Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Social Justice draws on the fields of geography, political theory, and cultural studies to analyze experiments with novel forms of democracy, highlighting the critical issue of the changing nature of the state and citizenship in the contemporary political landscape as they are buffeted by countervailing forces of corporate globalization and participatory politics.

Using interesting case studies, the book explores these 3 main themes:

• the meaning of radical democracy in light of recent developments in democratic theory
• new spatial arrangements or scales of democracy from local to global, from streets protests to the development of transnational networks
• the character and role of states in the development of new forms of democracy

The book asks and answers: are participatory models of democracy viable alternatives in their own right or are they best understood as supplemental to traditional representative democracy? What are the conditions that give rise to the development of such models and are they equally effective at every scale; i.e., do they only realize their radical potential in particular, local places?

A useful text in a broad range of advanced undergraduate courses including social movements, political sociology or geography, political philosophy.

The principle of national self-determination is one of the two or three most influential, but least understood, concepts in modern political thought. While recent philosophical examination has failed to look at the concept in any systematic fashion, in this book Omar Dahbour examines all of the arguments that have been given for national self-determination, whether by international lawyers, moral philosophers, democratic theorists, or political communitarians. Without trying to either justify of condemn nation-states, Dahbour attempts to rescue this frequently invoked idea from nationalistic misuse, and applies it to current political struggles against globalization and imperialism.

Bringing fresh insight to an important contemporary debate, Fred Dallmayr and Jose M. Rosales consider the changing definition of nationalism and the nation-state in our era of globalization. The question mark in the title of this volume points to the multiple issues at stake: what is the meaning of nationalism? Is there only one or possibly multiple types of nationalism? What does it mean to be "beyond" nationalism? Can one safely abandon nationalism and the nation-state? The contributors address these and other concerns, not only through the lenses of institutional and comparative social scientific analysis, but also with an eye toward the "existential" implications for people living in our time: their well-being, legal safety and protection, and sense of identity. Dallmayr and Rosales have structured the book in three parts, leading from theoretical revisions of nationalist theory to contrasting views on globalization and sovereignty to the concluding discussion of human rights. Beyond Nationalism? thus explores some of the most urgent contemporary civic and political challenges raised by a post-national and cosmopolitan reconfiguration of the world order.

How do groupsOCobe they religious or ethnicOCoachieve sovereignty in a postnationalist world? In "Self-Determination without Nationalism," noted philosopher Omar Dahbour insists that the existing ethics of international relations, dominated by the rival notions of liberal nationalism and political cosmopolitanism, no longer suffice.

Dahbour notes that political communities are an ethically desirable and historically inevitable feature of collective life.a The ethical principles that govern them, howeverOCoespecially self-determination and sovereigntyOCorequire reformulation in light of globalization and the economic and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.
a
Arguing that nation-states violate the principle of self-determination, Dahbour then develops a detailed new theory of self-determination that he calls ecosovereignty.OCOa Ecosovereignty defines political community in a way that can protect and further the rights of indigenous peoples as well as the needs of ecological regions for a sustainable form of development and security from environmental destruction.
In the series Global Ethics and Politics, edited by Carol Gould.

Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Social Justice draws on the fields of geography, political theory, and cultural studies to analyze experiments with novel forms of democracy, highlighting the critical issue of the changing nature of the state and citizenship in the contemporary political landscape as they are buffeted by countervailing forces of corporate globalization and participatory politics.

Using interesting case studies, the book explores these 3 main themes:

• the meaning of radical democracy in light of recent developments in democratic theory
• new spatial arrangements or scales of democracy from local to global, from streets protests to the development of transnational networks
• the character and role of states in the development of new forms of democracy

The book asks and answers: are participatory models of democracy viable alternatives in their own right or are they best understood as supplemental to traditional representative democracy? What are the conditions that give rise to the development of such models and are they equally effective at every scale; i.e., do they only realize their radical potential in particular, local places?

A useful text in a broad range of advanced undergraduate courses including social movements, political sociology or geography, political philosophy.