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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Nationalism
How can democracies deal with plurality? This book looks at the political accommodation of national plurality in liberal democracies and in the European Union at the turn of the century. Its panel of international authorities examines this issue from a variety of perspectives, considering questions of citizenship, multiculturalism, immigration and equality. The contributors, many of whom have set the terms of this debate in international political science, include Will Kymlicka, Carlos Closa, Michael Keating, Enric Fossas, Wayne Norman and Ricard Zapata Barrero.
Jay Sekulow--one of America's most influential attorneys--explores a post Obama landscape where bureaucracy has taken over our government and provides a practical roadmap to help take back our personal liberties.Jay Sekulow is on a mission to defend Americans' freedom. The fact is that freedom is under attack like never before. The threat comes from the fourth branch of government--the biggest branch--and the only branch not in the Constitution: the federal bureaucracy. The bureaucracy imposes thousands of new laws every year, without a single vote from Congress. The bureaucracy violates the rights of Americans without accountability--persecuting adoptive parents, denying veterans quality healthcare, discriminating against conservatives and Christians for partisan purposes, and damaging our economy with job-killing rules. Americans are bullied by the very institutions established to protect their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our nation's bureaucrats are on an undemocratic power trip. But Sekulow has a plan to fight back. We can resist illegal abuse, we can reform a broken system, and we can restore American democracy. This book won't just tell you how to win, it will show you real victories achieved by Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice. Unless we can roll back the fourth branch of govern-ment--the most dangerous branch--our elections will no longer matter. Undemocratic is a wake-up call, a call made at just the right time--before it's too late to save the democracy we love.
Many new democracies are characterized by majority dominance and ethnocentrism. Varying paths or transitions toward democracy create very different outcomes for how ethnic identities, communities and politics are recognized. This book illustrates the varied consequences of democratization, from ethnic violence, new forms of accommodation to improve minorities' status, or sometimes only minor improvements to life for ethnic minorities. The book treads a nuanced path between conflicting myths of democratization, illustrating that there are a variety of outcomes ranging from violence or stability, to the extension of rights, representation, and new resources for ethnic minorities. Contributors discuss the complex mechanisms that determine the impact of democratization of ethnic minorities through five factors; inherited legacies from the pre-transition period, institutional configurations, elite strategies, societal organization and international influences. Global in scope, this book features a broad range of case studies, both country specific and regional, including chapters on Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Taiwan, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast and East Asia. This book provides new insights and makes at important contribution to existing debates. Democratization and Ethnic Minorities will be essential reading for students and scholars of democratization, nationalism, ethnic conflict and ethnic politics, political science, history, and sociology.
The National Front was one of the most controversial political parties in Britain. This exploration, first published in 1981, of the NF ideology and its meaning for members is based on a participation observation study which involved the development of relations with its headquarters, and with branch staff and members in several English cities. The fieldwork was carried out at marches, branch meetings and rallies, and candidates, activists, ordinary members and opponents of the NF were interviewed. Nigel Fielding examines in detail the ethnography of the National Front, describing its history, electoral performance and some demographic characteristics of its membership. He investigates the party ideology, concentrating on the key aspects of race, nationalism and conspiracy theory. The party's involvement in overt and covert political action is discussed, and tolerance of ambiguity in adherence to ideology, are explored. In a final chapter the author discusses the case for regarding active NF membership as evidence of a commitment to an alternative conception of social reality founded on fundamental disagreement with the political and social order of the status quo. This book examines the problem of the relationship between the beliefs and actions of the political deviant in the context of a group which is involved in political activism.
The "national question" and how to impose control over its diverse ethnic identities has long posed a problem for the Russian state. This major survey of Russia as a multi-ethnic empire spans the imperial years from the sixteenth century to 1917, with major consideration of the Soviet phase. It asks how Russians incorporated new territories, how they were resisted, what the character of a multi-ethnic empire was and how, finally, these issues related to nationalism.
The unprecedented economic success of South Korea since the 1990s has led in turn to a large increase in the number of immigrants and foreign workers in Korean industries. This book describes and explains the experiences of discrimination and racism that foreigners and 'new' Koreans have faced in a multicultural South Korea. It looks at how society has treated the foreigners and what their experiences have been given that common discourse about race in Korea surrounds issues of Korean heterogeneity and pure blood nationalism. Starting with critiques of Korean scholarship and policy framework on multiculturalism, this book argues for the need to revisit the most fundamental aspect of multiculturalism: the host population's ability to respect new comers rather than discriminate against them. The author employs a critical realist understanding of racism and attempts to identify long-lasting institutional factors which make Korean society less than welcoming 'new' or temporary Koreans. A large number of new reportages are identified and systematically analysed based on the principles of grounded theory method. The findings show that nouveau-riche nationalism and pure-blood nationalism are widely practised when Koreans deal with 'foreigners'. As a newly industrialised and highly successful nation, Korean society is still in transition and treats foreigners according to economic standard of their countries of origin. As one of the very first books in English about foreigners' experiences of Korean nationalism, multiculturalism and discrimination, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Sociology, Ethnic studies, Asian studies, Korean studies, Media studies and Cultural studies.
This book provides an interpretive and critical analysis of Kurdish identity, nationalism and national movement in Turkey since the 1960s. By raising issues and questions relating to Kurdish political identity and highlighting the ideological specificity, diversity and the transformation of Kurdish nationalism, it develops a new empirical dimension to the study of the Kurds in Turkey. Cengiz Gunes applies an innovative theoretical approach to the analysis of an impressively large volume of primary sources and data drawn from books and magazines published by Kurdish activists, political parties and groups. The analysis focuses on the specific demands articulated by the Kurdish national movement and looks at Kurdish nationalism at a specific level by disaggregating the nationalist discourse, showing variations over time and across different Kurdish nationalist organisations. Situating contemporary Kurdish political identity and its political manifestations within a historical framework, the author examines the historical and structural conditions that gave rise to it and influenced its evolution since the 1960s. The analysis also encompasses an account of the organisational growth and evolution of the Kurdish national movement, including the political parties and groups that were active in the period. Bringing the study of the organisational development and growth of the Kurdish National Movement in Turkey up to date, this book will be an important reference for students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, social movements, nationalism and conflict.
Three years before publication of the "Communist Manifesto" Karl Marx began work on a critique of a movement that was gaining popularity as a challenge to capitalism - nationalism, as put forth by the German economist Friedrich List. Long regarded as a major cultural and political force in 19th-century Europe, nationalism was in fact to become directly involved in the conflict between capitalism and socialism, offering an appealing alternative to capitalism's "New World Order" - the doctrine of Free Trade - and socialism's call for a worldwide unification of the workers against the bourgeoisie. In this original new work Professor Szporluk offers a major reinterpretation of Marxism's historical development - one that recognises nationalism as the third contender on the battlefield where Marxism met capitalism. A bold new interpretation of Marx's intellectual biography, showing how the history of Marx and Marxism is to a great extent the story of their confrontation with nationalism before 1848. At the same time, this is a fresh look at nationalism, focusing on the heretofore neglected although increasingly recognized figure of Friedrich List, the first economist whom Marx seriously studied. Professor Szporluk outlines the comprehensive vision of List's nationalism, a vision that constituted a historical alternative - and possible threat - to the Marxian project. Finally, this is the story of the enduring relationship between communism and nationalism that extended beyond 1848 into the 20th century, had enormous implications for Russia in 1917, and still lies at the heart of debates over the importance of allegiance to nation as opposed to social class, the choice between internationalism and national independence, and the role of communism in developing countries.
What makes a person call a particular place 'home'? Does it follow simply from being born there? Is it the result of a language shared with neighbours or attachment to a familiar landscape? Perhaps it is a piece of music, or a painting, or even a travelogue that captures the essence of home. And what about the sense of belonging that inspires nationalist or local autonomy movements? Each of these can be a marker of identity, but all are ambiguous. Where you were born has a different meaning if, like so many modern Germans, you have moved on and now live elsewhere. Representing the 'national interest' in parliament becomes more difficult when voters demand attention to local and regional issues or when ethnic tensions erupt. In all these situations the landscape of 'home' takes on a more elusive meaning. Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place is about the German nation state and the German-speaking lands beyond it, from the 1860s to the 1930s. The authors explore a wide range of subjects: music and art, elections and political festivities, local landscape and nature conservation, tourism and language struggles in the family and the school. Yet they share an interest in the ambiguities of German identity in an age of extraordinarily rapid socio-economic change. These essays do not assume the primacy of national allegiance. Instead, by using the 'sense of place' as a prism to look at German identity in new ways, they examine a sense of 'Germanness' that was neither self-evident nor unchanging.
Ten years before the Soviet Union collapsed, Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan stood almost alone in predicting its demise. As the
intelligence community and cold war analysts churned out statistics
demonstrating the enduring strength of the Moscow regime, Moynihan,
focusing on ethnic conflict, argued that the end was at hand. Now,
with such conflict breaking out across the world, from Central Asia
to South Central Los Angeles, he sets forth a general proposition:
Far from vanishing, ethnicity has been and will be an elemental
force in international politics.
This is a book about the difficulties of thinking and acting politically in ways that refuse the politics of nationalism. The book offers a detailed study of how contemporary attempts by theorists of cosmopolitanism, citizenship, globalism and multiculturalism to go beyond nationalism often reproduce key aspects of a nationalist imaginary. It argues that the challenge of resisting nationalism will require more than a shift in the scale of politics - from the national up to the global or down to the local, and more than a shift in the count of politics - to an emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. In order to avoid the grip of 'nationalist thinking', we need to re-open the question of what it means to imagine community. Set against the backdrop of the imaginative geographies of the War in Terror and the new beginning promised by the Presidency of Barack Obama, the book shows how critical interventions often work in collaboration with nationalist politics, even when the aim is to resist nationalism. It claims that a nationalist imaginary includes powerful understandings of freedom, subjectivity, sovereignty and political space/time which must also be placed under question if we want to avoid reproducing ideas about 'us' and 'them'. Drawing on insights from feminist, cultural and postcolonial studies as well as critical approaches to International Relations and Geography, this book presents a unique and refreshing approach to the politics of nationalism.
This book traces the formation of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) and the tensions created by its combination and aims: socialism and Basque nationalism. The Basque Nationalist movement emerged in the late nineteenth century as a response to the rapid transformation of Basque society by industrialisation. The influx of Spanish-speaking workers to Basque territories seemed to threaten the stability of basque society. Gradually the immigrants became absorbed into the radical struggle, with the creation of illegal trade unions and the need to resist the Franco regimne by whatever means. Over the next half century Basque consicousness developed until the radical nationalist organisation ETA was formed in 1959.
More than two hundred years after his birth, and 150 years after the publication of his most famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the Western tradition. This book combines an up-to-date assessment of the philosophical legacy of Mill's arguments, his complex version of liberalism and his account of the relationship between character and ethical and political commitment. Bringing together key international and interdisciplinary scholars, including Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer, this book combines the latest insights of Mill scholarship with a long-term appraisal of the ways in which Mill's work has been received and interpreted from the time of his death in 1873 to today. The book offers compelling insights into Mill's posthumous fate and reputation; his youthful political and intellectual activism; his views on the formation of character; the development of his thought on logic; his differences from his father and Bentham; his astonishingly prescient, environmentally sensitive and 'green' thought; his relation to virtue ethics; his conception of higher pleasures and its relation to his understanding of justice; his feminist thought and its place in contemporary debates and feminist discourses; his defence of free speech and its fundamental significance for his liberalism; and his continued contemporary relevance on a number of major issues. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Political Theory, Philosophy, History, English, Psychology, and also Cultural Studies, Empire studies, nationalism and ethnicity studies.
A biography of one of the great 19th-century Africans and an insightful analysis of one of the earlier phases of African nationalism.
How is the complex history of the ancient Near East and Islamic World brought to bear in contemporary political discourse? In this book, Medieval Near Eastern historian Jacob Lassner explores the resonance of ancient and medieval history in the political disputes that dominate the contemporary Middle East. From identification with ancient forbears as a method of legitimization and nation-building, to tracing the deep history of the concept of revolution in the Arab world, the author probes the historical foundations of modern conflicts in the region. A medievalist, the author takes the position that an appreciation of cultural history is essential to understanding the debate surrounding the Israel/Palestine conflict. In turn, the book identifies the misappropriation and misunderstanding of the past, deliberate or accidental, as key weapon in the ongoing conflict.
A major feature of the political development of Western democracies is the growth of indigenous, ethnic and national groups striving for political self-determination. This book analyses the institutional responses individual governments have made to these demands. Sub-State Nationalism provides a much needed categorization and genuinely comparative analysis of the political voice gained by sub-state national groups in multinational democratic communities. The book includes international case-studies drawn from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. It covers the empirical question of what voice these groups have, and how its institutions are structured, and the analytical question of how such knowledge contributes to our theoretical understanding of the politics of group rights and representation.
Despite flourishing economic interactions and deepening interdependence, the current political and diplomatic relationship between Japan and China remains lukewarm at best. Indeed, bilateral relations reached an unprecedented nadir during the spring of 2005, and again more recently in autumn 2012, as massive anti-Japanese demonstrations across Chinese cities elicited corresponding incidents of popular anti-Chinese reprisal in Japan. This book systematically explores the complex dynamics that shape contemporary Japanese-Chinese relations. In particular, it analyses the so-called 'revival' of nationalism in post-Cold War Japan, its causality in redefining Japan's external policy orientations, and its impact on the atmosphere of the bilateral relationship. Further, by adopting a neoclassical realist model of state behaviour and preferences, Lai Yew Meng examines two highly visible bilateral case studies: the Japanese-Chinese debacle over prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and the multi-dimensional dispute in the East China Sea which comprises the Senkaku/Diaoyudao territorial row, alleged Chinese maritime incursions, and bilateral competition for energy resources. Through these examples, this book explores whether nationalism really matters; when, and under what circumstances nationalism becomes most salient; and the extent to which the emotional dimensions of nationalism manifest most profoundly in Japanese state-elites' policy decision-making. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars of both Japanese and Chinese politics, as well as those interested in international relations, nationalism, foreign policy and security studies more broadly.
The concept of "authenticity" enters multicultural politics in three distinct but interrelated senses: as an ideal of individual and group identity that commands recognition by others; as a condition of individuals' autonomy that bestows legitimacy on their values, beliefs and preferences as being their own; and as a form of cultural pedigree that bestows legitimacy on particular beliefs and practices (commonly called "cultural authenticity"). In each case, the authenticity idea is called on to anchor or legitimate claims to some kind of public recognition. The considerable work asked of this concept raises a number of vital questions: Should "authenticity" be accorded the importance it holds in multicultural politics? Do its pitfalls outweigh its utility? Is the notion of "authenticity" avoidable in making sense of and evaluating cultural claims? Or does it, perhaps, need to be rethought or recalibrated? Geoffrey Brahm Levey and his distinguished group of philosophers, political theorists, and anthropologists challenge conventional assumptions about "authenticity" that inform liberal responses to minority cultural claims in Western democracies today. Discussing a wide range of cases drawn from Britain and continental Europe, North America, Australia and the Middle East, they press beyond theories to consider also the practical and policy implications at stake. A helpful resource to scholars worldwide in Political and Social Theory, Political Philosophy, Legal Anthropology, Multiculturalism, and, more generally, of cultural identity and diversity in liberal democracies today.
Many theoretical explanations had been offered for the rise of the European Community, but none had used historical analysis to draw out the deeper significance of the events that surrounded Maastricht. However, in this book, first published in 1993, the authors explored the process of European integration, and its future, drawing on extensive empirical research into the national archives of the member states. The authors brought their findings together in this consistently argued book to provide a new and coherent theory of European integration, which threw a fresh light on unexplored aspects of EC policy. The debate over the Treaty of Maastricht shows how ill-understood are the issues involved, and this book is intended to improve that understanding. It is essential reading to students of history, international relations and political science.
South Asia is the theatre of myriad experimentations with nationalisms of various kinds - religious, linguistic, religio-linguistic, composite, plural and exclusivist. In all the region s major states, officially promulgated nationalism at various times has been fiercely contested by minority groups intent on preserving what they see as the pristine purity of their own cultural inheritance. This volume examines the perspective of minority identities as they negotiate their terms of co-existence, accommodation and adaptation with several other competing identities within the framework of the nation state in South Asia. It examines three different kinds of minority articulations cultural conclaves with real or fictitious attachments to an imaginary homeland, the identity problems of dispersed minorities with no territorial claims and the aspirations of indigenous communities, tribes or ethnicities. The essays in this volume offer a rich menu: the evolution of Naga nationalism, the construction of the territory-less Sylheti identity, the debates over Pashtun nationalism in Pakistan, the evolution of Muslim nationalism in Sri Lanka, the politics of religious minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the making of minority politics in India, and questions of Islam and nationalism in colonial India. It is an eclectic mix for students of nationalism, politics, modern history and anyone interested in the evolution of South Asia. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture."
'The unofficial voice of modern Irish history' Economist When President of the Irish Republic Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.' In August 1922 at the height of the Irish Civil War, that prophecy came true - Collins was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman in a shocking political assassination. So ended the life of the greatest of all Irish nationalists, but his visions and legacy lived on. This authorative and comprehensive biography presents the life of a man who became a legend in his own lifetime, whose idealistic vigour and determination were matched only by his political realism and supreme organisational abilities. Coogan's biography provides a fascinating insight into a great political leader, whilst vividly portraying the political unrest in a divided Ireland, that can help to shape our understanding of Ireland's past, present and future. 'There have been several other lives of Collins, but none has assembled such wealth of detail' Independent on Sunday
Reflecting on the processes of nation-building and citizenship formation in Africa, Edmond J. Keller believes that although some deep parochial identities have eroded, they have not disappeared and may be more assertive than previously thought, especially in instances of political conflict. Keller reconsiders how national identity has been understood in Africa and presents new approaches to identity politics, intergroup relations, state-society relations, and notions of national citizenship and citizenship rights. Focusing on Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Rwanda, he lays the foundation for a new understanding of political transition in contemporary Africa.
A figure of enduring ingenuity, the nation has for centuries played a part on the socio-political stage. Whether centre stage or background scenery, it has featured in violent tragedies, revolutionary drama and nostalgic fable. Today, the nation is cast simultaneously in the roles of villain and hero. While it is renounced by those advocating trans-national, post-national and cosmopolitan forms of belonging, it has lately also been asserted as the solution to various social failures in liberal democracies. This appears to leave us with two alternatives: to jettison the nation in order to move towards a less parochial world, a world in which new forms of belonging underpin more inclusive politics. Or to celebrate the nation as way of ensuring the social cement that can unite a diverse society. Using the ideas of Wittgenstein and Lacan, Amanda Machin expertly explains that the overlapping and conflicting language games of the nation produce it as an object of desire in an uncertain world. The nation is not a pre-political "thing" but a matter of persistent political contestation and coalition. She reveals that the nation still has a vital part to play in democratic politics, but that this role is one of improvisation. While they endure as tools of emancipatory promise, nations nonetheless remain potential categories of violent exclusion. They cannot be pinned down as easily as anti-national and pro-national alternatives suggest. It is precisely the indeterminacy of the nation that gives it ongoing importance for democracy today. Providing an urgent riposte to dominant accounts, this thought provoking and highly original account demands a re-politicisation of the nation. This book will appeal to those engaged in theory and empirical research on nations and nationalism and the question of their link to democracy in a changing world, as well as those interested in psychoanalysis and Wittgenstein.
As violent conflicts become increasingly intra-state rather than inter-state, international migration has rendered them increasingly transnational, as protagonists from each side find themselves in new countries of residence. In spite of leaving their homeland, the grievances and grudges that existed between them are not forgotten and can be passed to the next generation. This book explores the extension of homeland conflicts into transnational space amongst diaspora groups, with particular attention to the interactions between second-generation migrants. Comparative in approach, Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts focuses on the tensions that exist between Kurdish and Turkish populations in Sweden and Germany, examining the effects of hostland policies and politics on the construction, shaping or elimination of homeland conflicts. Drawing on extensive interview material with members of diasporic communities, this book sheds fresh light on the influences exercised on conflict dynamics by state policies on migrant incorporation and multiculturalism, as well as structures of migrant organizations. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, political science and international studies with interests in migration and diaspora, integration and transnational conflict.
Direct Democratic Choice sets out to understand how the citizens actually decide in direct-democratic votes. Author Hanspeter Kriesi has analyzed nearly twenty years of post-election surveys in Switzerland (1981-1999), which he has contextualized according to the various political issues and the relevant arguments provided by the political elites. This book's core argument is that the citizens who participate in direct-democratic votes make competent choices. Kriesi's extensive empirical research shows that the majority of these voters arrive at their decisions on the basis of arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of the available options. The less competent and less interested citizens either do not vote or, if they do, employ heuristic shortcuts allowing them to make approximately reasonable decisions. Kriesi provides strong support for an optimistic view of direct-democratic decision-making but also indicates that this process, wherever it occurs, can be improved by proper institutional design and by appropriate strategies enacted by the political elite. |
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