Download or read book The Concept of Representation written by Hanna F. Pitkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being concerned with representation, this book is about an idea, a concept, a word. It is primarily a conceptual analysis, not a historical study of the way in which representative government has evolved, nor yet an empirical investigation of the behavior of contemporary representatives or the expectations voters have about them. Yet, although the book is about a word, it is not about mere words, not merely about words. For the social philosopher, for the social scientist, words are not "mere"; they are the tools of his trade and a vital part of his subject matter. Since human beings are not merely political animals but also language-using animals, their behavior is shaped by their ideas. What they do and how they do it depends upon how they see themselves and their world, and this in turn depends upon the concepts through which they see. Learning what "representation" means and learning how to represent are intimately connected. But even beyond this, the social theorist sees the world through a network of concepts. Our words define and delimit our world in important ways, and this is particularly true of the world of human and social things. For a zoologist may capture a rare specimen and simply observe it; but who can capture an instance of representation (or of power, or of interest)? Such things, too, can be observed, but the observation always presupposes at least a rudimentary conception of what representation (or power, or interest) is, what counts as representation, where it leaves off and some other phenomenon begins. Questions about what representation is, or is like, are not fully separable from the question of what "representation" means. This book approaches the former questions by way of the latter. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972. Being concerned with representation, this book is about an idea, a concept, a word. It is primarily a conceptual analysis, not a historical study of the way in which representative government has evolved, nor yet an empirical investigation of the behavior
Download or read book The Concept of Representation written by Hanna F. Pitkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1967 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book arises out of Hannah Pitkin's doctoral dissertation and is considered by political scientists to be the gold standard in terms of a philosophical treatment of the subject. Pitkin covers the historical evolution of thinking about representation from the Greeks through the founding of the American republic highlighting diverse thinkers and politicians like Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and James Madison as well as more contemporary scholars like Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom.
Download or read book The Concept of Representation written by Hanna Fenichel Pitkin and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Concept of Constituency written by Andrew Rehfeld and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In virtually every democratic nation in the world, political representation is defined by where citizens live. In the United States, for example, Congressional Districts are drawn every 10 years as lines on a map. Why do democratic governments define political representation this way? Are territorial electoral constituencies commensurate with basic principles of democratic legitimacy? And why might our commitments to these principles lead us to endorse a radical alternative: randomly assigning citizens to permanent, single-member electoral constituencies that each looks like the nation they collectively represent? Using the case of the founding period of the United States as an illustration, and drawing from classic sources in Western political theory, this book describes the conceptual, historical, and normative features of the electoral constituency. As an institution conceptually separate from the casting of votes, the electoral constituency is little studied. Its historical origins are often incorrectly described. And as a normative matter, the constituency is almost completely ignored. Raising these conceptual, historical and normative issues, the argument culminates with a novel thought experiment of imagining how politics might change under randomized, permanent, national electoral constituencies. By focusing on how citizens are formally defined for the purpose of political representation, The Concept of Constituency thus offers a novel approach to the central problems of political representation, democratic legitimacy, and institutional design.
Download or read book Understanding Representation written by Jen Webb and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is an extraordinarily lucid book. I am not sure that there is anyone who can do this sort of thing better than Jen Webb. It is a gift to students; extremely accessible yet complex and sophisticated in its treatment of theories and concepts of representation." - Jim McGuigan, Loughborough University Understanding Representation offers a contemporary, coherent and genuinely interdisciplinary introduction to the concept of representation. Drawing together the full range of ideas, practices, techniques and disciplines associated with the subject, this book locates them in a historical context, presents them in a readable fashion, and shows their relevance to everyday life in an engaging and accessible manner. Readers will be shown how to develop a sophisticated attitude to meaning, and understand the relationship to truth and identity that is brought into focus by communicative practices. With chapters on linguistic and political representation, art and media, and philosophical and cognitive approaches, this book: Guides readers through complex theoretical terrain with a highly readable and refreshing writing style. Explains the techniques and perspectives offered by semiotics, discourse analysis, poetics, politics, narratology, visual culture, cognitive theory, performance theory and theories of embodied subjectivity. Covers the new ideas and practices that have emerged since the work of Barthes, Eco and Foucault - especially communication and meaning-making in the digital environment, and the new paradigms of understanding associated with cognitive theories of identity and language. Teaches readers how to interpret and interrogate the world of signs in which they live. Understanding Representation provides students across the social sciences and humanities with an invaluable introduction to what is meant by ′representation′.
Download or read book Representation written by Monica Brito Vieira and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is representation? What does it mean when a politician represents citizens in government? How can citizens be represented beyond the boundaries of the nation-state? These are just some of the questions which will be answered by David Runciman and Mónica Brito Vieira as they explain why representation should be understood as one of the key concepts in modern politics. The first part of the book examines the historical roots of the concept of representation, from its origins in ancient Rome through to its role in the revolutionary politics of the modern world. The second looks at different varieties of representation – in law as well as politics. The final part asks how the concept of representation can help us think creatively about current and future challenges facing the world. Representation is too often treated as a secondary or qualifying idea – as in the phrase ‘representative democracy’. This book argues that we have this the wrong way round. Representation is the foundational idea in almost all areas of our political life. Making sense of representation in its own terms is crucial for seeing why democracy functions the way it does, and for exploring how it might function differently.
Download or read book Rethinking Popular Representation written by O. Törnquist and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-12-21 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book starts out from the deep concern with contemporary tendencies towards depoliticisation of public issues and popular interests and makes a case for rethinking more democratic popular representation. It outlines a framework for popular representation, examines key issues and experiences and provides a policy-oriented conclusion.
Download or read book The Symbolic Representation of Gender written by Dr Emanuela Lombardo and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is symbolic representation? Since Hanna Pitkin’s seminal The Concept of Representation, the symbolic has been the least studied dimension of political representation. Innovatively adopting a discursive approach, this book - the first full-length treatment of symbolic representation - focuses on gender issues to tackle important questions such as: What are women and men symbols of, and how is gender constructed in policy discourse? It studies what functions symbolic representation fulfils in the construction of gender, what social roles get legitimized in policy discourse, and how this affects power constellations, ultimately revealing much about the relation between symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation. Emanuela Lombardo and Petra Meier draw on theories of symbolic representation and gender, as well as rich primary material about political debates on labour and care issues, partnership and reproductive rights, gender violence, and quotas. Using this original data, the authors show that reconsidering symbolic representation from a discursive perspective makes explicit issues of (in)equality embedded within particular constructions, as well as their consequences for political representation and gender equality. This important exploration raises relevant new questions regarding the representation of gender that form valuable contributions to the fields of political science, political theory, sociology, and gender studies.
Download or read book Representation Reconsidered written by William M. Ramsey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-21 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Reclaiming Representation written by Monica Brito Vieira and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representation is integral to the functioning and legitimacy of modern government. Yet political theorists have often been reluctant to engage directly with questions of representation, and empirical political scientists have closed down such questions by making representation synonymous with congruence. Conceptually unproblematic and normatively inert for some, representation has been deemed impossible to pin down analytically and to defend normatively by others. But this is changing. Political theorists are now turning to political representation as a subject worthy of theoretical investigation in its own right. In their effort to rework the theory of political representation, they are also hoping to impact how representation is assessed and studied empirically. This volume gathers together chapters by key contributors to what amounts to a "representative turn" in political theory. Their approaches and emphases are diverse, but taken together they represent a compelling and original attempt at re-conceptualizing political representation and critically assessing the main theoretical and political implications following from this, namely for how we conceive and assess representative democracy. Each contributor is invited to look back and ahead on the transformations to democratic self-government introduced by the theory and practice of political representation. Representation and democracy: outright conflict, uneasy cohabitation, or reciprocal constitutiveness? For those who think democracy would be better without representation, this volume is a must-read: it will question their assumptions, while also exploring some of the reasons for their discomfort. Reclaiming Representation is essential reading for scholars and graduate researchers committed to staying on top of new developments in the field.
Download or read book The Retreat of Representation written by Martha B. Helfer and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1996-03-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the notion of Darstellung [representation] in the critical discourse of German Idealism and Romanticism, paying particular attention to Kant, Fichte, Novalis, and Kleist.
Download or read book Representation and Behavior written by Fred Keijzer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-02-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT), the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. Representation is a fundamental concept within cognitive science. Most often, representations are interpreted as mental representations, theoretical entities that are the bearers of meaning and the source of intentionality. This approach views representation as the internal reflection of external circumstances—that is, as the end station of sensory processes that translate the environmental state of affairs into a set of mental representations. Fred Keijzer stresses, however, that representations are also the starting point for a set of processes that lead back to the external environment. They are used as theoretical components within an explanation of a person's outwardly visible behavior. In this book Keijzer investigates the usefulness of representation for behavioral explanation, irrespective of mental issues. Viewing representation solely in terms of its contribution to explaining behavior allows him to build a serious case for a nonrepresentational approach and to evaluate representation's role in cognitive science. Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT). AT is the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. He proposes an alternative to AT called Behavioral Systems Theory (BST), which explains behavior as the result of interactions between an organism and its environment. Keijzer compares BST to related work in the biology of cognition, in the building of animal-like robots, and in dynamical systems theory. Most important, he extends BST to the difficult issue of anticipatory behavior through an analogy between behavior and morphogenesis, the process by which a multicellular body develops.
Download or read book The Principles of Representative Government written by Bernard Manin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-02-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thesis of this original and provocative book is that representative government should be understood as a combination of democratic and undemocratic, aristocratic elements. Professor Manin challenges the conventional view that representative democracy is no more than an indirect form of government by the people, in which citizens elect representatives only because they cannot assemble and govern in person. The argument is developed by examining the historical moments when the present institutional arrangements were chosen from among the then available alternatives. Professor Manin reminds us that while today representative institutions and democracy appear as virtually indistinguishable, when representative government was first established in Europe and America, it was designed in opposition to democracy proper. Drawing on the procedures used in earlier republican systems, from classical Athens to Renaissance Florence, in order to highlight the alternatives that were forsaken, Manin brings to the fore the generally overlooked results of representative mechanisms. These include the elitist aspect of elections and the non-binding character of campaign promises.
Download or read book Representative Democracy written by Nadia Urbinati and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is usually held that representative government is not strictly democratic, since it does not allow the people themselves to directly make decisions. But here, taking as her guide Thomas Paine’s subversive view that “Athens, by representation, would have surpassed her own democracy,” Nadia Urbinati challenges this accepted wisdom, arguing that political representation deserves to be regarded as a fully legitimate mode of democratic decision making—and not just a pragmatic second choice when direct democracy is not possible. As Urbinati shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision maker’s direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy.
Download or read book Representation and Citizenship written by Richard Marback and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The audience for this book includes, but is not limited to, students and scholars in citizenship studies, history, law, political science, and social science, especially those interested in issues of patriotism and multiculturalism.
Download or read book The Triangle of Representation written by Christopher Prendergast and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our best-known cultural critics examines the concept of representation and its many and varied forms in literature and art.
Download or read book Representation written by Stuart Hall and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1997-04-08 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive outline of how visual images, language and discourse work as `systems of representation'. Individual chapters explore: representation as a signifying practice in a rich diversity of social contexts and institutional sites; the use of photography in the construction of national identity and culture; other cultures in ethnographic museums; fantasies of the racialized `Other' in popular media, film and image; the construction of masculine identities in discourses of consumer culture and advertising; and the gendering of narratives in television soap operas.
