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Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis
by Hendrik WagenaarThis accessible book gives academics, graduate students, and researchers a comprehensive overview of the vast, varied, and often confusing landscape of interpretive policy analysis. It is both theoretically informed and clear and jargon-free as it discusses the specific strengths and weaknesses of different interpretive approaches--all with a practical orientation towards doing policy analysis
Meaning of Justice in African Philosophy (Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations #28)
by Grivas Muchineripi KayangeThe book examines the meaning of justice in African political philosophy, building on the use-theoretical approach. Currently, most of the philosophical works in this context advocate for a communal interpretation of the meaning of justice, such as the 'relational theory of justice' and 'Ubuntu justice as fairness.' The author argues that this foundation of justice in the community undermines the self, which is a major problem with these theories. As an attempt to go beyond communitarianism in African thought, the book recognizes other philosophical frameworks for elaborating the meaning of justice in ordinary people's experience, such as vitalism, theism, ubuntuism, and semantic framework. The author opts for a reconstructed ubuntu-based theory of the meaning of justice that reflects the traditional African experience and recuperates 'valuing self-existence' and 'valuing other-existence' as its foundations. The book further identifies the centrality of rights in defining justice in traditional African communities.
Meaningful Philanthropy: The Person Behind the Giving
by Adrian Sargeant Jen ShangWith unparalleled access to some of the world’s most reflective and thoughtful philanthropists, this book explores the philanthropic journeys of 48 high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) to uncover the person behind the giving. Their stories reveal the difference between the meaning they experience and the impact their philanthropy makes. Through the lens of philanthropic psychology, the authors examine how philanthropists experience their giving and the psychological challenges they need to overcome. This fascinating book provides a unique guide for new and experienced philanthropists and their trusted advisers and fundraisers in the creation of more meaningful philanthropic experiences.
Meaningless Citizenship: Iraqi Refugees and the Welfare State
by Sally Wesley BonetA searing critique of the &“freedom&” that America offers to the victims of its imperialist machinations of war and occupation Meaningless Citizenship traces the costs of America&’s long-term military involvement around the world by following the forced displacement of Iraqi families, unveiling how Iraqis are doubly displaced: first by the machinery of American imperialism in their native countries and then through a more pernicious war occurring on U.S. soil—the dismantling of the welfare state.Revealing the everyday struggles and barriers that texture the lives of Iraqi families recently resettled to the United States, Sally Wesley Bonet draws from four years of deep involvement in the refugee community of Philadelphia. An education scholar, Bonet&’s analysis moves beyond the prevalent tendency to collapse schooling into education. Focusing beyond the public school to other critical institutions, such as public assistance, resettlement programs, and healthcare, she shows how encounters with institutions of the state are an inherently educative process for both refugee youths and adults, teaching about the types of citizenship they are expected to enact and embody while simultaneously shaping them into laboring subjects in service of capitalism. An intimate, in-depth ethnography, Meaningless Citizenship exposes how the veneer of American values—freedom, democracy, human rights—exported to countries like Iraq, disintegrates to uncover what is really beneath: a nation-state that prioritizes the needs of capitalism above the survival and wellbeing of its citizens.
Meaninglessness
by M. A. CaseyWhat would the world be like if we no longer needed meaning? Australian sociologist Michael Casey's revealing work charts the collapse of the metaphysical world and the innate human need for meaning. With the decline of Christianity and the demise of secular universalism in the west, the meaning and value of metaphysical culture has been replaced by an entirely new post-metaphysical world. <p><p> In Meaninglessness, Casey revisits the social theory of Nietzsche, Freud, and Rorty, in order to conceive how this post-metaphysical culture may take shape in the third millennium. Framing questions of enduring significance to contemporary social and political theory in a new methodological light, this work will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in sociology, post-modernism, cultural studies, political theory, and philosophy.
Meanings & Co.: The Interdisciplinarity of Communication, Semiotics and Multimodality (Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress #6)
by Alin Olteanu Andrew Stables Dumitru BorţunThis book explores the interdisciplinarity of semiotics and communication studies, comprising both theoretical explorations and semiotic applications to communication with theoretical bearings. These disciplines have generally been understood as mutually implicit, but there still are many unexplored research avenues in this area, particularly on a conceptual level. The book offers broad insights into the epistemological relations between semiotics and other approaches to communication from perspectives such as sociology, philosophy of language and communication theory. As such, it sheds light on the communication of knowledge.Semiotics is currently enjoying increasing popularity within the humanities and social sciences. Understood as relational logic (Charles Peirce) or hermeneutics (structuralism and poststructuralism), semiotics fundamentally implies certain positions with regard to communication. Because of the generality and conceptual vagueness of semiosis and communication, how one elucidates the other is still an underexplored theme. With some pioneering studies of this relation, the books examines various fields, such as language, code, learning, embodiment, political communication, media, cinema, cuisine, multimodality and intertextuality.
Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America
by Gabriela Polit Dueñas María Helena RuedaThis volume includes contributions of scholars from various fields - the social sciences, journalism, the humanities and the arts - whose work offers insightful and innovative ways to understand the devastating and unprecedented forms of violence currently experienced in Latin America. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, it offers an array of perspectives that contribute to ongoing debates in the study of violence in the region.
Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Theory Out of Bounds #20)
by Giorgio AgambenAn essential reevaluation of the proper role of politics in contemporary life. In this critical rethinking of the categories of politics within a new sociopolitical and historical context, the distinguished political philosopher Giorgio Agamben builds on his previous work to address the status and nature of politics itself. Bringing politics face-to-face with its own failures of consciousness and consequence, Agamben frames his analysis in terms of clear contemporary relevance. He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gesture—a politics of means without end.Among the topics Agamben takes up are the "properly" political paradigms of experience, as well as those generally not viewed as political. He begins by elaborating work on biopower begun by Foucault, returning the natural life of humans to the center of the polis and considering it as the very basis for politics. He then considers subjects such as the state of exception (the temporary suspension of the juridical order); the concentration camp (a zone of indifference between public and private and, at the same time, the secret matrix of the political space in which we live); the refugee, who, breaking the bond between the human and the citizen, moves from marginal status to the center of the crisis of the modern nation-state; and the sphere of pure means or gestures (those gestures that, remaining nothing more than means, liberate themselves from any relation to ends) as the proper sphere of politics. Attentive to the urgent demands of the political moment, as well as to the bankruptcy of political discourse, Agamben’s work brings politics back to life, and life back to politics.Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Language and Death (1991), Stanzas (1992), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #2)
by Robert A. CaroRobert A. Caro's life of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the greatly acclaimed The Path to Power, also winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, continues -- one of the richest, most intensive and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American President. In Means of Ascent the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer/historian, chronicler also of Robert Moses in The Power Broker, carries Johnson through his service in World War II and the foundation of his long-concealed fortune and the facts behind the myths he created about it. But the explosive heart of the book is Caro's revelation of the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for forty years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson had to win or face certain political death, and which he did win -- by "the 87 votes that changed history." Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new -- the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
by Byron TauYou are being surveilled right now. This sweeping exposé reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home.&“A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age.&”—Kirkus Reviews&“That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance program—one designed to track everyone.&”For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring.Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is &“following&” you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for sale—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government.In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scope—one that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directive—&“get everything you can&”—and the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it.Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargain—ubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price?
Means to an End
by Tod Lindberg Lee FeinsteinThe International Criminal Court remains a sensitive issue in U.S. foreign policy circles. It was agreed to at the tail end of the Clinton administration, but with serious reservations. In 2002 the Bush administration ceremoniously reversed course and "unsigned" the Rome Statute that had established the Court. But recent developments in Washington and elsewhere indicate that the United States may be moving toward de facto acceptance of the Court and active cooperation in its mission. In Means to an End, Lee Feinstein and Tod Lindberg reassess the relationship of the United States and the ICC, as well as American policy toward international justice more broadly. Praise for the hardcover edition of Means to an End "Books of this sort are all too rare. Two experienced policy intellectuals, one liberal, one conservative, have come together to find common ground on a controversial foreign policy issue.... The book is short, but it goes a long way toward clearing the ideological air." -- Foreign Affairs "A well-researched and timely contribution to the debate over America's proper relationship to the International Criminal Court. Rigorous in its arguments and humane in its conclusions, the volume is an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers alike." --Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State"Two of our nation's leading authorities on preventing atrocities have joined to make a convincing argument that closer cooperation with the International Criminal Court will help promote human rights and the values on which America was founded." --Angelina Jolie, co-chair, Jolie-Pitt Foundation
Means to an End
by Tod Lindberg Lee FeinsteinThe International Criminal Court remains a sensitive issue in U.S. foreign policy circles. It was agreed to at the tail end of the Clinton administration, but with serious reservations. In 2002 the Bush administration ceremoniously reversed course and "unsigned" the Rome Statute that had established the Court. But recent developments in Washington and elsewhere indicate that the United States may be moving toward de facto acceptance of the Court and active cooperation in its mission. In Means to an End, Lee Feinstein and Tod Lindberg reassess the relationship of the United States and the ICC, as well as American policy toward international justice more broadly.Praise for the hardcover edition of Means to an End "Books of this sort are all too rare. Two experienced policy intellectuals, one liberal, one conservative, have come together to find common ground on a controversial foreign policy issue.... The book is short, but it goes a long way toward clearing the ideological air." - Foreign Affairs "A well-researched and timely contribution to the debate over America's proper relationship to the International Criminal Court. Rigorous in its arguments and humane in its conclusions, the volume is an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers alike." -Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State"Two of our nation's leading authorities on preventing atrocities have joined to make a convincing argument that closer cooperation with the International Criminal Court will help promote human rights and the values on which America was founded." -Angelina Jolie, co-chair, Jolie-Pitt Foundation
Means, Motives, and Opportunities: How Executives and Interest Groups Set Public Policy
by Christian Breunig Chris KoskiMeans, Motives, and Opportunities illuminates how states spend public money through the lens of governmental structure, executive power, and interest group competition. Christian Breunig and Chris Koski argue that policymaking is a function of not only policymakers' means (powers), but of their motives (issues) and opportunities (interest group competition) for change. Using over twenty-five years of data across all fifty US states, four in-depth case studies, and multiple examples of budget battles, the book describes a budget-making environment in which governors must balance the preferences of interest groups with their own, all while attempting to build a budget that roughly balances. While governors are uniquely powerful, the range of changes they can make is largely impacted by interest group competition. By showing how means, motives, and opportunities matter, the book shows how spending decisions at the state level influence nearly every aspect of American life.
Measure for Measure: Three Novels of Revenge
by Jon LandVengeance leads to justice in this trio of thrillers from the USA Today–bestselling author and “one of the best all-out action writers in the business” (Los Angeles Review of Books). “Nobody writes action like Jon Land,” and in these three action-packed thrillers, personal quests for vengeance expose international conspiracies posing global threats (John Lescroart). No wonder James Rollins says: “Jon Land proves yet again that suspense has a new king.” Labyrinth: An American op in Colombia has discovered a far-reaching conspiracy, code-named Tantalus. After he is murdered, the State Department enlists an old friend of his. Once the Academy’s brightest prospect, Christopher Locke is now an unemployed professor sunken in debt, struggling to support three children. To avenge his friend’s death, Locke pursues a nefarious organization known as the Committee from Lichtenstein to Geneva to London, but with every turn he finds himself closer and closer to his own dead end. The Lucifer Directive: Since the day his father was murdered by hijackers, Dan Lennigin has dreamed about taking revenge on the world’s terrorists. Now a college student, he is awakened one night by a phone call and hears a code meant for someone else’s ears. Minutes after the call, an operative for the antiterrorist agency Lucifer is killed, and his superiors come for Dan. He is the only one who has heard the warning, and the only one who can stop an international terrorist conspiracy. The Council of Ten: After his cocaine-smuggling grandmother turns informant for the DEA and is murdered by a vicious drug lord, journalist Drew Jordan vows to avenge her. But he soon discovers the drug-smuggling operation is only the tip of a global conspiracy. Teaming up with an ex-CIA black ops agent known as the Timber Wolf and a lethal female Mossad agent, Jordan must bring down a shadow organization known only as the Council of Ten.
Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea
by Laura C. NelsonMeasured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea.
Measurement of Fiscal Impact: Methodological Issues
by Mario I. Blejer Ke-Young ChuA report from the International Monetary Fund.
Measurement of Nontariff Barriers
by Robert M. Stern Alan V. DeardorffAs tariffs on imports of manufactures have been reduced as a result of multi-lateral trade negotiations, interest in the extent to which existing nontariff barriers may distort and restrict international trade is growing. Accurate and reliable measures are needed in order to address the issues involving the use and impacts of nontariff barriers. This study assesses currently available methods for quantifying such barriers and makes recommendations as to those methods that can be most effectively employed. The authors focus both on the conceptual issues arising in the measurement of the different types of nontariff barriers and on the applied research that has been carried out in studies prepared by country members of the OECD Pilot Group and others seeking to quantify the barriers. Nontariff barriers include quotas, variable levies, voluntary export restraints, government procurement regulations, domestic subsidies, and antidumping and countervailing duty measures. The authors discuss the many different methods available for measuring the effects of these and other nontariff barriers. Illustrative results are presented for industrial OECD countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Finally, the authors offer guideline principles and recommend procedures for measuring different types of nontariff barriers.
Measures of Social Evolution: Macroeconomic Indicators of Social Stability (SpringerBriefs in Sociology)
by Erik W. AslaksenThis book extends a previously published model of social evolution by using macroeconomic measures to indicate both the current state of the society, and its evolutionary trajectory. This model considers society as a system of interacting elements evolving through stages of increasing strength of interaction and complexity of structure. It measures society in constituting the world collectively, with nation-states as the elements, here described through macroeconomic measures such as GDP, government expenditure, and inequality. The economic data presented indicates that this stage is approaching the next evolutionary step, which is either the formation of a world society of nations, with an associated overarching common infrastructure absorbing some of the sovereign functions of nation-states as they exist today, or as a society of competing groups of nations, each bound by alliances and bilateral agreements. The book explores how the former faces great obstacles in the form of nationalism and a misunderstood concept of sovereignty, and poses that it is in an embryonic stage. The author poses that it is this structure that would be best equipped to handle common challenges, such as the environment and global warming, and topically, pandemics. A novel interdisciplinary text in social complexity, this book is of interest to researchers in socio-economic fields.
Measuring Democracy: A Bridge between Scholarship and Politics (Democratic Transition and Consolidation)
by Gerardo L. MunckAlthough democracy is a widely held value, concrete measurement of it is elusive. Gerardo L. Munck’s constructive assessment of the methods used to measure democracies promises to bring order to the debate in academia and in practice.Drawing on his years of academic research on democracy and measurement and his practical experience evaluating democratic practices for the United Nations and the Organization of American States, Munck's discussion bridges the theories of academia with practical applications. In proposing a more open and collaborative relationship between theory and action, he makes the case for reassessing how democracy is measured and encourages fundamental changes in methodology. Munck’s field-tested framework for quantifying and qualifying democracy is built around two instruments he developed: the UN Development Programme’s Electoral Democracy Index and a case-by-case election monitoring tool used by the OAS.Measuring Democracy offers specific, real-world lessons that scholars and practitioners can use to improve the quality and utility of data about democracy.
Measuring Development: An Inequality Dominance Approach (Themes in Economics)
by Asis Kumar BanerjeeThis book discusses how to measure the level of development of an economy, particularly, the task of ranking economies in terms of their development. In this context, development is defined as an increase in people’s level of wellbeing. The book emphasises that wellbeing is a multidimensional concept, and that it is important to ask how equitably the fruits of development are distributed, and as such it focuses on multidimensional, inequality-sensitive development ranking. Rather than using various specific development indices, which would lead to different development rankings for a country, the book proposes a dominance approach, which formulates conditions under which two economies can be ranked unambiguously, making it valid for all reasonable development indices. With the help of illustrative examples using real-world data, it demonstrates that such unambiguous rankings are possible, and that the proposed approach can be used to complement traditional approaches. An invaluable resource for researchers working in the field of development, the book will also appeal to practitioners engaged in measuring development.An excerpt from the book's Foreword:"[This book] is a comprehensive and valuable contribution to the literature on the measurement of inequality and the use of such measurement in the assessment of social welfare. I believe that it will be of much interest to researchers working on measures of inequality and social welfare as well as advanced graduate students who are looking for a solid introduction to this important area of normative economics."- Prof. Prasanta K. Pattanaik, University of California, Riverside, California, U.S.A.
Measuring E-government Efficiency
by Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-BolívarE-government has the potential to improve public services, information transparency, and the engagement of civic participation of the public sector management. This book analyzes the achievement of expectations created by public managers, policy-makers, and stakeholders with regard to the implementation of e-government policies and applications. It also tries to determine whether e-government applications have been introduced as a fad or according to real demands from citizenry and if efforts within e-government have been effective. This book investigates how public managers and policy-makers imagine e-government policies and the impact of those policies on their management and decision-making process through the engagement of citizenry. It is also discusses whether e-government policies are merely procedural improvements that strictly introduce new ways of delivering public services or disclosing public sector information. The book's analysis of the overall expectations on e-government applications makes it of interest to scholars in public administration as well as to policy-makers and stakeholders.
Measuring Education Inequality in Developing Countries
by Nichole Torpey-SaboeThis book constructs a measure of education inequality using time-series cross-national data and utilizes real-world examples based on author interviews. It provides insights into how classic trade theory might be applied more broadly to generate expectations not only about income distribution, but also about investment in human capital. The project explores the ways in which global trends toward urbanization and democratization might be expected to impact education inequality. The author addresses contemporary issues in politics, such as growing income inequality, the backlash against globalization and free trade, and concerns that democratic institutions are elite-dominated and unresponsive to the needs of common citizens.
Measuring Global Migration: Towards Better Data for All (Routledge Key Issues in Global Migration)
by Frank Laczko Elisa Mosler Vidal Marzia RangoThis book focuses on how to improve the collection, analysis and responsible use of data on global migration and international mobility.While migration remains a topic of great policy interest for governments around the world, there is a serious lack of reliable, timely, disaggregated and comparable data on it, and often insufficient safeguards to protect migrants’ information. Meanwhile, vast amounts of data about the movement of people are being generated in real time due to new technologies, but these have not yet been fully captured and utilized by migration policymakers, who often do not have enough data to inform their policies and programmes. The lack of migration data has been internationally recognized; the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration urges all countries to improve data on migration to ensure that policies and programmes are "evidence-based", but does not spell out how this could be done. This book examines both the technical data issues associated with improving data on migration and the wider political challenges of how countries manage the collection and use of migration data. The first part of the book discusses how much we really know about international migration based on existing data, and key concepts and approaches which are often used to measure migration. The second part of the book examines what measures could be taken to improve migration data, highlighting examples of good practice from around the world in recent years, across a range of different policy areas, such as health, climate change and sustainable development more broadly. Written by leading experts on international migration data, this book is the perfect guide for students, policymakers and practitioners looking to understand more about the existing evidence base on migration and what can be done to improve it.
Measuring Globalisation
by Pim Martens Axel Dreher Noel GastonGlobalisation is a timely and controversial topic. Against the chorus of globalisation's proponents and detractors, the authors propose an approach for measuring globalisation and its consequences. Undertaking a comprehensive review of the literature on globalisation and using data from the MGI and KOF indices, the well-respected authors build a framework for defining globalisation and analyzing the relationships among economic, political, and social variables.