During the Brexit referendum campaign it became clear how easily national conversations around politics could become raucous and bitter. This book explores the nature of talking about politically contentious issues and how our society can begin to develop a more constructive culture of political talk. Uniquely, this study focuses on citizens own experiences and reflections on developing, practising and evaluating their own political voices. Based on seventy in-depth interviews with a diverse range of people, Stephen Coleman explores the intricate nature of interpersonal political talk and what this means for public attitudes towards politics and how people negotiate their political identities. Engaging with a broad range of subjects from Political Communication to Sociology this book offers valuable insight into how the public can discuss politically turbulent topics in a meaningful and constructive way.

Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves brings to life the unique contribution by French women during the early nineteenth century, a key period in the history of colonialism and slavery. The book enriches our understanding of French and Atlantic history in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary years when Haiti was menaced with the re-establishment of slavery and when class, race, and gender identities were being renegotiated. It offers in-depth readings of works by Germaine de Stael, Claire de Duras, and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. In addition to these now canonical French authors, it calls attention to the lives and works of two lesser-known but important figures-Charlotte Dard and Sophie Doin. Approaching these five women through the prism of paternal authority, Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves explores the empathy that daughters show toward blacks as well as their resistance against the oppression exercised by male colonists and other authority figures. The works by these French women antislavery writers bear significant similarities, which the book explores, with twentieth and twenty-first century Francophone texts. These women's contributions allow us to move beyond the traditional boundaries of exclusively male accounts by missionaries, explorers, functionaries, and military or political figures. They remind us of the imperative for ever-renewed gender research in the colonial archive and the need to expand conceptions of French women's writing in the nineteenth century as being a small minority corpus. Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves contributes to an understanding of colonial fiction, Caribbean writing, romanticism, and feminism. It undercuts neat distinctions between the cultures of France and its colonies and between nineteenth and twentieth-century Francophone writing."

Active political engagement requires the youth of today to begin their journeys now to be leaders of tomorrow. Young individuals are instrumental in providing valuable insight into issues locally as well as on a national and international level. Participation of Young People in Governance Processes in Africa examines the role of young peoples' involvement in governance processes in Africa and demonstrates how they are engaging in active citizenship. There is an intrinsic value in upholding their right to participate in decisions that affect their daily lives and their communities, and the content within this publication supports this by focusing on topics such as good citizenship, youth empowerment, democratic awareness, political climate, and socio-economic development. It is designed for researchers, academics, policymakers, government officials, and professionals whose interests center on the engagement of youth in active citizenship roles.

Social media has emerged as a powerful tool that reaches a wide audience with minimum time and effort. It has a diverse role in society and human life and can boost the visibility of information that allows citizens the ability to play a vital role in creating and fostering social change. This practice can have both positive and negative consequences on society. Examining the Roles of IT and Social Media in Democratic Development and Social Change is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of social media within community development and democracy. While highlighting topics including information capitalism, ethical issues, and e-governance, this book is ideally designed for social workers, politicians, public administrators, sociologists, journalists, policymakers, government administrators, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on social advancement and change through social media and technology.

'James R. May and Erin Daly, household names in global environmental constitutionalism, have produced a magnum opus on human rights and the environment. An encyclopedia studded with precious research, analysis and wisdom from eminent voices from all over the world. The timing of the publication is auspicious. It coincides with the first ever Report of the UN Secretary General on International Environmental Law towards a Global Pact for the Environment. The encyclopedia is a must have for all students and scholars of human dignity and sustainable development, and particularly for those that will, hopefully, craft the Global Pact for the Environment into hard law on the model of the International Covenants on Human Rights.' - Parvez Hassan, IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and Pakistan Environmental Law Association 'Is the Environment about the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees? Or is It about the vital organs of Life on Earth - the Land, Air, and Waters? (LAW). This marvelous work by James R. May and Erin Daly, and the contributors, world champions of the human right to Life and to the Sources of Life, could not be more timely. When we finally understand that the Environment is Life itself, then we will truly care for the LAW of Life that Human Rights and the Environment envelops.' - Antonio Oposa, Jr., Litigator, Educator, Organizer and Activist Much has been written, discussed, advocated and litigated about human rights and the environment over the last two decades. With 45 structured entries from a global collection of expert scholars, this volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law provides an authoritative source of reference and features new commentary on the role of the rule of law in responding to the variegated impacts of environmental challenges on the human condition. This comprehensive volume offers fresh perspectives to the conversation by focusing especially on four subjects that shed new light on the subject of environmental human rights: the challenges of identifying the fundamental legal sources for the protection of human rights and the environment, the recognition of the indivisibility of human rights and environmental law, the centrality of the right to human dignity as the lodestar of human rights law, and the uniqueness of geographic particularities. Fundamentally, the entries demonstrate that there is much to do, learn and share on this vital topic. Offering thoughtful critical perspectives on a timely subject, this volume will be an essential resource for academics and students, as well as policymakers and practitioners. Contributors include: S. Adelman, N. Ahuja, C. Anant Malviya, A. Awal Khan, L. Benjamin, D. Bonilla Maldonado, R. Bratspies, C. Bruch, M. Burger, C. Butler, A. Carlson, C. Cournil, P. Coventry, E. Daly, K. Davies, R. Dhingra, R.J. Donato Quan, E. Gebre, C. Guneratne, A.M. Hammadeen, B. Hudson, C. Iorns Magallanes, V. Karageorgou, A. Kariuki, A. Kenmogne Simo, J.H. Knox, G.J. Kounga, A. Kreilhuber, S. Lamdan, R. Libel Waldman, K.E. Makuch, S.-J.-T. Manga, P. Martin, J.R. May, A. Mboya, S.O. McKenzie, M.A. Mekouar, D. Misiedjan, E. Mrema, R. Mwanza, D.S. Olawuyi, N. Osborne, O.W. Pedersen, J. Pendergrass, M.-C. Petersmann, M. Prieur, S.R. Rajan, L. Reins, J.M. Rivero Godoy, D.N. Scott, A. Solntsev, M. Stevenson, D.B. Suagee, A. Thomas, S.J. Turner, G. Van Hoorick, L. Vandenhende, J. Wentz, W. Yun Santoso

The securitization that accompanied many national responses after 11 September 2001, along with the shortfalls of neo-liberalism, created waves of opposition to the growth of the human rights regime. By chronicling the continuing contest over the reach, range, and regime of rights, Contracting Human Rights analyzes the way forward in an era of many challenges. Through an examination of both global and local challenges to human rights, including loopholes, backlash, accountability, and new opportunities to move forward, the expert contributors analyze trends across multiple-issue areas. These include; international institutions, humanitarian action, censorship and communications, discrimination, human trafficking, counter-terrorism, corporate social responsibility and civil society and social movements. The topical chapters also provide a comprehensive review of the widening citizenship gaps in human rights coverage for refugees, women?s rights in patriarchal societies, and civil liberties in chronic conflict. This timely study will be invaluable reading for academics, upper-level undergraduates, and those studying graduate courses relating to international relations, human rights, and global governance. Contributors include: K. Ainley, G. Andreopolous, C. Apodaca, P. Ayoub, Y. Bei, N. Bennett, K. Caldwell, F. Cherif, M. Etter, J. Faust, S. Ganesh, F. Gomez Isa, A. Jimenez-Bacardi, N. Katona, B. Linder, K. Lukas, J. Planitzer, W. Sandholtz, G. Shafir, C. Stohl, M. Stohl, A. Vestergaard, C. Wright

This groundbreaking book offers a compelling articulation of the right of access to justice for individuals facing human rights violations by international organizations. Following an examination of the human rights obligations of a variety of international organizations, the author scrutinizes their dispute settlement mechanisms as well as the conflict between their immunities and the right of access to justice before national jurisdictions. Highlighting recent examples, such as the cholera outbreak in Haiti, this book reveals how individual victims of human rights violations by international organizations are frequently left in the cold, due to the lack of an independent, impartial dispute settlement mechanism before which they can file such claims. Considering both global mechanisms and current mechanisms established by international organisations such as administrative jurisdictions for employment-related disputes, Pierre Schmitt finds that they either are not competent or that they have a limited scope. He concludes by offering normative proposals addressed both to international organizations and to national judges confronted with such cases. Offering a wealth of empirical and practical wisdom, this book will appeal to scholars in public international law and human rights. It is also a must-read for practitioners, judges and legal advisers working in the field and will prove a useful tool for national authorities negotiating immunity conventions with international organizations.

Turbulent times challenge democratic politics and governance in Western countries. Party systems, in many instances, have failed to produce solutions to vital policy problems, like immigration, state borders, welfare, or environmental issues. While subjective perceptions of macroeconomic outcomes are consistently related to political trust at the micro level, few studies have explored how individuals develop political engagement and identity. New insights are needed from studies focusing on how people become politically active and how political identities develop. Political Identity and Democratic Citizenship in Turbulent Times is a critical scholarly research publication that investigates, discusses, deconstructs, analyzes, and tests the concept of political identity and its evolving role in modern democracy. Moreover, it explores the contours of politics and brings together studies that examine the democratic potential of a diversity of participatory spheres, institutions, and arenas. Highlighting topics such as political culture, consumerism, and welfare states, this book is ideal for politicians, policymakers, government officials, sociologists, historians, academicians, professionals, researchers, and students.

In December 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the nation's first antilynching act, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act. For the first time in US history, legislators, representing the American people, classified lynching as a federal hate crime. While lynching histories and memories have received attention among communication scholars and some interdisciplinary studies of traditional civil rights memorials exist, contemporary studies often fail to examine the politicized nature of the spaces. This volume represents the first investigation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, both of which strategically make clear the various links between America's history of racial terror and contemporary mass incarceration conditions, the mistreatment of juveniles, and capital punishment. Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching focuses on several key social agents and organizations that played vital roles in the public and legal consciousness raising that finally led to the passage of the act. Marouf A. Hasian Jr. and Nicholas S. Paliewicz argue that the advocacy of attorney Bryan Stevenson, the work of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and the efforts of curators at Montgomery's new Legacy Museum all contributed to the formation of a rhetorical culture that set the stage at last for this hallmark lynching legislation. The authors examine how the EJI uses spaces of remembrance to confront audiences with race-conscious messages and measure to what extent those messages are successful.

‘The freezing loneliness made one wish for death,’ journalist Joyce Sikakane-Rankin said of solitary confinement. With seven other women, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, she was held for more than a year.

This is the story of these heroic women, their refusal to testify in the ‘Trial of Twenty-Two’ in 1969, their brutal detention and how they picked up their lives afterwards. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa is South Africa's fifth post-apartheid president. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as the founder of the National Union of Mineworkers. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, Ramaphosa was at the head of the reception committee that greeted him. Chosen as secretary general of the African National Congress in 1991, Ramaphosa led the ANC's team in negotiating the country's post-apartheid constitution. Thwarted in his ambition to succeed Mandela, he exchanged political leadership for commerce, ultimately becoming one of the country's wealthiest businessmen, a breeder of exotic cattle, and a philanthropist.

This fully revised and extended edition charts Ramaphosa's early life and education, and his career in trade unionism - including the 1987 21-day miners' strike when he committed the union to the wider liberation struggle - politics, and constitution-building. Extensive new chapters explore his contribution to the National Planning Commission, the effects of the Marikana massacre on his political prospects, and the real story behind his rise to the deputy presidency of the country in 2014. They set out the constraints Ramaphosa faced as Jacob Zuma's deputy, and explain how he ultimately triumphed in the election of the ANC's new president in 2017. The book concludes with an analysis of the challenges Ramaphosa faces as the country's fifth post-apartheid president.

Based on numerous personal conversations with Ramaphosa over the past decade, and on rich interviews with many of the subject's friends and contemporaries, this new biography offers a frank appraisal of one of South Africa's most enigmatic political figures.

Recent years have seen a growing body of literature dedicated to memories of slavery in the Anglophone world, yet little has been done to approach this subject from Francophone perspectives. This collection responds to the urgent need to contribute to current research on slavery and memory studies by focusing specifically on the Francophone world. Featuring the scholarship of leading academics in France, Britain, the United States and Canada, the collection reflects upon contemporary commemorative practices that relate to the history of slavery and the slave trade, and questions how they function in relationship to other, less memorialized histories of exploitation, such as indentured and forced labour. The volume is set against the context of France's growing body of memory legislation, as well as its close cultural and political connections to its former empire, all of which make it an influential player in how slavery continues to be memorialized and conceptualized in the public sphere. Contributors retrace and redraw the narrative map of slavery and its legacies in the Francophone world through a comparative understanding of how these different, but interconnected forms of labour exploitation have been remembered and/or forgotten from European, West African, Indian Ocean and Caribbean perspectives.

A provocative and shocking look at how western society is misunderstanding and mistreating mental illness. Perfect for fans of Empire of Pain and Dope Sick. In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity. Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain. Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of mental illness has been promoted by successive governments and big business - and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.

Important new policy frameworks call on governments to ensure respect for human rights by businesses and to secure a transition to sustainable consumption. Public procurement accounts for a significant share of the global economy, and nearly 30% of government expenditure across OECD countries. But what are the obligations of the state to protect human rights when it acts as a buyer? And how can procurement be used to drive respect for human rights amongst government suppliers? This engaging book reflects on these important questions, from the dual disciplinary perspectives of public procurement and human rights. Through legal analysis and practice-focused case studies, the expert contributors interrogate the role and potential of public procurement as a driver for responsible business conduct. Highlighting the character of public procurement as an interface for multiple normative regimes and competing policies, the book advances a compelling case for a shift to a new paradigm of sustainable procurement that embraces human rights as crucial to realising international policies such as those embodied in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Topical and thought-provoking, Public Procurement and Human Rights will be an essential read for academics and students of human rights law, public procurement law, and business and human rights, as well as practitioners in public procurement and sustainability, and government officials. Contributors include: B.S. Claeson, E. Conlon, C. Emberson, P. Goethberg, O. Martin-Ortega, A. Marx, C. Methven O'Brien, C. Nicholas, O. Outhwaite, G. Quinot, D. Russo, A. Sanchez-Graells, J. Sinclair, R. Stumberg, A. Trautrims, N. Vander Meulen, S. Williams-Elegbe

A better understanding of regime changes, and their drivers, is vital to understanding the root causes of conflict and instability. In doing so, national and international actors can develop appropriate strategies to address, curb and prevent escalations of violence when these transitions occur. This innovative book explores the motivations and impacts of regime change and political transition in the contemporary era. Systematically examining the drivers, formats and long term impacts of transitions, the contributors seek to identify patterns, commonalities, and disjunctures between them. Bringing together leading scholars and practitioners with longstanding relationships to the conflicts they have covered, this book provides systematic cross-case examinations of regime change. It examines the structural and immediate triggers of transitions both external and internal, as well as shedding light on the ways in which everyday life is changed by them --? for better or worse. Providing a framework for typological and comparative analysis, this book provides ontological and epistemological perspectives on 14 case studies of regime change following civil wars, secessionist conflicts, popular revolutions, military rule and foreign intervention. This book is a vital tool for academics and students of political science, development, history, regional, peace and conflict studies. Reflecting on regime change processes spanning different regions and types of transition, The Elgar Companion to Post Conflict Transition is an accessible way to cover key debates. Contributors include: A.-G. Abdulai, B. Austin, R.K. Bhandari, E. Blakaj, U. Bozkurt, G. Crawford, G. Culaj, N. Dzuverovic, C. Emery, B. Engels, G. Gabusi, H.J. Giessmann, F. Kuhn, R. Mac Ginty, A. Mazrreku, S. Pogodda, R. Read, S. Robins, S. Ruzza, C. Seifert, G. Tepsic, M. van Leeuwen, A. Weber

"How civil liberties triumphed over national insecurity"

Between the two major red scares of the twentieth century, a police raid on a Communist Party bookstore in Oklahoma City marked an important lesson in the history of American freedom.

In a raid on the Progressive Bookstore in 1940, local officials seized thousands of books and pamphlets and arrested twenty customers and proprietors. All were detained incommunicado and many were held for months on unreasonably high bail. Four were tried for violating Oklahoma's "criminal syndicalism" law, and their convictions and ten-year sentences caused a nationwide furor. After protests from labor unions, churches, publishers, academics, librarians, the American Civil Liberties Union, members of the literary world, and prominent individuals ranging from Woody Guthrie to Eleanor Roosevelt, the convictions were overturned on appeal.

Shirley A. Wiegand and Wayne A. Wiegand share the compelling story of this important case for the first time. They reveal how state power--with support from local media and businesses--was used to trample individuals' civil rights during an era in which citizens were gripped by fear of foreign subversion.

Richly detailed and colorfully told, "Books on Trial "is a sobering story of innocent people swept up in the hysteria of their times. It marks a fascinating and unnerving chapter in the history of Oklahoma and of the First Amendment. In today's climate of shadowy foreign threats--also full of unease about the way government curtails freedom in the name of protecting its citizens--the past speaks to the present.