As states across the country battle internally over same-sex marriage in the courts, in legislatures, and at the ballot box, activists and scholars grapple with its implications for the status of gays and lesbians and for the institution of marriage itself. Yet, the struggle over same-sex marriage is only the most recent political and public debate over marriage in the United States. What is at stake for those who want to restrict marriage and for those who seek to extend it? Why has the issue become such a national debate? These questions can be answered only by viewing marriage as a political institution as well as a religious and cultural one. In its political dimension, marriage circumscribes both the meaning and the concrete terms of citizenship. Marriage represents communal duty, moral education, and social and civic status. Yet, at the same time, it represents individual choice, contract, liberty, and independence from the state. According to Priscilla Yamin, these opposing but interrelated sets of characteristics generate a tension between a politics of obligations on the one hand and a politics of rights on the other. To analyze this interplay, American Marriage examines the status of ex-slaves at the close of the Civil War, immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, civil rights and women's rights in the 1960s, and welfare recipients and gays and lesbians in the contemporary period. Yamin argues that at moments when extant political and social hierarchies become unstable, political actors turn to marriage either to stave off or to promote political and social changes. Some marriages are pushed as obligatory and necessary for the good of society, while others are contested or presented as dangerous and harmful. Thus political struggles over race, gender, economic inequality, and sexuality have been articulated at key moments through the language of marital obligations and rights. Seen this way, marriage is not outside the political realm but interlocked with it in mutual evolution.

No topic is more polarizing than guns and gun control. From a gun culture that took root early in American history to the mass shootings that repeatedly bring the public discussion of gun control to a fever pitch, the topic has preoccupied citizens, public officials, and special interest groups for decades.
The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know(r) delves into the issues that Americans debate when they talk about guns. With a balanced and broad-ranging approach, noted economist Philip J. Cook and political scientist Kristin A. Goss thoroughly cover the latest research, data, and developments on gun ownership, gun violence, the firearms industry, and the regulation of firearms. The authors also tackle sensitive issues such as the effectiveness of gun control, the connection between mental illness and violent crime, the question of whether more guns make us safer, and ways that video games and the media might contribute to gun violence. No discussion of guns in the U.S. would be complete without consideration of the history, culture, and politics that drive the passion behind the debate. Cook and Goss deftly explore the origins of the American gun culture and the makeup of both the gun rights and gun control movements.
Written in question-and-answer format, the book will help readers make sense of the ideologically driven statistics and slogans that characterize our national conversation on firearms. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in getting a clear view of the issues surrounding guns and gun policy in America.

What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

This 'sketch' by John Malcolm (1769-1833), covers a relatively small period - from the introduction of the India Bill in 1784 to the book's publication in 1811. The bill marked the beginning of increased government control over the East India Company, and Malcolm had arrived in India the year before it was passed and had an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of British influence and ambitions in India. In over five hundred pages, he examines governance in India, covering the administrations of Lord Cornwallis, Sir John Shore and Marquis Wellesley, all of whom he served under in increasingly important roles. Malcolm went on to write other books about India and Persia, where he also spent several years, and in 1827 became Governor of Bombay. His Sketch of India gives an insider's perspective on a crucial period in the consolidation of British authority in large areas of the subcontinent.

This volume explores the life stories of ordinary Burmese by drawing on the narratives of individual subjects and using an array of interdisciplinary approaches, covering anthropology, history, literature, ethnomusicology, economics and political science. Burma is one of the most diverse societies in Southeast Asia in terms of its ethnic composition. It has a long history of resistance from the public realm against colonial rule and post-independence regimes. However, its isolation for decades before 1988 deprived scholars of a close look into the many faces of this society. Looking into the life stories of members of several major ethnic communities, who hail from different occupations and are of different ages and genders, this book has a particular significance that would help reveal the multiplicities of Burma's modern history. The authors of this volume write about stories of their long-term informants, close friends, family members, or even themselves to bring out a wide range of issues relating to migration, economy, politics, religion and culture. The constituted stories jointly highlight the protagonists' survival strategies in everyday life that demonstrate their constant courage, pain and frustration in dealing with numerous social injustices and adversities. Through these stories, we see movement of lives as well as that of Burmese society.

In Conscientious Objectors in Israel, Erica Weiss examines the lives of Israelis who have refused to perform military service for reasons of conscience. Based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnography chronicles the personal experiences of two generations of Jewish conscientious objectors as they grapple with the pressure of justifying their actions to the Israeli state and society-often suffering severe social and legal consequences, including imprisonment. While most scholarly work has considered the causes of animosity and violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Conscientious Objectors in Israel examines how and under what circumstances one is able to refuse to commit acts of violence in the midst of that conflict. By exploring the social life of conscientious dissent, Weiss exposes the tension within liberal citizenship between the protection of individual rights and obligations of self-sacrifice. While conscience is a strong cultural claim, military refusal directly challenges Israeli state sovereignty. Weiss explores conscience as a political entity that sits precariously outside the jurisdictional bounds of state power. Through the lens of Israeli conscientious objection, Weiss looks at the nature of contemporary citizenship, examining how the expectations of sacrifice shape the politics of both consent and dissent. In doing so, she exposes the sacrificial logic of the modern nation-state and demonstrates how personal crises of conscience can play out on the geopolitical stage.

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order? The First Political Order is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development. Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society's choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, worse health, worse demographic problems, worse environmental protection, and worse social progress. Yet despite the pervasive power of social and political structures that subordinate women, history-and the data-reveal possibilities for progress. The First Political Order shows that when steps are taken to reduce the hold of inequitable laws, customs, and practices, outcomes for all improve. It offers a new paradigm for understanding insecurity, instability, autocracy, and violence, explaining what the international community can do now to promote more equitable relations between men and women and, thereby, security and peace. With comprehensive empirical evidence of the wide-ranging harm of subjugating women, it is an important book for security scholars, social scientists, policy makers, historians, and advocates for women worldwide.

Finalist, 2020 Elliott P. Skinner Award, given by the Association of Africanist Anthropology Examines why African care workers feel politically excluded from the United States Care for America's growing elderly population is increasingly provided by migrants, and the demand for health care labor is only expected to grow. Because of this health care crunch and the low barriers to entry, new African immigrants have adopted elder care as a niche employment sector, funneling their friends and relatives into this occupation. However, elder care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility. In The New American Servitude, Coe demonstrates how these workers often struggle to find a sense of political and social belonging. They are regularly subjected to racial insults and demonstrations of power-and effectively turned into servants-at the hands of other members of the care worker network, including clients and their relatives, agency staff, and even other care workers. Low pay, a lack of benefits, and a lack of stable employment, combined with a lack of appreciation for their efforts, often alienate them, so that many come to believe that they cannot lead valuable lives in the United States. While jobs are a means of acculturating new immigrants, African care workers don't tend to become involved or politically active. Many plan to leave rather than putting down roots in the US. Offering revealing insights into the dark side of a burgeoning economy, The New American Servitude carries serious implications for the future of labor and justice in the care work industry.

Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War, Espionage, Covert Action, and Interrogation explores a number of wrenching ethical issues and challenges faced by military and intelligence personnel. It provides a robust and practical approach to analyzing ethical issues in war and intelligence operations, and applies careful reasoning to issues of vital importance today, not only for soldiers, intelligence professionals, and policy makers, but also for the citizens they serve and protect. This new edition has been updated throughout and includes new contents, to deal with critical issues such as torturing detainees, using espionage to penetrate terrorist cells, mounting covert actions to undermine hostile regimes, practicing euthanasia on the battlefield as mercy-killing, or using targeted killings as a means to fight insurgencies. Partly Cloudy provides an excellent introduction to the field for students, instructors, and practitioners who are interested in the ethical challenges faced by public servants.

The political participation of names such as Mowassat, Demirel, or OEzdemir alongside conventional German names such as Schmidt, Maier, or Beck is already becoming a routine aspect in German politics. Recent political debates on introducing special quotas to motivate more political aspirants with migration background adds emphasis on the necessity to elaborate whether and how having a 'migration background' is negotiated in political practice. Devrimsel Deniz Nergiz investigates how German politicians with migration background negotiate and deploy the marker 'migration background' in their political practice.

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

Americans preach egalitarianism, but democracy makes it hard for minorities to win. "Changing Minds, If Not Hearts" explores political strategies that counteract the impulse of racial majorities to think about racial issues as a zero-sum game, in which a win for one group means a loss for another. James M. Glaser and Timothy J. Ryan argue that, although political processes often inflame racial tensions, the tools of politics also can alleviate conflict.Through randomized experiments conducted in South Carolina, California, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and New Jersey, Glaser and Ryan uncover the racial underpinnings of disputes over affirmative action, public school funding initiatives, Confederate flag displays on government buildings, reparations, and racial profiling. The authors examine whether communities rife with conflict endorse different outcomes when issues are cast in different terms--for example, by calling attention to double standards, evoking alternate conceptions of fairness and justice, or restructuring electoral choices to offer voters greater control. Their studies identify a host of tools that can help overcome opposition to minority interests that are due to racial hostility. Even in communities averse to accommodation, even where antipathy and prejudice linger, minorities can win.With clearly presented data and compelling prose, "Changing Minds, If Not Hearts" provides a vivid and practical illustration of how academic theory can help resolve conflicts on the ground.

"Constructing Cassandra" analyzes the intelligence failures at the CIA that resulted in four key strategic surprises experienced by the US: the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Iranian revolution of 1978, the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks--surprises still play out today in U.S. policy. Although there has been no shortage of studies exploring how intelligence failures can happen, none of them have been able to provide a unified understanding of the phenomenon.
To correct that omission, this book brings culture and identity to the foreground to present a unified model of strategic surprise; one that focuses on the internal make-up the CIA, and takes seriously those Cassandras who offered warnings, but were ignored. This systematic exploration of the sources of the CIA's intelligence failures points to ways to prevent future strategic surprises.

In America today, one in every hundred adults is behind bars. As our prison population has exploded, 'law and order' interest groups have also grown -- in numbers and political clout. In The Toughest Beat, Joshua Page argues in crisp, vivid prose that the Golden State's prison boom fueled the rise of one of the most politically potent and feared interest groups in the nation: the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). As it made great strides for its members, the prison officers' union also fundamentally altered the composition and orientation of the penal field. TheToughest Beat is essential reading for anyone concerned with contemporary crime and punishment, interest group politics, and public sector labor unions.

FROM THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF MY SEDITIOUS HEART AND THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS, A NEW AND PRESSING DISPATCH FROM THE HEART OF THE CROWD AND THE SOLITUDE OF A WRITER'S DESK The chant of 'Azadi!' - Urdu for 'Freedom!' - is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom - a chasm or a bridge? - the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The Coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

This book seeks to refine our understanding of transitional justice and peacebuilding, and long-term security and reintegration challenges after violent conflicts. As recent events following political change during the so-called 'Arab Spring' demonstrate, demands for accountability often follow or attend conflict and political transition. While, traditionally, much literature and many practitioners highlighted tensions between peacebuilding and justice, recent research and practice demonstrates a turn away from the supposed 'peace vs justice' dilemma. This volume examines the complex, often contradictory but sometimes complementary relationship between peacebuilding and transitional justice through the lenses of the increased emphasis on victim-centred approaches to justice and the widespread practices of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of excombatants. While recent volumes have sought to address either DDR or victim-centred approaches to justice, none has sought to make connections between the two, much less to place them in the larger context of the increasing linkages between transitional justice and peacebuilding . This book will be of much interest to students of transitional justice, peacebuilding, human rights, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

The dramatic and penetrating story of the political maneuverings and personalities behind the creation of the office of the president, with ramifications that continue to this day.
For the first time, by focusing closely on the dynamic give-and-take at the Constitutional Convention, Ray Raphael reveals how politics and personalities cobbled together a lasting, but flawed, executive office. Remarkably, the hero of this saga is Gouverneur Morris, a flamboyant, peg-legged delegate who pushed through his agenda with amazing political savvy, and not a little deceit. Without Morris's perseverance, a much weaker American president would be appointed by Congress, serve for seven years, could not be reelected, and have his powers tightly constrained.
Charting the presidency as it evolved during the administrations of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, Raphael shows how, given the Constitution's broad outlines, the president's powers could easily be augmented but rarely diminished. Today we see the result--an office that has become more sweeping, more powerful, and more inherently partisan than the framers ever intended. And the issues of 1787--whether the Electoral College, the president's war powers, or the extent of executive authority--continue to stir our political debates.

In light of the events of 2011, 'Real-Time Diplomacy' examines how diplomacy has evolved as media have gradually reduced the time available to policy makers. It analyzes the workings of real-time diplomacy and the opportunities for media-centred diplomacy programs that bypass governments and directly engage foreign citizens.

Torture. Secret prisons. Wiretaps on Americans. Even with a new president in the White House, daily headlines contain disturbing revelations about how the United States conducts itself in the 'war on terror'. This book shows, however, that the Bush police state didn't commence when Bush was inaugurated.

"Lost Geographies of Power" offers a compelling account of the difference that space makes to our understanding of power. The aim of the book is to unsettle the idea that power can be held, centred in people and institutions, and transmitted intact across the contemporary landscape. We have lost sight, in the everyday sense, of the ways in which proximity and reach, distance and mobility, place and presence, actually shift the register of power. We have lost sight too, certainly among geographers, of the diversity of power - that authority, coercion, seduction and manipulation are neither one and the same thing, nor reducible to the business of domination.

Drawing upon the work of social theorists who have implicated space in their reasoning of power, such as Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Michael Mann, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, the author sets out their spatial vocabularies of power and highlights their limitations.

It makes vital reading for anyone interested in how power actually 'works' in and across society. This book will be invaluable for students and academics in human geography, sociology, cultural studies and politics.

Since the start of the occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Israel's domination of the Palestinians has deprived an entire population of any political status or protection. But even decades on, most people speak of this ruleOCoboth in everyday political discussion and in legal and academic debatesOCoas temporary, as a state of affairs incidental and external to the Israeli regime. In "The One-State Condition," Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir directly challenge this belief.
Looking closely at the history and contemporary formation of the ruling apparatusOCothe technologies and operations of the Israeli army, the General Security Services, and the legal system imposed in the Occupied TerritoriesOCoAzoulay and Ophir outline the one-state condition of Israel/Palestine: the grounding principle of Israeli governance is the perpetuation of differential rule over populations of differing status. Israeli citizenship is shaped through the active denial of Palestinian citizenship and civil rights.
Though many Israelis, on both political right and left, agree that the occupation constitutes a problem for Israeli democracy, few ultimately admit that Israel is no democracy or question the very structure of the Israeli regime itself. Too frequently ignored are the lasting effects of the deceptive denial of the events of 1948 and 1967, and the ways in which the resulting occupation has reinforced the sweeping militarization and recent racialization of Israeli society. Azoulay and Ophir show that acknowledgment of the one-state "condition" is not only a prerequisite for considering a one- or two-state "solution"; it is a prerequisite for advancing new ideas to move beyond the trap of this false dilemma."

Since the start of the occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Israel's domination of the Palestinians has deprived an entire population of any political status or protection. But even decades on, most people speak of this rule-both in everyday political discussion and in legal and academic debates-as temporary, as a state of affairs incidental and external to the Israeli regime. In The One-State Condition, Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir directly challenge this belief. Looking closely at the history and contemporary formation of the ruling apparatus-the technologies and operations of the Israeli army, the General Security Services, and the legal system imposed in the Occupied Territories-Azoulay and Ophir outline the one-state condition of Israel/Palestine: the grounding principle of Israeli governance is the perpetuation of differential rule over populations of differing status. Israeli citizenship is shaped through the active denial of Palestinian citizenship and civil rights. Though many Israelis, on both political right and left, agree that the occupation constitutes a problem for Israeli democracy, few ultimately admit that Israel is no democracy or question the very structure of the Israeli regime itself. Too frequently ignored are the lasting effects of the deceptive denial of the events of 1948 and 1967, and the ways in which the resulting occupation has reinforced the sweeping militarization and recent racialization of Israeli society. Azoulay and Ophir show that acknowledgment of the one-state condition is not only a prerequisite for considering a one- or two-state solution; it is a prerequisite for advancing new ideas to move beyond the trap of this false dilemma.

America and the Rogue States traces and examines the policies and interaction of the United States with the main adversarial nations in the post-Cold War era. The book concentrates on the three major rogue states-North Korea, Iran, and pre-invasion Iraq. What are termed as lesser rogue nations-Libya, Syria, Cuba, and the Sudan-receive summarized treatment in one chapter together with a brief discussion about why Afghanistan and Venezuela are not rogues. The author makes clear the distinctions among these confrontational regimes, noting that North Korea, Iran, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq aroused much more anxiety in Washington than lesser rogues and other troublesome states. After an opening chapter placing the rogue-nation phenomenon in historical and current context, the manuscript devotes one chapter each to the three major adversarial rogues. A final chapter deals with the less threatening rogue regimes. Each chapter follows a chronological format with description and analysis. The work is intended for a general reader interested in the topic; it also will have appeal as a supplemental text for university classes in international relations covering the period after the Cold War ended.