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The Politics of Human Life: Rethinking Subjectivity
by Piergiorgio DonatelliThis book centres on the notion of human life that lies at the foundation of contemporary thinking in the areas of ethics, law and politics. Centrally, the book addresses the deep divide, characteristic of this thinking, between: on the one hand, those who wish to do away with any anthropological understandings of the human, and appeal to mere facts delivered by science; and, on the other hand, critics who defend an anthropological understanding of human life that is tied to traditional, teleological, metaphysics. In short: knowledge of the world is given over to the sciences and moral theory is considered to operate in a distinct, and insulated, domain. But this opposition has, Piergiorgio Donatelli argues here, outlived its usefulness. Through a discussion of the intimate human spheres of reproduction, dying and sexuality, he argues that we now live in a world characterized by new ways of living: by novel rearrangements of emotions, and by the modification, and in some cases a radical rupture in, existing ideas of human life. These shifts challenge any established separation between facts and norms, between human life and its conceptualization. As such, it is argued here, they simultaneously offer the possibility of a new, socially articulated, understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and normativity. Engaging pressing contemporary themes, this book will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of ethics, law and political theory, and both analytic and continental philosophy.
The Politics of Imagination (Birkbeck Law Press)
by Chiara Bottici Benoît ChallandThe Politics of Imagination offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary relationship between politics and the imagination. What role does our capacity to form images play in politics? And can we define politics as a struggle for people’s imagination? As a result of the increasingly central place of the media in our lives, the political role of imagination has undergone a massive quantitative and a qualitative change. As such, there has been a revival of interest in the concept of imagination, as the intimate connections between our capacity to form images and politics becomes more and more evident. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and theoretical outlooks, The Politics of Imagination examines how the power of imagination reverberates in the various ambits of social and political life: in law, history, art, gender, economy, religion and the natural sciences. And it will be of considerable interest to those with contemporary interests in philosophy, political philosophy, political science, legal theory, gender studies, sociology, nationalism, identity studies, cultural studies, and media studies.
The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers
by Jane Guskin David L. WilsonBacked with a wide range of cited sources, The Politics of Immigration tackles questions and concerns about immigration with compelling arguments and hard facts, laid out in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. For immigrants and supporters, the book is an effective tool to confront common myths and misinformation. For teachers, it provides a useful framework on the current debate, and ample opportunities for students to reach out and explore the intersecting issues. Those who believe immigrants steal jobs from citizens, drive down wages, strain public services, and threaten our culture will find such assumptions challenged here, while people who are undecided about immigration will find the solid data and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion.
The Politics of Industrial Agriculture (Natural Resource Management Set)
by Nicholas Hildyard Tracey Clunies-RossIn the last forty years, agriculture in the industrialised countries has undergone a revolution. That has dramatically increased yields, but it has also led to extensive rural depopulation; widespread degradation of the environment; contamination of food with agrochemicals and bacteria; more routine maltreatment of farm animals; and the undermining of Third World economies and livelihoods through unfair trading systems. Confronted by mounting evidence of environmental harm and social impacts, mainstream agronomistis and policy-makers have debatedly recognized the need for change. 'Sustainable agricultutre' has become the buzz phrase. But that can mean different things to different people. We have to ask: sustainable agriculture for whom? Whose interests are benefiting? And whose are suffering? At issue is the question of power – of who controls the land and what it produces. Most of the changes currently under discussion will actually strengthen the status quo and the underlying causes of the damage. The result will be greater intensification of farming, environmental destruction and inequality. There are no simple off-the-shelf alternatives to industrial agriculture. There are, however, groups throughout the world, who have contributed to this report and who are working together on a new approach. An agriculture that, in Wendell Berry's words, 'depletes neither soil nor people'. Originally published in 1992
The Politics of Innocence: How Wrongful Convictions Shape Public Opinion
by Robert J. Norris William D. Hicks Kevin J. Mullinix2024 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice ReviewsThe political dynamics that shape the Innocence MovementSince 1989, more than 3000 people are known to have been exonerated after being wrongly convicted in the United States. Each one of these cases represents a gross miscarriage of justice; they are stories of lives upended by a criminal legal system gone awry. Yet, this number just scratches the surface and does not capture the full breadth of wrongful convictions, which may well number in the tens of thousands.The Politics of Innocence explores the political dynamics that have shaped the proliferation of innocence-related policies across the United States and the ways in which wrongful convictions affect public opinion about the criminal legal system. Although some have suggested that this issue transcends ideological divisions, the authors argue that public opinion and the policies that address wrongful convictions are a product of the political landscape. Using original data, the authors show how political ideology influences awareness of the issue, affects support for policy reform, and, in particular electoral contexts, influences state policy adoption. The Politics of Innocence is a moving and data-driven account of wrongful convictions.
The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medicines
by Valbona MuzakaThis book shows why contests over intellectual property rights and access to affordable medicines emerged in the 1990s and how they have been 'resolved' so far. It argues that the current arrangement mainly ensures wealth for some rather than health for all, and points to broader concerns related to governing intellectual property solely as capital
The Politics of International Economic Law
by Tomer Broude Marc L. Busch Amelia PorgesHow do politics and international economic law interact with each other? Financial crises and shifts in global economic patterns have refocused our attention on how the fingerprints of the 'visible hand' can be seen all over the institutions that underpin the rules of globalization. From trade and investment to finance, governments are under pressure to enforce, resist and rewrite international economic law. Lawyers have seldom given enough attention to the influence of politics on law, whereas political scientists have had an on-again, off-again fascination with how the law influences relations among states. This book leads the way toward filling this interdisciplinary gap, through a series of important studies written by leaders in the field on specific problems in international economic relations. The book demonstrates a variety of ways in which the international political-economic nexus may be researched and understood.
The Politics of International Political Theory: Reflections On The Works Of Chris Brown
by Mathias Albert Anthony F. Lang Jr.This book assesses the impact of the work of Chris Brown in the field of International Political Theory. The volume engages with general issues of IPT as well as basic issues such as the use and role of practical reasoning and presents a nuanced understanding about issues regarding the legitimacy of war and violence. It explores questions that pertain to human rights, morality, and ethics, and generally an outlook for devising a ‘better’ world. The project is ideal for audiences with interest in International Relations, Ethics and Morality Studies and International Political Theory.
The Politics of Intimacy: Rethinking the End-of-Life Controversy (Configurations: Critical Studies Of World Politics)
by Anna DurnováDebates on the end-of-life controversy are complex because they seem to highjack national and cultural traditions. Where previous books have focused on ideological grounds, The Politics of Intimacy explores dying as the site where policies are negotiated and implemented. Intimacy comprises the emotional experience of the end of life and how we acknowledge it—or not—through institutions. This process shows that end-of-life controversy relies on the conflict between the individual and these institutions, a relationship that is the cornerstone of Western liberal democracies. <P><P> Through interviews with mourners, stakeholders, and medical professionals, examination of media debates in France and the Czech Republic, Durnová shows that liberal institutions, in their attempts to accommodate the emotional experience at the end of life, ultimately fail. She describes this deadlock as the “politics of intimacy,” revealing that political institutions deploy power through collective acknowledgment of individual emotions but fail to maintain this recognition because of this same experience.
The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State
by Iza R. HussinIn The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.
The Politics of Juridification: The Actor's Revenge (Law and Politics)
by Mariano CroceThe Politics of Juridification offers a timely contribution to debates about how politics is being affected by the increasing relevance of judicial bodies to the daily administration of Western political communities. While most critical analyses portray juridification as a depoliticizing, de-democratizing transferral of political authority to the courts (whether national or international), this book centres on the workable ambivalence of such a far-reaching phenomenon. While juridification certainly intensifies the power and competences of judicial bodies to the disadvantage of representative political institutions, it cannot be easily reduced to the demise of democratic politics. By focusing on the multiple ways in which social agents make use of the law, The Politics of Juridification teases out the agential and transformative aspects of the various negotiations social agents engage with legal institutions with a view to obtaining political visibility. In particular, the book homes in on two seemingly distinct phenomena: on one hand, the regulation of sexuality and emerging kinship formations; on the other, the fragmentation of legal settings due to the claims to legal autonomy advanced by sub-state cultural and religious groups. By doing so, the book makes the case for an unexpected convergence between the struggles for legal recognition of sexual minorities and religious and cultural minorities. The conclusion is that juridification does entail normalization and favour the infiltration of law into the social realm. But because of its ambivalent nature, it can and does serve as an alternative vehicle for social change – one that attaches more importance to how social agents produce law on a daily basis and how this law permeates official legal orders.
The Politics of Justice in European Private Law: Social Justice, Access Justice, Societal Justice (Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy)
by Hans-W MicklitzThe Politics of Justice in European Private Law intends to highlight the differences between the Member States' concepts of social justice, which have developed historically, and the distinct European concept of access justice. Contrary to the emerging critique of Europe's justice deficit in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, this book argues that beneath the larger picture of the Monetary Union, a more positive and more promising European concept of justice is developing. European access justice is thinner than national social justice, but access justice represents a distinct conception of justice nevertheless. Member States or nation states remain free to complement European access justice and bring to bear their own pattern of social justice.
The Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
by Julius Kirshner Lauro Martines Lawrin ArmstrongThe Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy features original contributions by international scholars on the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Lauro Martines' Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence, which is recognized as a groundbreaking study challenging traditional approaches to both Florentine and legal history.Essays by leading historians examine the professional, social, and political functions of Italian jurists from the thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries. The volume also examines the use of emergency powers, the critical role played by jurists in mediating the rule of law, and the adjudication of political crimes. The Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy provides both an assessment of Martines' pioneering archival scholarship as well as fresh insights into the interplay of law and politics in late medieval and Renaissance Italy.
The Politics of Legal Expertise in EU Policy-Making (Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy)
by Päivi Leino-SandbergLegal advisers working in the institutions of the European Union exercise significant power, but very little is known about their work. Notwithstanding the handful of cases where legal matters find their way into the news, legal advice remains invisible in EU policy making. For more than ten years Päivi Leino-Sandberg was a part of the invisible community of EU legal advisers, and participated in the exercise of their power. In this book, she shares her insights about how law and lawyers work in the EU institutions, and what their role and impact is on EU decisions from within the decision-making structure. She draws on interviews with over sixty EU lawyers and policymakers: legal experts who interpret the Treaties within the Institutions, draft legislation and defend the Institutions before the EU Court. Telling the true stories behind key negotiations, this book explores the interplay and tensions between legal requirements and political ambitions.
The Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age
by Ben Golder Daniel McLoughlinThis volume addresses the relationship between law and neoliberalism. Assembling work from established and emerging legal scholars, political theorists, philosophers, historians, and sociologists from around the world – including the Americas, Australia, Europe, and the United Kingdom – it addresses the conceptual, legal, and political relationships between liberal legality and neoliberal economics. More specifically, the book analyses the role that legality plays in the dominant economic force of our time, offering both a legal corrective to scholarship in economics and political economy that has paid insufficient attention to legal ideas, and, at the same time, a political economic corrective to legal scholarship that has only recently turned to theorizing neoliberalism. It will be of enormous interest to those working at the intersection of law and politics in our neoliberal age.
The Politics of Leverage in International Relations
by H. Richard FrimanThis unique volume unpacks the concept and practice of naming and shaming by examining how governments, NGOs and international organisations attempt to change the behaviour of targeted actors through public exposure of violations of normative standards and legal commitments.
The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilization and Human Rights as a Way of Life (Stanford Studies in Human Rights)
by Lynette J. ChuaThe Politics of Love in Myanmar offers an intimate ethnographic account of a group of LGBT activists before, during, and after Myanmar's post-2011 political transition. Lynette J. Chua explores how these activists devoted themselves to, and fell in love with, the practice of human rights and how they were able to empower queer Burmese to accept themselves, gain social belonging, and reform discriminatory legislation and law enforcement. Informed by interviews with activists from all walks of life—city dwellers, villagers, political dissidents, children of military families, wage laborers, shopkeepers, beauticians, spirit mediums, lawyers, students—Chua details the vivid particulars of the LGBT activist experience founding a movement first among exiles and migrants and then in Myanmar's cities, towns, and countryside. A distinct political and emotional culture of activism took shape, fusing shared emotions and cultural bearings with legal and political ideas about human rights. For this network of activists, human rights moved hearts and minds and crafted a transformative web of friendship, fellowship, and affection among queer Burmese. Chua's investigation provides crucial insights into the intersection of emotions and interpersonal relationships with law, rights, and social movements.
The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises
by Neophytos LoizidesWhat drives the politics of majority nationalism during crises, stalemates and peace mediations? In his innovative study of majority nationalism, Neophytos Loizides answers this important question by investigating how peacemakers succeed or fail in transforming the language of ethnic nationalism and war. The Politics of Majority Nationalism focuses on the contemporary politics of the 'post-Ottoman neighborhood' to explore conflict management in Greece and Turkey while extending its arguments to Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Drawing on systematic coding of parliamentary debates, new datasets and elite interviews, the book analyses and explains the under-emphasized linkages between institutions, symbols, and framing processes that enable or restrict the choice of peace. Emphasizing the constraints societies face when trapped in antagonistic frames, Loizides argues wisely mediated institutional arrangements can allow peacemaking to progress.
The Politics of Military Reform
by Hans Born Jürgen Rüland Maria-Gabriela ManeaThis volume seeks to explain why democratization and military reforms stagnate in newly democratizing countries. The contributions blend historical, ideational, cultural and structural explanatory factors to analyze the trajectories of military reform in Indonesia and Nigeria, two major regional powers that share many structural commonalities. In the tradition of the literature on security sector reform (SSR), the book not only scrutinizes executive initiatives toward military reform, but also provides ample coverage of societal actors. Findings show that while military reform is stagnating in both countries, societal forces ought to be taken into account more as major driving forces in explaining military reform. Several chapters study how legislatures, non-governmental organizations and the civilian defence epistemic community contribute to the transformation of military institutions. The last part of the book tackles another aspect rarely studied in the literature on military reform, namely, the role of militias in military reform.
The Politics of Murder: The Power and Ambition Behind "The Altar Boy Murder Case"
by Margo NashThis true crime investigation of a Boston teenager&’s murder trial is &“a chilling story about corruption, political power and a stacked judicial system" (John Ferak, author of Failure of Justice). On a hot night in July 1995, Janet Downing was stabbed ninety-eight times in her Somerville home, two miles northwest of Boston. Within hours, fifteen-year-old Eddie O&’Brien was identified as the prime suspect. The best friend of one of Janet&’s sons, Eddie was a peculiar choice. He had no criminal record or symptoms of mental illness. He had neither motive nor opportunity to commit the crime—while others had both. And yet, powers far beyond Somerville decided that Eddie was guilty. Perhaps it was politics. At the time, a movement targeting the supposed scourge of young &“superpredators&” was sweeping the nation. Dubbed the alter boy murder case by Court TV, Eddie&’s trial garnered national publicity and changed juvenile law in Massachusetts. But, as attorney Margo Nash demonstrates in this explosive expose, the justice system failed Eddie. Appointed Eddie&’s guardian ad litem, Nash attended every court session and gained access to his files. Examining the investigation, trial transcripts, and forensic evidence, Nash demonstrates that Eddie could not have committed the crime and that other viable suspects were never properly considered. Now readers can decide if politics sent an innocent boy to adult prison for the rest of his life.
The Politics of Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Nonprofit-Business Partnerships
by Maria May SeitanidiThe widespread partnering phenomenon in the US and the UK spurred a significant amount of literature focusing on its strategic use. The Politics of Partnerships diverges by examining if partnerships can deliver benefits that extend beyond the organisational to the societal level resulting from the intentional combined efforts of the partners.
The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia: Identity, Nationalism and the Uniform Civil Code
by Partha S. GhoshThe viability of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has always been a bone of contention in socially and politically plural South Asia. It is entangled within the polemics of identity politics, minority rights, women’s rights, national integration, uniform citizenry and, of late, global Islamic politics and universal human rights. While champions of each category view the issue from their own perspectives, making the debate extremely complex, this book takes up the challenge of providing a holistic political analysis. As most of the South Asian states today subscribe to a decentralised view and share a common history, this study is an excellent comparative analysis of the applicability of the UCC. In this work, India figures prominently, being the most plural and vibrant democracy, as well as accounting for almost three-fourths of the region’s population. This provides the backdrop for an analysis of the other states in the region. This second edition will be indispensable for scholars, researchers and students of law, political science and South Asian Studies.
The Politics of Personal Law in South Asia: Identity, Nationalism and the Uniform Civil Code
by Partha S. GhoshIt is a political study of the controversy surrounding the issue of the uniform civil code vis-à-vis personal laws from a South Asian perspective. At the centre of the debate is whether there should be a centralized view of the legal system in a given society or a decentralized view, both horizontally and vertically. This issue is entangled within the threads of identity politics, minority rights, women’s rights, national integration, global Islamic politics and universal human rights. Champions of each category view it through their own prisms, making the debate extremely complex, especially in politically and socially plural South Asia. So, this book attempts to harmonize the threads of the debate to provide a holistic political analysis.
The Politics of Persons: Individual Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves
by John ChristmanIt is both an ideal and an assumption of traditional conceptions of justice for liberal democracies that citizens are autonomous, self-governing persons. Yet standard accounts of the self and of self-government at work in such theories are hotly disputed and often roundly criticized in most of their guises. John Christman offers a sustained critical analysis of both the idea of the 'self' and of autonomy as these ideas function in political theory, offering interpretations of these ideas which avoid such disputes and withstand such criticisms. Christman's model of individual autonomy takes into account the socially constructed nature of persons and their complex cultural and social identities, and he shows how this model can provide a foundation for principles of justice for complex democracies marked by radical difference among citizens. His book will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics, and the social sciences.