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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > General
The first and second volumes of Xi Jinping's The Governance of China have received an enthusiastic response from China and other parts of the world.
Since the 19th CPC National Congress, Xi Jinping has put forward many original ideas drawn from his experiences in state governance in the new era, charting the course in line with the times and further enriching the theoretical base of the Party. To help officials and the public understand and apply Xi Jinping's thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, to strengthen their commitment to the Four Consciousnesses, the Four-sphere Confidence and the Two Upholds, and also to help the international community gain a full appreciation of the thought and the reasons for the success of the CPC, Marxism and Chinese socialism, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council Information Office, with the support of the Research Institute of Party History and Literature of the CPC Central Committee and China International Publishing Group, have compiled a third volume of The Governance of China.
This volume contains a compilation of 92 of Xi Jinping's spoken and written works from October 18, 2017 to January 13, 2020, along with 41 photographs. It is divided into 19 sections by topic, with the articles in each section arranged in chronological order.
The first and second volumes of Xi Jinping's The Governance of China have received an enthusiastic response from China and other parts of the world.
Since the 19th CPC National Congress, Xi Jinping has put forward many original ideas drawn from his experiences in state governance in the new era, charting the course in line with the times and further enriching the theoretical base of the Party. To help officials and the public understand and apply Xi Jinping's thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, to strengthen their commitment to the Four Consciousnesses, the Four-sphere Confidence and the Two Upholds, and also to help the international community gain a full appreciation of the thought and the reasons for the success of the CPC, Marxism and Chinese socialism, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council Information Office, with the support of the Research Institute of Party History and Literature of the CPC Central Committee and China International Publishing Group, have compiled a third volume of The Governance of China.
This volume contains a compilation of 92 of Xi Jinping's spoken and written works from October 18, 2017 to January 13, 2020, along with 41 photographs. It is divided into 19 sections by topic, with the articles in each section arranged in chronological order.
European jihadism is a multi-faceted social phenomenon. It is not
only linked to the extremist behavior of a limited group, but also
to a much more global crisis, including the lack of a utopian
vision and a loss of meaning among the middle classes, and the
humiliation and denial of citizenship among disaffiliated young
people in poor districts all over Western Europe. This book
explores how European jihadism is fundamentally grounded in an
unbridled and modern imagination, in an uneasy relationship with
social, cultural, and economic reality. That imagination emerges
among: young women and their longing for another family model;
adolescents and their desire to become adults and to overcome the
family crisis; people with mental problems for whom jihad is a
catharsis; and young converts who seek contrast with a disenchanted
secular Europe. The family and its crisis, in many ways, plays a
role in promoting jihadism, particularly in families of immigrant
origin whose relationship to patriarchy is different from that of
the mainstream society in Europe. Exclusion from mainstream society
is also a factor: at the urban level, a large proportion of
jihadists come from poor, stigmatized, and ethnically segregated
districts. But jihadism is also an expression of the loss of hope
in the future in a globalized world among middle class and
lower-class youth.
Multi-layered inequalities and a sense of insecurity has long been
the hallmark of South African life. Recently, however, the
uncertainties of Covid-19 have led to greater shared experiences of
vulnerability among South Africans. This volume of State of the
Nation offers perspectives that may help us navigate our way
through the ‘new normal’ in which we find ourselves. Foremost
among the unavoidable political and socioeconomic interventions
that will be required are interventions based on an ethics of care.
Care as an essential attribute must be inserted into all of the
diverse contexts that structure needs, desires and relations of
power. An ethics of care requires us to reconsider relations of
domination, oppression, injustice, inequality, or paternalism
within the state. In a democratic post-apartheid state that
confirms human connectedness, bodies matter and this knowledge must
be driven by active citizenship. We are all caught up in webs of
power that require of us, as individuals and as communities, the
will and understanding to combat and counter poverty and inequality
and thus to improve the state of the nation. The effects of poverty
and inequality are as insidious as Covid-19 and render the most
vulnerable even more powerless in the face of this and similar
ravages. Now, more than ever, we need to prioritise an ethics of
care.
Since the beginning of recorded history, Iran/Persia has been one
of the most important world civilizations. Iran remains a distinct
civilization today despite its status as a major Islamic state with
broad regional influence and its deep integration into the global
economy through its vast energy reserves. Yet the close attention
paid to Iran in recent decades stems from the impact of the 1979
revolution, which unleashed ideological shock waves throughout the
Middle East that reverberate to this day. Many observers look at
Iran through the prism of the Islamic Republic's adversarial
relationship with the US, Israel, and Sunni nations in its region,
yet as Michael Axworthy shows in Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know,
there is much more to contemporary Iran than its fraught and
complicated foreign relations. He begins with a concise account of
Iranian history from ancient times to the late twentieth century,
following that with sharp summaries of the key events since the1979
revolution. The final section of the book focuses on Iran today-its
culture, economy, politics, and people-and assesses the challenges
that the nation will face in coming years. Iran will be an
essential overview of a complex and important nation that has
occupied world headlines for nearly four decades.
The Letters of Richard Cobden (1804-1865) provides, in four printed
volumes, the first critical edition of Cobden's letters, publishing
the complete text in as near the original form as possible. The
letters are accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, together with
an introduction to each volume which re-assesses Cobden's
importance in their light. Together, these volumes make available a
unique source of the understanding of British liberalism in its
European and international contexts, throwing new light on issues
such as the repeal of the Corn Laws, British radical movements, the
Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, Anglo-French relations, and the
American Civil War. The fourth and final volume, drawing on some
forty-six archives worldwide, is dominated by Cobden's search for a
permanent political legacy at home and abroad, following the severe
check to his health in the autumn of 1859. In January 1860, he
succeeded in negotiating the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty, a
landmark in Anglo-French relations designed to bind the two nations
closer together, and to provide the basis for a Europe united by
free trade. Yet the Treaty's benefits were threatened by a
continuing naval arms race between Britain and France, fuelled by
what Cobden saw as self-interested scare mongering in his tract The
Three Panics (1862). By 1862 an even bigger danger was the
possibility that British industry's need for cotton might
precipitate intervention in the American Civil War. Much of
Cobden's correspondence now centred on the necessity of
non-intervention and a campaign for the reform of international
maritime law, while he played a major part in attempts to alleviate
the effects of the 'Cotton Famine' in Lancashire. In addition to
Anglo-American relations, Cobden, the 'International Man',
continued to monitor the exercise of British power around the
globe. He was convinced that the 'gunboat' diplomacy of his prime
antagonist, Lord Palmerston, was ultimately harmful to Britain,
whose welfare demanded limited military expenditure and the
dismantling of the British 'colonial system'. Known for a long time
as the 'prophet in the wilderness', in 1864 Cobden welcomed
Palmerston's inability to intervene in the Schleswig-Holstein
crisis as a key turning-point in Britain's foreign policy, which,
together with the imminent end of the American Civil War, opened up
the prospect of a new reform movement at home. Disappointed with
the growing apathy of the entrepreneurs he had once mobilised in
the Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden now promoted the enfranchisement
of the working classes as necessary and desirable in order to
achieve the reform of the aristocratic state for which he had
campaigned since the 1830s.
While scholars, media, and the public may be aware of a few
extraordinary government raids on religious communities, such as
the U.S. federal raid on the Branch Davidians in 1993, very few
people are aware of the scope and frequency with which these raids
occur. Following the Texas state raid on the Fundamentalist Church
of Latter-day Saints in 2008, authors Stuart Wright and Susan
Palmer decided to study these raids in the aggregate-rather than as
individual cases-by collecting data on raids that have taken place
over the last six decades. They did this both to establish for the
first time an archive of raided groups, and to determine if any
patterns could be identified. Even they were surprised at their
findings; there were far more raids than expected, and the vast
majority of them had occurred since 1990, reflecting a sharp,
almost exponential increase. What could account for this sudden and
dramatic increase in state control of minority religions? In
Storming Zion, Wright and Palmer argue that the increased use of
these high-risk and extreme types of enforcement corresponds to
expanded organization and initiatives by opponents of
unconventional religions. Anti-cult organizations provide strategic
"frames" that define potential conflicts or problems in a given
community as inherently dangerous, and construct narratives that
draw on stereotypes of child and sexual abuse, brainwashing, and
even mass suicide. The targeted group is made to appear more
dangerous than it is, resulting in an overreaction by authorities.
Wright and Palmer explore the implications of heightened state
repression and control of minority religions in an increasingly
multicultural, globalized world. At a time of rapidly shifting
demographics within Western societies this book cautions against
state control of marginalized groups and offers insight about why
the responses to these groups is often so reactionary.
During the heyday of Cold War cultural politics, state-sponsored
performances of classical and popular music were central to the
diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union, while
states on the periphery of the conflict often used state-funded
performances to articulate their position in the polarized global
network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested
heavily in public performances, effectively creating a new genre of
popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States:
Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas
Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a
close examination of the development and reception of light music
as it has long been broadcast at an annual song competition,
Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide
range of archival resources and over forty interviews with
composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes
how popular music became integral to governmental projects to
improve society-and a major concern for both state-socialist and
post-socialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's
narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that
state officials saw light music as a modernizing agent that would
cultivate a cosmopolitan, rational populace. Interweaving archival
research with ethnographic interviews, author Nicholas Tochka
argues that modern political orders do not simply render social
life visible, but also audible. As the Cold War thawed and
communist states fell, the post-socialist government turned again
to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape
Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Incorporating insights
from ethnomusicology, governmental studies, and post-socialist
studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music
and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately
limited nature of state power in the modern world. Tochka's project
represents a nascent entry in a growing area of study in music
scholarship that focuses on post-soviet Europe and popular musics.
A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible
States is a foundational text in this area and will be of great
interest for music scholars and graduate students interested in
popular music, sound studies, and politics of the Cold War.
As the plugged-in presidential campaign has arguably reached
maturity, Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age challenges
popular claims about the democratizing effect of Digital
Communication Technologies (DCTs). Analyzing campaign strategies,
structures, and tactics from the past five presidential election
cycles, Stromer-Galley reveals how, for all their vaunted
inclusivity and tantalizing promise of increased two-way
communication between candidates and the individuals who support
them, DCTs have done little to change the fundamental dynamics of
campaigns. The expansion of new technologies has presented
candidates with greater opportunities to micro-target potential
voters, cheaper and easier ways to raise money, and faster and more
innovative ways to respond to opponents. The need for communication
control and management, however, has made campaigns slow and loathe
to experiment with truly interactive internet communication
technologies. Citizen involvement in the campaign historically has
been and, as this book shows, continues to be a means to an end:
winning the election for the candidate. For all the proliferation
of apps to download, polls to click, videos to watch, and messages
to forward, the decidedly undemocratic view of controlled
interactivity is how most campaigns continue to operate.
Contributing to the field a much-needed historical understanding of
the shifting communication practices of presidential campaigns,
Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age examines election
cycles from 1996, when the World Wide Web was first used for
presidential campaigning, through 2012, when practices were being
tuned to perfection using data analytics for carefully targeting
and mobilizing particular voter segments. As the book charts
changes in internet communication technologies, it shows how, even
as campaigns have moved responsively from a mass mediated to a
networked paradigm, and from fundraising to organizing, the
possibilities these shifts in interactivity seem to promise for
citizen input and empowerment remain much farther than a click
away.
This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple
ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and
reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that
is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and
predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions.
It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas,
social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus
integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly
liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between
history, politics, and religion.
The individual contributions, written by a new generation of
scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the
processes of translation and globalization of historically specific
concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical
counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume
contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to
unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion
and secularism as modern concepts.
What is the status of religious freedom in the world today? What
barriers does it face? What are the realistic prospects for
improvement, and why does this matter? The Future of Religious
Freedom addresses these critical questions by assembling in one
volume some of the best forward-thinking and empirical research on
religious liberty, international legal trends, and societal
dynamics. Top scholars from law, political science, diplomacy,
sociology, and religion explore the status, value, and challenges
of religious liberty around the world - with illustrations from a
wide range of historical situations, contemporary contexts, and
constitutional regimes. With a thematic focus on the nature of
religious markets and statecraft, the book surveys conditions in
different regions, from the Muslim arc to Asia to Eastern Europe.
It probes dynamics in both established and emerging democracies. It
features up-to-date treatments of such pivotal nations as China,
Russia, and Turkey, as well as illuminating new threats to
conscience and religious autonomy in the United States and in kin
countries of the English speaking world. Finally, it demonstrates
the vital contribution of religious freedom to inter-religious
harmony, thriving societies, and global security, and applies these
findings to the momentous issue of advancing freedom and democracy
in Islamic cultures.
This book assesses whether a new category of religious actors has
been constructed within international law. Religious actors,
through their interpretations of the religion(s) they are
associated with, uphold and promote, or indeed may transform,
potentially oppressive structures or discriminatory patterns. This
study moves beyond the concern that religious texts and practices
may be incompatible with international law, to provide an
innovative analysis of how religious actors themselves are
accountable under international law for the interpretations they
choose to put forward. The book defines religious actors as
comprising religious states, international organizations, and
non-state entities that assume the role of interpreting religion
and so claim a 'special' legitimacy anchored in tradition or
charisma. Cutting across the state / non-state divide, this
definition allows the full remit of religious bodies to be
investigated. It analyses the crucial question of whether religious
actors do in fact operate under different international legal norms
to non-religious states, international organizations, or companies.
To that end, the Holy See-Vatican, the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation, and churches and religious organizations under the
European Convention on Human Rights regime are examined in detail
as case studies. The study ultimately establishes that religious
actors cannot be seen to form an autonomous legal category under
international law: they do not enjoy special or exclusive rights,
nor incur lesser obligations, when compared to their respective
non-religious peers. Going forward, it concludes that a process of
two-sided legitimation may be at stake: religious actors will need
to provide evidence for the legality of their religious
interpretations to strengthen their legitimacy, and international
law itself may benefit from religious actors fostering its
legitimacy in different cultural contexts.
How is the adoption of digital media in the Arab world affecting
the relationship between the state and its subjects? What new forms
of online engagement and strategies of resistance have emerged from
the aspirations of digitally empowered citizens? Networked Publics
and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia
tells the compelling story of the concurrent evolution of
technology and society in the Middle East. It brings into focus the
intricate relationship between Internet development, youth
activism, cyber resistance, and political participation. Taking
Tunisia - the birthplace of the Arab uprisings - as a case study,
it offers an ethnographically nuanced and theoretically grounded
analysis of the digital culture of contention that developed in an
authoritarian context. It broadens the focus from narrow debates
about the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings
toward a fresh understanding of how changes in media affect
existing power relations. Based on extensive fieldwork, in-depth
interviews with Internet activists, and immersive analyses of
online communication, this book redirects our attention from
institutional politics to the informal politics of everyday life.
An original contribution to the political sociology of Arab media,
Networked Publics and Digital Contention provides a unique
perspective on how networked Arab publics negotiate agency,
reconfigure political action, and reimagine citizenship.
In the last few decades, all major presidential candidates have
openly discussed the role of faith in their lives, sharing their
religious beliefs and church commitments with the media and their
constituencies. And yet, to the surprise of many Americans, God
played almost no role in the 2012 presidential campaign. During the
campaign, incumbent Barack Obama minimized the role of religion in
his administration and in his life. This was in stark contrast to
his emphasis, in 2008, on how his Chicago church had nurtured him
as a person, community organizer, and politician, which ultimately
backfired when incendiary messages preached by his liberationist
pastor Jeremiah Wright went viral. The Republican Party faced a
different kind of problem in 2012, with the increasing irrelevance
or absence of founders of the Religious Right such as Pat Robertson
or Jerry Falwell. Furthermore, with Mormon Mitt Romney running as
the GOP candidate, party operatives avoided shining a spotlight on
religion, recognizing that vast numbers of Americans remain
suspicious of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The
absence of God during the 2012 election reveals that the United
States is at a crossroads with regards to faith, even while
religion continues to play a central role in almost every facet of
American culture and political life. The separation of church and
state and the disestablishment of religion have fostered a rich
religious marketplace characterized by innovation and
entrepreneurship. As the generation that launched the culture wars
fades into history and a new, substantially more diverse population
matures, the question of how faith is functioning in the new
millennium has become more important than ever. In Faith in the New
Millennium historians, sociologists, and religious studies scholars
tackle contemporary issues, controversies, and policies ranging
from drone wars to presidential campaigns to the exposing of
religious secrets in order to make sense of American life in the
new millennium. This melding of past and present offers readers a
rare opportunity to assess Americans' current wrestling with
matters of faith, and provides valuable insight into the many ways
that faith has shaped and transformed the age of Obama and how the
age of Obama has shaped American religious faith.
What is the nature of affections such as joy, compassion, sorrow,
and shame and what role do they play in politics? While political
experience is replete with affectivity, the affective dimension of
political experience has typically been under-conceptualised in
political theory. Joshua Hordern argues that Christian political
theology and contemporary theory of emotions have resources to
respond to this challenge and, in so doing, to offer diagnoses and
remedies for the political alienation and democratic deficit which
trouble contemporary political life. Hordern contends that
affections have a cognitive aptitude whereby they become enduring
features of shared political reasoning. In conversation with Martha
Nussbaum, Jurgen Habermas, Roger Scruton, Oliver O'Donovan and
other political thinkers both classical and contemporary, his
argument interrelates affections with memory, moral order, death,
suffering, virtue, neuroscience, familial life and national
identity. In contrast to dualisms which would separate reason from
affection and theology from politics, Hordern describes the way
that affections' role in politics is shaped by the eschatological
commitments of political thought. Through close attention to
Deuteronomy, Luke and Acts, Hordern considers the role of
affections in institutions of political representation, law and
healthcare. Over against post-national visions which underplay
locality in human identity, the account of political affectivity
which emerges suggests that civic participation, critical patriotic
loyalties, social trust and international concern will be primarily
galvanised by the renewal of local affections through effective
political representation. Moreover, churches, shaped by the
affective vision of their Scriptures, are to embody the joyful,
hopeful affective life of the Kingdom of God and thereby offer
renewal to social and political experience at local, national and
international levels.
One of the key scientific challenges is the puzzle of human
cooperation. Why do people cooperate? Why do people help strangers,
even sometimes at a major cost to themselves? Why do people want to
punish others who violate norms and undermine collective interests?
Reward and punishment is a classic theme in research on social
dilemmas. More recently, it has received considerable attention
from scientists working in various disciplines such as economics,
neuroscience, and psychology. We know now that reward and
punishment can promote cooperation in so-called public good
dilemmas, where people need to decide how much from their personal
resources to contribute to the public good. Clearly, enjoying the
contributions of others while not contributing is tempting.
Punishment (and reward) are effective in reducing free-riding. Yet
the recent explosion of research has also triggered many questions.
For example, who can reward and punish most effectively? Is
punishment effective in any culture? What are the emotions that
accompany reward and punishment? Even if reward and punishment are
effective, are they also efficient - knowing that rewards and
punishment are costly to administer? How can sanctioning systems
best organized to be reduce free-riding? The chapters in this book,
the first in a series on human cooperation, explore the workings of
reward and punishment, how they should be organized, and their
functions in society, thereby providing a synthesis of the
psychology, economics, and neuroscience of human cooperation.
In The Wyoming State Constitution, Robert B. Keiter provides a
comprehensive guide to Wyoming's colorful constitutional history.
Featuring an outstanding analysis of the state's governing charter,
the book includes an in-depth, section-by-section analysis of the
entire constitution, detailing important changes that have been
made since its initial drafting. This treatment, which includes a
list of cases, index, and bibliography, makes this guide
indispensable for students, scholars, and practitioners of
Wyoming's constitution. The second edition contains an up-to-date
analysis of the Wyoming Supreme Court's constitutional decisions,
new state constitutional amendments and Supreme Court decisions
since 1992. Also included is new material explaining how the
Wyoming Supreme Court goes about interpreting the state
constitution. The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of
the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed
international interest in constitutional history and provides
expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume
in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the
state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis
of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further
research. Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr,
Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers
University, this series provides essential reference tools for
understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be
purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers
unmatched access to these important political documents.
Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics,
disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through
conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes
of communication. Within this world is a "Religion of Fear," a
critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts
and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast "orthodox"
behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and
demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several
popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind
novels, church-sponsored Halloween "Hell Houses," sensational comic
books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock
and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating
and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and
shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity.
As the "Religion of Fear" has developed since the 1960s, Bivins
sees its message moving from a place of relative marginality to one
of prominence. What does it say about American public life that
such ideas of fearful religion and violent politics have become
normalized? Addressing this question, Bivins establishes links and
resonances between the cultural politics of evangelical pop, the
activism of the New Christian Right, and the political exhaustion
facing American democracy.
Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our
understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United
States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and
the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.
The delineation and emergence of the Irish border radically
reshaped political and social realities across the entire island of
Ireland. For those who lived in close quarters with the border,
partition was also an intimate and personal occurrence, profoundly
implicated in everyday lives. Otherwise mundane activities such as
shopping, visiting family, or travelling to church were often
complicated by customs restrictions, security policies, and even
questions of nationhood and identity. The border became an
interface, not just of two jurisdictions, but also between the
public, political space of state territory, and the private,
familiar spaces of daily life. The effects of political disunity
were combined and intertwined with a degree of unity of everyday
social life that persisted and in some ways even flourished across,
if not always within, the boundaries of both states. On the border,
the state was visible to an uncommon degree - as uniformed agents,
road blocks, and built environment - at precisely the same point as
its limitations were uniquely exposed. For those whose worlds
continued to transcend the border, the power and hegemony of either
of those states, and the social structures they conditioned, could
only ever be incomplete. As a consequence, border residents lived
in circumstances that were burdened by inconvenience and
imposition, but also endowed with certain choices. Influenced by
microhistorical approaches, Unapproved Routes uses a series of
discrete 'histories' - of the Irish Boundary Commission, the Foyle
Fisheries dispute, cockfighting tournaments regularly held on the
border, smuggling, and local conflicts over cross-border roads - to
explore how the border was experienced and incorporated into
people's lives; emerging, at times, as a powerfully revealing site
of popular agency and action.
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