After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule was widely publicized in the United States as one of the humanitarian issues justifying intervention.Kabul ...Carnivalexplores the contradictions, ambiguities, and unintended effects of the emancipatory projects for Afghan women designed and imposed by external organizations. Building on embodiment and performance theory, this evocative ethnography describes Afghan women's responses to social anxieties about identity that have emerged as a result of the military occupation.
Offering one of the first long-term on-the-ground studies since the arrival of allied forces in 2001, Julie Billaud introduces readers to daily life in Afghanistan through portraits of women targeted by international aid policies. Examining encounters between international experts in gender and transitional justice, Afghan civil servants and NGO staff, and women unaffiliated with these organizations, Billaud unpacks some of the paradoxes that arise from competing understandings of democracy and rights practices.Kabul Carnivalreveals the ways in which the international community's concern with the visibility of women in public has ultimately created tensions and constrained women's capacity to find a culturally legitimate voice.
Small and midsized cities played a key role in the Industrial Revolution in the United States as hubs for the shipping, warehousing, and distribution of manufactured products. But as the twentieth ...century brought cheaper transportation and faster communication, these cities were hit hard by population losses and economic decline. In the twenty-first century, many former industrial hubs-from Springfield to Wichita, from Providence to Columbus-are finding pathways to reinvention. With innovative urban policies and design, once-declining cities are becoming the unlikely pioneers of postindustrial urban revitalization.Revitalizing American Citiesexplores the historical, regional, and political factors that have allowed some industrial cities to regain their footing in a changing economy. The volume discusses national patterns and drivers of growth and decline, presents case studies and comparative analyses of decline and renewal, considers approaches to the problems that accompany the vacant land and blight common to many of the country's declining cities, and examines tactics that cities can use to prosper in a changing economy. Featuring contributions from scholars and experts of urban planning, economic development, public policy, and education,Revitalizing American Citiesprovides a detailed, illuminating look at past and possible reinventions of resilient American cities.Contributors:Frank S. Alexander, Eugenie L. Birch, Paul C. Brophy, Steven Cochrane, Gilles Duranton, Sean Ellis, Kyle Fee, Edward Glaeser, Daniel Hartley, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Sophia Koropeckyj, Alan Mallach, Ana Patricia Muñoz, Jeremy Nowak, Laura W. Perna, Aaron Smith, Catherine Tumber, Susan M. Wachter, Kimberly A. Zeuli.
The Trump presidency has resulted in a fundamentally disruptive
moment in this nation's political culture. Not only were there
different policy options and directions, but the cultural artifacts
of ...politics changed because of how this president dramatically
challenged the existing norms of political behavior and action. As
we have shifted from a period of American liberalism to a time of
political populism, deep fissures are dividing Americans in general
and Jews in particular.
The Impact of the Presidency of Donald Trump on American
Jewry and Israel unpacks President Donald Trump's distinctive
and unique relationship with the American Jewish community and the
State of Israel. Addressing the various dimensions of his personal
and political connections with Jews and Israel, this publication is
designed to provide an assessment of how the Trump presidency has
influenced and altered American Jewish political behavior. Writers
from different backgrounds and political orientations bring a broad
range of perspectives designed to examine various aspects of this
presidency, including Trump's particular impact on Israel-US
relations, his special connection with Orthodox Jews, and his
complex and uneven relationship with Jewish Republicans.
For liberal American Jews, these four years represented a
fundamental revolution, overturning and challenging much that a
generation of activists had fought to achieve and protect. For
Trump's supporters, it afforded them an opportunity to advance
their priorities, while joining the forty-fifth president in
changing the American political landscape. The "Trump effect" will
extend well beyond his four-year tenure, creating an environment
that has fomented the politics of hate and exposed a deeply
embedded presence of anti-Semitism. How Americans understand this
moment in time and the ways society will adapt can be reflected
through the prism of the Jewish encounter with Trumpism that this
volume seeks to explore.
Life in debt Han, Clara
2012., 20120506, 2012, 2012-06-05, 20120101
eBook
Chile is widely known as the first experiment in neoliberalism in Latin America, carried out and made possible through state violence. Since the beginning of the transition in 1990, the state has ...pursued a national project of reconciliation construed as debts owed to the population. The state owed a "social debt" to the poor accrued through inequalities generated by economic liberalization, while society owed a "moral debt" to the victims of human rights violations. Life in Debt invites us into lives and world of a poor urban neighborhood in Santiago. Tracing relations and lives between 1999 and 2010, Clara Han explores how the moral and political subjects imagined and asserted by poverty and mental health policies and reparations for human rights violations are refracted through relational modes and their boundaries. Attending to intimate scenes and neighborhood life, Han reveals the force of relations in the making of selves in a world in which unstable work patterns, illness, and pervasive economic indebtedness are aspects of everyday life. Lucidly written, Life in Debt provides a unique meditation on both the past inhabiting actual life conditions but also on the difficulties of obligation and achievements of responsiveness.
The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of ...international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.
Inclusion and resilience Silva, Joana; Levin, Victoria; Morgandi, Matteo
2013., 2013, 05-02-2013, 2013-05
eBook, Book
Open access
This report is organized in five chapters: chapter one, a framework for Social Safety Nets (SSN) reform in the Middle East and North Africa, describes and illustrates the reasons for the region's ...growing need for SSN reform and establishes the framework for renewed SSNs. Chapter two, the challenge: poverty, exclusion and vulnerability to shocks, analyzes the challenges facing the region's poor and vulnerable households, which SSNs should focus on as a priority. Chapter three, the current state of SSNs in the Middle East and North Africa, analyzes SSN spending and assesses different aspects of the SSN systems' performance (including coverage, targeting, generosity, and the impact on poverty and inequality of both subsidy and non-subsidy SSNs). It benchmarks such performance against that of other regions and countries and identifies the gaps in existing systems. Chapter four, the political economy of SSN reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: what do citizens want? Presents new evidence on citizens preferences concerning redistribution and SSN design, using newly collected data (MENA SPEAKS surveys and the Jordan Gives behavioral experiment). It also discusses how political economy considerations could be taken into account in designing renewed SSNs in the region. Finally, chapter five, the way forward: how to make safety nets in the Middle East and North Africa more effective and innovative analyzes and proposes an agenda for reform and the path for moving forward, using global experience and the evidence presented in the preceding chapters.
Hanan Al-Cinema Marks, Laura U
2015, 2015-09-25, 2015-10-16
eBook
An examination of experimental cinema and media art from the Arabic-speaking world that explores filmmakers' creative and philosophical inventiveness in trying times.
The third quarter of the twentieth century was a golden age for labor in the advanced industrial countries, characterized by rising incomes, relatively egalitarian wage structures, and reasonable ...levels of job security. The subsequent quarter-century has seen less positive performance along a number of these dimensions. This period has instead been marked by rapid globalization of economic activity that has brought increased insecurity to workers. The contributors to this volume distinguish four explanations for this historic shift. These include 1) rapid development of new technologies; 2) global competition for both business and labor; 3) deregulation of industry with more reliance on markets; and 4) increased immigration of workers, especially unskilled workers, from developing countries. In addition to analyzing the causes of these trends, the contributors also investigate important consequences, ranging from changes in collective bargaining and employment relations to family formation decisions and incarceration policy.
The possibility of a new emancipatory and democratizing politics, explored through the lens of recent urban insurgencies.
In Promises of the Political, Erik Swyngedouw explores whether progressive ...and emancipatory politics is still possible in a post-political era. Activists and scholars have developed the concept of post-politicization to describe the process by which “the political” is replaced by techno-managerial governance. If the political domain has been systematically narrowed into a managerial apparatus in which consensual governance prevails, where can we find any possibility of a new democratic politics? Swyngedouw examines this question through the lens of recent urban insurgencies. In Zuccotti Park, Paternoster Square, Taksim Square, Tahrir Square, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, he argues, insurgents have gathered to choreograph new configurations of the democratic.
Swyngedouw grounds his argument in urban and ecological processes, struggles, and conflicts through which post-politicization has become institutionally entrenched. He casts “the city” and “nature” as emblematic of the construction of post-democratic modes of governance. He describes the disappearance of the urban polis into the politics of neoliberal planetary urbanization; and he argues that the political-managerial framing of “nature” and the environment contributes to the formation of depoliticized governance—most notably in the impotent politics of climate change. Finally, he explores the possibilities for a reassertion of the political, considering whether—after the squares are cleared, the tents folded, and everyday life resumes—the urban uprisings of the last several years signal a return of the political.
In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and ...anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers—including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellán, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber—whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.
