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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s influenced
many in the Islamic world to reject Western norms of liberal
rationality and to return, instead, to their own tradition for
political and cultural inspiration. This rejection of foreign
thought threatens to end the centuries-long dialogue between Islam
and the West, a dialogue that has produced a nascent Middle Eastern
liberalism, along with many less desirable forms of discourse. With
"Islamic Liberalism," Leonard Binder hopes to reinvigorate that
dialogue, asking whether political liberalism can take root in the
Middle East without a vigorous Islamic liberalism. But, Binder
asks, is an Islamic liberalism possible?
Examining the relationship between sedition and liberal democracies, particularly in India, this book looks at the biography of sedition laws, its contradictory position against free speech, and democratic ethics. Recent sedition cases registered in India show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, group of university students for their alleged 'anti-national' statements, anti-liquor activists, and anti-nuclear movement, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracy. The lived reality of the law of sedition in changing anthropological sites is juxtaposed with its positivist existence. Anushka Singh uses a comparative framework keeping in focus the Indian experience backed by fieldwork in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, and includes a comparative perspective from England, the USA, and Australia to contribute to debates on sedition within liberal democracies at large, especially in the wake of the proliferation of counter-terror legislations.
Does the concept of nationality apply to the economic elite, or have they shed national identities to form a global capitalist class? In Rooted Globalism, Kevin Funk unpacks dozens of ethnographic interviews he conducted with Latin America's urban-based, Arab-descendant elite class, some of whom also occupy positions of political power in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Based on extensive fieldwork, Funk illuminates how these elites navigate their Arab ancestry, Latin American host cultures, and roles as protagonists of globalization. With the term "rooted globalism," Funk captures the emergence of classed intersectional identities that are simultaneously local, national, transnational, and global. Focusing on an oft-ignored axis of South-South relations (between Latin America and the Arab world), Rooted Globalism provides detailed analysis of the identities, worldviews, and motivations of this group and ultimately reveals that rather than obliterating national identities, global capitalism relies on them.
It's not the economy, stupid: How liberal politicians' faith in the healing powers of economic growth-and refusal to address racial divisions-fueled reactionary politics across the South. From FDR to Clinton, charismatic Democratic leaders have promised a New South-a model of social equality and economic opportunity that is always just around the corner. So how did the region become the stronghold of conservative Republicans in thrall to Donald Trump? After a lifetime studying Southern politics, Anthony Badger has come to a provocative conclusion: white liberals failed because they put their faith in policy solutions as an engine for social change and were reluctant to confront directly the explosive racial politics dividing their constituents. After World War II, many Americans believed that if the edifice of racial segregation, white supremacy, and voter disfranchisement could be dismantled across the South, the forces of liberalism would prevail. Hopeful that economic modernization and education would bring about gradual racial change, Southern moderates were rattled when civil rights protest and federal intervention forced their hand. Most were fatalistic in the face of massive resistance. When the end of segregation became inevitable, it was largely driven by activists and mediated by Republican businessmen. Badger follows the senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto and rejected Nixon's Southern Strategy. He considers the dilemmas liberals faced across the South, arguing that their failure cannot be blamed simply on entrenched racism. Conservative triumph was not inevitable, he argues, before pointing to specific false steps and missed opportunities. Could the biracial coalition of low-income voters that liberal politicians keep counting on finally materialize? Badger sees hope but urges Democrats not to be too complacent.
The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in November 2016 was a political earthquake, one supporters and detractors alike agree has changed the course of history. The policy implications have been stark and will continue well beyond his presidency. The political implications have been perhaps even more drastic—for both political parties. Trump has shaken the 40-year-old coalition of traditional conservatives, orthodox religious voters, and free-market libertarians that has long-composed the Republican Party. The Republican Resistance: #NeverTrump Conservatives and the Future of the GOP explores the members of that coalition, especially traditional, establishment-oriented Republicans and conservative intellectuals who opposed his candidacy, who generally still oppose his presidency, and who represent the elite-in-waiting that believes it will have to rebuild the GOP when the Trump coalition implodes. In the end, The Republican Resistance argues that the Trump presidency and the #NeverTrump countermovement reflect key features of modern American politics which both major political parties must contend: the rise of a populist insurgency intent on overtaking the parties from within and challenges of embracing demographic and structural realities on the one hand while catering to a political base often built to oppose those trends on the other.
The Liberal Unionist party was one of the shortest-lived political parties in British history. It was formed in 1886 by a faction of the Liberal party, led by Lord Hartington, which opposed Irish home rule. In 1895, it entered into a coalition government with the Conservative party and in 1912, now under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain, it amalgamated with the Conservatives. Ian Cawood here uses previously unpublished archival material to provide the first complete study of the Liberal Unionist party. He argues that the party was a genuinely successful political movement with widespread activist and popular support which resulted in the development of an authentic Liberal Unionist culture across Britain in the mid-1890s. The issues which this book explores are central to an understanding of the development of the twentieth century Conservative party, the emergence of a 'national' political culture, and the problems, both organisational and ideological, of a sustained period of coalition in the British parliamentary system.
After decades on the social and political margins, far-right groups and movements are enjoying increasing success, and even claiming a place in mainstream electoral politics in many Western political systems. Research shows that new media like Twitter, YouTube, and community sites likes 4chan and Reddit are increasingly involved with the mobilization of popular support for far-right electoral campaigns, and even organized political violence. These technologies - including other social media, discussion websites, certain online games, chat servers, talk radio, cable news, and print media - are making contemporary far-right ideologies possible in diverse ways, altering methods of recruitment to the extent that they become unrecognizable from far-right movements of the past, and thus, more dangerous. The results of these new technological processes can be seen in the increasing normalization of far-right values within mainstream culture, politics, and media ecosystems within countries from the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany, and Hungary. This book brings together recent academic research exploring how far-right groups use new media to recruit followers to extremist beliefs and mobilize political action. In doing so, the book reveals the complex ways that evolving technologies are used both purposively, subtly, and in some cases incidentally, to recruit and mobilize far-right support.
Continuing a R&L tradition now entering its fourth decade, this book provides the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the national 2020 election, including the presidential nomination process and general election, and congressional and state elections. Andrew E. Busch and John J. Pitney Jr. revisit the campaigns and results through the short lens of politics today and the long lens of American political history. With its keen insights into the issues and events that drove the 2020 elections, Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics will be an invaluable resource for students and all political observers seeking to understand a historic election that will continue to resonate throughout American politics for many years to come.
The Soweto crisis of 1976 marked a watershed in South African political and social history. It focused the attention of the world on the injustice of South African society and started the long and tortuous process that has led to the dismantling of Apartheid. This book examines the role and increasing impotence of English-speaking intellectuals and liberals in South African politics from the 19th century until the Soweto crisis.
This book investigates the relationship between liberal democracies and ontology, that is, philosophical claims about the constitution of agents and the social world. Many philosophers argue that ontology needs to be avoided in political and legal philosophy. In fact, political liberalism, a highly influential paradigm founded by the philosopher John Rawls, makes the avoidance of ontology a core ambition of its 'political, non-metaphysical' programme. In contrast to political liberalism, this book argues that attending to ontological disputes is essential to political and legal philosophy. Illuminating, criticising and developing ontological arguments does not only enhance our understanding of justice, but also highlights key features of democratic citizenship. The argument is built up by bringing together three traditions of thought that have so far not been confronted with one another: political liberalism, the work of Michel Foucault, and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Donald Winnicott. The book also investigates more concrete implications of ontological disputes by drawing on several case studies: a Dutch political-legal debate about greeting rituals; an American conflict about the legalisation of religious freedom; and the struggles for resilience of two American social movement groups.
We commonly think of the psychedelic sixties as an explosion of creative energy and freedom that arose in direct revolt against the social restraint and authoritarian hierarchy of the early Cold War years. Yet, as Fred Turner reveals in The Democratic Surround, the decades that brought us the Korean War and communist witch hunts also witnessed an extraordinary turn toward explicitly democratic, open, and inclusive ideas of communication and with them new, flexible models of social order. Surprisingly, he shows that it was this turn that brought us the revolutionary multimedia and wild-eyed individualism of the 1960s counterculture. In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and '50s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember. Turner tracks the influential mid-century entwining of Bauhaus aesthetics with American social science and psychology. From the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the New Bauhaus in Chicago and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Turner shows how some of the most well-known artists and intellectuals of the forties developed new models of media, new theories of interpersonal and international collaboration, and new visions of an open, tolerant, and democratic self in direct contrast to the repression and conformity associated with the fascist and communist movements. He then shows how their work shaped some of the most significant media events of the Cold War, including Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibition, the multimedia performances of John Cage, and, ultimately, the psychedelic Be-Ins of the sixties. Turner demonstrates that by the end of the 1950s this vision of the democratic self and the media built to promote it would actually become part of the mainstream, even shaping American propaganda efforts in Europe. Overturning common misconceptions of these transformational years, The Democratic Surround shows just how much the artistic and social radicalism of the sixties owed to the liberal ideals of Cold War America, a democratic vision that still underlies our hopes for digital media today.
Joseph Chamberlain was a dynamic orator, notable reformer and superb parliamentary tactician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In his early political career Chamberlain was a radically minded Liberal Party member and a supporter of political reform, yet after the Liberal Split, his allegiance changed dramatically when his Liberal Unionist Party entered into alliance with the Conservatives. As Colonial Secretary in Salisbury's government, he was a prime instigator of the Boer War and an important negotiator in the attempts to build an Anglo-German alliance. Ultimately disenchanted with the Conservative leadership of Salisbury and Balfour, he played an integral role in the Unionist Split over the issue of Tariff Reform which ultimately led to Balfour's downfall. Travis Crosby here sheds light on an often-overlooked, but exceptionally influential politician. He argues that Chamberlain was driven primarily by a personal need for power and control - characteristics that went beyond political loyalties. Nevertheless, his accomplishments as chief spokesman for electoral and social reform, and his achievements as Colonial Secretary, were genuine and lasting. This book sheds new light on an influential character who played an important role in the development of British politics.
In the last fifty years, many aspects of socialism have been rolled back around the world. Indeed, in the 1990s, following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, it seemed as if classical liberal ideas had triumphed. But this did not happen by accident. The role of free-market think tanks was critical. This volume draws on the experiences of thirteen authors involved in classical liberal think tanks in different parts of the world. The contributors identify the strategies that have proved successful in influencing the public policy and explain how they can be adapted to local circumstances. Indeed, though the 'war of ideas' has been hard fought, it has been only partially won. New threats to freedom have emerged, including environmentalism and big-government conservatism. In some countries the burden taxation and regulation has never been greater. "Taming Leviathan" is essential reading for anyone involved in the battle against resurgent collectivism.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Liberalism today has perhaps more supporters and adversaries than any other political movement. This volume traces liberalism's global ascent through essays about some of the thinkers and actors who participated in its rise and spread. The essays included here present for the first time in one place the geographic and ideological diversity of liberal thought and practice as it developed since the eighteenth century. By exploring thinkers as diverse as Montesquieu, Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Burckhardt, Khayr al-Din, Hu Shih, John Rawls, and Czeslaw Milosz, this volume contributes toward a better understanding of liberalisms past and present. Each chapter opens with a critical passage from the author under consideration and explores the author's significance for liberalism. By facilitating a direct encounter with influential authors and texts, the volume serves as an introduction both to the multiple dimensions of liberalism and to reading texts in political thought. By engaging with particular liberal moments, the essays allow readers to create and explore conversations among liberalisms across time and space. It thus encourages a broader and more nuanced understanding of the nature and history of liberalism. Stimulating, accessible and interdisciplinary, Liberal Moments will appeal to students and scholars in the history of political thought, intellectual history and beyond.
Between 1944 and 1996, Guatemala experienced a revolution, counterrevolution, and civil war. Playing a pivotal role within these national shifts were students from Guatemala's only public university, the University of San Carlos (USAC). USAC students served in, advised, protested, and were later persecuted by the government, all while crafting a powerful student nationalism. In no other moment in Guatemalan history has the relationship between the university and the state been so mutable, yet so mutually formative. By showing how the very notion of the middle class in Guatemala emerged from these student movements, this book places an often-marginalized region and period at the center of histories of class, protest, and youth movements and provides an entirely new way to think about the role of universities and student bodies in the formation of liberal democracy throughout Latin America.
This book is a cry from the heart to see the emergence of a new kind of people - The Reformers. They are `young' (in age and at heart), they are full of creative energy and passion. They are tired of the status quo, tired of the state of their nations. They are like you - they want to see change and are willing to pay the price to be the instigator of that change. The dream is to raise an army of social reformers bound by four key qualities. This book is a manual for developing, refining and releasing them. Through valuable information and real life stories and experiences this masterfully crafted book strikes at the core of the issues and defines the true reformer and the process of personal development necessary to become one. It is about changing the songs of pain and sadness that can still be heard on the continent of Africa. It is about singing new ones - songs of hope and victory. It is time to raise a dignified, undaunted army of social reformers. Would you like to join this army?
German ordoliberalism originated at the end of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) in a context of hyper-inflation, depression, mass unemployment and social unrest. For ordoliberalism, a free economy is premised on a sound political, legal, social and moral framework to secure its cohesion. The role of the state is to ensure a liberal economic order. Ordoliberalism is a contested account of post-neoliberal political economy: some argue that it offers a more restrained and socially just market order; others, in complete contrast, that is a form of authoritarian liberalism and that it is the theoretical foundation for the austerity politics that the EU has actively promoted in recent years. Foucault discusses ordoliberalism at length in The Birth of Biopolitics, and Bonefeld's book provides a thought-provoking companion to those lectures by offering a more comprehensive investigation of the theoretical foundation of ordoliberal thought and its historical and theoretical contexts.
Despite the severity of the global economic crisis and the widespread aversion towards austerity policies, neoliberalism remains the dominant mode of economic governance in the world. What makes neoliberalism such a resilient mode of economic and political governance? How does neoliberalism effectively reproduce itself in the face of popular opposition? States of Discipline offers an answer to these questions by highlighting the ways in which today's neoliberalism reinforces and relies upon coercive practices that marginalize, discipline and control social groups. Such practices range from the development of market-oriented policies through legal and administrative reforms at the local and national-level, to the coercive apparatuses of the state that repress the social forces that oppose various aspects of neoliberalization. The book argues that these practices are built on the pre-existing infrastructure of neoliberal governance, which strive towards limiting the spaces of popular resistance through a set of administrative, legal and coercive mechanisms. Exploring a range of case studies from across the world, the book uses 'authoritarian neoliberalism' as a conceptual prism to shed light on the institutionalization and employment of state practices that invalidate public input and silence popular resistance.
Political practices, agencies and institutions around the world promote the need for humans, individually and collectively, to develop capacities of resilience. We must accept and adapt to the 'realities' of an endemic condition of global insecurity and to the practice of so-called sustainable development. But in spite of claims that resilience make us more adept and capable, does the discourse of resilience undermine our ability to make our own decisions as to how we wish to live? This book draws out the theoretical assumptions behind the drive for resilience and its implications for issues of political subjectivity. It establishes a critical framework from which discourses of resilience can be understood and challenged in the fields of governance, security, development, and in political theory itself. Each part of the book includes a chapter by David Chandler and another by Julian Reid that build a passionate and provocative dialogue, individually distinct and offering contrasting perspectives on core issues. It concludes with an insightful interview with Gideon Baker. In place of resilience, the book argues that we need to revalorize an idea of the human subject as capable of acting on and transforming the world, rather than being cast in a permanent condition of enslavement to it.
Following Labour's defeat at the polls in 2015, and at time when the Party is attempting to redefine its meaning, values and even identity, there is an urgent need for fresh thinking. Most people agree that a new start is needed. But in which direction should Labour turn? A crucial conversation is beginning, and it is in this fluid and volatile context that Blue Labour ideas could make a crucial difference. Seeking to move beyond the centrist pragmatism of both Blair and Cameron, and attempting to inject into politics a newfound passion and significance with which people can truly engage, this essential work speaks to the needs of diverse people and communities across the country. Critiquing the dominance in Britain of a social-cultural liberalism linked to the left and a free-market liberalism associated with the right, Blue Labour blends a 'progressive' commitment to greater economic equality with a more 'conservative' disposition emphasising personal loyalty, family, community and locality. It is the manifesto of a vital new force in politics: one that could define the thinking of the next generation and beyond.
Learning the Left examines the ways in which young people and adults learned (and continue to learn) the tenets of liberal politics in the United States through the popular media and the arts from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. This collection of essays foregrounds mass culture as an educational site; it is hoped that this focus on the history of the civic functions of the popular media and arts will begin a much-needed conversation among a variety of scholars, notably historians of education.
Darwinian Evolution and Classical Liberalism canvasses an array of thinkers from the past to the present as it examines fundamental political, philosophical, ethical, economic, anthropological, and scientific aspects of the ferment between Darwinian biology and classical liberalism. Early chapters focus on classical thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith, while later chapters provide analyses of present-day classical liberals, focusing especially on F.A. Hayek, Thomas Sowell, and Larry Arnhart, the most prominent advocates of 'contemporary' classical liberalism. Thematically, the volume falls into three parts. Part I examines foundational matters, arguing that Darwinism and classical liberalism hold incompatible visions of morality, human nature, and individual autonomy. This section also contends that the free market's spontaneous order is fully compatible with a teleological (or non-Darwinian) view of the universe. Part II turns to contemporary applications, contending that Darwinism and classical liberalism are at odds in their views of (or implications about) limited government, vital religion, economic freedom, and the traditional family. This section also argues that, since its inception, Darwinism has attenuated core tenets and values of classical liberalism and Western civilization. Part III of the volume contains alternative views to those in the first two parts, adding critical diversity to the book. Respectively, these chapters hold that Darwinian evolution simply has little to say about classical liberalism; an evolutionary account of human volition is fully compatible with the individual choice presupposed in classical liberalism; and evolutionary naturalism, unlike religious alternatives, provides a strong foundation for freedom, morality, and the traditional family.
In the presidential campaign of 1948, Henry Wallace set out to challenge the conventional wisdom of his time, blaming the United States, instead of the Soviet Union, for the Cold War, denouncing the popular Marshall Plan, and calling for an end to segregation. In addition, he argued that domestic fascism--rather than international communism--posed the primary threat to the nation. He even welcomed Communists into his campaign, admiring their commitment to peace. Focusing on what Wallace himself later considered his campaign's most important aspect, the troubled relationship between non-Communist progressives like himself and members of the American Communist Party, Thomas W. Devine demonstrates that such an alliance was not only untenable but, from the perspective of the American Communists, undesirable. Rather than romanticizing the political culture of the Popular Front, Devine provides a detailed account of the Communists' self-destructive behavior throughout the campaign and chronicles the frustrating challenges that non-Communist progressives faced in trying to sustain a movement that critiqued American Cold War policies and championed civil rights for African Americans without becoming a sounding board for pro-Soviet propaganda.
Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is widely recognized as one of the most influential works of modern political philosophy. Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World is the first book to introduce students to Nozick's ideas for a rights-based minimal libertarian state, and to apply them to current political realities of the modern American welfare state. Mark D. Friedman begins by clearly introducing the reader to Nozick's argument for natural rights and how his theory of rights undermines claims for social justice, and enables libertarians to rebut the most common objections to their doctrine. Through this introduction, the book goes on to critique a wide range of America's state operations with chapters addressing particular rights that are violated by the state, such as those pertaining to expression and property, while others address the state's intervention in a discrete aspect of modern life, such as education and healthcare showing that with few exceptions they are morally impermissible.Friedman argues that aside from a few morally legitimate functions, there are viable private sector alternatives to the services the state now provides and that reducing the liberal democratic state to its core functions would not produce the sort of moral catastrophe that might make us reconsider our commitment to individual rights. So, what is to be done? Friedman concludes with thoughts regarding the most effective means of moving our politics in a more libertarian direction. |
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