Illusive utopia Kim, Suk-Young
2010., 20100602, 2010, c2010.
eBook
No nation stages massive parades and collective performances on the scale of North Korea. Even amid a series of intense political/economic crises and international conflicts, the financially troubled ...country continues to invest massive amounts of resources to sponsor unflinching displays of patriotism, glorifying its leaders and revolutionary history through state rituals that can involve hundreds of thousands of performers. Author Suk-Young Kim explores how sixty years of state-sponsored propaganda performances—including public spectacles, theater, film, and other visual media such as posters—shape everyday practice such as education, the mobilization of labor, the gendering of social interactions, the organization of national space, tourism, and transnational human rights. Equal parts fascinating and disturbing, Illusive Utopia shows how the country's visual culture and performing arts set the course for the illusionary formation of a distinctive national identity and state legitimacy, illuminating deep-rooted cultural explanations as to why socialism has survived in North Korea despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China's continuing march toward economic prosperity. With over fifty striking color illustrations, Illusive Utopia captures the spectacular illusion within a country where the arts are not only a means of entertainment but also a forceful institution used to regulate, educate, and mobilize the population.
Based on a series of pathbreaking lectures given at Yale University in 2012, this powerful, thought-provoking work by national best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein combines legal theory with ...behavioral economics to make a fresh argument about the legitimate scope of government, bearing on obesity, smoking, distracted driving, health care, food safety, and other highly volatile, high-profile public issues. Behavioral economists have established that people often make decisions that run counter to their best interests-producing what Sunstein describes as "behavioral market failures." Sometimes we disregard the long term; sometimes we are unrealistically optimistic; sometimes we do not see what is in front of us. With this evidence in mind, Sunstein argues for a new form of paternalism, one that protects people against serious errors but also recognizes the risk of government overreaching and usually preserves freedom of choice.Against those who reject paternalism of any kind, Sunstein shows that "choice architecture"-government-imposed structures that affect our choices-is inevitable, and hence that a form of paternalism cannot be avoided. He urges that there are profoundly moral reasons to ensure that choice architecture is helpful rather than harmful-and that it makes people's lives better and longer.
How do issues end up on the agenda? Why do lawmakers routinely invest in program oversight and broad policy development? What considerations drive legislative policy change? For many, Congress is an ...institution consumed by partisan bickering and gridlock. Yet the institution's long history of addressing significant societal problems - even in recent years - seems to contradict this view. Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving argues that the willingness of many voters to hold elected officials accountable for societal conditions is central to appreciating why Congress responds to problems despite the many reasons mustered for why it cannot. The authors show that, across decades of policy making, problem-solving motivations explain why bipartisanship is a common pattern of congressional behavior and offer the best explanation for legislative issue attention and policy change.
What do the physical characteristics of the books acquired by elite women in the late medieval and early modern periods tell us about their owners, and what in particular can their ...illustrations-especially their illustrations of women-reveal? Centered on Anne, duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, with reference to her contemporaries and successors,The Queen's Libraryexamines the cultural issues surrounding female modes of empowerment and book production. The book aims to uncover the harmonies and conflicts that surfaced in male-authored, male-illustrated works for and about women. In her interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural and political legacy of Anne of Brittany and her female contemporaries, Cynthia J. Brown argues that the verbal and visual imagery used to represent these women of influence was necessarily complex because of its inherently conflicting portrayal of power and subordination. She contends that it can be understood fully only by drawing on the intersection of pertinent literary, historical, codicological, and art historical sources. InThe Queen's Library, Brown examines depictions of women of power in five spheres that tellingly expose this tension: rituals of urban and royal reception; the politics of female personification allegories; the "famous-women"topos; women in mourning; and women mourned.
In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, ...these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children’s books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices.
Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form.
Spotlighting three thematic threads – communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda – The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.
Winner of the 2007 Everett Lee Hunt Award presented by the Eastern Communication Association Scripting the Black Masculine Body traces the origins of Black body politics in the United States and its ...contemporary manifestations in popular cultural productions. From early blackface cinema through contemporary portrayals of the Black body in hip-hop music and film, Ronald L. Jackson II examines how African American identities have been socially constructed, constituted, and publicly understood, and argues that popular music artists and film producers often are complicit with Black body stereotypes. Jackson offers a communicative perspective on body politics through a blend of social scientific and humanities approaches and offers possibilities for the liberation of the Black body from its current ineffectual and paralyzing representations.
Trust us Hellstrom, Anders
2016., 20160101, 2016, 2016-01-15, 2015
eBook, Book
In Scandinavia, there is separation in the electorate between those who embrace diversity and those who wish for tighter bonds between people and nation. This book focuses on three nationalist ...populist parties in Scandinavia-the Sweden Democrats, the Progress Party in Norway, and the Danish People's Party. In order to affect domestic politics by addressing this conflict of diversity versus homogeneity, these parties must enter the national parliament while earning the nation's trust. Of the three, the Sweden Democrats have yet to earn the trust of the mainstream, leading to polarized and emotionally driven public debate that raises the question of national identity and what is understood as the common man.
While traditionally powerful Western economies are treading water at best, beset by crises in banking, housing, and employment, industrial growth and economic development are exploding in China and ...India. The world's two most populous nations are the biggest reasons for Asia's growing footprint on other global regions. The increasing size and impact of that footprint are especially important in the Middle East, an economic, religious, and geopolitical linchpin. The East Moves West details the growing interdependence of the Middle East and Asia and projects the likely ramifications of this evolving relationship. It also examines the role of Pakistan, Japan, and South Korea in the region. Geoffrey Kemp, a longtime analyst of global security and political economy, compares and contrasts Indian and Chinese involvement in the Middle East. He stresses an embedded historical dimension that gives India substantially more familiarity and interest in the region--India was there first, and it has maintained that head start. Both nations, however, are clearly on the rise and leaving an indelible mark on the Middle East, and that enhanced influence has international ramifications for the United States and throughout the world. Does the emergence of these Asian giants--with their increasingly huge need for energy--strengthen the case for cooperative security, particularly in the maritime arena? After all, safe and open sea-lanes remain an essential component of mutually beneficial intercontinental trade, making India and China increasingly dependent on safe passage of oil tankers. Or will we see reversion to more traditional competition and even conflict, given that the major Asian powers themselves have so many unresolved problems and that the future of the U.S. presence in the area is uncertain. Kemp believes the United States will remain the dominant
military power in the region but will have to share some security responsibilities with the Asians, esp.
Masters of the universe Jones, Daniel Stedman; Jones, Daniel Stedman
2012., 20140721, 2014, 2012-09-24, 2014-07-21, 20120101
eBook
Based on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement,Masters of the Universetraces the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar Europe to supremacy ...under Reagan and Thatcher and in the decades since. Daniel Stedman Jones argues that there was nothing inevitable about the victory of free-market politics. Far from being the story of the simple triumph of right-wing ideas, the neoliberal breakthrough was contingent on the economic crises of the 1970s and the acceptance of the need for new policies by the political left. This edition includes a new foreword in which the author addresses the relationship between intellectual history and the history of politics and policy.
Fascinating, important, and timely, this is a book for anyone who wants to understand the history behind the Anglo-American love affair with the free market, as well as the origins of the current economic crisis.
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