Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism
In early 2010 Russia once again entered a turbulent period. From the system of property distribution, to structure of the political elites and relations between the Center and the regions - various spheres of Russian life are in a state of flux. Two major factors are driving this change: oil prices which are unlikely to grow the way they did in the 2000s and the rapidly deteriorating efficiency of governance. Relations between federal and regional elites, as well as public activism, are derived from these two factors and play an important role of their own. Will change take an evolutionary path or is Russia facing another revolution? The book offers a view of the Russian future until 2025 based on thematic scenarios created by an international team of Russia scholars whose expertise range from politics and economics to demographics and foreign policy.
In 2011, the international community watched as a shockingly unlikely community of citizens toppled three of the world's most entrenched dictators: Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, and Qaddafi in Libya. This movement of cascading democratization, commonly known as the Arab Spring, was planned and executed not by political parties, but by students, young entrepreneurs, and the rising urban middle class. International experts and the popular press have pointed to the near-identical reliance on digital media in all three movements, arguing that these authoritarian regimes were in essence defeated by the Internet. Is that true? Should Mubarak blame Twitter for his sudden fall from power? Did digital media "cause" the Arab Spring? In Democracy's Fourth Wave?, Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain examine the complex role of the Internet, mobile phones, and social networking applications in the Arab Spring. Examining digital media access, level of grievance, and levels of protest for popular democratization in 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Howard and Hussain conclude that digital media was neither the most nor the least important cause of the Arab Spring. Instead, they illustrate a complex web of conjoined causal factors for social mobilization. The Arab revolts cascaded across countries largely because digital media allowed communities to realize shared grievances and nurtured transportable strategies for mobilizing against dictators. Individuals were inspired to protest for personal reasons, but through social media they acted collectively. Democracy's Fourth Wave examines not only the unexpected evolution of events during the Arab Spring, but the longer history of desperate-and creative-digital activism through the Arab world.
The danger raised by the terrorist threat is real, existential, and vital to the United States. But the attacks on 9/11 have been broadly misunderstood. In assessing the meaning and significance of "the war on terror," Tschirgi raises many issues related to the Middle East and American policy toward that area. For example, he debunks the entire "exceptionalist" approach to the Arab world (the presumption that Arab societies fail to be fathomed by Western social science). While Tschirgi stresses the need for resolving the war on terrorism favorably, he also suggests two broad policy recommendations. First, he argues that while the United States should maintain its firm commitment to Israel's preservation as a Jewish state, it has no corresponding duty to support Israeli expansionism. U.S.-Israeli relations should proceed on this basis and should be informed by a greater American reliance on principles of international law. Second, Tschirgi concludes that an American withdrawal from Iraq must be effected as early as possible. Tschirgi's provocative thesis is that the attacks of 9/11 were not as unique an event as we commonly believe. Rather, they were understandable--though deplorable--human reactions to a combination of factors that fueled the Arab world's marginalization and led to a generalized feeling among the people of that region that the West (and particularly the United States) posed a mortal threat to their identity. Employing three case studies of marginalized violent conflict--Mexico's Zapatista conflict, Egypt's struggle against the Gama'a al-Islamiyya in Upper Egypt, and Nigeria's fight against the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta--Tschirgi demonstrates the dynamics throughwhich "traditional" peoples have in modern times opted to wage hopeless struggle against objectively more powerful states. The parallels between the dynamics that informed each of these situations and those marking the international Muslim insurgency against the West are striking, as are the significant differences between the two phenomena. The parallels are found in the mechanics of marginalization and resistance. The differences lie, first, in the Muslim insurgency's identification of the West as a total enemy and the struggle with it as having a zero-sum nature and, second, in the modern terrorists' potential access to lethal means of mass destruction. Both the parallels and differences that mark the two phenomena help deepen a real understanding of the meaning of 9/11.
Galia Golan's concise but richly detailed monograph gives us the first look at Soviet policy toward terrorism under Gorbachev. Drawing on a wide array of Soviet sources, Dr. Golan traces the evolution in Soviet attitudes toward terrorism and support for movements of national liberation from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. She focuses specifically on the change in Soviet public positions toward a more explicit condemnation of terrorist acts. The debate is likely to continue over whether changing public positions reflect an actual shift in Soviet behavior, but Golan's book helps to frame that debate. All those who are interested in evaluating Soviet `new thinking' on an important global and regional issue should read this book. Dennis B. Ross Director, Policy Planning Staff U.S. Department of State This book examines the reevaluation of Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev, known as the new thinking. This new foreign policy has produced a new Soviet attitude and, apparently, different behavior toward terrorism. In the past, terrorism was officially condemned either as a method employed by imperialist or capitalist regimes against an oppressed population or as an illegitimate offshoot of armed struggle, having nothing in common with genuine liberation struggles. Under Gorbachev, there is a reduction in Soviet aid to many groups using terrorism and a call for political solutions to ongoing conflicts. The latest volume in The Washington Papers series, Gorbachev's New Thinking on Terrorism will be of special interest to political scientists, Soviet specialists, or anyone interested in terrorism today. With a foreword by Walter laqueur Laqueur, this book begins with a detailed background study of Soviet attitudes toward terrorism, demonstrating the changes in Gorbachev's approach to the problem. Galia Golan, Darwin professor of Soviet and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, defines the differences between Gorbachev's rhetoric and the reality of the new thinking as the book explores reports and rumors of Soviet involvement in Pakistan and the Philippines. The book concludes with a look at current Soviet policy toward terrorist groups traditionally backed by the Soviet Union.
This book describes how Christian communities in South Africa have responded to HIV/AIDS and how these responses have affected the lives HIV-positive people, youth and broader communities. Drawing on Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, it explains how religion became influential in reshaping ideas about sexuality, medicine and modernity.
The interest of Russian intellectuals in the French Revolution demonstrates that some Russian thinkers of the 19th century had begun to question the concept of Russia's uniqueness. Yet most of them came to believe that the French Revolution (which they tended to equate with the Western experience) was irrelevant not only to Russia but to the rest of the world as well. They saw, perhaps correctly, that the Western experience, with the French Revolution as its symbol, was foreign to Russian destiny. Most of the Russian intellectuals of that time had rightly foreseen Russia, and to some degree the rest of the world's future, as following an authoritarian/totalitarian model of development.
Drawing on unique first-hand data from Russia's North Caucasus, this study is the first of its kind to detail the causes and contexts of individual disengagement of various types of militants: avengers, nationalists, and jihadists. It aims to considerably enhance our theoretical understanding of individual militants' incentives to abandon violence.
The book interprets the Cuban revolutionary movement from 1868 to 1959 as a continuous process that sought political independence and social and economic transformation of colonial and neocolonial structures. Cuba is a symbol of hope for the Third World. The Cuban Revolution took power from a national elite subordinate to foreign capital, and placed it in the hands of the people; and it subsequently developed alternative structures of popular democracy that have functioned to keep delegates of the people in power. While Cuba has persisted, the peoples of the Third World, knocked down by the neoliberal project, have found social movement and political life, a renewal that is especially evident in Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement. At the same time, the capitalist world-economy increasingly reveals its unsustainability, and the global elite demonstrate its incapacity to respond to a multifaceted and sustained global crisis. These dynamics establish conditions for popular democratic socialist revolutions in the North.
Diane Stone addresses the network alliances or partnerships of international organisations with knowledge organisations and networks. Moving beyond more common studies of industrial public-private partnerships, she addresses how, and why, international organisations and global policy actors need to incorporate ideas, expertise and scientific opinion into their 'global programmes'. Rather than assuming that the encouragement for 'evidence-informed policy' in global and regional institutions of governance is an indisputable public good, she queries the influence of expert actors in the growing number of part-private or semi-public policy networks.
This book discusses all the questions related to Kashmiri Pandits and their relation and current issues regarding their return to Kashmir. The book explores the importance of return of Kashmiri Pandits for Kashmir and both major Kashmiri communities, especially those who really want to return home, out of their own volition and for all right reasons. The book shows how to bring about a reasonable and realistic degree of practical and sustainable reconciliation between the two communities, whilst trying to make them stand in each other's shoes, understand each other's perspective and pain and then self-introspect sincerely, so that a bridge of mutual trust and acceptance is rebuilt between the two communities, which can then allow those Pandits who genuinely want to return cross over and be home.
This vivid biography is a study of the life and times of the Italian poet-activist, Lauro de Bosis. Remarkably productive as a poet, cultural diplomat, and political subversive, de Bosis founded and lead an underground resistance group, the National Alliance for Liberty. His actions culminated in a dramatic solo flight over Rome in October 1931, showering the city with protest leaflets against the Fascist dictatorship before plunging to his death. This feat brought world attention to the existence of anti-Fascism, much to Mussolini's chagrin and rage. De Bosis's story, told against the backdrop of Rome's politics in the 1920s, is at once personal, national, and international. World figures --- from Mussolini, Croce, Ezra Pound, to Walter Lippmann, Thornton Wilder, and his lover, the actress Ruth Draper --- were all within de Bosis's compass. Gifted, quirky, original, and impulsive but principled to the point of giving up both personal love and family for his cause, his life shows how Mussolini's regime systematically cleared out the cream of Italy's young liberal intellectuals. Based on previously untapped archival resources, this is the first biography of a young, gifted Italian poet who dared to challenge the power of a totalitarian state with his practical idealism and fierce determination to protect Italy's fragile democracy from il Duce.
This book highlights historical explanations to and roots of present phenomena of violence, insecurity, and law enforcement in Central America. Violence and crime are among the most discussed topics in Central America today, and sensationalism and fear of crime is as present as the increase of private security, the re-militarization of law enforcement, political populism, and mano dura policies. The contributors to this volume discuss historical forms, paths, continuities, and changes of violence and its public and political discussion in the region. This book thus offers in-depth analysis of different patterns of violence, their reproduction over time, their articulation in the present, and finally their discursive mobilization.
This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution on Jan. 25, 2011. In doing so, it examines the relevance and applicability of the concepts of citizen journalism and civic engagement to the discourses and deliberations in five of the most popular political blogs in Egypt, through exploring the potential connection between virtual activism, as represented in the postings on these blogs, and real activism in Egyptian political life, as represented in the calls for social, economic and political reform on the streets.
London is a city of dreamers. A city of possibility and experiment. A city of fervent imaginings and courageous aspirations. For centuries, it has been the capital of utopian thought. The Infinite City tells this history for the first time. In his soaring new book, Niall Kishtainy draws us into the imaginative worlds of Thomas More, the Diggers, William Morris and Extinction Rebellion protestors. He introduces us to thinkers like Thomas Spence who threw coins stamped with the words ‘YOU FOOLS’ into the alleys of Holborn. To Ada Salter who was the first woman borough councillor in London and ignited the Bermondsey Revolution. To ninety-two-year-old Dolly Watson who became the queen of Claremont Road in Leytonstone during the Reclaim the Streets protests in the 1990s. These are inspiring tales of people who drew might from the city around them and fought for their ideologies in an increasingly transforming world. Beginning in the sixteenth century and stretching from the contemporary transformation of the East End docklands to the COVID lockdowns, The Infinite City shows how London’s spirit has been one of visionary imagination amid relentless change and innovation.
When contrasted with the miners' dramatic strike victories in 1972 and 1974, the shattering industrial defeat suffered by British miners in 1985 has been seen as evidence of the further weakening of working-class solidarity. Undertaken with complete unity, the strikes of 1972 and 1974 brought the miners substantial material gains, contributed to the downfall of a government, and reinforced the National Union of Mineworkers' position at the core of the British labour movement. In contrast, the strike in Britain in 1984/85 was marked by internal division and by the miners' attempt to resist the pit closure programme of the Thatcher government, and it ended in bitter defeat.
This volume provides insights on how recruitment patterns develop for two related types of criminal networks: organized crime and terrorism. It specifically explores the social, situational, psychological, and economic drivers of recruitment. Although organized crime networks and terrorism networks can differ in underlying goals and motivations, this volume demonstrates common drivers in their recruitment, which will provide insights for crime prevention and intervention. The goal of the book is to explore the current knowledge about these common drivers, as well as highlight emerging research, to identify and prioritize a research agenda for scholars, as well as policymakers. The research presented in this work aims to fill existing gaps in the knowledge of recruitment to both organized crime and terrorism. For each area, it provides a systematic review of the existing research on social, psychological, and economic drivers of recruitment. It then presents findings from independent original research aimed to explore new ground not covered in these previous studies. The contributions to this volume were the result of a research project funded by a European Union Horizon 2020 grant, and present a diverse, international mix of expertise and cases. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, psychology, and international relations. Chapter 13 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
Matilda Joslyn Gage was a woman's rights' activist during the 19th century, committed to the woman suffrage movement and civil rights. This book brings needed attention to Gage's life and work and explores her impact on women's rights. Using an advanced and distinctive form of feminist thought that encompassed an incisive analysis of patriarchy, Gage even criticized the church as patriarchy's prime sponsor. In fact, Gage connected all of women's oppression, including prostitution, marriage customs, divorce, rape and cusotdy rights to patriarchy, It is perhaps for her radical theory that Gage's arguments remain salient and controversial today. An overdue addition to the scholarship on the role feminists like Matilda Joslyn Gage have played in history, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of United States history, women's history, and women's studies.
This book presents up-to-date empirical research on crucial questions of political socialisation. It suggests new approaches and answers to a classic but still valid question of political socialisation research: 'Who learns what from whom under what circumstances with what effects?' (Greenstein 1965: 13). The volume maintains that political socialisation is no universal or independent phenomenon, but one significantly shaped by the surrounding parameters of the society in which it is embedded. Therefore, deficits in political socialisation research have become especially clear in light of political and societal changes over recent decades. The book contributes to two important discussions in the study of political socialisation: first, the question of the (relative) importance of socialisation agents and contexts, second - inextricably interwoven with the first - the timing of political socialisation. From a European perspective, articles in the volume shed light on old problems and topics of the field, using new methodological approaches or dealing with long-neglected perspectives such as young children's democratic learning or political socialisation. Includes quantitative approaches as well as innovative and explorative case studies.
This volume fills this gap by examining the many ways in which political parties, the business world, foreign policymakers, and the intelligence community experienced, confronted, and even actively contributed to domestic and transnational forms of dissent.
In view of the 100th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution and Sun Yat-sen's relations with the Nanyang communities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the Chinese Heritage Centre came together to host a two-day bilingual conference on the three-way relationships between Sun Yat-sen, Nanyang and the 1911 Revolution in October 2010 in Singapore. This volume is a collection of papers in English presented at the conference. While there are extensive research and voluminous publications on Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution, it was felt that less had been done on the Southeast Asian connections. Thus this volume tries to chip in some original and at times provocative analysis on not only Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution but also contributions from selected Southeast Asian countries.
The horrific slaughter in Rwanda has once again driven home the deeply rooted existence and continuing presence of genocidal impulses. In this passionately argued volume-first published to great acclaim in France and considerably updated during the translation process-a deeply involved witness of the massacres takes an unflinching look at recent events in Rwanda and what they can tell us about the nature of genocide. Table of Contents
'It's damned hard lines asking for bread and only getting a bullet!' The dramatic and chaotic events surrounding the Russian Revolution have been studied and written about extensively for the last hundred years, by historians and journalists alike. However, some of the most compelling and valuable accounts are those recorded by eyewitnesses, many of whom were foreign nationals caught in Petrograd at the time. Drawing from the Bodleian Library's rich collections, this book features extracts from letters, journals, diaries and memoirs written by a diverse cast of onlookers. Primarily British, the authors include Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the royal children, Bertie Stopford, an antiques dealer who smuggled the Vladimir tiara and other Romanov jewels into the UK, and the private secretary to Lord Milner in the British War Cabinet. Contrasting with these are a memoir by Stinton Jones, an engineer who found himself sharing a train compartment with Rasputin, a newspaper report by governess Janet Jeffrey who survived a violent confrontation with the Red Army, and letters home from Labour politician, Arthur Henderson. Accompanied by seventy contemporary illustrations, these first-hand accounts are put into context with introductory notes, giving a fascinating insight into the tumultuous year of 1917.
|
You may like...
Breaking A Rainbow, Building A Nation…
Rekgotsofetse Chikane
Paperback
|