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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > General
We are now living in a world where Brexit and Trump are daily realities. But how did this come about? And what does it mean for the future? Populism and ultra-nationalism brought about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. Now, as Trump sits in the White House, Britain negotiates its way out of the EU, and countries across Europe see substantial gains in support for the extreme Right, award-winning journalist, author, and historian Gwynne Dyer asks how we got here, and where we go next. Dyer examines the global challenges facing us all today and explains how they have contributed to a world of inequality, poverty, and joblessness, conditions which he argues inevitably lead to the rise of populism. The greatest threat to social and political stability, he argues, lies in the rise of automation, which will continue to eliminate jobs, whether politicians admit that it is happening or not. To avoid a social and political catastrophe, we will have to find ways of putting real money into the pockets of those who have no work. But this is not a book without hope. Our capacity for overcoming the worst has been tested again and again throughout history, and we have always survived. To do so now, Dyer argues, we must embrace radical solutions to the real difficulties facing individuals, or find ourselves back in the 1930s with no way out.
This exciting book, newly available in paperback, investigates the scope of maternity legislation and family-friendly policies in the European Union. The wider context of the analysis is the development of equal rights as part of a European social dimension. The book is concerned with the influence of values and beliefs about women, equality, politics and employment on the scope of equal rights and maternity provisions. It provides answers to the following questions - what are the stated objectives of family-friendly policies? Which values transpire from the analysis of maternity rights? How do gender power hierarchies shape the overall aim of policies for the reconciliation between work and family life? Through the use of two case studies - one from Italy and one from the UK - it uncovers the values that underpin the policy making process and gives concrete examples of gender policies in action. It will be of vital benefit to anyone studying gender and gender policies in a specific European Union context. -- .
This book traces the entire trajectory of the farmers' movement in Western India, especially Maharashtra, from the 1980s to the present day. It reveals the fundamental contradictions between populism as an ideology and as political power within the democratic state structure. The volume highlights the ideologies of the movement; its emergence in the wake of a perceived agrarian crisis; how it conflates economics and populism; the role of leadership; stages of development from grassroots agitations rooted in civil society to the attempts to create space within structures of democratic politics; the eventual formation of a separate political party and consequent implications. It maps the linkages between populist ideology and mass participation, and their contested successes and failures in the domain of electoral politics. Further, the author underlines the effectiveness of the movement in addressing class and gender equations in the region. Rich in primary archival sources and informed field studies, this book will interest scholars and researchers of agrarian economy, rural sociology, and politics, particularly those concerned with social movements in India.
'Nick Bryant is brilliant. He has a way of showing you what you've been missing from the whole story whilst never leaving you feeling stupid.' - Emily Maitlis 'Bryant is a genuine rarity, a Brit who understands America' - Washington Post In When America Stopped Being Great, veteran reporter and BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant reveals how America's decline paved the way for Donald Trump's rise, sowing division and leaving the country vulnerable to its greatest challenge of the modern era. Deftly sifting through almost four decades of American history, from post-Cold War optimism, through the scandal-wracked nineties and into the new millennium, Bryant unpacks the mistakes of past administrations, from Ronald Reagan's 'celebrity presidency' to Barack Obama's failure to adequately address income and racial inequality. He explains how the historical clues, unseen by many (including the media) paved the way for an outsider to take power and a country to slide towards disaster. As Bryant writes, 'rather than being an aberration, Trump's presidency marked the culmination of so much of what had been going wrong in the United States for decades - economically, racially, politically, culturally, technologically and constitutionally.' A personal elegy for an America lost, unafraid to criticise actors on both sides of the political divide, When America Stopped Being Great takes the long view, combining engaging storytelling with recent history to show how the country moved from the optimism of Reagan's 'Morning in America' to the darkness of Trump's 'American Carnage'. It concludes with some of the most dramatic events in recent memory, in an America torn apart by a bitterly polarised election, racial division, the national catastrophe of the coronavirus and the threat to US democracy evidenced by the storming of Capitol Hill.
Whether called pressure groups, NGOs, social movement organisations or organised civil society, the value of 'groups' to the policy process, to economic growth, to governance, to political representation and to democracy has always been contested. However, there seems to be a contemporary resurgence in this debate largely centred on their democratising potential: can groups effectively link citizens to political institutions and policy processes? Are groups an antidote to emerging democratic deficits? Or do groups themselves face challenges in demonstrating their legitimacy and representativeness? This book debates the democratic potential and practice of groups; focussing on the vibrancy of internal democracies, and modes of accountability with those who join such groups and to the constituencies they advocate for. It draws on literatures covering national, European and global levels, and presents new empirical material from the UK and Australia -- .
Newly available in paperback, Redefining the French Republic is an innovative work. Explicitly adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the book investigates continuity and change in contemporary French politics, society and culture. The chapters go beyond the familiar question of whether the Republic is acting in accordance with its vocation, to address the issue of whether that vocation is still viable. Drawing on contributions that reflect a variety of methodological approaches, ranging from theoretical speculations and modelling to the interpretation of fieldwork data, this study examines the dynamics of the relationship between the Republic and its constituencies, in the fields of political relations, territorial identities, social movements, public policy and foreign policy, and in each context juxtaposing what is perceived as the model for that relationship with the current reality. France in the twenty-first century is facing challenges that could not have been imagined a generation ago. The test for the Republic is whether it will resist the ongoing pressures for redefinition imposed by internal contestation and the emergence of powerful supranational and global forces, or whether it will find a way of adapting to these pressures while preserving a part of the vocation and ambition that make it characteristically French. The book concludes that, though the French polity remains characteristically different from other models of modern liberal democracy, internal and external pressures have challenged the republican model to the core. -- .
What makes people agree to the extension of political rights to those they clearly dislike? This book moves beyond the extensive research on this question in western contexts to focus on the global south, offering unique empirical studies of political tolerance in plural societies where poverty is prevalent and democratic institutions can often be fragile. Based on extensive data gathered in India, Pakistan and Uganda, this volume offers an account of the factors that shape the foundations of a society and its capacity to be democratic, but where the need for the protection of human rights is great and where the state is either weak or even constitutes a counter-force against the rights of individuals and groups. Combining large scale survey data with in-depth interviews in each national setting, the author exemplifies the great variation of factors which are related to political tolerance, shedding light on the fundamental patterns existing in the organization of state-society relations and the ways in which they produce certain results owing to the manner in which the forces of modernization operate. A broad and empirically informed study of what shapes the foundations of a democratic society in modernizing nations, Political Tolerance in the Global South will appeal to scholars of sociology and political science with interests in democracy, human rights, diversity and tolerance.
In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.
In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been dubbed the 'kingmaker' in recent studies of Iranian politics, precipitating heated debates surrounding the potential militarization of the Iranian regime and giving rise to paradoxical understandings of the IRGC; whether as a military institution entering politics, or a political institution with a military history. Revolutionary Guards in Iranian Politics offers a way out of this paradox by showing that the IRGC is not a recently politicized institution, but has instead been highly politicized since its inception. It identifies the ways in which the IRGC relates to national political dynamics, examines the factors contributing to this relationship, and its implications on Iranian politics from the revolution up to the present day. The book examines the three decades following the revolution, uncovering the reasons behind the rise of the Revolutionary Guards and tracking the organization's evolving relationship with politics. Establishing a theoretical framework from revolution and civil-military relations theories, this book provides new perspectives on the relationship between the IRGC and Iranian politics. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East Studies and Iranian Studies, in particular Iranian Politics.
Panarchy is a normative political meta-theory that advocates non-territorial states founded on actual social contracts that are explicitly negotiated and signed between states and their prospective citizens. The explicit social contract, or a constitution, sets the terms under which a state may use coercion against its citizens and the conditions under which the contract may be annulled, revised, rescinded, or otherwise exited from. Panarchy does not advocate any particular model of the state or social justice, but intends to encourage political variety, innovation, experimentation, and choice. With its emphasis on explicit social contracts, Panarchy offers an interesting variation on traditional social contract theories. Today, Panarchist political thought is particularly relevant and interesting in the context of globalization, increased international migration, the weakening of national sovereignty, the rise of the internet "cloud" as a non-territorial locus of political and protopolitical social networks that are not geographic, the invention of cryptocurrencies that may replace national currencies, and the rise of urban centers where people of many different political identities live and work together. This is the first volume to bring together key philosophically and politically interesting yet often overlooked Panarchist texts. From the first published translation of de Puydt seminal 1860 article to contemporary Silicon Valley political theory, the volume includes Panarchist texts from different eras, cultures and geographical regions. The amassed wealth of theoretical insight enables readers to compare different texts in this tradition of political thought and distinguish different streams and varieties within this political tradition, in comparison with Cosmopolitanism, Contractarianism, and Anarchism.
This book presents a study of the career of Charles R. Crane, a central player in President Woodrow Wilson's entourage. In the wake of the U.S. intervention in the Great War, Crane participated in important diplomatic and fact-finding missions. Leclair follows Crane through revolutionary Russia and on the Western front, in the emerging countries born out of the Ottoman Empire, and then in postwar China. In the process, Leclair's book offers original insights into some of the major domestic and international decisions that define Wilson's presidency and its legacy in the history of the United States and of international relations, most notably Wilson's motivation and effort to bring about a new world order under American political and moral leadership. Leclair convincingly portrays Crane as a proponent of the principle of self-determination -one, indeed, whose aversion to colonialism predated Wilson's international vision as formulated in his Fourteen Points. While a convergence of reform interest and humanitarian concerns brought Crane and Wilson together on some of the most complex issues of the time, Crane's vision -propelled by a genuine philanthropic commitment-adds substance to what has largely been derided as empty Wilsonian idealism. The thematic structure of this book, the quality of its narration, and the wealth of information it contains, are added elements that make it an excellent contribution to the field of U.S. history. It could be used as a an assigned reading in college or university courses, especially in advanced American history, American Political thought and international relations courses.
Contemporary politics is dominated by a liberal creed that champions 'negative liberty' and individual happiness. This creed undergirds positions on both the right and the left - free-market capitalism, state bureaucracy and individualism in social life. The triumph of liberalism has had the effect of subordinating human association and the common good to narrow self-interest and short-term utility. By contrast, post-liberalism promotes individual fulfilment and mutual flourishing based on shared goals that have more substantive content than the formal abstractions of liberal law and contract, and yet are also adaptable to different cultural and local traditions. In this important book, John Milbank and Adrian Pabst apply this analysis to the economy, politics, culture, and international affairs. In each case, having diagnosed the crisis of liberalism, they propose post-liberal alternatives, notably new concepts and fresh policy ideas. They demonstrate that, amid the current crisis, post-liberalism is a programme that could define a new politics of virtue and the common good.
How do rebel groups decide how to recruit members? To answer this question, Obayashi classifies recruitment techniques of rebel groups into two types, coercion and inducement, and develops a theory of rebel recruitment that simultaneously addresses agency problems inside rebel groups and the rebel-state contest over information. Important themes such as desertion, counterinsurgency strategies including amnesties and civil war termination are also examined to further understand the dynamics of rebellion and violent disorder. The theory is applied to examine the changes in conflicts involving the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.
Europeanization as Discursive Practice adopts a poststructuralist reading of Europeanization to study the effects of EU accession in the light of political territoriality and consequent state-building processes in the EU and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and the Western Balkans, from 1990-2013. Focusing on how domestic actors have framed Europe/EU norms in the debates on territorial reforms and the implications of this framing on policy reforms, it asks how competing articulations of the EU and its norms construct state territoriality in the given political and policy debates. The book argues that the European Union acted as a discursive force and a challenge to the established structures of understanding of territoriality, statehood, and power. With this, the author proposes a new research model for the study of Europeanization that goes beyond the neo-institutionalist account of the EU's policy/norm transfer to member/non-member states. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners of European integration, EU foreign policy, enlargement policy, and regional policy and territoriality in post-socialist spaces.
Originally published in 1984. At that time many formerly prosperous regions were becoming impoverished and many former "core" areas were being demoted to peripheral status. This book considers this crisis, its nature and manifestations and its implications. It looks in particular at how the regional crisis affects the socialist analysis of capitalism and it analyses how the crisis affects the political outlook and political actions of the working class in afflicted regions. The theories and analysis put forward apply throughout the world in both advanced and less developed countries.
This book aims to study China's economic statecraft in the contemporary era in a comprehensive manner. It attempts to explore China's approaches to using its economic, trade, investment, and financial power for the pursuit of its political, security, and strategic interests at the regional and global levels. The volume addresses three major issue areas in particular. The first issue pertains to how Beijing has used its economic clout to protect what it perceives as its 'core interests' in its external relations. Three cases are included: the Taiwan issue, human rights, and territorial dispute in the South China Sea. The second major area of inquiry focuses on how China has employed its economic power in its key bilateral relations, including relations with Japan, North Korea, the United States, and other states in the East Asian region. The third issue concerns China's economic statecraft in the global context. It addresses the impacts of China's economic power and policy on the transformation of the global financial structure, developments in Africa, the international intellectual property rights regime, and China's food security relations with the outside world.
This book analyzes the controversy surrounding imperialism associated with capitalist development. The last dozen years passed under the shadow of two momentous events: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan conducted in the framework of the broader "war on terror", and the economic crisis. They occurred against the backdrop of global economic integration, but also against the contradictions in its development. Those events and processes are explained in the theory of contemporary capitalist imperialism that the author attempts to reconstruct.
Death lies at the beginning of the Arab uprisings, and death continues to haunt them. Most narratives about the 'Arab Spring' begin with Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire. Egyptian protesters in turn referred to Khaled Said, a young man from Alexandria whom the police had beaten to death. This book places death at the centre of its engagement with the Arab uprisings, counterrevolutions, and their aftermaths. It examines martyrdom and commemoration as performative acts through which death and life are infused with meaning. Conversely, it shows how, in the making, remembering, and erasing of martyrs, hierarchies are (re)produced and possible futures are foreclosed. The contributors argue that critical anthropological engagement with death, martyrdom, and afterlife is indispensable if we want to understand the making of pasts and futures in a revolutionary present. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology.
One of the main themes running through Gandhi's life and work was the battle against evil. This book offers a fascinating reconstruction of Gandhi and the doctrine of Ahimsa or non-violence. Gandhi's moral perfectionism is contrasted with other forms of perfectionism, but the book stresses that Gandhi also offered a doctrine of the second best. Following Gandhi, the author argues that outward violence with compassion is intrinsically not as good as non-violence with compassion, but it is a second best that is sometimes a necessary evil in an imperfect world. The book provides an illuminating analysis of coercion, non-co-operation, civil disobedience and necessary evil, comparing Gandhi's ideas with that of some of the leading western moral, legal and political philosophers. Further, some of his important ideas are shown to have relevance for the working of the Indian Constitution. This book will be essential for scholars and researchers in moral, legal and political philosophy, Gandhi studies, political science and South Asian studies.
Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Hwa Yol Jung explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. The essays in this volume examine diverse issues, encompassing globalization, cosmopolitanism, public philosophy, political ecology, ecocriticism, ethics of encounter, and aesthetics of caring. They examine the philosophical traditions of phenomenology of Hursserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger; the dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin; the philosophy of mestizaje literature; and Asian philosophical traditions. This rich comparative and cross-cultural investigation of philosophy and political theory demonstrates the importance of cultural and cross-cultural understanding in our reading of philosophical texts, exploring how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm and political theory. This volume honors the scholarship and philosophy of Hwa Yol Jung, who has been a pioneer in the field of comparative political theory, cross-cultural philosophy, and interdisciplinary scholarship. In one of his earliest publications, The Crisis of Political Understanding (1979), Jung described the urgency and necessity of breakthrough in political thinking as a crisis, and he followed up on this issue for his half century of scholarship by introducing Asian philosophy and political thought to Western scholarship, demonstrating the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical thinking. In his most recent publications, Jung refers to this possibility as "transversality" or "trans(uni)versality," a concept which should replace the outmoded Eurocentric universality of modernist philosophy. Jung expounds that in "transversality," "differences are negotiated and compromised rather than effaced and absorbed into sameness." This volume is a testimony to the very possibility of
Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine provides a comprehensive evaluation of the relationship between spirituality, religion, and medicine evaluating current empirical research and academic scholarship. In Part 1, the book examines the relationship of religion, spirituality, and the practice of medicine by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the most recent empirical research of religion/spirituality within twelve distinct fields of medicine including pediatrics, psychiatry, internal medicine, surgery, palliative care, and medical ethics. Written by leading clinician researchers in their fields, contributors provide case examples and highlight best practices when engaging religion/spirituality within clinical practice. This is the first collection that assesses how the medical context interacts with patient spirituality recognizing crucial differences between contexts from obstetrics and family medicine, to nursing, to gerontology and the ICU. Recognizing the interdisciplinary aspects of spirituality, religion, and health, Part 2 of the book turns to academic scholarship outside the field of medicine to consider cultural dimensions that form clinical practice. Social-scientific, practical, and humanity fields include psychology, sociology, anthropology, law, history, philosophy, and theology. This is the first time in a single volume that readers can reflect on these multi-dimensional, complex issues with contributions from leading scholars. In Part III, the book concludes with a synthesis, identifying the best studies in the field of religion and health, ongoing weaknesses in research, and highlighting what can be confidently believed based on prior studies. The synthesis also considers relations between the empirical literature on religion and health and the theological and religious traditions, discussing places of convergence and tension, as well as remainingopen questions for further reflection and research. This book will provide trainees and clinicians with an introduction to the field of spirituality, religion, and medicine, and its multi-disciplinary approach will give researchers and scholars in the field a critical and up-to-date analysis.
This book calls for a pragmatic approach to contemporary U.S. social problems, stressing workable outcomes regardless of their ideological origin, be they conservative, pluralistic, or radical. The policy analysis, grounded in social science research, claims that there is a broad cultural consensus on American values and a public willingness to help others in need. This critique of the three dominant ideologies extracts ideas, approaches, policies, and programs from each and proposes an eclectic "outcomes" perspective rooted in American pragmatism.
This book examines the development of identity politics amongst the Alevis in Europe and Turkey, which simultaneously provided the movement access to different resources and challenged its unity of action. While some argue that Aleviness is a religious phenomenon, and others claim it is a cultural or a political trend, this book analyzes the various strategies of claim-making and reconstructions of Aleviness as well as responses to the movement by various Turkish and German actors. Drawing on intensive fieldwork, Elise Massicard suggests that because of activists' many different definitions of Aleviness, the movement is in this sense an "identity movement without an identity."
A sense of order has irreversibly retreated at the turn of the twenty-first century with the rise of such ancient civilizations as China and India and the militant resurgence of Islamic groups. The United States and like-minded states want to maintain the once-dominant international and global order buttressed by a set of mainly Western value systems and institutions. Nevertheless, challengers have sought to redraw the international and global order according to their own ideas and preferences, while selectively accommodating and taking advantage of the established order. Because of this, the entire world is teetering on the brink of an order war. This book is a synthesis of two separate bodies of thoughts, from Western and East Asian ideas and philosophies respectively. The authors deploy the major ideas of key Western and East Asian thinkers to shed a new light on their usefulness in understanding the transition of global order. They locate new ideas to overcome the contradictions of the late modern world and provide some ideational building blocks of a new global order. The new concepts proposed are: recognition between the great civilizations; a harmony and floating balance between and within contrasts-individual versus community, freedom versus equality-;and mediation between friends and foes. As the former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put it, "you don't need to make peace with your friends, you have to make peace with your foes." The values of the West as well as that of the East cannot survive in a globalized world by taking them as absolute, but only by balancing them to those of the other great civilizations of the world. |
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