problem of Presence makes important contributions to the anthropology of Christianity, the history of religions in Africa, semiotics, and material culture studies.

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 Presence written by Ranjan Ghosh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of "presence" seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes presence a post-linguistic or post-discursive theory that challenges current understandings of "meaning" and "interpretation." Presence provides an overview of the concept and surveys both its weaknesses and its possible uses.In this book, Ethan Kleinberg and Ranjan Ghosh bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives—history, sociology, literature, cultural theory, media studies, photography, memory, and political theory. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. In three original case studies, presence illuminates the relationships among photography, the past, memory, and the Other. What these diverse but overlapping essays have in common is a shared commitment to investigate the attempt to reconnect meaning with something "real" and to push the paradigm of presence beyond its current uses. The volume is thus an important intervention in the most fundamental debates within the humanities today.Contributors: Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales; Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley; Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona; Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal; Suman Gupta, Open University Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University; John Michael, University of Rochester; Vincent P. Pecora, University of Utah; Roger I. Simon.

Download or read book The Third Way written by Anthony Giddens and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-29 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.