- Table View
- List View
Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis
by Paul PiersonThis groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.
Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul
by Sarah El-KazazIn Politics in the Crevices, Sarah El-Kazaz takes readers into the world of urban planning and design practices in Istanbul and Cairo. In this transnational ethnography of neighborhoods undergoing contested rapid transformations, she reveals how the battle for housing has shifted away from traditional political arenas onto private crevices of the city. She outlines how multiple actors—from highly capitalized international NGOs and corporations to city dwellers, bureaucrats, and planning experts—use careful urban design to empower conflicting agendas, whether manipulating property markets to protect affordable housing or corner luxury real estate. El-Kazaz shows that such contemporary politicizations of urban design stem from unresolved struggles at the heart of messy transitions from the welfare state to neoliberalism, which have shifted the politics of redistribution from contested political arenas to design practices operating within market logics, ultimately relocating political struggles onto the city’s most intimate crevices. In so doing, she raises critical questions about the role of market reforms in redistributing resources and challenges readers to rethink neoliberalism and the fundamental ways it shapes cities and polities.
Politics of Anti-Racism Education: In Search of Strategies for Transformative Learning
by George J. Sefa Dei Mairi McdermottThis collection of essays invites readers to think through critical questions concerning anti-racism education, such as: How does anti-racism education centre race as an analytic and simultaneously work with multiple sites of oppression, without reifying hierarchies of difference? How can anti-racism education be engaged to speak to historical questions of power and privilege, within conventional schooling practices? How do we recognize anti-racism education in its many iterations? In this book the authors explore the knowledge that constitutes anti-racism education and the ways in which knowledge constitutive of anti-racism education becomes embodied through particular pedagogues. The authors are anti-racism educators with experiences in diverse settings: the chapters cover various fields and socio-historic geographies, address contemporary educational issues, and are situated within personal-political, historical and philosophical conversations. Anti-racism education is a discursive stance and steeped in politics that shape and are shaped by everyday conversations, theories, and practices. The essays in this collection work through many of the possibilities and limitations of engaging in counter-hegemonic education for transformative learning. Readers will discover lived experiences, theory, practice and critical reflexivity.
Politics of Education in India: A Perspective from Below
by Ramdas RupavathThis book studies the state of tribal education in India. India has the single largest tribal population in the world, yet the tribal community remains one of the most economically impoverished and marginalized groups in the country. The volume • Examines the educational status of the tribal population and studies developmental issues such as unemployment, illiteracy, caste discrimination, and inequality faced by the community. • Studies the implementation and execution of welfare schemes, initiatives, and reforms in place to tackle issues faced by tribal students and identifies loopholes in the various centrally sponsored schemes. • Emphasizes the importance of the Right to Education Act and presents policy implications for the educational uplift of India’s very many millions of tribal people. A critical study of the Indian education system, this book will be indispensable to students and researchers of education, education policy, minority studies, indigenous studies, sociology of education, and South Asian studies.
Politics of Fear: How Republicans Use Money, Race and the Media to Win
by Richard Delgado Manuel G. Gonzales"Lucidly written, widely informed, and uncompromisingly honest -- a valuable expose." Michael Parenti "Documents the stunning success of a network of wealthy donors and corporations in creating and sustaining a set of think tanks, legal action groups, and media strategies." Gary Orfield, Harvard University What explains the electoral success of Republicans, particularly of the ascendant neoconservatives who now dominate the Party? Based on a thorough and up-to-date examination of the New Right over twenty-five years, The Politics of Fear proposes some provocative answers, including globalization, new technologies, and a far-reaching network of right-wing think tanks and foundations. As the authors show, all have opened the doors to a new politics of fear successfully waged by the neoconservatives. By manipulating insecurity, the New Right has created an extraordinarily successful populist conservative movement. Utilizing extensive documentation, the authors argue convincingly that the fear of immigrants and racial minorities has served as the most effective tactic in the GOP arsenal, while their approach also implicates gays, feminists, and terrorists. The book explains why Americans have willingly supported a party that promises them security, just as it delivers greater economic and political insecurity. The authors argue that, despite their striking political successes, neoconservatives have delivered to voters a set of policies harmful to working Americans in the way of regressive tax measures, military exploits, tort reform, deregulation, and environmental destruction.
Politics of Global Climate Change
by Patrick M. ReganIn 2009 the US House of Representatives passed legislation requiring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent over the coming decade. Later that year, President Obama went to Copenhagen to sign a treaty requiring reductions by 50 percent over a two-decade period. The President came back with nothing: no firm commitment to reduce emissions and only a vague target to hold global temperature rises to under 2 C. How does a President who has a 75-vote majority in the House and a 19-vote majority in the Senate who has pre-approval for a treaty reducing greenhouse gas production by 18 percent not achieve a treaty with at least the minimum goal of 18 percent reductions by 2020?Others have answered the puzzle by looking at institutional designs or negotiation dynamics. This book articulates a multilevel process that starts with local politics to explain how they can influence international negotiations and why President Obama s efforts in Copenhagen were doomed to fail. Understanding the role of local private interests can help form strategies for overcoming national resistance to climate change legislation and ultimately international agreements that could change the environmentally self-destructive course we are on. Features of this Innovative Text: "
Politics of Gun Control
by Robert J. SpitzerThe new edition of this classic text covers the latest developments in American gun policy, including shooting incidents plaguing the American landscape - especially Sandy Hook, the Colorado theatre shootings and the tragic death of Trayvon Martin - placing them in context with similar recent events. The incidents described in the book sparked a wave of gun control legislation at local, state and national levels, some of which was successful, some doomed and all controversial. At the national level, President Obama put his political capital on the line to push for new gun control measures, only to see them shot down by Congress. Robert J. Spitzer has long been a recognised authority on gun control and gun policy. His even-handed treatment of the issue - as both a member of the NRA and the Brady Center - continues to compel national and international interest, including interviews by the likes of Terry Gross, Tom Ashbrook and Diane Rehm. This sixth edition of The Politics of Gun Control provides the reader with up-to-date data and coverage of gun ownership, gun deaths, school shootings, border patrols and new topics including social media, stand-your-ground laws, magazine regulation, and shooting-related mental health initiatives.
Politics of Hybrid Warfare: The Remaking of Security in Czechia after 2014 (Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations)
by Jakub Eberle Jan DanielThis is a first book-long analysis showing how the notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ was used to transform security policies and discourses in an EU/NATO country. Building on current debates in International Political Sociology, Critical Security Studies, and Critical Geopolitics, it provides a novel account of how crisis, geopolitics, uncertainty, and expertise are intertwined in the social construction of threats. Based on extensive and original empirical research of large textual archive and elite interviews in the Czech Republic and Brussels, the book shows how officials, bureaucrats, journalists, activists, and experts all participate in the reshaping of security in a new geopolitical environment. Zooming on the case of Czechia and its specific Central European context, it complements the predominantly Western-centric studies of insecurity with an account of how the liminal position on an East/West boundary influences security politics. As a first study of its kind and scope, it will be of interest to academics and students interested in Central European politics, practices and discourses of hybrid warfare, as well as critical approaches to security and geopolitics.
Politics of Identity in Small Plural Societies
by Stacey-Ann WilsonIn small plural societies, cultural differences can be exaggerated, exploited and intensified during political contests. The survival of these societies as democracies - or even at all - hangs in the balance.
Politics of Mass Society (International Library of Sociology)
by William Kornhauser"The Politics of Mass Society" explores the social conditions necessary for democracy and the vulnerabilities of large scale society to totalitarian systems. Mass movements mobilize people who are alienated from the social system, who do not believe in the legitimacy of the established order, and who are therefore ready to engage in efforts to destroy. Contrary to the psychological approach prevalent in European doctrines of mass movements, Kornhauser persuasively argues that social order is the critical factor. The greatest number of people available to mass movements are located in those segments of society that have the fewest ties to social order.The book draws on a wide range of materials - from classical political theory contemporary sociological analysis, historical and intuitional studies, public opinion surveys, and other published and unpublished data. Kornhauser selected political phenomena in organizations, communities, classes, and whole societies. He examined support for communism and fascism in a variety of countries in relation to rates of urbanization and, industrialization, employment, suicide and homicide, among other phenomena. In his new introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz identifies Kornhauser's book as a seminal work of the great tradition in political sociology at mid-twentieth century.Kornhauser points out that modern democratic systems possess a distinct vulnerability to mass movements. He spells out and identifies factors that tend to increase or decrease this vulnerability - not least the health and strength of elites. In this way, the book reveals new clues to the origins and nature of mass political movements. "The Politics of Mass Society" remains the most complete analytical account of the sociological approach to mass society in advanced industrial societies.
Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics: Cultural Sociology of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (Cultural Sociology)
by Jeffrey C. Alexander Jason L. MastThe 2016 U.S. presidential election revealed a nation deeply divided and in flux. This volume provides urgently needed insights into American politics and culture during this period of uncertainty. The contributions answer the election’s key mysteries, such as how contemporary Christian evangelicals identified in the unrepentant candidate Trump a hero to their cause, and how working class and economically struggling Americans saw in the rich and ostentatious candidate a champion of their plight. The chapters explain how irrationality is creeping into political participation, and demonstrate how media developments enabled a phenomenon like “fake news” to influence the election. At this polarized and contentious moment, this volume satisfies the urgent need for works that carefully analyze the forces and tensions tearing at the American social fabric. Simultaneously intellectual and accessible, this volume is designed to illuminate the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath for academics and students of politics alike.
Politics of Migration: Indian Emigration in a Globalized World
by S. Irudaya Rajan A. Didar SinghThis book studies the politics surrounding Indian emigration from the 19th century to the present day. Bringing together data and case studies from across five continents, it moves beyond economic and social movers of migration, and explores the role of politics—both local and global—in shaping diaspora at a deeper level. The work will be invaluable to scholars and students of migration and diaspora studies, development studies, international politics, and sociology as well as policy-makers, and non-governmental organizations in the field.
Politics of Possibility: Encountering the Radical Imagination
by Henry A. Giroux Gary A. Olson Lynn WorshamIn the probing interviews in this vibrant new book, eminent scholars struggle with some of the most crucial issues facing contemporary intellectuals. Poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler discusses the pain of rigorous intellectual work, saying that it is necessarily extremely hard labor, as she examines the intersection of discourse and political action. Award-winning filmmaker, philosopher, and social theorist David Theo Goldberg reviews his life s work, especially on issues of racism. Literary critic and feminist philosopher Avital Ronell sets out to disrupt the standard logic of signification, to force readers into fresh ways of perceiving a subject at hand. Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha discusses how critical literacy is intimately connected to the question of democratic representation, and he elaborates on how cultural difference can lead to a politics of discrimination. And neo-Marxist cultural critic Slavoj i ek takes readers on an exhilarating journey through a wide range of critical subjects."
Politics of Quality Improvement in English Further Education: Policies and Practices
by Zahid NazThis book offers a rich account of how quality improvement agendas, informed by neoliberalism, create contradictory and complex contexts in which teachers produce different types of practices for specific purposes. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s analytical tools, archaeology and genealogy, this book weaves together findings from classroom observations, field notes and interviews to explore the dichotomies between practices focussing on day-to-day pedagogies and practices concerned with performance management and accountability initiatives. By attending to a Foucauldian conception of power and counter conduct, it explores new means of defining quality in teaching spaces. After considering existing quality assurance judgements, the book illuminates the significance of moving slightly away from an institutionalised enterprise culture and loosing relations with reductionist approaches as a starting point. While doing so, it reworks the idea of quality by presenting other ways of looking at the complex character of pedagogical real(s) with new insights into an emergentist and process-oriented conception of teaching practices. The book argues that we need to unlearn our existing knowledge of quality that overlooks contextual constraints and opportunities enmeshed in teaching practices. It questions the assumptions that the existing methods of observation are capable of quantifying the quality of education in a classroom or in a college in toto. By introducing the idea of documentisation, the book breaks new theoretical ground to show that this so-called system of robust accountabilities is not as self-evident as we believe and why we must rethink quality by unthinking our current common sense. Written for researchers in educational studies, practising teachers and policy makers, this book combines profound insights from theory and contemporary teaching practices with clear guidelines as to how educational policy making should be approached.
Politics of Segmentation: Party Competition and Social Protection in Europe (Routledge Studies in the Political Economy of the Welfare State)
by Georg PicotWhen political parties make policy decisions they are influenced by the competition they face from other parties. This book examines how party competition and party systems affect reforms of social protection. Featuring a historical comparison of Italy and Germany post-1945, the book shows how a high number of parties and ideological polarisation lead to fragmented and unequal social benefits. Utilising a comparative approach, the author brings together two important issues in welfare state research that have been insufficiently investigated. Firstly, the complex influence of party competition on social policy-making, and second, how some social groups enjoy better social protection than others. Moving beyond the two countries of the case study, the book proposes an innovative framework for studying segmentation of social protection and applies this framework to a wider set of 15 advanced welfare states. Overall, this book draws together different strands of research on political parties and on welfare states, and introduces a new argument on how party politics shapes social policy. An invaluable text on the political economy of the welfare state, Politics of Segmentation will be of interest to scholars of political economy, social policy and comparative politics.
Politics of Social Psychology (Frontiers of Social Psychology)
by Lee Jussim Jarret T. CrawfordSocial scientists have long known that political beliefs bias the way they think about, understand, and interpret the world around them. In this volume, scholars from social psychology and related fields explore the ways in which social scientists themselves have allowed their own political biases to influence their research. These biases may influence the development of research hypotheses, the design of studies and methods and materials chosen to test hypotheses, decisions to publish or not publish results based on their consistency with one’s prior political beliefs, and how results are described and dissemination to the popular press. The fact that these processes occur within academic disciplines, such as social psychology, that strongly skew to the political left compounds the problem. Contributors to this volume not only identify and document the ways that social psychologists’ political beliefs can and have influenced research, but also offer solutions towards a more depoliticized social psychology that can become a model for discourse across the social sciences.
Politics of Social Research
by Ralph L. Beals Alan WoolfolkPolitics of Social Research addresses itself to the question of the behavior appropriate for social scientists conducting research sponsored by or otherwise involving government agencies-our own and those of other countries. The simple patriotism that suggests that social scientists, like other citizens, should not hesitate to put their skills at the service of their government is questioned here and by practitioners. This is partly because of outright disagreement with government policies and partly because of the threat to independence posed by massive government funding. As this book plainly shows, the problems are especially acute for social scientists working abroad, where they are viewed as de facto representatives of American policy while at the same time they must accommodate to the policies of foreign governments.
Politics of Urban Planning: The Making and Unmaking of the Mumbai Development Plan 2014–2034 (Exploring Urban Change in South Asia)
by Luca Pattaroni Amita Bhide Christine LutringerThis book offers an interdisciplinary and dynamic account of the politicization of urban planning in Mumbai, India. It presents a unique perspective on the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the wider context of global urbanization, and broadens readers’ understanding of urban planning, chiefly focusing on the interplay between grassroots movements, experts’ involvement, and sociotechnical questions. As the respective chapters of the book show, the various controversies surrounding the Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) have called into question the social and political effects of reshaping the city, the exclusion, and inequalities it has produced, but also the role it confers on the state and the market, and its impacts on the environment. After carefully describing these controversies, the book tackles the fundamental democratic question of who gets to define the future of a city. Given its scope, the book is of interest to researchers, students, and teachers of city planning, urban development, and urban studies, as well as policymakers.
Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan
by Daniel P. MoynihanA prominent Democrat discusses The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan.
Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-century America
by Emily E. LB. TwarogThe history of women's political involvement has focused heavily on electoral politics, but throughout the twentieth century women engaged in grassroots activism when they found it increasingly challenging to feed their families and balance their household ledgers. Politics of the Pantryexamines how working- and middle-class American housewives used their identity as housewives to protest the high cost of food. In doing so, housewives' relationships with the state evolved over the course of the century. Shifting the focus away from the workplace as a site of protest, Emily E. LB. Twarog looks to the homefront as a starting point for protest in the public sphere. With a focus on food consumption rather than production, Twarog looks closely at the ways food - specifically meat - was used by women as a political tool. Engaging in domestic politics, housewives both challenged and embraced the social and economic order as they sought to craft a unique politicalvoice and build a consumer movement focused on the home. The book examines key moments when women used consumer actions to embrace their socially ascribed roles as housewives to demand economic stability for their families and communities. These include the Depression-era meat boycott of 1935, the consumer coalitions of the New Deal, and the wave ofconsumer protests between 1966 and 1973. Twarog introduces numerous labor and consumer activists and their organizations in both urban and suburban areas - Detroit, greater Chicago, Long Island, and Los Angeles.
Politics of the Periphery: Governing Global Suburbia (Global Suburbanisms)
by Pierre HamelNew urban forms characterizing contemporary metropolises reflect a certain continuity with the patterns of the past. They also include unexpected forms of settlement and design that have emerged in response to social and economic needs and as a way of leveraging new technologies. Politics of the Periphery sets out to explore sub/urban governance in diverse contexts in order to better understand how materiality and space are shaped by the possibilities and constraints of confronting actors. This collection, edited by Pierre Hamel, examines the empirical aspects of collective action and planning in eight urban regions around the world – across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa – and reveals the impacts and consequences of various structures of suburban governance. The case studies feature a diverse range of local actors facing both the specificity of their respective milieus and the broader context of extended urbanization as metropolitan regions cope with new territorial challenges. The book focuses on suburbanization processes that characterize most of these post-metropolitan regions and questions whether it is possible to improve suburban governance in the face of growing uncertainties arising from structural and subjective transformations. Paying close attention to the relationship between the local and the global, Politics of the Periphery challenges the planning processes of evolving metropolitan regions.
Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya
by Lynn M. ThomasIn more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance--and complex ramifications--of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Politics under the Influence: Vodka and Public Policy in Putin's Russia
by Anna L. Bailey"You know just how serious a problem alcoholism has become for our country. Frankly speaking, it has taken on the proportions of a national disaster." So spoke Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 as the government launched its latest anti-alcohol campaign. Challenging the standard narrative of top-down implementation of policy, Anna Bailey’s Politics under the Influence breaks new ground in the analysis of Russian alcoholism and the politics of the Putin regime.The state is supposed to make policy in the national interest, to preserve the nation’s health against the ravages inflicted by widespread alcohol abuse. In fact, Bailey shows, the Russian state is deeply divided, and policy is commonly a result of the competitive interactions of stakeholders with vested interests. Politics under the Influence turns a spotlight on the powerful vodka industry whose ties to Putin’s political elite have grown in influence since 2009. She details how that lobby has used the anti-alcohol campaign as a way to reduce the competitiveness of its main rival—the multinational beer industry. Drawing on a wide range of sources including fieldwork interviews, government documents, media articles, and opinion polls, Bailey reveals the many ambivalences, informal practices, and paradoxes in contemporary Russian politics. Politics under the Influence exhibits the kleptocratic nature of the Putin regime; as a result, analysis of vested interests and informal sources of power is essential to understanding public policy in contemporary Russia. This book will be an invaluable resource for anyone working on policy and corruption in Putin’s Russia.
Politics with a Human Face: Identity and Experience in Post-Soviet Europe (Contemporary Liminality)
by Arvydas GrišinasPolitics with a Human Face presents a holistic understanding of identity formation in post-Soviet Europe, arguing that since politics is fundamentally a human affair. In order to adequately understand it, one needs to understand its human side first. Drawing on the thought of Dilthey, Ricoeur and Plato, the author employs empathy as a method, together with visual and historical analysis, to analyse the role of human experience in post-Soviet politics. As a result, the book offers a theoretical approach for assessing influence of the non-rationalistic factors, such as associative symbolism, human experience, political images and historical narratives, in both domestic and foreign affairs. A study at the juncture of Social Sciences and Humanities, Politics with a Human Face explores a number of cases, including Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia, as well as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, examining issues of liminal transition, ‘far-right’ movements, victimhood, ethnic conflict and political paradoxes. Seeking to shed light on the region’s agency and perception of both its own political and existential situation, and that of the surrounding world, this book constitutes a timely and original contribution to understanding the post-Soviet Europe.
Politics, Death, and the Devil: Self and Power in Max Weber and Thomas Mann
by Harvey GoldmanThis sequel to Harvey Goldman's well-received Max Weber and Thomas Mann continues his rich exploration of the political and cultural critiques embodied in the more mature writings of these two authors. Combining social and political thought, intellectual history, and literary interpretation, Goldman examines in particular Weber's "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation" and Mann's The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus.Goldman deals with the ways in which Weber and Mann sought an antidote to personal and cultural weakness through "practices" for generating strength, mastery, and power, drawing primarily on ascetic traditions at a time when the vitality of other German traditions was disappearing. Power and mastery concerned both Weber and Mann, especially as they tried to resolve problems of politics and culture in Germany. Although their resolutions of the problems they confronted seem inadequate, they show the significance of linking social and political thought to conceptions of self and active worldly practices.Trenchant and illuminating, Goldman's book is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory, social thought, and the intellectual history of Germany.