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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
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.
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.
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.
A data-rich analysis of how the four inter-related crises of 2020 — the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic collapse and K-shaped recovery, the clashes over the legacy of racism and policing, and assaults on the legitimacy of democratic institutions (abetted by conspiracy theories) — shaped not only the 2020 election, but also the future of our democracy. The 2020 election cycle was one of the most tumultuous in the nation's history. Early in the cycle, a global pandemic hit the US, paralyzing much of the economy and raising a multitude of questions about how people would go about voting. Then, beginning in late spring, a series of police brutality cases set off a nationwide wave of protests and civil disturbances related to racial justice concerns. In the final phase, the president of the United States refused to accept the results and incited his followers to storm the US Capitol. How did all of these momentous events shape voters' opinions? And what impact did they have on the outcome? To answer these questions, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and her collaborators surveyed 9,000 Americans over the course of the year to determine how voters reacted to the events on the ground, the campaigns' attempts at persuasion, and the post-election chaos that followed Biden's victory. Generally, American voters saw the multitude of crises through the lens of their polarized partisan predispositions. But why? Jamieson and her co-authors first stress that America has multiple electorates, and they are exposed to different informational environments. The divergent messages they received shaped not only their vote choice, but also how they made sense of these crises. Interestingly, though, while many voters were locked in place by their partisan priors, a majority of those who ended up voting for either Biden or Trump were unsure of their choice and whether they would actually vote at some point during the year. What led to both the wavering in people's choices and the attitudes they eventually adopted were in large part due to the differing media environments enveloping them: the messages from the campaigns, from their family and friends, as well from those in mass and social media. But this is not a simple story of "echo chambers," where individuals are immersed in only one type of media — far from it. The distinct media environments in which these electorates experienced the election were in fact complex and varied, and the interaction between these different types of media was key. Indeed, most voters were subject to cross-cutting information pressures and not only one type of partisan source. This book's focus on the ebb and flow of the campaign over time and the centrality of wavering voters makes this an authoritative and essential account of one of the most momentous American elections ever.
This book investigates governance practiced by non-state actors. It analyses how multinational mining companies protect their sites in fragile contexts and what that tells us about political ordering 'beyond' the state. Based on extensive primary research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Europe and North America, the book compares companies' political role in the 19th and 21st centuries. It demonstrates that despite a number of disturbing parallels, many contemporary practices are not a reversion to the past but unique to the present. The book discloses hybrid security practices with highly ambiguous effects around the sites of contemporary companies that have committed to norms of corporate social and security responsibility. Companies invest in local communities, and offer human rights training to security forces alongside coercive techniques of fortress protection, and stability-oriented clientele practice and arrangements of indirect rule. The book traces this hybridity back to contradictory collective meaning systems that cross borders and structure the perceptions and choices of company managers, private security officers, NGO collaborators and others practitioners. The book argues that hybrid security practices are not the result of an encounter between a supposed 'local' with the liberal 'global'. Instead, this hybridity is inherent in the transnational and part and parcel of liberal transnational governance. Therefore, more critical reflection of global governance in practice is required. These issues are sharply pertinent to liberal peacebuilding as well as global governance more broadly. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in business, politics and human rights; critical security studies; peacebuilding and statebuilding; African politics; and ethnographic and sociological approaches to global governance and international relations more generally.
Fear is ingrained in the history of cities but our short-sightedness prevents us from grasping its evolution over time. Increasingly, risk and fear are experienced, portrayed and discussed as globalized phenomena, particularly since 9/11. This research puts urban insecurity in perspective, with a comparison of world cities in the North and South.
The U.S. immigration debate has raised some of the most difficult
questions our nation has ever faced: How can we preserve the
integrity of sovereign borders while also respecting the dignity of
human beings? How should a border-that imaginary line in the
sand-be humanely and effectively maintained? And how should we
regard "the stranger" in our midst?
This book presents the raging debate on one of the most brutal political realities that India has confronted in recent years: the rising conflict between Maoist insurgent groups and the Indian State. With some of the finest writings on the subject, it brings together articles and interviews from leading authors, politicians, journalists, intellectuals, filmmakers and legal practitioners. The volume straddles between two apparently irreconcilable perspectives: (a) the view that the Maoist movement threatens the very core of democratic foundations, and should be perceived as a violent law & order situation justifying severe retaliatory measures, and (b) the counterview where Maoists are fiercely defended as revolutionaries and comrades of resistance, and the movement seen as the last-ditch struggle by those who have been abandoned over years by the State in its developmental process. The essays probe whether armed struggle is avoidable, whether the desperate desire for peace has simply been overtaken by political ideologies, and whether an inclusive developmental State policy may help restore faith in its democratic ethos. The book will be of interest to academics and students of politics, sociology, social anthropology and law. It will also be extremely useful to social workers, policymakers, politicians, bureaucrats, as well as the general reader.
Our world and the people within it are increasingly interpreted and classified by automated systems. At the same time, automated classifications influence what happens in the physical world. These entanglements change what it means to interact with governance, and shift what elements of our identity are knowable and meaningful. In this cyber-physical world, or 'world state', what is the role for law? Specifically, how should law address the claim that computational systems know us better than we know ourselves? Monitoring Laws traces the history of government profiling from the invention of photography through to emerging applications of computer vision for personality and behavioral analysis. It asks what dimensions of profiling have provoked legal intervention in the past, and what is different about contemporary profiling that requires updating our legal tools. This work should be read by anyone interested in how computation is changing society and governance, and what it is about people that law should protect in a computational world.
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.
A long-term resident and expert observer of dissent in Hong Kong takes readers to the frontlines of Hong Kong's revolution. Through the long, hot summer of 2019, Hong Kong burned. Anti-government protests, sparked by a government proposal to introduce a controversial extradition law, grew into a pro-democracy movement that engulfed the city for months. Protesters fought street battles with police, and the unrest brought the People's Liberation Army to the doorstep of Hong Kong. Driven primarily by youth protesters with their 'Be water!' philosophy, borrowed from hometown hero Bruce Lee, this leaderless, technology-driven protest movement defied a global superpower and changed Hong Kong, perhaps forever. In City on Fire, Antony Dapiran provides the first detailed analysis of the protests, and reveals the protesters' unique tactics. He explains how the movement fits into the city's long history of dissent, examines the cultural aspects of the movement, and looks at what the protests will mean for the future of Hong Kong, China, and China's place in the world. City on Fire will be seen as the definitive account of an historic upheaval.
Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.
Since the end of the Cold War, transnational non-state forces have
been a major source of global instability, with many ominous and
disruptive flows of people, goods, and services moving readily
across international boundaries. And because these activities are
so multifaceted and so intertwined within the fabric of society,
they remain largely invisible until the intrusion is well-advanced
and difficult to reverse. Thus, the threat posed by transnational
organized crime ultimately undermines the "total security" of
countries--including the economic, cultural, and political
dimensions--and now presents an international security challenge of
staggering proportions.
In his address to the nation on September 20, 2001, President Bush declared war on terrorism and set in motion a detention policy unlike any we have ever seen. Since then, the United States has seized thousands of people from around the globe, setting off a firestorm of controversy. Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power explores that policy and the intense debates that have followed. Written by an expert on the subject, one of the lawyers who fought - and won - the right for prisoners to have judicial review, this important book will be of immense interest to anyone concerned about the legal implications. With shocking facts and firsthand accounts, Margulies takes readers deep into the Guantanamo Bay prison, into the interrogation rooms and secret cells where hundreds of men and boys have been designated 'enemy combatants'. Held without legal process, they have been consigned to live out their days in isolation until the Bush administration sees fit to release them - if it ever does.Tracing the arguments on both sides of the debate, this vitally important book paints a portrait of a country divided, on the brink of ethical collapse, where the loss of personal freedoms is under greater threat than ever before.
Recently, a wall was built in eastern Germany. Made of steel and cement blocks, topped with razor barbed wire, and reinforced with video monitors and movement sensors, this wall was not put up to protect a prison or a military base, but rather to guard a three-day meeting of the finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8). The wall manifested a level of security that is increasingly commonplace at meetings regarding the global economy. The authors of Shutting Down the Streets have directly observed and participated in more than 20 mass actions against global in North America and Europe, beginning with the watershed 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle and including the 2007 G8 protests in Heiligendamm. Shutting Down the Streets is the first book to conceptualize the social control of dissent in the era of alterglobalization. Based on direct observation of more than 20 global summits, the book demonstrates that social control is not only global, but also preemptive, and that it relegates dissent to the realm of criminality. The charge is insurrection, but the accused have no weapons. The authors document in detail how social control forecloses the spaces through which social movements nurture the development of dissent and effect disruptive challenges.
Political movements and citizens across the globe are increasingly challenging the traditional ways in which political authorities and governing bodies establish and maintain social control. This edited collection examines the intersections of social control, political authority and public policy. Each chapter provides an important insight into the key elements needed to understand the role of governance in establishing and maintaining social control through law and public policymaking. Close attention is paid to the roles of surveillance and dissent as tools for both establishing and disrupting the social control of political institutions. This collection examines the vast implications of increased participation in governance by citizens through dissent, revealing the ways in which this represents both a disruption of social control and a mechanism for increased accountability through surveillance and media. Through its examination of issues such as police militarization, police legitimacy, religion and the state, immigration, mental health policy, privacy and surveillance, and mass media and social control in a post-truth environment, this collection will prove invaluable for researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike.
Eliz Sanasarian's book explores the political and ideological relationship between non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran and the state during the formative years of the Islamic Republic to the present day. Her analysis is based on a detailed examination of the history and experiences of the Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahais and Iranian Christians, and describes how these communities have responded to state policies regarding minorities. Many of her findings are constructed out of personal interviews with members of these communities. While the book is essentially an empirical study, it also highlights more general questions associated with exclusion and marginalization and the role of the state in defining these boundaries. This is an important and original book which will make a significant contribution to the literature on minorities and to the workings of the Islamic Republic.
The US government spends billions of dollars every year to reduce
uncertainty: to monitor and forecast everything from the weather to
the spread of disease. In other words, we spend a lot of money to
anticipate problems, identify opportunities, and avoid mistakes. A
substantial portion of what we spend--over $50 billion a year--goes
to the US Intelligence Community.
This book explores the meaning of local ownership in peacebuilding and examines the ways in which it has been, and could be, operationalized in post-conflict environments. In the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, the idea of local ownership is based upon the premise that no peace process is sustainable in the absence of a meaningful degree of local involvement. Despite growing recognition of the importance of local ownership, however, relatively little attention has been paid to specifying what precisely the concept means or how it might be implemented. This volume contributes to the ongoing debate on the future of liberal peacebuilding through a critical investigation of the notion of local ownership, and challenges conventional assumptions about who the relevant locals are and what they are expected to own. Drawing on case studies from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, the text argues that local ownership can only be fostered through a long-term consensus-building process, which involves all levels of the conflict-affected society. This book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, development studies, security studies and IR.
The US government spends billions of dollars every year to reduce
uncertainty: to monitor and forecast everything from the weather to
the spread of disease. In other words, we spend a lot of money to
anticipate problems, identify opportunities, and avoid mistakes. A
substantial portion of what we spend--over $50 billion a year--goes
to the US Intelligence Community. |
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