Since Donald Trump's first day in office, a large and energetic grassroots "Resistance" has taken to the streets to protest his administration's plans for the United States. Millions marched in pussy ...hats on the day after the inauguration; outraged citizens flocked to airports to declare that America must be open to immigrants; masses of demonstrators circled the White House to demand action on climate change; and that was only the beginning. Who are the millions of people marching against the Trump administration, how are they connected to the Blue Wave that washed over the U.S. Congress in 2018-and what does it all mean for the future of American democracy? American Resistance traces activists from the streets back to the communities and congressional districts around the country where they live, work, and vote. Using innovative survey data and interviews with key players, Dana R. Fisher analyzes how Resistance groups have channeled outrage into activism, using distributed organizing to make activism possible by anyone from anywhere, whenever and wherever it is needed most. Beginning with the first Women's March and following the movement through the 2018 midterms, Fisher demonstrates how the energy and enthusiasm of the Resistance paid off in a wave of Democratic victories. She reveals how the Left rebounded from the devastating 2016 election, the lessons for turning grassroots passion into electoral gains, and what comes next.American Resistance explains the organizing that is revitalizing democracy to counter Trump's presidency.
Stories of the missing offer profound insights into the tension between how political systems see us and how we see each other. The search for people who go missing as a result of war, political ...violence, genocide, or natural disaster reveals how forms of governance that objectify the person are challenged. Contemporary political systems treat persons instrumentally, as objects to be administered rather than as singular beings: the apparatus of government recognizes categories, not people. In contrast, relatives of the missing demand that authorities focus on a particular person: families and friends are looking for someone who to them is unique and irreplaceable.
InMissing, Jenny Edkins highlights stories from a range of circumstances that shed light on this critical tension: the aftermath of World War II, when millions in Europe were displaced; the period following the fall of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan in 2001 and the bombings in London in 2005; searches for military personnel missing in action; the thousands of political "disappearances" in Latin America; and in more quotidian circumstances where people walk out on their families and disappear of their own volition. When someone goes missing we often find that we didn't know them as well as we thought: there is a sense in which we are "missing" even to our nearest and dearest and even when we are present, not absent. In this thought-provoking book, Edkins investigates what this more profound "missingness" might mean in political terms.
As the site of the assassination that triggered World War I and the place where the term "ethnic cleansing" was invented during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Bosnia has become a global symbol of ...nationalist conflict and ethnic division. But as Edin Hajdarpasic shows, formative contestations over the region began well before 1914, emerging with the rise of new nineteenth-century forces-Serbian and Croatian nationalisms as well as Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim, and Yugoslav political movements-that claimed this province as their own.Whose Bosnia?reveals the political pressures and moral arguments that made this land a prime target of escalating nationalist activity.
To explain the remarkable proliferation of national movements since the nineteenth century, Hajdarpasic draws on a vast range of sources-records of secret societies, imperial surveillance files, poetry, paintings, personal correspondences-spanning Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, and Austria. Challenging conventional readings of Balkan histories,Whose Bosnia?provides new insight into central themes of modern politics, illuminating core subjects like "the people," state-building, and national suffering. Hajdarpasic uses South Slavic debates over Bosnian Muslim identity to propose a new figure in the history of nationalism: the(br)other, a character signifying at the same time the potential of being both "brother" and "Other," containing the fantasy of both complete assimilation and insurmountable difference. By bringing such figures into focus,Whose Bosnia?shows nationalism to be an immensely dynamic and open-ended force, one that eludes any clear sense of historical closure.
Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be ...understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (as well as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.
InSpoils of Truce, Reinoud Leenders documents the extensive corruption that accompanied the reconstruction of Lebanon after the end of a decade and a half of civil war. With the signing of the Ta'if ...peace accord in 1989, the rebuilding of the country's shattered physical infrastructure and the establishment of a functioning state apparatus became critical demands. Despite the urgent needs of its citizens, however, graft was rampant. Leenders describes the extent and nature of this corruption in key sectors of the Lebanese economy and government, including transportation, health care, energy, natural resources, construction, and social assistance programs.
Exploring in detail how corruption implicated senior policymakers and high-ranking public servants, Leenders offers a clear-eyed perspective on state institutions in the developing world. He also addresses the overriding role of the Syrian leadership's interests in Lebanon and in particular its manipulation of the country's internal differences. His qualitative and disaggregated approach to dissecting the politics of creating and reshaping state institutions complements the more typical quantitative methods used in the study of corruption. More broadly,Spoils of Trucewill be uncomfortable reading for those who insist that power-sharing strategies in conflict management and resolution provide some sort of panacea for divided societies hoping to recover from armed conflict.
This book explores concepts of Cultural genocide, its definitions, place in international law, the systems and methods that contribute to its manifestations, and its occurrences. Through a systematic ...approach and comprehensive analysis, international and interdisciplinary contributors from the fields of genocide studies, legal studies, criminology, sociology, archaeology, human rights, colonial studies, and anthropology examine the legal, structural, and political issues associated with cultural genocide. This includes a series of geographically representative case studies from the USA, Brazil, Australia, West Papua, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, and Canada.This volume is unique in its interdisciplinarity, regional coverage, and the various methods of cultural genocide represented, and will be of interest to scholars of genocide studies, cultural studies and human rights, international law, international relations, indigenous studies, anthropology, and history.
Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It examines four important traditions within the history of ...modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself.
La Colombie a vu tant de conflits qui auraient pu être résolus se solder par une guerre ; tant de projets qui auraient pu être réalisés perdus au milieu des rivalités entre factions ; tant d’accords ...qui ont échoué à cause de rancunes. Pour résumer, tant de bonnes intentions qui ont été gâchées par des affects mal contrôlés. L’injustice sociale, le despotisme, l’oligarchie, l’incapacité administrative et la corruption sont à la source de ces drames et les études qui le montrent sont nombreuses. Cependant, la Colombie n’aurait-elle pas pu dépasser ces obstacles sans les emportements de sa classe politique ? Mauricio García Villegas répond à cette question de la manière suivante : dans toutes les sociétés, il existe une tension interne entre ce que Spinoza appelait, d’une part, les « passions tristes » – la haine, la vengeance, le ressentiment, l’envie, la peur – et, de l’autre, les « passions joyeuses » – la bienveillance, la compassion, le respect et la sympathie. En Colombie, l’équilibre, surtout dans le milieu politique, a lourdement penché du côté de la haine et de la vengeance. L’auteur commence son analyse par les découvertes de la « révolution cognitive » pour expliquer l’importance des affects dans la nature humaine et conclut par une discussion sur le mal et une défense éthique de la tolérance, et des autres émotions dites placides, comme possibilités d’endiguer la violence qui ébranle le pays depuis plus de cinquante ans.
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