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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion , Chris Hedges- who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class - investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges' message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization.Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as sublime madness" , the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this sublime madness."From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.
National intelligence cultures are shaped by their country's history and environment. Featuring 32 countries (such as Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Norway, Latvia, Montenegro), the work provides insight into a number of rarely discussed national intelligence agencies to allow for comparative study, offering hard to find information into one volume. In their chapters, the contributors, who are all experts from the countries discussed, address the intelligence community rather than focus on a single agency. They examine the environment in which an organization operates, its actors, and cultural and ideological climate, to cover both the external and internal factors that influence a nation's intelligence community. The result is an exhaustive, unique survey of European intelligence communities rarely discussed.
Foucault and Family Relations: Governing from a Distance in Australia analyzes how notions of property ownership were instrumental in maintaining family stability and continuity in rural Australia, outlining how inheritance and divorce laws functioned to govern the internal relationships of families to assist the state to 'rule from a distance'. Using a selection of Foucault's ideas on the "family", sexuality, race, space and economics this books shows how "property" operated as a disciplinary device, which was underpinned by "technical ideas", such as surveying and cartography. This book uses legal judgments as a form of ethnography to show how property, as a socio-technical device, allowed a degree of local freedom for owners. This aspect of property allowed the state to stimulate ideas of local freedom to assist in "ruling from a distance," demonstrating how the rural family as a domestic unit became a key field of intervention for the state as the family represented a bridge to larger relationships of power.
Around the world in the twentieth century, political violence in emerging states gave rise to different kinds of silence within their societies. This book explores the histories of these silences, how they were made, maintained, evaded, and transformed. This book gives a comprehensive view of the ongoing evolutions and multiple faces of silence as a common strand in the struggles of state-building. It begins with chapters that examine the construction of "regimes of silence" as an act of power, and it continues through explorations of the ambiguous limits of speech within communities marked by this violence. It highlights national and transnational attempts to combat state silences, before concluding with a series of considerations of how these regimes of silence continue to be extrapolated in the gaps of records and written history. This volume explores histories of the composed silences of political violence across the emerging states of the late twentieth century, not solely as a present concern of aftermath or retrospection but as a diachronic social and political dimension of violence itself. This book makes a major original contribution to international history, as well as to the study of political terror, human rights violations, social recovery, and historical memory.
The Dutch Reformed Church, it was said in apartheid South Africa, was the National Party at prayer, and indeed, given that the Bible was so fundamental to much of the legislation that governed the apartheid state, that apparently satirical description had the ring of truth. 'Religion in South Africa's past', writes Dhammamegha Annie Leatt has been 'saturated by politics' and politics 'saturated by religion'. So how, she asks, was it possible for a new state to found itself without religious authority? Why did the churches give up so much of their political role in the transition? How can we think about tradition and the customary in relation to secularism? How can we not? In The State of Secularism Leatt guides the reader from a history of global political secularism through an exploration of the roles played by religion and traditional authority in apartheid South Africa to the position of religion in the post-apartheid state. She analyses the negotiations relating to religion in the constitution-making process, arguing, that South Africa is both secular in its Constitution and judicial foundations and increasingly non-secular in its embrace of traditional authorities and customary law. In the final chapter Leatt turns her attention to post-apartheid South Africa, examining changing relationships between churches and the ruling African National Congress and the increasing influence of traditional leaders and evangelical Christians in an anti-liberal alliance. This book makes a tremendous contribution to the literature on postcolonial politics on the African continent. It has wonderful insights into the founding of a constitutional democracy in South African and will appeal to students in history, politics, sociology and anthropology and constitutional law.
No one could have predicted that a peaceful sit-in to counter
government plans to raze Istanbul's Gezi park would escalate into a
country-wide protest movement, arguably the most serious political
crisis Turkey, a country often hailed as a 'model' in the region,
has faced in the last ten years.
In this holistic examination of political scandal in the United States, David Dewberry argues convincingly that such scandals follow a consistent narrative centered largely on media coverage and politician performance rather than the actual corruption or ethics violation committed. In making this argument, he also provides an analytical framework for understanding the patterns underlying scandals regardless of their unique political contexts. Dewberry dissects four major examples-Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Clinton/Lewinsky-and explores the roles of various constituencies involved in creating, reacting to, and mediating the scandal. What is the true role of journalism within the context of scandal? What persuasive techniques do politicians employ to develop and perpetuate scandals? What motives and values bring scandals to a close? In addition to the core cases, Dewberry incorporates briefer examples from contemporary and ongoing controversies including Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal, money and sex in Congress, how cover-ups have gone digital, and Chris Christie's Bridgegate. The result is a fascinating and thoughtful look at the relationships among political discourse, free speech, and democracy.
Christians in the Middle East have come under increasing pressure in recent years with the rise of radical Islam. In Egypt, the large Coptic Christian community has traditionally played an important political and historical role. This book examines Egyptian Christians' responses to sectarian pressures in both national and local contexts.
South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 heralded the end of more than forty years of apartheid. The Government of National Unity started the process of bringing together this deeply divided society principally through the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). However, interest in – and responsibility for - the reconciliation project first embodied through the TRC appears to have diminished over more than two decades of democracy. The narrow mandate of the Commission itself has been retrospectively criticised, and at face value it would seem that deep divisions persist: the chasm between rich and poor gapes wider than ever before; the public is polarised over questions of restitution and memorialisation; and incidents of racialised violence and hate speech continue. This edited volume uses a decade of public opinion survey data to answer these key questions about the extent of progress in South African reconciliation. Leading social scientists analyse longitudinal data derived from the South African Reconciliation Barometer Survey (SARB) – conducted annually by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation since 2003 as well as interrogate and reach critical conclusions on the state of reconciliation, including in the areas of economic transformation, race relations and social contact, political participation, national identity formation and transitional justice. Their findings both confirm and disrupt theory on reconciliation and social change, and point to critical new directions in thinking and policy implementation.
Elections always have consequences, but the 2017 Bundestag election in Germany proved particularly consequential. With political upheaval across the globe-notably in Britain and the USA-it was vital to European and global order that Germany remain stable. And it did through the re-election of Angela Merkel as chancellor, now in her fourth term. Just under the surface, however, instability is mounting-exemplified by the entry of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the largest opposition party, the decline of the Social Democrats, the ever-restive Bavarians, and the growing factionalism within the Christian Democratic Union as the Merkel era comes to an end. Paying special attention to the rise of the AfD, this volume delves into the campaign, leading political figures, the structure of the electorate, the state of the parties, the media environment, coalition negotiations, and policy impacts.
From the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid, to First Nations' mass campaigns against pipeline construction in North America, Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of some of the crucial struggles of our age. Rich with their distinct histories and cultures, they are connected by the shared enemy they face: settler colonialism. In this introduction to the subject, Sai Englert highlights the ways in which settler colonialism has and continues to shape our global economic and political order. From the rapacious accumulation of resources, land, and labour, through Indigenous dispossession and genocide, to the development of racism as a form of social control, settler colonialism is deeply connected to many of today's social ills. To understand settler colonialism as an ongoing process, is therefore also to start engaging with contemporary social movements and solidarity campaigns differently. It is to start seeing how distinct struggles for justice and liberation are intertwined.
In this book, Edenborg studies contemporary conflicts of community as enacted in Russian media, from the 'homosexual propaganda' laws to the Sochi Olympics and the Ukraine war, and explores the role of visibility in the production and contestation of belonging to a political community. The book examines what it is that determines which subjects and narratives become visible and which are occluded in public spheres; how they are seen and made intelligible; and how those processes are involved in the imagination of communities. Investigating the differentiated consequences of visibility, Edenborg discusses what forms of visibility make belonging possible and what forms of visibility may be related to exclusion or violence. The book maps and analyses the practices and mechanisms whereby a state seeks to produce and shape belonging through controlling what becomes visible in public, and how that which becomes visible is seen and understood. In addition, it examines what forms contestation can take and what its effects may be. Advancing theoretical understanding and offering a useful way to analytically conceptualize the role of visibility in the production and contestation of political communities, this work will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and sexuality politics, borders, citizenship, nationalism, migration and ethnic relations.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the number of intelligence courses and related curricula have soared. Many instructors look for interactive learning tools because they add immeasurable value to the student's understanding of the intelligence enterprise. Such tools, however, take time and effort to develop and are not circulated among faculty. This is the first textbook to offer in one volume original simulations, exercises, and games designed by academics and intelligence professionals from several countries. These innovative methods are meant to enhance the learning experience and provide an international perspective to the topics and approaches discussed in class. Intelligence simulations and games are presented in ready-to run formats, from easy instructions to result recordings matrices, to minimize preparation time for both instructors and students. Exercises, such as cyber attack simulation, information sharing, ethical scenarios and more, expose the student to the many subtle aspects of the intelligence enterprise through active role-playing in simulations and game exercises. The cases cover a wide range of key analytical issues and contexts with an international focus for an innovative text that will suit intelligence training courses at all levels.
In 2013, former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents revealing that state agencies like the NSA had spied on the communications of millions of innocent citizens. International outrage resulted, but the Snowden documents revealed only the tip of the surveillance iceberg. Apart from insisting on their rights to tap into communications, more and more states are placing citizens under surveillance, tracking their movements and transactions with public and private institutions. The state is becoming like a one-way mirror, where it can see more of what its citizens do and say, while citizens see less and less of what the state does, owing to high levels of secrecy around surveillance. In this book, Jane Duncan assesses the relevance of Snowden’s revelations for South Africa. In doing so she questions the extent to which South Africa is becoming a surveillance society governed by a surveillance state. Duncan challenges members of civil society to be concerned about and to act on the ever-expanding surveillance capacities of the South African state. Is surveillance used for the democratic purpose of making people safer, or is it being used for the repressive purpose of social control, especially of those considered to be politically threatening to ruling interests? She explores the forms of collective action needed to ensure that unaccountable surveillance does not take place and examines what does and does not work when it comes to developing organised responses. This book is aimed at South African citizens, academics as well as the general reader, who care about our democracy and the direction it is taking.
This book uncovers and explains the ways by which politics is naturalized and denaturalized, and familiarized and de-familiarized through popular media. It explores the tensions between state actors such as censors, politicized and nonpoliticized audiences, and visual media creators, at various points in the history of Japanese visual media. It offers new research on a wide array of visual media texts including classical narrative cinema, television, documentary film, manga, and animated film. It spans the militarized decades of the 1930s and 1940s, through the Asia Pacific War into the present day, and demonstrates how processes of politicization and depoliticization should be understood as part of wider historical developments including Japan's postwar devastation and poverty, subsequent rapid modernization and urbanization, and the aging population and economic struggles of the twenty-first century.
This book begins discussion at a point where many civil-military conversations end. Hartwell identifies underlying dynamics, key issues, and challenges that civilian and military organizations encounter when negotiating their roles in real and virtual volatile environments. These include managing expectations, understanding organizational missions and cultures, building trust, and exploring different approaches to violence. The impact of applied technologies on decision making processes and interventions is discussed in terms of recent and future complex crises. Linking earlier history to current discussions, this study makes an important contribution by reframing issues and outlining strategies to avoid unintended consequences and more effectively protect civilians in future operations. While geographic focus is on the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific, the core issues are applicable to negotiating civil-military relationships in a wide range of environments.
Originally published in 1988, this volume outlines the need for a series of organisational reforms, new studies and committees to focus attention on mobilization issues and to provide an administrative framework for enhancing the mobilization base. The authors point out that mobilization is becoming a more viable US national security option. Case studies are used around raw materials of petroleum, ferroalloys, machine tools and semi-conductors which highlight common problems of diminishing domestic market share and growing reliance on foreign sector capacity, declining profits, research and development expense, a decline of skilled labour and economic decline in subsector industries.
PPR, LA GUERRA NO EST EN LA CALLE, expone de un modo atrevido, contundente y ameno, la realidad interna de la descomposici n moral y estructural que atraviesa la Polic a de Puerto Rico. A trav s de sus cap tulos el autor presenta las causas de la debacle que afecta negativamente el desempe o de la Uniformada. Expone el autor adem s, los desaf os e injusticias que enfrentan los polic as dentro de un sistema arbitrario, incongruente y desmoralizante. PPR, LA GUERRA NO EST EN LA CALLE, es una objetiva evaluaci n cr tica de aquellos fallidos fundamentos administrativos, legales y operacionales que han transformado a nuestra Polic a del siglo 21, en un inminente peligro para la sociedad puertorrique a. Las experiencias del autor lo motivan a expresar sus recomendaciones para contener y remediar tan terrible mal.
This book offers a new model for measuring the success and impact of counterterrorism strategies, using four comparative historical case studies. The effectiveness of counterterrorism measures is hard to assess, especially since the social impact of terrorist attacks is a fundamental and complex issue. This book focuses on the impact of counterterrorist measures by introducing the concept of the performative power of counterterrorism: the extent to which governments mobilize public and political support - thereby sometimes even unwittingly assisting terrorists in creating social drama. The concept is applied to counterterrorism in the Netherlands, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States in the 1970s. Based on in-depth case study research using new primary sources and interviews with counterterrorist officials and radicals, a correlation is established between a low level of performative power and a decline of terrorist incidents. This is explored in terms of the link between social drama (as enhanced by counterterrorist measures) and ongoing radicalization processes. This book demonstrates that an increase in visible and intrusive counterterrorist measures does not automatically lead to a more effective form of counterterrorism. In the open democracies of the west, not transforming counterterrorism into a performance of power and repression is at least as important as counterterrorism measures themselves. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, discourse analysis, media and communication studies, conflict studies and IR/Security Studies in general.
This book documents what happens when people encounter public officials. It draws on multi-national Barometer surveys asking questions about corruption and bribery in 119 countries. Clear prose, tables and figures report the answers given by more than 250,000 people and the conclusion sets out six principles for reducing bribery.
This book, part of the Companions series, provides succinct yet robust definitions and explanations of core concepts and themes in relation to state power, liberties and human rights. Laid out in a user-friendly A-Z format, it includes entries from expert contributors with clear direction to related entries and further reading. It will be suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students on a variety of courses such as Criminology, Criminal Justice, International Relations, Politics, Social Policy, Policing Studies, and Law as well as other researchers in these areas.
This book, part of the Companions series, provides succinct yet robust definitions and explanations of core concepts and themes in relation to state power, liberties and human rights. Laid out in a user-friendly A-Z format, it includes entries from expert contributors with clear direction to related entries and further reading. It will be suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students on a variety of courses such as Criminology, Criminal Justice, International Relations, Politics, Social Policy, Policing Studies, and Law as well as other researchers in these areas.
The book presents the reader with an applied analysis of how the concepts of information and manipulation were illustrated in the Romanian press when the Securitate files were revealed, based on the case of Mona Musca, a controversial topic that was widely debated by most dailies at the time. One of the most important roles played by the press is agenda setting - the role of setting priorities on the individual's agenda. Journalists draw up an imaginary list of topics of primary interest for public debate and forming different currents of opinion. The analyzed press segment revealed the predilection for a speech condemning Mona Musca. The message received by the target audience was not a balanced, objective one, but one that contradicts the deontology of the journalistic profession.
This book presents a collection of philosophical essays on freedom and tolerance in the Netherlands. It explores liberal freedom and its limits in areas such as freedom of speech, public reason, sexual morality, euthanasia, drugs policy, and minority rights. The book takes Dutch practices as exemplary test cases for the principled discussions on these subjects from the perspective of political liberalism. Indeed, the Netherlands may be viewed as a social laboratory in human tolerance. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Holland took the lead in a global emancipation process towards a society based on equal freedom. It was the first country to legalize euthanasia, soft drugs and gay marriage. In the final sections, the book examines the question of whether the political murders on the politician Pim Fortuyn and the film director Theo van Gogh, the reactions to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's film Submission, as well as the success of the populist politician Geert Wilders are signs of the end of Dutch tolerance. Although it recognizes that the political climate has taken a conservative turn, the book shows that the Netherlands still shows remarkable tolerance.
In 2008 there were 149 militia groups in the United States. In 2009, that number more than tripled to 512, and now there are nearly 600. In Right-Wing Resurgence, author Daryl Johnson offers a detailed account of the growth of right-wing extremism and militias in the United States and the ever-increasing threat they pose. The author is an acknowledged expert in this area and has been an intelligence analyst working for several federal agencies for nearly 20 years. The book is also a first-hand, insider's account of the DHS Right-Wing Extremism report from the person who wrote it. It is a truthful depiction of the facts, circumstances, and events leading up to the leak of this official intelligence assessment. The leak and its aftermath have had an adverse effect on homeland security. Because of its alleged mishandling of the situation, the Department's reputation has declined in the intelligence and law enforcement communities and the analytical integrity of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis was undermined. Most importantly, the nation's security has been compromised during a critical time when a significant domestic terrorist threat is growing. This book is replete with case studies and interviews with leaders which reveal their agendas, how they recruit, and how they operate around the country. It presents a comprehensive account of an ever-growing security concern at a time when this threat is only beginning to be realized, and is still largely ignored in many circles. |
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