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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Political oppression & persecution
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago, Russia has undergone a dizzying and complex transition that has seen it transform from a communist state into a democracy before regressing back to the more authoritarian regime that exists today. Through a compelling and insightful analysis of the Russian case, this book explores the role that social welfare plays in regime transitions, specifically it examines the role that gender and social welfare has played in Russia's often chaotic post-communist political evolution, from Boris Yeltsin's assumption of the presidency in 1991 to Vladimir Putin's return for a third term as president in 2012. From 2001 to 2011, social welfare (especially pronatalist policies) was a key part of the political leadership's governance strategy. A shift from pluralism to regulation accompanied a discourse in which strong government would rein-in a wayward society. But can a hierarchical political system satisfy the aspirations of a changing citizenry? This study demonstrates that gender is at the very centre of debates over the authenticity of democracy in Russia.
One of the most crucial issues to affect national policy in the
state of Israel is that of relations between its Jewish and Arab
citizens. The confrontation of October 2000 demonstrated the
explosive potential of the unresolved dilemmas posed by these
relations.
This volume examines the causes, consequences, and dynamics of that style of governance by force that has come to be known as state terror. The collection deals with theoretical issues and examines case applications as well. The editors distinguish among the study of oppression, repression, and state terror systems. State terrorism in the form of enforcement terrorism, economic repression, military control, and the "legal" oppression of apartheid in Latin America, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Africa is discussed. One chapter explores American containment policy. Theoretical chapters on state terrorism include editor George Lopez's scheme for the analysis of government terror, editor Michael Stohl's discussion of the international dimensions of this problem, and an agenda for continued investigation.
Despite lacking any sort of military advantage over the regimes
they have confronted, the Iranian people have never been dissuaded
from rising against and challenging varying forms of injustice.
Through the successful implementation of non-violent action
Iranians have overcome the violence of successive governments by
undermining their moral and political legitimacy. But more than a
hundred years after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Iranians
are still in search of a social covenant through which they can
acquire and practice public freedom. The stakes are extremely high,
if Iran fails to end its culture of violence as a state and society
then it risks its future as a stable, democratic state. So how then
can the Iranian people break the cycle of violent and oppressive
regimes and start looking towards a non-violent and democratic
future? There is no magic formula that will immediately end
violence in Iran but this book argues that by shunning violence and
showing a readiness to face down persecution that the Iranian
people have a chance to secure their freedom.
The antibureaucratic revolution was the most crucial episode of
Yugoslav conflicts after Tito. Drawing on primary sources and
cutting-edge research, this book explains how popular unrest
contributed to the fall of communism and the rise of a new form of
authoritarianism, competing nationalisms and the break-up of
Yugoslavia.
Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for "The Washington Post," when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border and a systematic reorganization of Cambodian society. Everyone was sent from the towns and cities to the countryside, where they were forced to labor endlessly in the fields. The intelligentsia were brutally exterminated, and torture, terror, and death became routine. Ultimately, almost two million people--nearly a quarter of the population--were killed in what was one of this century's worst crimes against humanity."When the War Was Over" is Elizabeth Becker's masterful account of the Cambodian nightmare. Encompassing the era of French colonialism and the revival of Cambodian nationalism; 1950s Paris, where Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot received his political education; the killing fields of Cambodia; government chambers in Washington, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh; and the death of Pol Pot in 1998; this is a book of epic vision and staggering power. Merging original historical research with the many voices of those who lived through the times and exclusive interviews with every Cambodian leader of the past quarter century, "When the War Was Over" illuminates the darkness of Cambodia with the intensity of a bolt of lightning.
A Human Being Died That Night recounts an extraordinary dialogue. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who grew up in a black South African township, reflects on her interviews with Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned death squads under apartheid. Gobodo-Madikizela met with de Kock in Pretoria's maximum-security prison, where he is serving a 212-year sentence for crimes against humanity. In profoundly arresting scenes, Gobodo-Madikizela conveys her struggle with contradictory internal impulses to hold him accountable and to forgive. Ultimately, as she allows us to witness de Kock's extraordinary awakening of conscience, she illuminates the ways in which the encounter compelled her to redefine the value of remorse and the limits of forgiveness.
First Published in 1998. Initially written in the period between 1942 and 44, with additional notes in the appendices of 1945, this volume looks at the areas of the secret Police, the secret control as developed by Fascism and National Socialism as laid on the Third Reich and the relationship between the law and the Political Police and their co-ordination with propaganda and the impact of the instrument of terror on the people.
Law as a profession was not Dikgang Moseneke's first choice. As a small boy he told his aunt that he wanted to be a traffic officer, but life had other plans for him. At the young age of 15, he was imprisoned for participating in anti-apartheid activities. During his ten years of incarceration, he completed his schooling by correspondence and earned two university degrees. Afterwards he studied law at the University of South Africa. Practising law during apartheid South Africa brought with it unique challenges, especially to professionals of colour, within a fraught political climate. After some years in general legal practice and at the Bar, and a brief segue into business, Moseneke was persuaded that he would best serve the country's young democracy by taking judicial office. All Rise covers his years on the bench, with particular focus on his 15-year term as a judge at South Africa's apex court, the Constitutional Court, including as the deputy chief justice. As a member of the team that drafted the interim Constitution, Moseneke was well placed to become one of the guardians of its final form. His insights into the Constitutional Court's structures, the personalities peopling it, the values it embodies, the human dramas that shook it and the cases that were brought to it make for fascinating reading. All Rise offers a unique, insider's view of how the judicial system operates at its best and how it responds when it is under fire. From the Constitutional Court of Arthur Chaskalson to the Mogoeng Mogoeng era, Moseneke's understated but astute commentary is a reflection on the country's ongoing but not altogether comfortable journey to a better life for all.
Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin is the first book devoted exclusively to popular participation in the 'Great Terror', a period in which millions of people were arrested, interrogated, shot, and sent to labor camps. The book shifts attention from the machinations of top Party leaders to the mechanisms by which repression engulfed Soviet society. In the unions and the factories, repression was accompanied by a mass campaign for democracy. Party leaders urged workers to criticize and remove corrupt and negligent officials. Workers, shop foremen, local Party members, and union leaders adopted the slogans of repression and used them, often against each other, to redress long-standing grievances, shift blame for intractable problems in production, and advance personal agendas. Repression quickly became a mass phenomenon; not only in the number of victims it claimed, but in the number of perpetrators it spawned. Using new, formerly secret archival sources, Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin takes us into the unions and the factories to observe how ordinary people moved through clear stages toward madness and self-destruction.
Infrastructure development projects are set to continue into the next century as developing country governments seek to manage population growth, urbanization and industrialization. The contributions in this volume raise many questions about 'development' and 'progress' in the late twentieth century. What is revealed are the enormous problems and disastrous affects which continue to accompany displacement operations in many countries, which raise the ever more urgent question of whether the benefits of infrastructure development justify or outweigh the pain of the radical disruption of peoples lives, exacerbated by the fact that, with some notable exceptions, there has been a lack of official recognition on the part of governments and international agencies that development-induced displacement is a problem at all. This important volume addresses the issues and shows just how serious the situation is.
Solidarity Road tells the story of Jan Theron’s involvement in the Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU) during apartheid South Africa. Part memoir, part history this fascinating tale will reveal what working conditions were like in the 1970’s. It outlines the very beginnings of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Theron states, ‘Solidarity in a trade union does not simply mean standing by your members, or by organised workers. It means solidarity with your class. At the time, in 1976, the working class was fragmented. Working for a trade union was part of a project to unite a fragmented class, and to give it a voice. This was the historical project to which a number of people from a certain intellectual background were drawn. This would be our contribution to the struggle: what we did to end apartheid. It was a struggle for democracy, but democracy did not just mean everyone getting to vote every so often in national elections. People also had to eat. The most obvious way in which the working class was then fragmented was in terms of race. The Union put its commitment to solidarity into practice by uniting workers of different races in factories manufacturing food. To do so it had to overcome divisions among workers created by the ways in which government had structured employment, in terms of the law, which the bosses were able to exploit. Nowadays ‘bosses’ seems like a dated term, yet this is the term workers used to refer to the people for whom they actually worked. It is also no less important today than it was then to differentiate between those who control the factories and mines and those who operate at their behest.
The concentrations camps that existed in the colonised world at the turn of the 20th Century are a vivid reminder of the atrocities committed by imperial powers on indigenous populations. This study explores British, American and Spanish camp cultures, analysing debates over their legitimacy and current discussions on retributive justice.
The British, Irish, Russian, American, German, and Austrian contributors examine the intricate nature of the mass repression unleashed by the Stalinist leader of the USSR during 1937-38. The first part of the collection deals with annihilation policies against the Soviet elite and the Communist International. The second section of the volume looks at mass operations of the secret police (NKVD) against social outcasts, Poles and other 'hostile' ethnic groups. The final section comprises micro-studies about targeted victim groups among the general population.
This book analyzes the development of the Stalinist state of the 1930s from the perspective of the changing nature of center-local relations. It examines the trend toward greater central state control over the formation and implementation of economic policy and the shift toward increased state repression through a series of archive-based case studies of the center's interactions with its republican and regional bodies. The book provides the basis for a new conceptualization of the Stalinist state.
African Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice examines the functioning of truth commissions in Africa, outlining the lessons learned, the best practices, and the successes and failures of seven African truth commissions. Its introduction and conclusion then work further to place truth commissions within the growing academic field of transitional justice. The first African truth commission was convened by the despot Idi Amin for reasons unrelated to the defense of human rights, but despite this ambiguous beginning, other African truth commissions have done important work. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996 has become the 'gold standard' for future truth commissions not only in Africa, but throughout the world: it unearthed much truth about the Apartheid era abuse of human rights and took vital first steps towards restorative justice in the Republic. Each truth commission is distinctive. However, although much has been written about South Africa's truth commissions, much less is known about the other six studied in this book-and an attentive reader will notice the suggestive patterns which emerge.
Since 1989, when the movement for Kashmiri independence took the form of an armed insurgency, it has been one of the most highly militarized regions in the world. This book is based on the idea that preserving memory is central to the struggle for justice and to someday rebuild a society shattered by two decades of armed conflict.
This bibliography includes English-language first-person accounts of individuals who survived or witnessed, as bystanders, journalists, diplomats, or liberators, genocidal acts in this century. The primary focus is on diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories, interviews and statements in newspaper articles or other texts. A secondary focus is on reports, films, microfilm collections, and archives that contain first-person accounts, essays about first-person accounts, and bibliographies that list first-person accounts. Although there are bibliographies devoted to specific genocidal acts and one general bibliography on genocide, this volume is the first to cover first-person accounts. The volume opens with a lengthy introductory essay on genocide. It then devotes chapters to specific genocidal acts, including German extermination of the Hereros, Ottoman genocide of the Armenians, Soviet-induced famine in the Ukraine, the Soviet's Great Purge, the Soviet deportation of whole nations, the Holocaust, Gypsies during the Holocaust, Indonesian genocide of Communists and suspected Communists, Ugandan genocides, Pakistani genocide in Bangladesh, Burundi genocide of the Hutus, Indonesian genocide in East Timor, the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, threatened genocide of the Baha'is, and genocide of various indigenous peoples. The chapters are subdivided by type of account, and all entries are annotated. The work includes subject and author indexes. The book will be a useful resource for historians, political scientists, and sociologists interested in genocide and international human relations.
Death camps are the most enduring image of the Holocaust, but they were only the final expression of a destruction process that began in 1933. In that year the Nazi regime mobilized members of an entire society to destroy their neighbors. Lawmakers, judges, attorneys, and the rest of the legal system played a crucial role in reassuring good Germans that a war on Jews was legitimate. Nazi Justiz emphasizes the prewar years of a robust Western European nation at peace with all countries. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a destruction process. Using original decrees, court decisions, and first-hand recollections of participants, Nazi Justiz documents how the German legal system transformed itself into a criminal organization. We see not only how the legal system shaped everyday life, but how good Germans and the business community benefited from the Holocaust. Germany in the 1930s-before the war-is emphasized. Such emphasis demonstrates that a Holocaust can happen in any country sharing the heritage of Western civilization, and warns of the inevitable outcome once ordinary people are targeted in a process of destruction. No other book has so much information on the Holocaust in peacetime Germany; indeed, the chapters on property confiscation and residential concentration are unique. With a richness of detail evoking an immediacy normally found in novels, Nazi Justiz offers a chilling portrayal of persons filled with so much goodness that they become oblivious to horrors they cause.
Social work is often presented as a benevolent and politically neutral profession, avoiding discussion about its sometimes troubling political histories. This book rethinks social work's legacy and history of both political resistance and complicity with oppressive and punitive practices. Using a comparative approach with international case studies, the book uncovers the role of social workers in politically tense episodes of recent history including the anti-racist struggle in the US and the impact of colonialism in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. As the de-colonisation of curricula and Black Lives Matter movement gain momentum, the fascinating book skilfully navigates social work's collective political past while considering its future.
Social scientist Archie Mafeje, who was born in the Eastern Cape but lived most of his scholarly life in exile, was one of Africa's most prominent intellectuals. This ground-breaking book is the first to consider the entire body of Mafeje's oeuvre and offers much-needed engagement with his ideas. The most inclusive and critical treatment to date of Mafeje as a thinker and researcher, it does not aim to be a biography , but rather offers an analysis of his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolution in Africa. Bongani Nyoka argues that Mafeje's superb scholarship developed out of both his experience as an oppressed black person and his early political education. These, merged with his university training, turned him into a formidable cutting-edge intellectual force. Nyoka begins with an evaluation of Mafeje's critique of the social sciences; his focus then shifts to Mafeje's work on land and agrarian issues in sub-Saharan Africa, before finally dealing with his work on revolutionary theory and politics. By bringing Mafeje's work to the fore, Nyoka engages in an act of knowledge decolonisation, thus making a unique contribution to South studies in sociology, history and politics.
This book explores the relationship between socialist psychiatry and political ideology during the Cold War, tracing Yugoslav 'psy' sciences as they experienced multiple internationalisations and globalisations in the post-WWII period. These unique transnational connections - with West, East and South - remain at the centre of this book. The author argues that the 'psy' disciplines provide a window onto the complications of Cold War internationalism, offering an opportunity to re-think postwar Europe's internal dynamics. She tells an alternative, pan-European narrative of the post-1945 period, demonstrating that, in the Cold War, there existed sites of collaboration and vigorous exchange between the two ideologically opposed camps, and places like Yugoslavia provided a meeting point, where ideas, frameworks and professional and cultural networks from both sides of the Iron Curtain could overlap and transform each other. Moreover, the book offers the first analysis of East European psychiatrists' contacts with and contributions to the decolonizing world, exploring their participation in broader political discussions about decolonization, anti-imperialism and non-alignment. The Yugoslav brand of East-West psychoanalysis and psychotherapy bred a truly unique intellectual framework, which enabled psychiatrists to think through a set of political and ideological dilemmas regarding the relationship between individuals and social structures. This book offers a thorough reinterpretation of the notion of 'communist psychiatry' as a tool used solely for political oppression, and instead emphasises the political interventions of East European psychiatry and psychoanalysis. |
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