Download or read book Challenges to A Liberal Polity written by M. Hamid Ansari and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2022-08-22 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges to a Liberal Polity, amazingly relevant and thought provoking for our times-by Hamid Ansari, former Vice President of India-brings to light some of the most critical issues, which influence our thoughts every day. From Nehru's vision for India as a major world power to the issues of citizenship, religion, democracy, the idea of plurality and Muslim identity in Indian society, inclusion/exclusion of Indian Muslims, the 'mainstream' decision making process in India, the role of women in order to build a compassionate society, implication for dissent, Muslims' role and contribution to Indian culture, civilization and nation-building in the post-Independent India, among others, the book thrashes some of the burning issues of Indian polity and society. Comprehensive, argumentative and evocative, this title will not only interest a wide spectrum of readers but also politicians, policymakers and students and scholars of Indian politics, history and sociology.

Download or read book Liberal Politics and Public Faith written by Kevin Vallier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eyes of many, liberalism requires the aggressive secularization of social institutions, especially public media and public schools. The unfortunate result is that many Americans have become alienated from the liberal tradition because they believe it threatens their most sacred forms of life. This was not always the case: in American history, the relation between liberalism and religion has often been one of mutual respect and support. In Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation, Kevin Vallier attempts to reestablish mutual respect by developing a liberal political theory that avoids the standard liberal hostility to religious voices in public life. He claims that the dominant form of academic liberalism, public reason liberalism, is far friendlier to religious influences in public life than either its proponents or detractors suppose. The best interpretation of public reason, convergence liberalism, rejects the much-derided "privatization" of religious belief, instead viewing religious contributions to politics as a resource for liberal political institutions. Many books reject privatization, Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation is unique in doing so on liberal grounds.

Download or read book The Future of Human Rights written by Alison Brysk and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human rights have fallen on hard times, yet they are more necessary than ever. People all over the world – from Amazonian villages to Iranian prisons – need human rights to gain recognition, campaign for justice, and save lives. But how can we secure a brighter future for human rights? What changes are required to confront the regime’s weaknesses and emerging global challenges? In this cutting-edge analysis, Alison Brysk sets out a pragmatic reformist agenda for human rights in the twenty-first century. Tracing problems and solutions through contemporary case studies – the plight of refugees, declining democracies such as Mexico and Turkey, the expansion of women’s rights, new norms for indigenous peoples, and rights regression in the USA – she shows that the dynamic strength of human rights lies in their evolving political practice. This distinctive vision demands that we build upon the gains of the human rights regime to construct new pathways which address historic rights gaps, from citizenship to security, from environmental protection to resurgent nationalism, and to globalization itself. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as a leading human rights scholar and activist, The Future of Human Rights offers a broad and authoritative guide to the big questions in global human rights governance today.

Download or read book Becoming Free written by Emily R. Gill and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As ethnic, racial, religious, and gender-based groups demand rights to pursue radically diverse lifestyles or maintain their cultural traditions, conflict seems inevitable, even in a free society. Government may offer remedies to social dilemmas—such as affirmative action, curbs on immigration, or protection of gay rights—but these may only fan the flames of resentment. Yet any society that tolerates and protects diversity is more likely to preserve the freedom to live one's life without interference. Emily Gill reexamines the liberal tradition to reconcile its core commitments to autonomy and diversity-values that in theory are complementary but in practice are often at odds-and to show that the interaction of these values determines how we as individuals become free. In Becoming Free, she argues that true freedom is enhanced through the promotion of diversity and the encouragement of rational reflection on the options it allows-and that limited choice or ignorance diminishes such freedom. Yet an incomplete freedom is what many individuals, groups, and states advocate when they commit to particular cultural traditions or religious beliefs, despite the autonomy they themselves enjoy. Gill traces the implications of these conflicting views by drawing on recent scholarship and legal decisions in six areas: national citizenship, cultural membership, ethnicity and gender, religious belief, sexuality, and civic education. By exploring the tensions between autonomy and diversity in such instances as Boy Scouts membership restrictions, gay rights legislation, and education among the Amish, she not only offers an insightful commentary on current issues but also explores the moral foundations of liberal thought. Unlike those who criticize liberalism for its shallow philosophical grounding, Gill shows it to have a substantive moral content grounded in the individual's capacity to make rational decisions based on critical reflection. In her tightly woven arguments, she explores real-world problems in a meaningful way for students and for anyone concerned with the future of liberalism, showing that becoming free is an ongoing process of human and social development.

Download or read book The Crisis of the Institutional Press written by Stephen D. Reese and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As polarized factions in society pull apart from economic dislocation, tribalism, and fear, and as strident attacks on the press make its survival more precarious, the need for an institutionally organized forum in civic life has become increasingly important. Populist challenges amplified by a counter-institutional media system have contributed to the long-term decline in journalistic authority, exploiting a post-truth mentality that strikes at its very core. In this timely book, Stephen Reese considers these threats through a new conception of the ‘hybrid institution’: an idea that extends beyond the traditional newsroom, and distributes across multiple platforms, national boundaries, and social actors. What is it about the institutional press that we value, and around what normative standards could a hybrid institution emerge? Addressing these questions, Reese highlights how this is no time to be passive but rather to articulate and defend greater aspirations. The institutional press matters more than ever: a reality that must be communicated to a public that depends on it. The Crisis of the Institutional Press is an essential resource for students and scholars of journalism, media and communication.

Download or read book Colonialism and Modern Social Theory written by Gurminder K. Bhambra and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern society emerged in the context of European colonialism and empire. So, too, did a distinctively modern social theory, laying the basis for most social theorising ever since. Yet colonialism and empire are absent from the conceptual understandings of modern society, which are organised instead around ideas of nation state and capitalist economy. Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood address this absence by examining the role of colonialism in the development of modern society and the legacies it has bequeathed. Beginning with a consideration of the role of colonialism and empire in the formation of social theory from Hobbes to Hegel, the authors go on to focus on the work of Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Du Bois. As well as unpicking critical omissions and misrepresentations, the chapters discuss the places where colonialism is acknowledged and discussed – albeit inadequately – by these founding figures; and we come to see what this fresh rereading has to offer and why it matters. This inspiring and insightful book argues for a reconstruction of social theory that should lead to a better understanding of contemporary social thought, its limitations, and its wider possibilities.

Download or read book The Liberal Polity written by C. Carr and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-07-28 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces a radically different type of liberal political theory by severing liberal thought from all underlying moral foundations. It presents a liberalism that accommodates the differences of worldview and moral theory of the good in today's pluralist societies and also meets liberalism's historic commitment to diversity.

Download or read book Liberal Freedom written by Eric MacGilvray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We seem to be losing the ability to talk to each other about – and despite – our political differences. The liberal tradition, with its emphasis on open-mindedness, toleration, and inclusion, is ideally suited to respond to this challenge. Yet liberalism is often seen today as a barrier to constructive dialogue: narrowly focused on individual rights, indifferent to the communal sources of human well-being, and deeply implicated in structures of economic and social domination. This book provides a novel defense of liberalism that weaves together a commitment to republican self-government, an emphasis on the value of unregulated choice, and an appreciation of how hard it is to strike a balance between them. By treating freedom rather than justice as the central liberal value this important book, critical to the times, provides an indispensable resource for constructive dialogue in a time of political polarization.

Download or read book Children and the Internet written by Sonia Livingstone and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the internet really transforming children and young people’s lives? Is the so-called ‘digital generation’ genuinely benefiting from exciting new opportunities? And, worryingly, facing new risks? This major new book by a leading researcher addresses these pressing questions. It deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children’s everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, Children and the Internet reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as: Digital in/exclusion Learning and literacy Peer networking and privacy Civic participation Risk and harm Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet - from governments, teachers, parents and children themselves. It concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children’s rights to expression, connection and play online as well as offline.

Download or read book The Once and Future Liberal written by Mark Lilla and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly 40 years, Ronald Reagan's vision--small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism--has remained America's dominant political ideology. The Democratic Party has offered no truly convincing competing vision. Instead, American liberalism has fallen under the spell of identity politics.Mark Lilla argues with acerbic wit that liberals, originally driven by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, have now unwittingly invested their energies in social movements rather than winning elections. This abandonment of political priorities has had dire consequences. But, with the Republican Party led by an unpredictable demagogue and in ideological disarray, Lilla believes liberals now have an opportunity to turn from the divisive politics of identity, and offer positive ideas for a shared future. A fiercely-argued, no-nonsense book, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times.

Download or read book The Good Fight written by Walter Mondale and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former vice president Walter Mondale makes a passionate, timely argument for American liberalism in this revealing and momentous political memoir. For more than five decades in public life, Walter Mondale played a leading role in America’s movement for social change—in civil rights, environmentalism, consumer protection, and women’s rights—and helped to forge the modern Democratic Party. In The Good Fight, Mondale traces his evolution from a young Minnesota attorney general, whose mentor was Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, into a U.S. senator himself. He was instrumental in pushing President Johnson’s Great Society legislation through Congress and battled for housing equality, against poverty and discrimination, and for more oversight of the FBI and CIA. Mondale’s years as a senator spanned the national turmoil of the Nixon administration; its ultimate self-destruction in the Watergate scandal would change the course of his own political fortunes. Chosen as running mate for Jimmy Carter’s successful 1976 campaign, Mondale served as vice president for four years. With an office in the White House, he invented the modern vice presidency; his inside look at the Carter administration will fascinate students of American history as he recalls how he and Carter confronted the energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and other crucial events, many of which reverberate to the present day. Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election set the stage for Mondale’s own campaign against Reagan in 1984, when he ran with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket; this progressive decision would forever change the dynamic of presidential elections. With the 1992 election of President Clinton, Mondale was named ambassador to Japan. His intriguing memoir ends with his frank assessment of the Bush-Cheney administration and the first two years of the presidency of Barack Obama. Just as indispensably, he charts the evolution of Democratic liberalism from John F. Kennedy to Clinton to Obama while spelling out the principles required to restore the United States as a model of progressive government. The Good Fight is replete with Mondale’s accounts of the many American political heavyweights he encountered as either an ally or as an opponent, including JFK, Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Gary Hart, Reagan, Clinton, and many others. Eloquent and engaging, The Good Fight illuminates Mondale’s philosophies on opportunity, governmental accountability, decency in politics, and constitutional democracy, while chronicling the evolution of a man and the country in which he was lucky enough to live.

Download or read book The End of Illusions written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

Download or read book The Politics of Identity written by Michael Kenny and published by Polity. This book was released on 2004-06-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and critical assessment of the ways in which Anglo-American political theorists have responded to the emergence of a politics of identity in democratic society. It examines the merits and weaknesses of the ideas associated with the major schools and thinkers in contemporary philosophical liberalism. It also provides a critical exploration of the arguments of their pluralist rivals, including advocates of multiculturalism, 'difference' and recognition. Kenny illustrates how debates over such concepts as identity, difference, recognition and culture are intertwined with political theorists' characterizations of democracy, citizenship and civil society. In an analysis that juxtaposes normative political theory with the study of social movements and change, the author challenges two widely held ideas about the relationship between liberal democracy and culturally based groups. He questions the assertion that there is no place for identity based political argument in the public life of a democracy. And he challenges the pluralist conviction that the re-emergence of collective identities signals the demise of liberal culture and political thought. Written in a clear and accessible style, The Politics of Identity is intended for students, scholars and general readers interested in contemporary political and social thought, political ideologies, and political culture.

Download or read book Challenge of Politics 4th Edition written by Neal Riemer and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So often, political science is introduced to students as a segmented field. The Challenge of Politics instead enables students to see how the subfields converge around a set of crucial questions: can we, as citizens and students articulate and defend a view of the good political life and its guiding political values? Can we develop a science of politics to help us understand significant political phenomenaùthe empirical realities of politics? Can we bring a high level of political prudence or wisdom to bear on judgments about politics and public issues? Can citizens and students creatively address the future of politics?Riemer, Simon, and Romance aim to harmonize the valuable lessons of classic and contemporary theory, as well as to reconcile politics to scientific and empirical study. The book gives students an avenue to explore the impact of philosophy and ideology, to recognize major forms of government, to evaluate empirical findings, and to understand how policy issues directly affect peopleÆs lives. Throughout, the authors look at political dynamics of American, comparative, and international affairs. While continuing to pursue its distinctive normative approach and showing politics to be a potentially humanizing enterprise, this new edition of Challenge has been revised and updated for major world events like the global financial crisis, recent elections in the U.S. and elsewhere, important policy decisions like the recent Supreme Court ruling in the U.S. on healthcare, and the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Based on reviewer feedback, it has also been substantially streamlined throughout.

Download or read book Making Sense of American Liberalism written by Jonathan Bell and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left. Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform. Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

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 Political Failure by Agreement written by Gerhard Wegner and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gerhard Wegner provides new insight into the relation between democracies and market economies. He recognizes conflict between the two, but he doesn t propose constitutional controls over political action. Such proposals are grounded in the comparative static manipulation of equilibrium models. In contrast, Wegner advances an evolutionary theory of political economy, and uses this theory to explain how processes of societal learning might be set in motion that could expand support for market arrangements through time. This thoughtful and challenging book will repay examination by all students of political economy. Richard E. Wagner, George Mason University, US In drawing particular attention to the implications of evolutionary market theory for public policy Gerhard Wegner adds a novel and instructive line of argument to the long-standing debate on the inherent tension between democratic politics and economic liberalism. His concept of learning liberalism addresses an important dimension of political failure that has been neglected in this debate. Viktor J. Vanberg, Universitaet Freiburg, Germany The purpose of this book is to reconsider economic liberalism from the viewpoint of political liberalism. The author argues that advocates of economic liberalism largely overlook empirical political preferences which, in many societies, go far beyond a limited role of the state. Recent difficulties of reforming the welfare state provide evidence that political preferences are at odds with liberal economic policy in numerous cases. This fact challenges a political conception which demands a limited state role but also claims that citizens preferences as they are should determine the content of policies. Using an evolutionary perspective on economic liberalism, the book develops new arguments about how economic liberalism can be brought into line with political liberalism. Drawing on an evolutionary theory of markets, Gerhard Wegner reinforces the claim that liberal economic policies are conducive to prosperity in society, but he argues that the liberal promise of prosperity does not translate into corresponding political preferences on the part of citizens. A tension between political and economic liberalism arises which lies at the centre of this book. Political Failure by Agreement will strongly appeal to postgraduate students and researchers of global governance, political theory, political economy and institutional economics.