This book is about the social condition of Deaf people, told through a Deaf woman's autobiography and a series of essays investigating how hearing societies relate to Deaf people. Michel Foucault described the powerful one as the beholder who is not seen. This is why a Deaf woman's perspective is important: Minorities that we don't even suspect we have power over observe us in turn. Majorities exert power over minorities by influencing the environment and institutions that simplify or hinder lives: language, mindsets, representations, norms, the use of professional power. Based on data collected by Eurostat, this volume provides the first discussion of statistics on the condition of Deaf people in a series of European countries, concerning education, labor, gender. This creates a new opportunity to discuss inequalities on the basis of data. The case studies in this volume reconstruct untold moments of great advancement in Deaf history, successful didactics supporting bilingualism, the reasons why Deaf empowerment for and by Deaf people does and does not succeed. A work of empowerment is effective if it acts on a double level: the community to be empowered and society at large, resulting in a transformation of society as a whole. This book provides instruments to work towards such a transformation.

Mainstreaming Pacifism. Conflict, success, and ethics takes on the challenge of answering the widespread objection that pacifism is ineffective. The book proposes a classification of 11 effectual means to an end (fraud, violence, force, gain, legality, masses, ideology, dialogue, humanity, time, vulnerability), and shows how such means have been at work both in the pages of classical political authors (Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx and Gandhi) and throughout history. Such effectual means are not only theoretically described, but are related to up-to-date experimental research, are observed in action when conflicts arise, and the general laws that govern their functioning are described. The main goal of the book is to show that violence is only one of such potentially successful political means. In presence of the political decision to act peacefully in international relations, apt combinations of non-violent effectual means may succeed over violence. The challenge taken on in this book is staying faithful to the topic of political success, while offering arguments for a peaceful resolution of conflicts. The result is an original cross-investigation, which gives visibility to an intriguing notion, effectuality, that has been silently at work throughout political philosophy, without ever having been thematized.