The contributors to The Anomie of the Earth explore the convergences and resonances between Autonomist Marxism and decolonial thinking. In discussing and rejecting Carl Schmitt's formulation of the nomos—a conceptualization of world order based on the Western tenets of law and property—the authors question the assumption of universal political subjects and look towards politics of the commons divorced from European notions of sovereignty. They contrast European Autonomism with North and South American decolonial and indigenous conceptions of autonomy, discuss the legacies of each, and examine social movements in the Americas and Europe. Beyond orthodox Marxism, their transatlantic exchanges point to the emerging categories disclosed by the collapse of the colonial and capitalist frameworks of Western modernity.

Contributors. Joost de Bloois, Jodi A. Byrd, Gustavo Esteva, Silvia Federici, Wilson Kaiser, Mara Kaufman, Frans-Willem Korsten, Federico Luisetti, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Benjamin Noys, John Pickles, Alvaro Reyes, Catherine Walsh, Gareth Williams, Zac Zimmer

Autonomy is a vital concept in much of modern theory, defining the Subject as capable of self-governance. Democratic theory relies on the concept of autonomy to provide justification for participatory government and the normative goal of democratic governance, which is to protect the ability of the individual to self-govern.

Offering the first examination of the concept of autonomy from a postfoundationalist perspective, The Autonomous Animal analyzes how the ideal of self-governance has shaped everyday life. Claire E. Rasmussen begins by considering the academic terrain of autonomy, then focusing on specific examples of political behavior that allow her to interrogate these theories. She demonstrates how the adolescent—a not-yet-autonomous subject—highlights how the ideal of self-governance generates practices intended to cultivate autonomy by forming the individual’s relationship to his or her body. She points up how the war on drugs rests on the perception that drug addicts are the antithesis of autonomy and thus must be regulated for their own good. Showing that the animal rights movement may challenge the distinction between human and animal, Rasmussen also examines the place of the endurance athlete in fitness culture, where self-management of the body is the exemplar of autonomous subjectivity.

In these learned essays, Joseph M. Levine shows how the idea and method of modern history first began to develop during the Renaissance, when a clear distinction between history and fiction was first proposed. The new claims for history were met by a new skepticism in a debate that still echoes today.

Levine's first three essays discuss Thomas More's preoccupation with the distinction between history and fiction; Erasmus's biblical criticism and the contribution of Renaissance philology to critical method; and the way in which Renaissance rhetoric, as in Thomas Elyot's Book of the Governor, continued to inhibit the autonomy of history. He then shows how these issues persisted into the eighteenth century, even as critical method developed. He concludes with a close description of the great controversy that culminated in Edward Gibbon's day over the authenticity of a biblical text that had been used for centuries to defend the Trinity but which turned out to be a forgery. Levine shows how by then all sides were ready to concede the autonomy of history.

In Autonomy Nicholas Brown theorizes the historical and theoretical argument for art's autonomy from its acknowledged character as a commodity. Refusing the position that the distinction between art and the commodity has collapsed, Brown demonstrates how art can, in confronting its material determinations, suspend the logic of capital by demanding interpretive attention. He applies his readings of Marx, Hegel, Adorno, and Jameson to a range of literature, photography, music, television, and sculpture, from Cindy Sherman's photography and the novels of Ben Lerner and Jennifer Egan to The Wire and the music of the White Stripes. He demonstrates that through their attention and commitment to form, such artists turn aside the determination posed by the demand of the market, thereby defeating the foreclosure of meaning entailed in commodification. In so doing, he offers a new theory of art that prompts a rethinking of the relationship between art, critical theory, and capitalism.

Today, Bernie Sanders is a household name, a wildly popular presidential candidate and an icon for progressive Democrats in the United States. But back in the 1980s, this “democratic socialist”—though some folks would prefer the term “social democrat”—was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where his administration attempted radical reforms. Some efforts were successful, but when a waterfront deal failed, it was not due to Sanders' efforts; he would rather compromise and have a net gain than be an ideological purist.
 
In his preface to this reissue of the 1990 book, Challenging the Boundaries of Reform, W. J. Conroy reflects on the recent legacy of Sanders, his Agenda for America, and his appeal to young voters. His book then looks back to identify Sanders’ experience in Burlington by examining several case studies that unfolded amidst a conservative trend nationally, an unsympathetic state government, and a hostile city council.
 
Ultimately, Conroy asks what lessons can be drawn from the case of Burlington that would aid the American left in its struggle to capture both government and civil society? 
 

Since the mid-1980s, Fritz W. Scharpf has been investigating the evolution of the multilevel European polity and its impact on the effectiveness and legitimacy of democratic government in Europe. Community and Autonomy collects in one volume Scharpf’s nearly two decades of research on government in Europe and offers new contributions that focus on the asymmetric impact of European law on the institutions and policy legacies of EU member states and on the implications of these asymmetries for the democratic legitimacy of government at national and European levels.

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth. Noting that most design—from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments—currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an “autonomous design” that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. Such design attends to questions of environment, experience, and politics while focusing on the production of human experience based on the radical interdependence of all beings. Mapping autonomous design’s principles to the history of decolonial efforts of indigenous and Afro-descended people in Latin America, Escobar shows how refiguring current design practices could lead to the creation of more just and sustainable social orders.

Finland and Europe was first published in 1982. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In 1808 the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Swedish kingdom since the thirteenth century, was invaded and in 1809 annexed by Russia -- events which took place within the context of the Napoleonic wars but whose significance was obscure to most Finns and to the outside world as well. During the nineteenth century Finnish national identity grew and Finland began to play a role in European politics. This book traces the course of Finnish involvement in European affairs from the time when it became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire down to the First World War. Juhani Paasivirta's analysis is centered upon eleven international crises, including the Russian annexation of Finland, the fall of Napoleon, two revolutions in Poland, the revolutions of 1848, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Japanese wars, and the outbreak of the First World War.

Paasivirta writes from two vantage points: he records the reactions to these events in Finland, across a broad social and economic spectrum, and the attitudes towards the 'Finnish situation' in Sweden, England, France, and Germany. Finland's relationship with Russia, and her necessarily realistic regard for the security of the Russian Empire were important matters faced by Finnish leaders; Paasivirta shows how this delicate relation collapsed, making way for a course that led to Finnish independence in 1917.

In this remarkable inquiry into the bases of social theory, Gordon L. Clark argues that the heterogeneous nature of our society, with its pluralism of values, causes the rules of social conduct to be constantly made and remade. Examining the role of the courts in structuring and achieving social discourse, he contends that legal doctrine is no different from other social theories: judicial interpretations are constructed out of specific circumstances and conflicting values, not deduced from neutral and logical principles. There is, he asserts, no final arbiter somehow unaffected by our controversies and schisms.

As concrete examples, Clark analyzes four court disputes in depth, showing that the concept of local autonomy has very different meanings and implications in each of them. These cases—Boston's defense of resident-preference hiring policies, conflict over urban land-use zoning in Toronto, a Chicago's suburb's fight against a sewage treatment plant, and the evolution of the City of Denver's power since 1900—demonstrate that legal reasoning is not impervious to other kinds of reasoning, and the solutions provided by the courts are not unique. To ground his explorations, Clark investigates both liberalism and structuralism, showing that both are inadequate bases for determining social policy. He mounts provocative critiques of the works of de Tocqueville, Nozick, Tiebout, and Posner on the one hand and Castells and Poulantzas on the other. 

This ambitious and important work will command the interest of geographers, political scientists, economists, sociologists, and legal scholars.

With an interdisciplinary combination of philosophy, theology, and family law, The Law of Love explores the impact of secular conceptions of autonomy on sexuality and family. Drawing from the thought of Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and the modern theologian Servais Pinckaers, Stephen F. Brett argues that the divorce of freedom from virtue has caused cultural relativism, and that a potent and healthy mix of temperance, chastity, and modesty is the antidote. Styled accessibly and quite cleverly with a broader audience in mind, The Law of Love will appeal to intellectuals of all faiths who are interested in facing the ambiguities and problems of contemporary life in a secularized society.

Neoliberalism is commonly viewed as an economic doctrine that seeks to limit the scope of government. Some consider it a form of predatory capitalism with adverse effects on the Global South. In this groundbreaking work, Aihwa Ong offers an alternative view of neoliberalism as an extraordinarily malleable technology of governing that is taken up in different ways by different regimes, be they authoritarian, democratic, or communist. Ong shows how East and Southeast Asian states are making exceptions to their usual practices of governing in order to position themselves to compete in the global economy. As she demonstrates, a variety of neoliberal strategies of governing are re-engineering political spaces and populations. Ong’s ethnographic case studies illuminate experiments and developments such as China’s creation of special market zones within its socialist economy; pro-capitalist Islam and women’s rights in Malaysia; Singapore’s repositioning as a hub of scientific expertise; and flexible labor and knowledge regimes that span the Pacific.

Ong traces how these and other neoliberal exceptions to business as usual are reconfiguring relationships between governing and the governed, power and knowledge, and sovereignty and territoriality. She argues that an interactive mode of citizenship is emerging, one that organizes people—and distributes rights and benefits to them—according to their marketable skills rather than according to their membership within nation-states. Those whose knowledge and skills are not assigned significant market value—such as migrant women working as domestic maids in many Asian cities—are denied citizenship. Nevertheless, Ong suggests that as the seam between sovereignty and citizenship is pried apart, a new space is emerging for NGOs to advocate for the human rights of those excluded by neoliberal measures of human worthiness.

Unlike autonomous professionals in Western industrialized democracies, professionals in a socialist, bureaucratic setting operate as employees of the state. The change in environment has important Implications not only for the practice of professions but also for the concept of professionalism itself. This collection of nine essays is the first to survey the major professions In the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The contributors investigate the implications of professional experience in a socialist economy as well as relating changes in professional organization and power to reform movements in general and perestroika in particular.


In the series Labor and Social Change, edited by Paula Rayman and Carmen Sirianni.
 

Balancing the development of autonomy with that of social interdependence is a crucial aim of education in any society, but nowhere has it been more hotly debated than in Japan, where controversial education reforms over the past twenty years have attempted to reconcile the two goals. In this book, Peter Cave explores these reforms as they have played out at the junior high level, the most intense pressure point in the Japanese system, a time when students prepare for the high school entrance exams that will largely determine their educational trajectories and future livelihoods.
           
Cave examines the implementation of “relaxed education” reforms that attempted to promote individual autonomy and free thinking in Japanese classrooms. As he shows, however, these policies were eventually transformed by educators and school administrators into curricula and approaches that actually promoted social integration over individuality, an effect opposite to the reforms’ intended purpose. With vivid detail, he offers the voices of teachers, students, and parents to show what happens when national education policies run up against long-held beliefs and practices, and what their complex and conflicted interactions say about the production of self and community in education. The result is a fascinating analysis of a turbulent era in Japanese education that offers lessons for educational practitioners in any country. 

Famously described by Louis Brandeis as "the most comprehensive of rights" and 'the right most valued by civilized men," the right of privacy or autonomy is more embattled during modern times than any other. Debate over its meaning, scope, and constitutional status is so widespread that it all but defines the post-1960s era of constitutional interpretation. Conservative Robert Bork called it "a loose canon in the law," while feminist Catharine MacKinnon attacked it as the “right of men to be left alone to oppress women.” Can a right with such prominent critics from across the political spectrum be grounded in constitutional law?

In this book, James Fleming responds to these controversies by arguing that the right to privacy or autonomy should be grounded in a theory of securing constitutional democracy. His framework seeks to secure the basic liberties that are preconditions for deliberative democracy—to allow citizens to deliberate about the institutions and policies of their government—as well as deliberative autonomy—to enable citizens to deliberate about the conduct of their own lives. Together, Fleming shows, these two preconditions can afford everyone the status of free and equal citizenship in our morally pluralistic constitutional democracy.

Historians of religion have examined at length the Protestant Reformation and the liberal idea of the self-governing individual that arose from it. In Spiritual Despots, J. Barton Scott reveals an unexamined piece of this story: how Protestant technologies of asceticism became entangled with Hindu spiritual practices to create an ideal of the “self-ruling subject” crucial to both nineteenth-century reform culture and early twentieth-century anticolonialism in India. Scott uses the quaint term “priestcraft” to track anticlerical polemics that vilified religious hierarchy, celebrated the individual, and endeavored to reform human subjects by freeing them from external religious influence. By drawing on English, Hindi, and Gujarati reformist writings, Scott provides a panoramic view of precisely how the specter of the crafty priest transformed religion and politics in India.
 
Through this alternative genealogy of the self-ruling subject, Spiritual Despots demonstrates that Hindu reform movements cannot be understood solely within the precolonial tradition, but rather need to be read alongside other movements of their period. The book’s focus moves fluidly between Britain and India—engaging thinkers such as James Mill, Keshub Chunder Sen, Max Weber, Karsandas Mulji, Helena Blavatsky, M. K. Gandhi, and others—to show how colonial Hinduism shaped major modern discourses about the self. Throughout, Scott sheds much-needed light how the rhetoric of priestcraft and practices of worldly asceticism played a crucial role in creating a new moral and political order for twentieth-century India and demonstrates the importance of viewing the emergence of secularism through the colonial encounter.

The book describes the “nation-building” strategy by which an increasing number of Native communities have set about reclaiming powers of self-determination, strengthening their cultures, and developing their economies. A piece of this movement has been the establishment of new models for tribally-driven and requested relations between universities and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities and organizations.

Building on the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development’s experience with more than 120 nation-building projects over two decades, Universities and Indian Country posits that the tenets of nation building can provide a strategy for expanding and diversifying universities’ perspectives of knowledge in a multicultural world, while also producing results that are requested by and useful to Native communities.

This groundbreaking volume extends the dialogue begun by the Harvard project, providing another venue for the sharing of knowledge and information. The projects presented address a wide range of topics, including the regulation of genetic research, human resource development, tribal fund-raising, development of tribal museums, and freedom of the press in Indian Country.

Universities and Indian Country’s focus on the concerns and questions of Native communities themselves, provides insight not only into how projects came together, but also into what significance they have to the tribal partners. This compilation is a valuable resource for any student, professional, or community member concerned with issues of nation building and self-determination.