- Table View
- List View
Power and the Vote
by Brian MinHow do developing states decide who gets access to public goods like electricity, water, and education? Power and the Vote breaks new ground by showing that the provision of seemingly universal public goods is intricately shaped by electoral priorities. In doing so, this book introduces new methods using high-resolution satellite imagery to study the distribution of electricity across and within the developing world. Combining cross-national evidence with detailed sub-national analysis and village-level data from India, Power and the Vote affirms the power of electoral incentives in shaping the distribution of public goods and challenges the view that democracy is a luxury of the rich with little relevance to the world's poor.
Power from Below in Premodern Societies: The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record
by Manuel Fernández-Götz T. L. ThurstonThis volume challenges previous views of social organization focused on elites by offering innovative perspectives on 'power from below.' Using a variety of archaeological, anthropological, and historical data to question traditional narratives of complexity as inextricably linked to top-down power structures, it exemplifies how commoners have developed strategies to sustain non-hierarchical networks and contest the rise of inequalities. Through case studies from around the world – ranging from Europe to New Guinea, and from Mesoamerica to China – an international team of contributors explore the diverse and dynamic nature of power relations in premodern societies. The theoretical models discussed throughout the volume include a reassessment of key concepts such as heterarchy, collective action, and resistance. Thus, the book adds considerable nuance to our understanding of power in the past, and also opens new avenues of reflection that can help inform discussions about our collective present and future.
Power in Conservation: Environmental Anthropology Beyond Political Ecology (Routledge Studies in Conservation and the Environment)
by Carol CarpenterThis book examines theories and ethnographies related to the anthropology of power in conservation. Conservation thought and practice is power laden—conservation thought is powerfully shaped by the history of ideas of nature and its relation to people, and conservation interventions govern and affect peoples and ecologies. This book argues that being able to think deeply, particularly about power, improves conservation policy-making and practice. Political ecology is by far the most well-known and well-published approach to thinking about power in conservation. This book analyzes the relatively neglected but robust anthropology of conservation literature on politics and power outside political ecology, especially literature rooted in Foucault. It is intended to make four of Foucault’s concepts of power accessible, concepts that are most used in the anthropology of conservation: the power of discourses, discipline and governmentality, subject formation, and neoliberal governmentality. The important ethnographic literature that these concepts have stimulated is also examined. Together, theory and ethnography underpin our emerging understanding of a new, Anthropocene-shaped world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, environmental anthropology, and political ecology, as well as conservation practitioners and policy-makers.
Power in Contemporary Zimbabwe (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Erasmus Masitera Fortune SibandaIn recent years, the Zimbabwe crisis rendered the country and its citizens to be a typical case of ‘failed states’, the world over. Zimbabwean society was and is still confronted with different challenges which include political, economic and social problems. Attempts to overcome these challenges have thrown light on the power that rests within individuals and or groups to change and even revolutionize their localities, communities, states and ultimately the world at large. Through experience, individuals and groups have promoted ideas that have aided in changing mentalities, attitudes and behaviors in societies at different levels. This book brings together contributors from various academic disciplines to reflect on and theorize the contours of power, including the intrinsic and or extrinsic models of power, which pertain to individuals, communities, and or groups in order to transform society. Reflections are on various groups such as political movements, environmental movements, religious groups, advocacy groups, gender groups, to mention but a few, as they struggle against marginalization, discrimination, exploitation, and other forms of oppression showing their agency or compliance.
Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies
by Isaac Ariail ReedIn Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you” as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money. He mobilizes this theory to investigate the onset of modernity in the Atlantic world, with a focus on rebellion, revolution, and state formation in colonial North America, the early American Republic, the English Civil War, and French Revolution. Modernity, Reed argues, dismantled the “King’s Two Bodies”—the monarch’s physical body and his ethereal, sacred second body that encompassed the body politic—as a schema of representation for forging power relations. Reed’s account then offers a new understanding of the democratic possibilities and violent exclusions forged in the name of “the people,” as revolutionaries sought new ways to secure delegation, build hierarchy, and attack alterity. Reconsidering the role of myth in modern politics, Reed proposes to see the creative destruction and eternal recurrence of the King’s Two Bodies as constitutive of the modern attitude, and thus as a new starting point for critical theory. Modernity poses in a new way an eternal human question: what does it mean to be the author of one’s own actions?
Power in Practice: The Pragmatic Anthropology of Afro-Brazilian Capoeira
by Sergio González VarelaConsidering the concept of power in capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian ritual art form, Varela describes ethnographically the importance that capoeira leaders (mestres) have in the social configuration of a style called Angola in Bahia, Brazil. He analyzes how individual power is essential for an understanding of the modern history of capoeira, and for the themes of embodiment, play, cosmology, and ritual action. The book also emphasizes the great significance that creativity and aesthetic expression have for capoeira's practice and performance.
Power in Vulnerability: A Multi-Dimensional Review of Migrants’ Vulnerabilities (Studien zur Migrations- und Integrationspolitik)
by Annette Jünemann Nicolas Fromm Hamza SafouaneWith this volume, the editors propose a multi-dimensional and critical review of migrants’ vulnerabilities. They argue that a deeper understanding of vulnerability is paramount to discuss empowerment and resilience. Regardless of their motivations, migrants can face vulnerabilities at any of the stages of their journey. These vulnerabilities may change over time for better or worse, corresponding with a person’s legal status, migratory path and the practices of migration regulation. This book addresses vulnerability from an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. It brings together latest academic research and practitioners’ insights to help reception societies adapt and improve their dealing with migrants’ vulnerabilities.
Power in the Village: Social Networks, Honor and Justice among Immigrant Families from Italy to Brazil (Microhistories)
by Maíra Ines VendramePower in the Village explores the formation of late-nineteenth-century Italian rural society in southern Brazil, through an examination of how Italian peasants in northern Italy and southern Brazil solved issues related to family honor. Looking specifically at social networks and justice practices to examine the kind of rationality that ruled individual and family behaviors, the book offers an understanding of the restoration of social balance in these communities, and explores the culture of immigrants, particularly in issues related to honor and morality. Taking as a case study the ambush and murder of a parish priest, Antonio Sorio, in January 1900 in Silveira Martins, a small town of Italian immigrants, Vendrame offers a reinterpretation of the society of Italian immigrants in southern Brazil. She argues that rather than being an idyllic picture of a homogeneous and harmonious society, the colonial settlements were places pervaded by tension, solidarity and self-interest, which guided individual and collective behavior. This book will be of great interest to scholars working in Italian history, Brazilian history, immigration history and the history of colonialism. It will also be of interest to scholars working on ethnographic and religious history, as well as to social anthropologists.
Power of Articulation: Imagery of Social Structure and Social Change
by Matti KortesojaThis open access book is the first book that attempts to treat the notion of articulation as an important concept to be added to the lexicon of communication studies and social science. It constitutes the first comprehensive and systematic discussion of ‘articulation’ in English, providing an introduction of its usages and what has occurred on its ‘travels’ from one theoretical realm to another in political philosophy, structural linguistics, new economic anthropology, cultural studies and post-Marxist discourse theory. The proposed research takes a relational approach to society and social action in a way that recognises their relative autonomy. It entails an introduction of the ‘discursive turn’ in the imagery of society and social change, thereby proving that the relational concept of articulation/Gliederung has potential to consider society as both a structured, complex whole and a product of human interaction.
Power of Development
by Jonathan CrushPost-colonial, post-modern and feminist critiques have challenged the ways we theorise and practice development. Development is not just the conclusion of economic logic; its histories reveal a legacy of contested power, illuminating the contemporary battlefields of knowledge. These essays explore the language of development, its rhetoric and meaning within different political and institutional contexts. The contested ideas behind world development are explained, with illustrative material, sensitive to place and time, chiefly drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America. This book examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder.
Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living
by Anne DufourmantelleGentleness is an enigma. Taken up in a double movement of welcoming and giving, it appears on the threshold of passages signed off by birth and death. Because it has its degrees of intensity, because it is a symbolic force, and because it has a transformative ability over things and beings, it is a power. The simplicity of gentleness is misleading. It is an active passivity that may become an extraordinary force of symbolic resistance and, as such, become central to both ethics and politics. Gentleness is a force of secret life-giving transformation linked to what the ancients called potentiality.In our day, gentleness is sold to us under its related form of diluted mawkishness. By infantilizing it our era denies it. This is how we try to overcome the high demands of its subtlety—no longer by fighting it, but by enfeebling it. Language itself is therefore perverted: what our society intends to give the human beings that it crushes “gently,” it does in the name of the highest values: happiness, truth, security.From listening to those who come to me and confide their despair, I have heard it expressed in every lived experience. I have felt its force of resistance and its intangible magic. In mediating its relation to the world, it appears that its intelligence carries life, saves and amplifies it.
Power of Scandal
by P. Johannes Ehrat, SJAre there events that are inherently scandalous? Power of Scandal finds that the very idea of 'scandal' is derived not from an event, but from public opinion - which, in turn, is construed by media narratives. Scandal is powerful because of its ability to challenge institutions by destabilizing their legitimacy. The media plays an integral role in the creation of scandal because it interprets real events as purposeful actions for the public. Examining the ubiquity of scandals in today's mass media, Johannes Ehrat's conclusions are fresh and surprising.Ehrat applies classic semiotic and pragmatic thought to contemporary media issues, mainly moralist discourse from sex abuse cases to the phenomenon of televangelism. Arguing that sociological and communications studies of scandal have ignored the media's constructed nature, Ehrat focuses on how meaningful public narrative is produced. By examining the parallel worlds of media and public opinion, Power of Scandal uses an alternative heuristic for understanding mass communication that is both rigorous and sophisticated.
Power to Save the World
by Gwyneth CravensAn informed look at the myths and fears surrounding nuclear energy, and a practical, politically realistic solution to global warming and our energy needs. Faced by the world's oil shortages and curious about alternative energy sources, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: it is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. In the end, we see that if we are to care for subsequent generations, embracing nuclear energy is an ethical imperative.
Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy
by Gwyneth CravensAn informed look at the myths and fears surrounding nuclear energy, and a practical, politically realistic solution to global warming and our energy needs. Faced by the world's oil shortages and curious about alternative energy sources, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: it is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. In the end, we see that if we are to care for subsequent generations, embracing nuclear energy is an ethical imperative.
Power to the Poor
by Gordon K. MantlerThe Poor People's Campaign of 1968 has long been overshadowed by the assassination of its architect, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the political turmoil of that year. In a major reinterpretation of civil rights and Chicano movement history, Gordon K. Mantler demonstrates how King's unfinished crusade became the era's most high-profile attempt at multiracial collaboration and sheds light on the interdependent relationship between racial identity and political coalition among African Americans and Mexican Americans. Mantler argues that while the fight against poverty held great potential for black-brown cooperation, such efforts also exposed the complex dynamics between the nation's two largest minority groups. Drawing on oral histories, archives, periodicals, and FBI surveillance files, Mantler paints a rich portrait of the campaign and the larger antipoverty work from which it emerged, including the labor activism of Cesar Chavez, opposition of Black and Chicano Power to state violence in Chicago and Denver, and advocacy for Mexican American land-grant rights in New Mexico. Ultimately, Mantler challenges readers to rethink the multiracial history of the long civil rights movement and the difficulty of sustaining political coalitions.
Power, Authority, and the Anabaptist Tradition (Center Books in Anabaptist Studies)
by Benjamin W. Redekop and Calvin W. RedekopFounded in part on a rejection of "worldly" power and the use of force, Anabaptism carried with it the promise of redemptive power. Yet the attempt to banish worldly power to the margins of the Christian community has been fraught with dilemmas, contradictions, and, at times, blatant abuses of authority. In this groundbreaking book, Benjamin W. Redekop, Calvin W. Redekop, and their coauthors draw on classic and contemporary thinking to confront the issue of power and authority in the Anabaptist-Mennonite community. From the power relationships of the sixteenth-century Peasants' War to issues of contemporary sexuality, the topics of Power, Authority, and the Anabaptist Tradition are sure to interest a wide audience.Contributors: Stephen C. Ainlay, College of the Holy Cross • J. Lawrence Burkholder, President Emeritus, Goshen College • Lydia Neufeld Harder, Toronto School of Theology • Joel Hartman, University of Missouri • Jacob A. Loewen, missionary, retired • Dorothy Yoder Nyce, Writer and former Assistant Professor, Goshen College • Lynda Nyce, Bluffton College • Wesley Prieb (deceased), former dean, Tabor College • Benjamin W. Redekop, Kettering University • Calvin W. Redekop, Conrad Grebel College, emeritus • James M. Stayer, Queen's University, Ontario
Power, Conflict and Criminalisation
by Phil ScratonDrawing on a body of empirical, qualitative work spanning three decades, this unique text traces the significance of critical social research and critical analyses in understanding some of the most significant and controversial issues in contemporary society. Focusing on central debates in the UK and Ireland – prison protests; inner-city uprisings; deaths in custody; women’s imprisonment; transition in the north of Ireland; the ‘crisis’ in childhood; the Hillsborough and Dunblane tragedies; and the ‘war on terror’ – Phil Scraton argues that ‘marginalisation’ and ‘criminalisation’ are social forces central to the application of state power and authority. Each case study demonstrates how structural relations of power, authority and legitimacy, establish the determining contexts of everyday life, social interaction and individual opportunity. This book explores the politics and ethics of critical social research, making a persuasive case for the application of critical theory to analysing the rule of law, its enforcement and the administration of criminal justice. It is indispensable for students in the fields of criminology, criminal justice and socio-legal studies, social policy and social work.
Power, Economics, And Security: The United States And Japan In Focus
by Henry BienenThis volume is dedicated to the memory of Klaus E. Knorr. Thisis fitting for a number of reasons. The collaborative work herewas done under the auspices of the Center of International Studiesat Princeton University, which Klaus Knorr directed from 1961until 1968. The concerns of this book are to analyze the relationshipsamong economic and military power and national security; to explorethe ways economic power and economic decline relate to internationalhegemony; and to examine our understanding of concepts such aspower, security, and burden-sharing. These concerns ranked highon Klaus Knorr's research agenda during his productive and fruitfullife.
Power, Empowerment and Social Change (Rethinking Development)
by Rosemary McGee Jethro PettitThis book uncovers how power operates around the world, and how it can be resisted or transformed through empowered collective action and social leadership. The stakes have never been higher. Recent years have seen a rapid escalation of inequalities, the rise of new global powers and corporate interests, increasing impunity of human rights violations, suppression of civil society, and a re-shaping of democratic processes by post-truth, populist and nationalist politics. Rather than looking at power through the lenses of agency or structure alone, this book views power and empowerment as complex and multidimensional societal processes, defined by pervasive social norms, conditions, constraints and opportunities. Bridging theory and practice, the book explores real-world applications using a selection of frameworks, tools, case studies, examples, resources and reflections from experience to support actors to analyse their positioning and align themselves with progressive social forces. Compiled with social change practitioners, students and scholars in mind, Power, Empowerment and Social Change is the perfect volume for anyone involved in politics, international development, sociology, human rights and environmental justice who is looking for fresh insights for transforming power in favour of relatively less powerful people.
Power, Glamour and Angst: Inside Australia's Elite Neighbourhoods (The Contemporary City)
by Ilan WieselPower, Glamour and Angst is about the social and cultural life of three Australian neighbourhoods – Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth) - which are home to some of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens. The book explores how living in these neighbourhoods shapes the lifestyles, social networks and status of Australia’s elites. The book explores the everyday rituals through which residents produce their neighbourhood's status. It maps residents’ social networks and exposes the local institutions – including schools and sports or social clubs – in which access to such high-powered networks is granted or withheld. Power, Glamour and Angst examines how the collective social and cultural capitals of elite neighbourhoods are mobilised towards varied objectives, from initiation of business connections and opportunities, through to opposition against unwanted development or traffic, both sources of ongoing angst. Deeply conservative and resistant to change at their core, despite their wealth and power these communities have not always been successful in fully repressing external pressures. In the 21st century Australian city, even elite neighbourhoods must learn to adapt to population growth, urban densification and increased cultural diversity.
Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government—and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead
by David RothkopfThe world's largest company, Wal-Mart Stores, has revenues higher than the GDP of all but twenty-five of the world's countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost a hundred nations. The world's largest asset manager, a secretive New York company called Black Rock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet. A private philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spends as much worldwide on health care as the World Health Organization. The rise of private power may be the most important and least understood trend of our time. David Rothkopf provides a fresh, timely look at how we have reached a point where thousands of companies have greater power than all but a handful of states. Beginning with the story of an inquisitive Swedish goat wandering off from his master and inadvertently triggering the birth of the oldest company still in existence, Power, Inc. follows the rise and fall of kings and empires, the making of great fortunes, and the chaos of bloody revolutions. A fast-paced tale in which champions of liberty are revealed to be paid pamphleteers of moneyed interests and greedy scoundrels trigger changes that lift billions from deprivation, Power, Inc. traces the bruising jockeying for influence right up to today's financial crises, growing inequality, broken international system, and battles over the proper role of government and markets.Rothkopf argues that these recent developments, coupled with the rise of powers like China and India, may not lead to the triumph of American capitalism that was celebrated just a few years ago. Instead, he considers an unexpected scenario, a contest among competing capitalisms offering different visions for how the world should work, a global ideological struggle in which European and Asian models may have advantages. An important look at the power struggle that is defining our times, Power, Inc. also offers critical insights into how to navigate the tumultuous years ahead.
Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship: An Ethnography of Academia (Transformations)
by Maria do Mar PereiraFeminist scholarship is sometimes dismissed as not quite ‘proper’ knowledge – it’s too political or subjective, many argue. But what are the boundaries of ‘proper’ knowledge? Who defines them, and how are they changing? How do feminists negotiate them? And how does this boundary-work affect women’s and gender studies, and its scholars’ and students’ lives? These are the questions tackled by this ground-breaking ethnography of academia inspired by feminist epistemology, Foucault, and science and technology studies. Drawing on data collected over a decade in Portugal and the UK, US and Scandinavia, this title explores different spaces of academic work and sociability, considering both official discourse and ‘corridor talk’. It links epistemic negotiations to the shifting political economy of academic labour, and situates the smallest (but fiercest) departmental negotiations within global relations of unequal academic exchange. Through these links, this timely volume also raises urgent questions about the current state and status of gender studies and the mood of contemporary academia. Indeed, its sobering, yet uplifting, discussion of that mood offers fresh insight into what it means to produce feminist work within neoliberal cultures of academic performativity, demanding increasing productivity. As the first book to analyse how academics talk (publicly or in off-the-record humour) about feminist scholarship, Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship is essential reading for scholars and students in gender studies, LGBTQ studies, post-colonial studies, STS, sociology and education. Winner of the FWSA 2018 Book Prize competition The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315692623, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Power, Legitimacy and the Public Sphere: The Iranian Ta’ziyeh Theatre Ritual (Contemporary Liminality)
by Amin Sharifi IsalooA ground-breaking study of political transformations in non-Western societies, this book applies anthropological, sociological and political concepts to the recent history of Iran to explore the role played by a ritual theatrical performance (Ta’ziyeh) and its symbols on the construction of public mobilisations. With particular attention to three formative phases – the 1978–79 Islamic Revolution, the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, and the 2009 Green Movement – the author concentrates on the relations between symbols of the ritual performance and the public sphere to shed light on the ways in which the symbols of Ta’ziyeh were used to claim political legitimacy. Thus, the book elucidates how symbols and images of a ritual performance can be utilised by ‘tricksters’, such as political actors and fanatical religious leaders, to take advantage of the prolongation of a state of transition within a society, and so manipulate the public in order to mobilise crowds and movements to fulfil their own interests and concerns. An insightful analysis of political mobilisation explained in terms of a set of interrelated master concepts such as ‘liminality’, ‘trickster’ and ‘schismogenesis’, Power, Legitimacy and the Public Sphere integrates theoretical, empirical and ‘diagnostic’ perspectives in order to investigate and illustrate links between the public sphere and religious and cultural rituals. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and anthropology with interests in social theory, public mobilisations and political transformation.
Power, Legitimacy, and World Order: Changing Contours of Preconditions and Perspectives
by Sanjay Pulipaka, Krishnan Srinivasan, and James MayallThis book reflects on the reasons for the decline of international cooperation in world politics and studies ways to restore legitimacy in the international order. It engages with the concept of legitimacy in international relations theories and practices to examine the discussions around power shifts, the decline of liberalism, demands for inclusive international architectures, and challenges to multilateralism, as well as established norms by leaders and nationalisms. It studies the impact of the post-COVID-19 world order on the nature of power in the international system and changes in normative concerns of security. The volume also interrogates political legitimacy through an area studies lens by examining the concept of legitimacy separately in the USA, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. An important and timely text featuring contributions from eminent scholars, this book will be of use to students and researchers of modern history, political science, and international relations. It will also be of interest to think tanks and policy-making bodies concerned with international affairs and foreign policy.
Power, Media and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Framing Public Discourse
by Stuart Price and Ben HarbisherThis edited collection provides an in-depth, interdisciplinary critique of the acts of public communication disseminated during a major global crisis. Encompassing contributions from academics working in the fields of politics, environmentalism, citizens’ rights, state theory, cultural studies, journalism, and discourse/rhetoric, the book offers an original insight into the relationship between the various social forces that contributed to the ‘Covid narrative’. The subjects analysed here include: the performance of the ‘mainstream’ media, the quality of political ‘messaging’ and argumentation, the securitised state and racism in Brazil, the growth of ‘catastrophic management’ in UK universities, emergent journalistic practices in South Africa, homelessness and punitive dispossession, the pandemic and the history of eugenics, and the Chinese media’s attempt to disguise discriminatory practices. This is one of the first comparative studies of the various rationales offered for state/corporate intervention in public life. Delving beneath established political tropes and state rhetoric, it identifies the power relations exposed by an event that was described as unprecedented and unique, but was in fact comparable to other major global disruptions. As governments insisted on distinguishing their own propaganda from unregulated disinformation, their increasingly sceptical ‘publics’ pursued their own idiosyncratic solutions to the crisis, while the apparent sacrifice of a host of citizens – from the most dedicated to the most vulnerable – suggested that inequality and exploitation remained at the heart of the social order. Power, Media, and the Covid-19 Pandemic is essential reading for students, researchers and academics in media, communication and journalism studies, politics, environmental sciences, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, and the sociology of health.