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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
Following the ICC intervention in 2005, northern Uganda has been at
the heart of international justice debates. The emergent
controversy, however, missed crucial aspects of Acholi realities:
that the primary moral imperative in the wake of wrongdoing was not
punishment but, instead, the restoration of social harmony. Drawing
upon abundant fieldwork and in-depth interviews with almost 200
women, Holly Porter examines issues surrounding wrongdoing and
justice, and sexual violence and rape, among the Acholi people in
northern Uganda. This intricate exploration offers evidence of a
more complicated and nuanced explanation of rape and its aftermath,
suggesting a re-imagining of the meanings of post-atrocity justice,
whilst acknowledging the role of sex, power and politics in all
sexual experiences between coercion and consent. With its wide
investigation of social life in northern Uganda, this provocative
study offers vital analysis for those interested in sexual and
gender violence, post-conflict reconstruction and human rights.
Drawing data from multiple sources, Un argues that following the
1993 United Nations intervention to promote democracy, the
Cambodian People's Party (CPP) perpetuated a patronage state weak
in administrative capacity but strong in coercive capacity. This
enabled them to maintain the presence of electoral
authoritarianism, but increased political awareness among the
public, the rise in political activism among community-based
organizations and a united opposition led to the emergence of a
counter-movement. Sensing that this counter-movement might be
unstoppable, the CPP has returned Cambodia to authoritarianism, a
move made possible in part by China's pivot to Cambodia.
Hearing the news from South America at the turn of the millennium
can be like traveling in time: here are the trials of Pinochet, the
searches for "the disappeared" in Argentina, the investigation of
the death of former president Goulart in Brazil, the Peace
Commission in Uruguay, the Archive of Terror in Paraguay, a Truth
Commission in Peru. As societies struggle to come to terms with the
past and with the vexing questions posed by ineradicable memories,
this wise book offers guidance. Combining a concrete sense of
present urgency and a theoretical understanding of social,
political, and historical realities, State Repression and the
Labors of Memory fashions tools for thinking about and analyzing
the presences, silences, and meanings of the past. With unflappable
good judgment and fairness, Elizabeth Jelin clarifies the often
muddled debates about the nature of memory, the politics of
struggles over memories of historical injustice, the relation of
historiography to memory, the issue of truth in testimony and
traumatic remembrance, the role of women in Latin American attempts
to cope with the legacies of military dictatorships, and problems
of second-generation memory and its transmission and appropriation.
Jelin's work engages European and North American theory in its
exploration of the various ways in which conflicts over memory
shape individual and collective identities, as well as social and
political cleavages. In doing so, her book exposes the enduring
consequences of repression for social processes in Latin America,
and at the same time enriches our general understanding of the
fundamentally conflicted and contingent nature of memory. A timely
exploration of the nature ofmemory and its political uses.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC
BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford
Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and
selected open access locations. Are algorithms ruling the world
today? Is artificial intelligence making life-and-death decisions?
Are social media companies able to manipulate elections? As we are
confronted with public and academic anxieties about unprecedented
changes, this book offers a different analytical prism through
which these transformations can be explored. Claudia Aradau and
Tobias Blanke develop conceptual and methodological tools to
understand how algorithmic operations shape the government of self
and other. They explore the emergence of algorithmic reason through
rationalities, materializations, and interventions, and trace how
algorithmic rationalities of decomposition, recomposition, and
partitioning are materialized in the construction of dangerous
others, the power of platforms, and the production of economic
value. The book provides a global trandisciplinary perspective on
algorithmic operations, drawing on qualitative and digital methods
to investigate controversies ranging from mass surveillance and the
Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK to predictive policing in the
US, and from the use of facial recognition in China and drone
targeting in Pakistan to the regulation of hate speech in Germany.
United States Attorneys (USAs), the chief federal prosecutors in
each judicial district, are key in determining how the federal
government uses coercive force against its citizens. How much
control do national political actors exert over the prosecutorial
decisions of USAs? This book investigates this question using a
unique dataset of federal criminal prosecutions between 1986 and
2015 that captures both decisions by USAs to file cases as well as
the sentences that result. Utilizing intuitions from
principal-agent theory, work on the career ambition of bureaucrats
and politicians, and selected case-studies, the authors develop and
advance a set of hypotheses about control by the President and
Congress. Harnessing variation across time, federal judicial
districts, and five legal issue areas - immigration, narcotics,
terrorism, weapons, and white-collar crime - Miller and Curry find
that USAs are subject to considerable executive influence in their
decision making, supporting findings about the increase of
presidential power over the last three decades. In addition, they
show that the ability of the President to appoint USAs to
higher-level positions within the executive branch or to federal
judgeships is an important mechanism of that control. This
investigation sheds light on how the need to be responsive to
popularly-elected principals channels the enormous prosecutorial
discretion of USAs.
Sparked by the brutal police murder of George Floyd, the second
wave of the #blacklivesmatter protest movement has surged across
more than 100 US cities, spilling into Brazil, South Africa, Paris
and London -Â to name a few of the primary sites of active
resistance. This is a new movement, international in scope, with a
disproportionately large section of young people -Â Black and
white -Â using their own language and tactics to fundamentally
challenge the whole range of racist institutions governing
today’s globalised world. Matt Clement’s No Justice, No Police?
The Politics of Protest and Social Change chronicles this
movement as it continues to deepen and broaden.
This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the
nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It
challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining
its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the
notion that for states online law and order is business as usual.
Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around
China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces,
as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised
virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself.
Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in
favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control
over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online
governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human
geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with
topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy,
identity and cartographic maps.
A preoccupation with the subject of freedom became a core issue in
the construction of all modern political ideologies. Here, Wael
Abu-'Uksa examines the development of the concept of freedom
(hurriyya) in nineteenth-century Arab political thought, its
ideological offshoots, their modes, and their substance as they
developed the dynamics of the Arabic language. Abu-'Uksa traces the
transition of the idea of freedom from a term used in a
predominantly non-political way, through to its popularity and near
ubiquity at the dawn of the twentieth century. Through this, he
also analyzes the importance of associated concepts such as
liberalism, socialism, progress, rationalism, secularism, and
citizenship. He employs a close analysis of the development of the
language, whilst at the same time examining the wider historical
context within which these semantic shifts occurred: the rise of
nationalism, the power of the Ottoman court, and the state of
relations with Europe.
Rwanda and Bosnia both experienced mass violence in the early
1990s. Less than ten years later, Rwandans surprisingly elected the
world's highest level of women to parliament. In Bosnia, women
launched thousands of community organizations that became spaces
for informal political participation. The political mobilization of
women in both countries complicates the popular image of women as
merely the victims and spoils of war. Through a close examination
of these cases, Marie E. Berry unpacks the puzzling relationship
between war and women's political mobilization. Drawing from over
260 interviews with women in both countries, she argues that war
can reconfigure gendered power relations by precipitating
demographic, economic, and cultural shifts. In the aftermath,
however, many of the gains women made were set back. This book
offers an entirely new view of women and war, and includes concrete
suggestions for policy makers, development organizations, and
activists supporting women's rights.
This Element argues that after twenty years of democratization,
Indonesia has performed admirably. This is especially so when the
country's accomplishments are placed in comparative perspective.
However, as we analytically focus more closely to inspect
Indonesia's political regime, political economy, and how
identity-based mobilizations have emerged, it is clear that
Indonesia still has many challenges to overcome, some so pressing
that they could potentially erode or reverse many of the democratic
gains the country has achieved since its former authoritarian
ruler, Soeharto, was forced to resign in 1998.
In most non-democratic countries, today governing forty-four
percent of the world population, the power of the regime rests upon
a ruling party. Contrasting with conventional notions that
authoritarian regime parties serve to contain elite conflict and
manipulate electoral-legislative processes, this book presents the
case of China and shows that rank and-file members of the Communist
Party allow the state to penetrate local communities. Subnational
comparative analysis demonstrates that in 'red areas' with high
party saturation, the state is most effectively enforcing policy
and collecting taxes. Because party membership patterns are
extremely enduring, they must be explained by events prior to the
Communist takeover in 1949. Frontlines during the anti-colonial
Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) continue to shape China's political
map even today. Newly available evidence from the Great Leap
Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) shows
how a strong local party basis sustained the regime in times of
existential crisis.
Racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system is much debated and
discussed, but until now, no single volume has covered the full
expanse of the issue. In Bias in the Law, sixteen outstanding
experts address the impact of racial bias in the full roster of
criminal justice actors. They examine the role of legislators
crafting criminal justice legislation, community enforcers, and
police, as well as prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges,
and jurors. Understanding when and why bias arises, as well as how
it impacts defendants requires a clear understanding how each of
these actors operate. Contributions touch on other crucial
topics-racialized drug stigma, legal technology, and
interventions-that are vital for understanding how the United
States has reached this moment of stark racial disparity in
incarceration. The result is an important entry into understanding
the pervasiveness of racial bias, how such bias impacts legal
outcomes, and why such impact matters. This is an issue that is as
relevant today as it was fifty-or even one hundred fifty-years ago,
and collection editors Joseph Avery and Joel Cooper provide a
glimpse at how to proceed.
How rumors, lies, and misrepresentations shaped American history
After the election of Donald Trump as president, people in the
United States and across large swaths of Europe, Latin America, and
Asia engaged in the most intensive discussion in modern times about
falsehoods pronounced by public officials. Fake facts in their
various forms have long been present in American life, particularly
in its politics, public discourse, and business activities –
going back to the time when the country was formed. This book
begins explores the long tradition of fake facts, in their various
guises, in American history. It is one of the first historical
studies to place the long history of lies and misrepresentation
squarely in the middle of American political, business, and science
policy rhetoric. In Fake News Nation, James Cortada and William
Aspray present a series of case studies that describe how lies and
fake facts were used over the past two centuries in important
instances in American history. Cortada and Aspray give readers a
perspective on fake facts as they appear today and as they are
likely to appear in the future.
Welcome to a brave new world of capitalism propelled by high tech,
guarded by enterprising authority, and carried forward by millions
of laborers being robbed of their souls. Gathered into mammoth
factory complexes and terrified into obedience, these workers feed
the world's addiction to iPhones and other commodities--a
generation of iSlaves trapped in a global economic system that
relies upon and studiously ignores their oppression. Focusing on
the alliance between Apple and the notorious Taiwanese manufacturer
Foxconn, Jack Linchuan Qiu examines how corporations and
governments everywhere collude to build systems of domination,
exploitation, and alienation. His interviews, news analysis, and
first-hand observation show the circumstances faced by Foxconn
workers--circumstances with vivid parallels in the Atlantic slave
trade. Ironically, the fanatic consumption of digital media also
creates compulsive free labor that constitutes a form of bondage
for the user. Arguing as a digital abolitionist, Qiu draws
inspiration from transborder activist groups and incidents of
grassroots resistance to make a passionate plea aimed at
uniting--and liberating--the forgotten workers who make our
twenty-first-century lives possible.
This book examines security in three cities that suffer from
chronic violence: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Medellin, Colombia; and
Kingston, Jamaica. In each, democratic states contend with
subnational armed groups that dominate territory and play important
roles in politics even as they contribute to fear and insecurity.
Through a nested three-city, six-neighborhood analysis of the role
of criminal groups in governance, this research provides a deep
understanding of the impact of crime on political experience.
Neighborhoods controlled by different types of armed actors,
operating in the same institutional context, build alliances with
state officials and participate in political life through the
structures created by these armed actors. The data demonstrates the
effects criminal dominance can have on security, civil society,
elections, and policymaking. Far from reflecting a breakdown of
order, varying types of criminal groups generate different local
lived political experiences.
In "Overseers of the Poor," John Gilliom confronts the everyday
politics of surveillance by exploring the worlds and words of those
who know it best-the watched. Arguing that the current public
conversation about surveillance and privacy rights is rife with
political and conceptual failings, Gilliom goes beyond the critics
and analysts to add fresh voices, insights, and perspectives.
This powerful book lets us in on the conversations of low-income
mothers from Appalachian Ohio as they talk about the welfare
bureaucracy and its remarkably advanced surveillance system. In
their struggle to care for their families, these women are
monitored and assessed through a vast network of supercomputers,
caseworkers, fraud control agents, and even grocers and neighbors.
In-depth interviews show that these women focus less on the right
to privacy than on a critique of surveillance that lays bare the
personal and political conflicts with which they live. And, while
they have little interest in conventional forms of politics, we see
widespread patterns of everyday resistance as they subvert the
surveillance regime when they feel it prevents them from being good
parents. Ultimately, "Overseers of the Poor" demonstrates the need
to reconceive not just our understanding of the
surveillance-privacy debate but also the broader realms of
language, participation, and the politics of rights.
We all know that our lives are being watched more than ever before.
As we struggle to understand and confront this new order, Gilliom
argues, we need to spend less time talking about privacy rights,
legislatures, and courts of law and more time talking about power,
domination, and the ongoing struggles of everyday people.
From gang- and drug-related shootings to mass shootings in schools,
shopping centers, and movie theatres, reports of gun crimes fill
the headlines of newspapers and nightly news programs. At the same
time, a different kind of headline has captured public attention: a
steady surge in pro-gun sentiment among Americans. A Gallup poll
conducted just a month after the Newtown school shootings found
that 74% of Americans oppose a ban on hand-guns, and at least 11
million people now have licenses to carry concealed weapons as part
of their everyday lives. Why do so many Americans not only own guns
but also carry them? In Citizen-Protectors, Jennifer Carlson offers
a compelling portrait of gun carriers, shedding light on Americans'
complex relationship with guns. Delving headlong into the world of
gun carriers, Carlson spent time participating in firearms training
classes, attending pro-gun events, and carrying a firearm herself.
Through these experiences she explores the role guns play in the
lives of Americans who carry them and shows how, against a backdrop
of economic insecurity and social instability, gun carrying becomes
a means of being a good citizen, an idea that not only pervades the
NRA's public literature and statements, but its training courses as
well. A much-needed counterpoint to the rhetorical battles over gun
control, Citizen-Protectors is a captivating and revealing look at
gun culture in America, and is a must-read for anyone with a stake
in this heated debate.
This book looks at the fundamental issue of governance in Africa.
After half a century of experimenting with democratic institutions,
African countries are still ambivalent about the complete or
absolute adoption of this form of governance. Africa lost
tremendous human and natural resources in the struggle for
political and economic independence. What form of governance
African leaders adopt will determine how worthwhile this sacrifice
has been to the African people. This issue is the major challenge
facing Africa, and addressing it is of high urgency. Employing a
political economy framework, this book provides some insights into
to dealing with this complex issue of democratic governance in
Africa.
Politicians claim social mobility is real - a just reward for
ambition and hard work. This book proves otherwise. From servants'
children who became clerks in Victorian Britain, to managers made
redundant by the 2008 financial crash, travelling up or down the
social ladder has been a fact of British life for more than a
century. Drawing on hundreds of personal stories, Snakes and
Ladders tells the hidden history of how people have really
experienced that social mobility - both upwards and down. It shows
how a powerful elite on the top rungs have clung to their perch and
prevented others ascending. It also introduces the unsung heroes
who created more room at the top - among them adult educators,
feminists and trade unionists, whose achievements unleashed the
hidden talents of thousands of people. As we face political crisis
after crisis, Snakes and Ladders argues that only by creating
greater opportunities for everyone to thrive can we ensure the
survival of our society A 'Best books of 2021' prediction:
Financial Times, Sunday Times Praise for The People: the Rise and
Fall of the Working Class 'The People is a book we badly need'
David Kynaston, Observer 'Ms Todd's great ability as an academic is
to avoid writing like one' Alistair Dawber, Independent 'What
differentiates Selina Todd's book from existing literature on this
subject is the way her narrative actually documents the voices of
working-class people . . . Brilliant and well-researched' New
Internationalist
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