front cover of Daily Labors
Daily Labors
Marketing Identity and Bodies on a New York City Street Corner
Carolyn Pinedo-Turnovsky
Temple University Press, 2019

On street corners throughout the country, men stand or sit together patiently while they wait for someone looking to hire un buen trabajador (a good worker). These day laborers are visible symbols of the changing nature of work—and the demographics of workers—in the United States. 

Carolyn Pinedo-Turnovsky spent nearly three years visiting with African American men and Latino immigrant men who looked for work as day laborers at a Brooklyn street intersection. Her fascinating ethnography, Daily Labors, considers these immigrants and citizens as active participants in their social and economic life. They not only work for wages but also labor daily to institute change, create knowledge, and contribute new meanings to shape their social world. 

Daily Labors reveals how ideologies about race, gender, nation, and legal status operate on the corner and the vulnerabilities, discrimination, and exploitation workers face in this labor market. Pinedo-Turnovsky shows how workers market themselves to conform to employers’ preconceptions of a “good worker” and how this performance paradoxically leads to a more precarious workplace experience. Ultimately, she sheds light on belonging, community, and what a “good day laborer” for these workers really is.

[more]

front cover of The Daily Thomas Paine
The Daily Thomas Paine
A Year of Common-Sense Quotes for a Nonsensical Age
Thomas Paine
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Thomas Paine was the spark that ignited the American Revolution. More than just a founding father, he was a verbal bomb-thrower, a rationalist, and a rebel. In his influential pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis, Paine codified both colonial outrage and the intellectual justification for independence, arguing consistently and convincingly for Enlightenment values and the power of the people. Today, we are living in times that, as Paine famously said, “try men’s souls.” Whatever your politics, if you’re seeking to understand the political world we live in, where better to look than Paine?

​The Daily Thomas Paine offers a year’s worth of pithy and provocative quotes from this quintessentially American figure. Editor Edward G. Gray argues that we are living in a moment that Thomas Paine might recognize—or perhaps more precisely, a moment desperate for someone whose rhetoric can ignite a large-scale social and political transformation. Paine was a master of political rhetoric, from the sarcastic insult to the diplomatic aperçu, and this book offers a sleek and approachable sampler of some of the sharpest bits from his oeuvre. As Paine himself says in the entry for January 20: “The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion.” The Daily Thomas Paine should prove equally incendiary and inspirational for contemporary readers with an eye for politics, even those who prefer the tweet to the pamphlet.
 
[more]

logo for University of Illinois Press
The Daley Show
Inside the Transformative Reign of Chicago's Richard M. Daley
Forrest Claypool; Foreword by David Axelrod
University of Illinois Press, 2024
“You have to have passion. You have to have honesty in office. You have to love the people.” Those words summed up the outlook, if not always the actions, of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Elected to govern a city roiled by racial and economic crises, Daley adroitly wielded the tools of power in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics. Under his rule, Chicago rebuilt a dying downtown, becoming a cultural and tourism mecca punctuated by construction of the iconic Millenium Park. To drive growth, he engineered a massive expansion of O’Hare Airport. To correct a historical injustice, he razed the city’s notorious public housing high rises as part of a sweeping plan to transform the lives of the city’s poorest residents. Yet corruption and graft, City Hall’s role in calamities like the 1995 heat wave, and Daley’s inaction in the face of evidence of police torture, tarnished his many accomplishments.

A two-time Daley chief-of-staff, Forrest Claypool draws on his long career in local government to examine the lasting successes, ongoing dramas, and disastrous failures that defined Daley’s twenty-two years in City Hall. Throughout, Claypool uses Daley’s career to illustrate how effectual political leadership relies on an adept and unapologetic use of power--and how wielding that power without challenge inevitably pulls government toward corruption.

A warts-and-all account of a pivotal figure in Chicago history, The Daley Show tells the story of how Richard M. Daley became the quintessential big city mayor.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Dam Politics
Restoring America's Rivers
William R. Lowry
Georgetown University Press, 2003

The politics of building dams and levees and other structures are just part of the policies determining how American rivers are managed or mismanaged. America's well-being depends upon the health of those rivers and important decisions go beyond just dam-building or dam removal. American rivers are suffering from poor water quality, altered flows, and diminished natural habitat. Current efforts by policymakers to change the ways American rivers are managed range from the removal of dams to the simulation of seasonal flows to the restoration of habitat, all with varying degrees of success.

Efforts to restore American rivers are clearly delineated by William Lowry in Dam Politics as he looks at how public policy and rivers interact, examines the physical differences in rivers that affect policies, and analyzes the political differences among the groups that use them. He argues that we are indeed moving into an era of restoration (defined in part as removing dams but also as restoring the water quality, seasonal flows, and natural habitat that existed before structural changes to the rivers), and seeks to understand the political circumstances that affect the degree of restoration.

Lowry presents case studies of eight river restoration efforts, including dam removals on the Neuse and Kennebec rivers, simulation of seasonal flows on the Colorado river, and the failed attempt to restore salmon runs on the Snake river. He develops a typology of four different kinds of possible change—dependent on the parties involved and the physical complexity of the river—and then examines the cases using natural historical material along with dozens of interviews with key policymakers. Policy approaches such as conjunctive water management, adaptive management, alternative licensing processes, and water marketing are presented as possible ways of using our rivers more wisely.

Dam Politics provides a useful and systematic account of how American waterways are managed and how current policies are changing. American rivers are literally the lifeblood of our nation. Lowry has written a lively and accessible book that makes it clear as a mountain stream that it matters deeply how those rivers are managed.

[more]

front cover of Damaged Parents
Damaged Parents
An Anatomy of Child Neglect
Norman A. Polansky, Mary Ann Chalmers, Elizabeth Werthan Buttenwieser, and David P. Williams
University of Chicago Press, 1981
"Most of us are unaware of child neglect even when we are witnessing it. . . . Neglect is a matter of things undone, of inaction compounded by indifference. Since it goes on at home, it is a very private sin. . . . It is little wonder that most of the public is unaware of poor child caring. Its ignorance is even greater as to how widespread the problem is. But this is not a blissful ignorance. The public may not want to attend to child neglect, but it lives with the distortions of human personality that are left in its wake."—from chapter 1 of Damaged Parents

"Norman Polansky and his colleagues have produced a truly remarkable book. . . . One of the consequences of [the] relative invisibility of child neglect is that we also know less about it. But this book will help to correct that for it contains reports of findings from two systematic efforts to define, measure, classify, and understand child neglect."—Thomas M. Young, Social Service Review
[more]

front cover of Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development
Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development
Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007
Allen F. Isaacman
Ohio University Press, 2013
Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River, built in the early 1970s during the final years of Portuguese rule, was the last major infrastructure project constructed in Africa during the turbulent era of decolonization. Engineers and hydrologists praised the dam for its technical complexity and the skills required to construct what was then the world’s fifth-largest mega-dam. Portuguese colonial officials cited benefits they expected from the dam—from expansion of irrigated farming and European settlement, to improved transportation throughout the Zambezi River Valley, to reduced flooding in this area of unpredictable rainfall. “The project, however, actually resulted in cascading layers of human displacement, violence, and environmental destruction. Its electricity benefited few Mozambicans, even after the former guerrillas of FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) came to power; instead, it fed industrialization in apartheid South Africa.” (Richard Roberts) This in-depth study of the region examines the dominant developmentalist narrative that has surrounded the dam, chronicles the continual violence that has accompanied its existence, and gives voice to previously unheard narratives of forced labor, displacement, and historical and contemporary life in the dam’s shadow.
[more]

front cover of Dance of the Furies
Dance of the Furies
Europe and the Outbreak of World War I
Michael S. Neiberg
Harvard University Press, 2011

The common explanation for the outbreak of World War I depicts Europe as a minefield of nationalism, needing only the slightest pressure to set off an explosion of passion that would rip the continent apart. But in a crucial reexamination of the outbreak of violence, Michael S. Neiberg shows that ordinary Europeans, unlike their political and military leaders, neither wanted nor expected war during the fateful summer of 1914. By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.

Neiberg marshals letters, diaries, and memoirs of ordinary citizens across Europe to show that the onset of war was experienced as a sudden, unexpected event. As they watched a minor diplomatic crisis erupt into a continental bloodbath, they expressed shock, revulsion, and fear. But when bargains between belligerent governments began to crumble under the weight of conflict, public disillusionment soon followed. Yet it was only after the fighting acquired its own horrible momentum that national hatreds emerged under the pressure of mutually escalating threats, wartime atrocities, and intense government propaganda.

Dance of the Furies gives voice to a generation who found themselves compelled to participate in a ghastly, protracted orgy of violence they never imagined would come to pass.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Dance of the Furies
Europe and the Outbreak of World War I
Michael S. Neiberg
Harvard University Press

The common explanation for the outbreak of World War I depicts Europe as a minefield of nationalism, needing only the slightest pressure to set off an explosion of passion that would rip the continent apart. But in a crucial reexamination of the outbreak of violence, Michael S. Neiberg shows that ordinary Europeans, unlike their political and military leaders, neither wanted nor expected war during the fateful summer of 1914. By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.

Neiberg marshals letters, diaries, and memoirs of ordinary citizens across Europe to show that the onset of war was experienced as a sudden, unexpected event. As they watched a minor diplomatic crisis erupt into a continental bloodbath, they expressed shock, revulsion, and fear. But when bargains between belligerent governments began to crumble under the weight of conflict, public disillusionment soon followed. Yet it was only after the fighting acquired its own horrible momentum that national hatreds emerged under the pressure of mutually escalating threats, wartime atrocities, and intense government propaganda.

Dance of the Furies gives voice to a generation who found themselves compelled to participate in a ghastly, protracted orgy of violence they never imagined would come to pass.

[more]

front cover of Dance of the Trustees
Dance of the Trustees
On the Astonishing Concerns of a Small Ohio Township
Dylan Taylor-Lehman
The Ohio State University Press, 2018
On September 9, 2015, in the quirky village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Miami Township Board of Trustees arbitrated a dispute concerning an area bed and breakfast that was apparently causing problems in the neighborhood where it was located. People were irate: the B&B was considered too loud by some but unfairly under attack by others, while township officials were called incompetent by both sides for not ruling in their favor. The trustees were amused, concerned, and baffled at the situation before them.
 
This quaint debate represents just one of many fascinating problems the trustees deal with on a daily basis. While Miami Township is small, the concerns are myriad—from cemeteries filled with unknown remains to a fire department to oversee to legal action required against properties clogged with junk. The responsibilities are doubly impressive considering no trustees have backgrounds in public office.
 
This book combines entertaining nonfiction vignettes with well-researched township history—including a history of religious cults and the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was once in town—and elucidates the processes behind an entire civic division. Dance of the Trustees documents twenty-first-century small-town life with humor, warmth, and erudition.
 
 
[more]

front cover of The Dangerous Class
The Dangerous Class
The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat
Clyde W. Barrow
University of Michigan Press, 2020
Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.
 
[more]

front cover of Dangerous Counsel
Dangerous Counsel
Accountability and Advice in Ancient Greece
Matthew Landauer
University of Chicago Press, 2019
We often talk loosely of the “tyranny of the majority” as a threat to the workings of democracy. But, in ancient Greece, the analogy of demos and tyrant was no mere metaphor, nor a simple reflection of elite prejudice. Instead, it highlighted an important structural feature of Athenian democracy. Like the tyrant, the Athenian demos was an unaccountable political actor with the power to hold its subordinates to account. And like the tyrant, the demos could be dangerous to counsel since the orator speaking before the assembled demos was accountable for the advice he gave.
           
With Dangerous Counsel, Matthew Landauer analyzes the sometimes ferocious and unpredictable politics of accountability in ancient Greece and offers novel readings of ancient history, philosophy, rhetoric, and drama. In comparing the demos to a tyrant, thinkers such as Herodotus, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristophanes were attempting to work out a theory of the badness of unaccountable power; to understand the basic logic of accountability and why it is difficult to get right; and to explore the ways in which political discourse is profoundly shaped by institutions and power relationships. In the process they created strikingly portable theories of counsel and accountability that traveled across political regime types and remain relevant to our contemporary political dilemmas.
 
[more]

front cover of Dangerous Frames
Dangerous Frames
How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion
Nicholas J. G. Winter
University of Chicago Press, 2008
In addition to their obvious roles in American politics, race and gender also work in hidden ways to profoundly influence the way we think—and vote—about a vast array of issues that don’t seem related to either category. As Nicholas Winter reveals in Dangerous Frames, politicians and leaders often frame these seemingly unrelated issues in ways that prime audiences to respond not to the policy at hand but instead to the way its presentation resonates with their deeply held beliefs about race and gender. Winter shows, for example, how official rhetoric about welfare and Social Security has tapped into white Americans’ racial biases to shape their opinions on both issues for the past two decades. Similarly, the way politicians presented health care reform in the 1990s divided Americans along the lines of their attitudes toward gender. Combining cognitive and political psychology with innovative empirical research, Dangerous Frames ultimatelyilluminates the emotional underpinnings of American politics. 
[more]

front cover of Dangerous Friendship
Dangerous Friendship
Stanley Levison, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers
Ben Kamin
Michigan State University Press, 2014
The product of long-concealed FBI surveillance documents, Dangerous Friendship chronicles a history of Martin Luther King Jr. that the government kept secret from the public for years. The book reveals the story of Stanley Levison, a well-known figure in the Communist Party–USA, who became one of King’s closest friends and, effectively, his most trusted adviser. Levison, a Jewish attorney and businessman, became King’s pro bono ghostwriter, accountant, fundraiser, and legal adviser. This friendship, however, created many complications for both men. Because of Levison’s former ties to the Communist Party, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover launched an obsessive campaign, wiretapping, tracking, and photographing Levison relentlessly. By association, King was labeled as “a Communist and subversive,” prompting then–attorney general Robert F. Kennedy to authorize secret surveillance of the civil rights leader. It was this effort that revealed King’s sexual philandering and furthered a breakdown of trust between King, Robert F. Kennedy, and eventually President John F. Kennedy. With stunning revelations, this book exposes both the general attitude of the U.S. government toward the privacy rights of American citizens during those difficult years as well as the extent to which King, Levison, and many other freedom workers were hounded by people at the very top of the U.S. security establishment.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Dangerous Offenders
The Elusive Target of Justice
Mark H. Moore, Susan Estrich, Daniel McGillis, and William Spelman
Harvard University Press, 1984

Americans rank crime among the most urgent of social concerns. Overflowing prisons and public outcry have led many to propose that the criminal justice system could control crime more effectively by focusing on dangerous offenders.

Recent social studies have suggested that serious criminality is highly concentrated and that high-rate offenders can be distinguished from others on the basis of prior criminal conduct, drug abuse, and employment record. Such studies urge judges to shift from rehabilitative sentencing to selective incapacitation, with longer prison sentences for convicted criminals who are deemed unusually dangerous. In response to these recommendations, some prosecutors' offices have established career criminal units designed to assure that repeat offenders will be prosecuted to the full measure of the law. Some police departments are experimenting with "perpetrator-oriented patrols" targeted on suspected high-rate offenders.

The authors of this major book in criminal jurisprudence describe and analyze the intellectual and social challenge posed to public officials by this new thrust in criminal justice policy. They develop a framework for evaluating policies that focus on dangerous offenders. They first examine the general issues that arise as society considers the benefits and risks of concentrating on a particular category of criminals. They then outline how that approach might work at each stage of the criminal justice system--sentencing, pretrial detention, prosecution, and investigation.

This cogently argued book provides much needed guidance on the crucial questions of whether sharpened attention to dangerous offenders is just, whether such a policy can be effective in managing the problem of crime, which applications seem particularly valuable, what the long-term risks to social institutions are, and what uncertainties must be monitored and resolved as the policy evolves.

[more]

front cover of Dangerous Times?
Dangerous Times?
The International Politics of Great Power Peace
Christopher J. Fettweis
Georgetown University Press, 2011

What horrors will the twenty-first century bring? For many people, a clash of civilizations and a perilous return to great power rivalries are the dominant visions of things to come. Fueled by daily headlines, overwhelming majorities of people from all walks of life consider the world to be a far more chaotic, frightening, and ultimately more dangerous place than ever before. Christopher J. Fettweis argues that these impressions, however widespread, are wrong.

Dangerous Times? is an examination of international politics that reveals both theoretical logic and empirical data that support the vision of a future where wars between great powers are unlikely and transnational threats can be contained. Despite popular perception, today a far greater percentage of the world’s population lives in peace than at any time in history, and the number and intensity of all types of warfare have dropped steadily since the early 1990s. Terrorism, though reprehensible, can be combated and can actually increase international cooperation among states fighting a common threat. World wars like those of the twentieth century—the true clash of civilizations—are unlikely to be repeated in the close-knit world of the twenty-first century.

In this sharp and insightful book, Fettweis discusses this revolution in human history and its ramifications for international relations theory. He suggests a new vision for a more restrained U.S. grand strategy and foreign policy and reveals how, despite pessimistic perceptions to the contrary, the world is more likely entering a golden age of peace and security.

[more]

front cover of Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion
Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion
An American Story
Daniel Bullen
Westholme Publishing, 2024
On January 25, 1787, in Springfield, Massachusetts, militia Major General William Shepard ordered his cannon to fire grapeshot at a peaceful demonstration of 1,200 farmers approaching the federal arsenal. The shots killed four and wounded twenty, marking the climax of five months of civil disobedience in Massachusetts, where farmers challenged the state’s authority to seize their farms for flagrantly unjust taxes. Government leaders and influential merchants painted these protests as a violent attempt to overthrow the state, in hopes of garnering support for strengthening the federal government in a Constitutional Convention. As a result, the protests have been hidden for more than two hundred years under the misleading title, “Shays’s Rebellion, the armed uprising that led to the Constitution.” But this widely accepted narrative is just a legend: the “rebellion” was almost entirely nonviolent, and retired Revolutionary War hero Daniel Shays was only one of many leaders. 
    Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen tells the history of the crisis from the protesters’ perspective. Through five months of nonviolent protests, the farmers kept courts throughout Massachusetts from hearing foreclosures, facing down threats from the government, which escalated to the point that Governor James Bowdoin ultimately sent an army to arrest them. Even so, the people won reforms in an electoral landslide. 
    Thomas Jefferson called these protests an honorable rebellion, and hoped that Americans would never let twenty years pass without such a campaign, to rein in powerful interests. This riveting and meticulously researched narrative shows that Shays and his fellow protesters were hardly a dangerous rabble, but rather a proud people who banded together peaceably, risking their lives for justice in a quintessentially American story. 
[more]

logo for Brandeis University Press
Daniel Webster, “The Completest Man”
Documents from The Papers of Daniel Webster
Edited by Kenneth E. Shewmaker and Daniel Webster
Brandeis University Press, 1993
Documents from The Papers of Daniel Webster
[more]

front cover of The Danish Voter
The Danish Voter
Democratic Ideals and Challenges
Rune Stubager, Kasper M. Hansen, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, and Richard Nadeau
University of Michigan Press, 2021
For many international experts, politicians, and commentators, Denmark stands out as an ideal society with a well-functioning welfare state, low levels of corruption, and a high degree of social and political stability. Like other countries, however, Denmark faces challenges brought on by overall societal changes—particularly the challenges of maintaining a prosperous economy and from the growing number of immigrants with different ethnic and religious backgrounds that have left their mark on Danish society over the past 50 years. But how have Danish voters reacted to these challenges?

The authors of The Danish Voter investigate a series of interesting questions concerning voters’ reactions to these macrosocial challenges and how their reactions affect the foundations for the ideal. Indeed, due to an electoral system open to new influences, the Danish case is an important test case for theories about political development of contemporary Western societies.
[more]

front cover of Darfur Allegory
Darfur Allegory
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf
University of Chicago Press, 2021
The Darfur conflict exploded in early 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, struck national military installations in Darfur to send a hard-hitting message of resentment over the region’s political and economic marginalization. The conflict devastated the region’s economy, shredded its fragile social fabric, and drove millions of people from their homes. Darfur Allegory is a dispatch from the humanitarian crisis that explains the historical and ethnographic background to competing narratives that have informed international responses. At the heart of the book is Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Abusharaf’s critique of the pseudoscientific notions of race and ethnicity that posit divisions between “Arab” northerners and “African” Darfuris.
 
Elaborated in colonial times and enshrined in policy afterwards, such binary categories have been adopted by the media to explain the civil war in Darfur. The narratives that circulate internationally are thus highly fraught and cover over—to counterproductive effect—forms of Darfurian activism that have emerged in the conflict’s wake. Darfur Allegory marries the analytical precision of a committed anthropologist with an insider’s view of Sudanese politics at home and in the diaspora, laying bare the power of words to heal or perpetuate civil conflict.
[more]

front cover of Dark Ghettos
Dark Ghettos
Injustice, Dissent, and Reform
Tommie Shelby
Harvard University Press, 2016

Winner of the Spitz Prize, Conference for the Study of Political Thought
Winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award


Why do American ghettos persist? Scholars and commentators often identify some factor—such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime—as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to “fix” ghettos or “help” their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban poor as moral agents responding to injustice.

“Provocative…[Shelby] doesn’t lay out a jobs program or a housing initiative. Indeed, as he freely admits, he offers ‘no new political strategies or policy proposals.’ What he aims to do instead is both more abstract and more radical: to challenge the assumption, common to liberals and conservatives alike, that ghettos are ‘problems’ best addressed with narrowly targeted government programs or civic interventions. For Shelby, ghettos are something more troubling and less tractable: symptoms of the ‘systemic injustice’ of the United States. They represent not aberrant dysfunction but the natural workings of a deeply unfair scheme. The only real solution, in this way of thinking, is the ‘fundamental reform of the basic structure of our society.’”
—James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review

[more]

front cover of Dark Hope
Dark Hope
Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine
David Shulman
University of Chicago Press, 2007

For decades, we’ve been shocked by images of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But for all their power, those images leave us at a loss: from our vantage at home, it’s hard for us to imagine the struggles of those living in the midst of the fighting. Now, American-born Israeli David Shulman takes us right into the heart of the conflict with Dark Hope, an eye-opening chronicle of his work as a member of the peace group Ta‘ayush, which takes its name from the Arabic for “living together.”

Though Shulman never denies the complexity of the issues fueling the conflict—nor the culpability of people on both sides—he forcefully clarifies the injustices perpetrated by Israel by showing us the human dimension of the occupation. Here we meet Palestinians whose houses have been blown up by the Israeli army, shepherds whose sheep have been poisoned by settlers, farmers stripped of their land by Israel’s dividing wall. We watch as whip-swinging police on horseback attack crowds of nonviolent demonstrators, as Israeli settlers shoot innocent Palestinians harvesting olives, and as families and communities become utterly destroyed by the unrelenting violence of the occupation.

Opposing such injustices, Shulman and his companions—Israeli and Palestinian both—doggedly work through checkpoints to bring aid, rebuild houses, and physically block the progress of the dividing wall. As they face off against police, soldiers, and hostile Israeli settlers, anger mixes with compassion, moments of kinship alternate with confrontation, and, throughout, Shulman wrestles with his duty to fight the cruelty enabled by “that dependable and devastating human failure to feel.”

With Dark Hope, Shulman has written a book of deep moral searching, an attempt to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong—and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might still be brought back.

[more]

front cover of Dark Matters
Dark Matters
On the Surveillance of Blackness
Simone Browne
Duke University Press, 2015
In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the eighteenth-century slave ship Brooks, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, and The Book of Negroes, to contemporary art, literature, biometrics, and post-9/11 airport security practices. Surveillance, Browne asserts, is both a discursive and material practice that reifies boundaries, borders, and bodies around racial lines, so much so that the surveillance of blackness has long been, and continues to be, a social and political norm. 
 
[more]

logo for Pluto Press
The Dark Sahara
America's War on Terror in Africa
Jeremy Keenan
Pluto Press, 2009

The US is keen to build a substantial military presence in Africa, citing the need to combat the growth of Al-Qaeda in Somalia, Algeria and other countries on the continent. This book reveals the secret US agenda behind the 'war on terror' in Africa and the shocking methods used to perpetuate the myth that the region is a hot-bed of Islamic terrorism.

Africa expert Jeremy Keenan points to overwhelming evidence suggesting that, from 2003, the Bush administration and Algerian government were responsible for hostage takings blamed on Islamic militants. This created a permissive public attitude, allowing the US to establish military bases in the region and pursue multiple imperial objectives in the name of security.

The shocking revelations in this book seriously undermine the mainstream view of Africa as a legitimate 'second front' in the 'war on terror'.

[more]

front cover of Darker than Blue
Darker than Blue
On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture
Paul Gilroy
Harvard University Press, 2011

Paul Gilroy seeks to awaken a new understanding of W. E. B. Du Bois’s intellectual and political legacy. At a time of economic crisis, environmental degradation, ongoing warfare, and heated debate over human rights, how should we reassess the changing place of black culture?

Gilroy considers the ways that consumerism has diverted African Americans’ political and social aspirations. Luxury goods and branded items, especially the automobile—rich in symbolic value and the promise of individual freedom—have restratified society, weakened citizenship, and diminished the collective spirit. Jazz, blues, soul, reggae, and hip hop are now seen as generically American, yet artists like Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, and Bob Marley, who questioned the allure of mobility and speed, are not understood by people who have drained their music of its moral power.

Gilroy explores the way in which objects and technologies can become dynamic social forces, ensuring black culture’s global reach while undermining the drive for equality and justice. Drawing on the work of a number of thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon, he examines the ethical dimensions of living in a society that celebrates the object. What are the implications for our notions of freedom?

With his brilliant, provocative analysis and astonishing range of reference, Gilroy revitalizes the study of African American culture. He traces the shifting character of black intellectual and social movements, and shows how we can construct an account of moral progress that reflects today’s complex realities.

[more]

front cover of Darwinian Politics
Darwinian Politics
The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom
Rubin, Paul H.
Rutgers University Press, 2002

Darwinian Politics is the first book to examine political behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. Here, Paul H. Rubin discusses group or social behavior, including ethnic and racial conflict; altruism and cooperation; envy; political power; and the role of religion in politics ¾ issues that have formed the hallmark of human social behavior.

Adopting a Darwinian perspective, Rubin demonstrates why certain political-moral philosophies succeed or fail in modern Western culture. He begins by showing relationships between biology and natural selection and the history of political philosophy and explains why desirable policies must treat each person as an individual. He considers the notion of group identity and conflict, observing a human propensity to form in-groups, a behavior that does not necessitate but often leads to deviancies such as racism. In discussing altruism, Rubin shows that people are willing to aid the poor if they are convinced that the recipients are not shirkers or free loaders. This explains why recent welfare reforms are widely viewed as successful. Envy, a trait that is often counterproductive in today’s world, is also addressed. In comparing major moral philosophical systems, Rubin contends that utilitarianism is broadly consistent with our evolved preferences. He illustrates evolutionary premises for religious belief and for desires to regulate the behavior of others, and how in today’s world such regulation may not serve any useful purpose.

Ultimately, Rubin argues that humans naturally seek political freedom, and modern Western society provides more freedom than any previous one. In light of his analysis, the author extrapolates that, while there are still areas for improvements, humans have done a remarkably good job of satisfying their evolved political preferences.

[more]

front cover of Data Visualization in Society
Data Visualization in Society
Martin Engebretsen
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Today we are witnessing an increased use of data visualization in society. Across domains such as work, education and the news, various forms of graphs, charts and maps are used to explain, convince and tell stories. In an era in which more and more data are produced and circulated digitally, and digital tools make visualization production increasingly accessible, it is important to study the conditions under which such visual texts are generated, disseminated and thought to be of societal benefit. This book is a contribution to the multi-disciplined and multi-faceted conversation concerning the forms, uses and roles of data visualization in society. Do data visualizations do 'good' or 'bad'? Do they promote understanding and engagement, or do they do ideological work, privileging certain views of the world over others? The contributions in the book engage with these core questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
[more]

front cover of Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900
Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900
Framing the Other
Farish A. Noor
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Empire-building did not only involve the use of excessive violence against native communities, but also required the gathering of data about the native Other. This is a book about books, which looks at the writings of Western colonial administrators, company-men and map-makers who wrote about Southeast Asia in the 19th century. In the course of their information-gathering they had also framed the people of Southeast Asia in a manner that gave rise to Orientalist racial stereotypes that would be used again and again. Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other revisits the era of colonial data-collecting to demonstrate the workings of the imperial echo chamber, and how in the discourse of 19th century colonial-capitalism data was effectively weaponized to serve the interests of Empire.
[more]

front cover of Daughters and Granddaughters of Farmworkers
Daughters and Granddaughters of Farmworkers
Emerging from the Long Shadow of Farm Labor
Wells, Barbara
Rutgers University Press

In Daughters and Granddaughters of Farmworkers, Barbara Wells examines the work and family lives of Mexican American women in a community near the U.S.-Mexican border in California’s Imperial County. Decades earlier, their Mexican parents and grandparents had made the momentous decision to migrate to the United States as farmworkers. This book explores how that decision has worked out for these second- and third-generation Mexican Americans.

Wells provides stories of the struggles, triumphs, and everyday experiences of these women. She analyzes their narratives on a broad canvas that includes the social structures that create the barriers, constraints, and opportunities that have shaped their lives. The women have constructed far more settled lives than the immigrant generation that followed the crops, but many struggle to provide adequately for their families.

These women aspire to achieve the middle-class lives of the American Dream. But upward mobility is an elusive goal. The realities of life in a rural, agricultural border community strictly limit social mobility for these descendants of immigrant farm laborers. Reliance on family networks is a vital strategy for meeting the economic challenges they encounter. Wells illustrates clearly the ways in which the “long shadow” of farm work continues to permeate the lives and prospects of these women and their families.

[more]

logo for University of Illinois Press
A David Montgomery Reader
Essays on Capitalism and Worker Resistance
David Montgomery. Edited by Shelton Stromquist and James R. Barrett
University of Illinois Press, 2024

A foundational figure in modern labor history, David Montgomery both redefined and reoriented the field. This collection of Montgomery’s most important published and unpublished articles and essays draws from the historian’s entire five-decade career.

Taken together, the writings trace the development of Montgomery’s distinct voice and approach while providing a crucial window into an era that changed the ways scholars and the public understood working people’s place in American history. Three overarching themes and methods emerge from these essays: that class provided a rich reservoir of ideas and strategies for workers to build movements aimed at claiming their democratic rights; that capital endured with the power to manage the contours of economic life and the capacities of the state but that workers repeatedly and creatively mounted challenges to the terms of life and work dictated by capital; and that Montgomery’s method grounded his gritty empiricism and the conceptual richness of his analysis in the intimate social relations of production and of community, neighborhood, and family life.

[more]

front cover of The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa
The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa
Anthropology, Literature, and History
E. Paul Durrenberger
University Press of Colorado, 2021
In The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa E. Paul Durrenberger recounts the transformation of Iowa’s family farms into today’s agricultural industry through the lens of the lives and writings of Iowa novelist Paul Corey and poet Ruth Lechlitner. This anthropological biography analyzes Corey’s fiction, Lechlitner’s poetry, and their professional and personal correspondence to offer a new perspective on an era (1925–1947) that saw the collapse and remaking of capitalism in the United States, the rise of communism in the Soviet Union, the rise and defeat of fascism around the world, and the creation of a continuous warfare state in America.
 
Durrenberger tells the story that Corey aimed to record and preserve of the industrialization of Iowa’s agriculture and the death of its family farms. He analyzes Corey’s regionalist focus on Iowa farming and regionalism’s contemporaneous association in Europe with rising fascism. He explores Corey’s adoption of naturalism, evident in his resistance to heroes and villains, to plot structure and resolution, and to moral judgment, as well as his ethnographic tendency to focus on groups rather than individuals.
 
An unusual and wide-ranging study, The Dawn of Industrial Agriculture in Iowa offers important insight into the relationships among fiction, individual lives, and anthropological practice, as well as into a pivotal period in American history.
 
[more]

front cover of Days of Awe
Days of Awe
Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians
Atalia Omer
University of Chicago Press, 2019
For many Jewish people in the mid-twentieth century, Zionism was an unquestionable tenet of what it meant to be Jewish. Seventy years later, a growing number of American Jews are instead expressing solidarity with Palestinians, questioning old allegiances to Israel. How did that transformation come about? What does it mean for the future of Judaism?

In Days of Awe, Atalia Omer examines this shift through interviews with a new generation of Jewish activists, rigorous data analysis, and fieldwork within a progressive synagogue community. She highlights people politically inspired by social justice campaigns including the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against anti-immigration policies. These activists, she shows, discover that their ethical outrage at US policies extends to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. For these American Jews, the Jewish history of dispossession and diaspora compels a search for solidarity with liberation movements. This shift produces innovations within Jewish tradition, including multi-racial and intersectional conceptions of Jewishness and movements to reclaim prophetic Judaism. Charting the rise of such religious innovation, Omer points toward the possible futures of post-Zionist Judaism.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
De Gaulle’s Foreign Policy, 1944–1946
A. W. DePorte
Harvard University Press

This is the first detailed, scholarly study of French foreign policy during the relatively brief period at the end of World War II when General de Gaulle was President of the provisional French government. During these years de Gaulle took the vitally important step of returning French foreign policy to the pragmatic, nationalist tradition of Poincaré and Louis Barthou. De Gaulle's efforts on the international scene, although not strikingly successful in themselves, foreshadowed many of the aims and policies which were pursued in various ways by his successors in the Fourth Republic and which he himself has reaffirmed in the years since 1958.

In the opening chapter, Mr. DePorte outlines French foreign policy between 1918 and 1940 and at the same time places de Gaulle firmly within that tradition of French diplomacy which rejected the notion that France could afford to be dependent on either Germany or Great Britain. In the second chapter, the author reviews de Gaulle's wartime experience, emphasizing his preoccupation with restoring France to full status as a Great Power and pointing out the extent to which his distrust of alliances preceded the problems he encountered with his allies as leader of the Free French. This discussion also includes a perceptive reevaluation of de Gaulle's difficulties with President Roosevelt.

The remaining chapters of the book deal in detail with the working out of diplomatic policies and problems during de Gaulle's term in office. Domestic affairs are discussed when events at home had a bearing on policy abroad. Through the issues and attitudes of these years--the Franco-Soviet pact, the distrust of allies and their blocs, the attempts to organize other groupings around France, the proposals for a Western European entity in which at least part of Germany could find a place--runs the unifying theme of the constant thrust for recognition of France's standing as a major power. During this period de Gaulle suffered many setbacks, but it is noteworthy that his basic objective the acceptance of France's right to participate in the great decisions of peace and war--which he himself did not achieve, was attained by his successors.

[more]

front cover of The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste
The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste
Lia Kent
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, thousands of people died, or were killed, in circumstances that did not allow the required death rituals to be performed. Since the nation’s independence, families and communities have invested considerable time, effort and resources in fulfilling their obligations to the dead. These obligations are imbued with urgency because the dead are ascribed agency and can play a benevolent or malevolent role in the lives of the living. These grassroots initiatives run, sometimes critically, in parallel with official programs that seek to transform particular dead bodies into public symbols of heroism, sacrifice and nationhood. The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste focuses on the dynamic interplay between the potent presence of the dead in everyday life and their symbolic usefulness to the state. It underlines how the dead shape relationships amongst families, communities and the nation-state, and open an important window into – are in fact pivotal to – processes of state and nation formation.
[more]

front cover of Dead Ends of Transition
Dead Ends of Transition
Rentier Economies and Protectorates
Edited by Michael Dauderstädt and Arne Schildberg
Campus Verlag, 2006
After war, many countries, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the transition to a democratic market economy extremely difficult. This failure to thrive, Dead Ends of Transition demonstrates, is often the result of national reliance on foreign aid. Rentier states, the contributors to this study argue, have few incentives to respond to the needs of their societies. Taking a closer look at the policies of rentier economies, this book further identifies new ways in which these countries and their international partners could work together to ease the critical transition to democracy.
[more]

front cover of Dead in the Water
Dead in the Water
Global Lessons from the World Bank's Model Hydropower Project in Laos
Edited by Bruce Shoemaker and William Robichaud; foreword by Yos Santasombat; afterword by Philip Hirsch
University of Wisconsin Press, 2019
For decades, large dam projects have been undertaken by both nations and international agencies with the aim of doing good: preventing floods, bringing electricity to rural populations, producing revenues for poor countries, and more. But time after time, the social, economic, and environmental costs have outweighed the benefits of the dams, sometimes to a disastrous degree. In this volume, a diverse group of experts—involved for years with the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos—issue an urgent call for critical reassessment of the approach to, and rationale for, these kinds of large infrastructure projects in developing countries.

In the 2000s, as the World Bank was reeling from revelations of past hydropower failures, it nonetheless promoted the enormous Nam Theun 2 project. NT2, the Bank believed, offered a new, wiser model of dam development that would alleviate poverty, protect the environment, engage locally affected people in a transparent fashion, and stimulate political transformation. This was a tall order. For the first time, this book shows in detail why, despite assertions of success from the World Bank and other agencies involved in the project, the dam's true story has been one of substantial loss for affected villagers and the regional environment. Nam Theun 2 is an important case study that illustrates much broader problems of global development policy.
[more]

front cover of Dead Labor
Dead Labor
Toward a Political Economy of Premature Death
James Tyner
University of Minnesota Press, 2019

A groundbreaking consideration of death from capitalism, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century

From a 2013 Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed fifteen people and injured 252 to a 2017 chemical disaster in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we are confronted all too often with industrial accidents that reflect the underlying attitude of corporations toward the lives of laborers and others who live and work in their companies’ shadows. Dead Labor takes seriously the myriad ways in which bodies are commodified and profits derived from premature death. In doing so it provides a unique perspective on our understanding how life and death drive the twenty-first-century global economy.

James Tyner tracks a history from the 1600s through which premature death and mortality became something calculable, predictable, manageable, and even profitable. Drawing on a range of examples, including the criminalization of migrant labor, medical tourism, life insurance, and health care, he explores how today we can no longer presume that all bodies undergo the same processes of life, death, fertility, and mortality. He goes on to develop the concept of shared mortality among vulnerable populations and examines forms of capital exploitation that have emerged around death and the reproduction of labor. 

Positioned at the intersection of two fields—the political economy of labor and the philosophy of mortality—Dead Labor builds on Marx’s notion that death (and truncated life) is a constant factor in the processes of labor. Considering premature death also as a biopolitical and bioeconomic concept, Tyner shows how racialized and gendered bodies are exposed to it in unbalanced ways within capitalism, and how bodies are then commodified, made surplus and redundant, and even disassembled in order to accumulate capital.

[more]

front cover of Dead Laws for Dead Men
Dead Laws for Dead Men
The Politics of Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Legislation
Daniel J. Curran
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993
This account of the struggle for coal mine health and safety legislation in the U.S. examines the series of laws that steadily expanded the role of the federal government from the late 1800s through the 1980s. Curran concludes that federal legislation has done little to improve change conditions in the coal mines.
[more]

front cover of Deadline
Deadline
Populism and the Press in Venezuela
Robert Samet
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Since 2006, Venezuela has had the highest homicide rate in South America and one of the highest levels of gun violence in the world. Former president Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, downplayed the extent of violent crime and instead emphasized rehabilitation. His successor, President Nicolás Maduro, took the opposite approach, declaring an all-out war on crime (mano dura). What accounts for this drastic shift toward more punitive measures?
 
In Deadline, anthropologist Robert Samet answers this question by focusing on the relationship between populism, the press, and what he calls “the will to security.” Drawing on nearly a decade of ethnographic research alongside journalists on the Caracas crime beat, he shows how the media shaped the politics of security from the ground up. Paradoxically, Venezuela’s punitive turn was not the product of dictatorship, but rather an outgrowth of practices and institutions normally associated with democracy. Samet reckons with this apparent contradiction by exploring the circulation of extralegal denuncias (accusations) by crime journalists, editors, sources, and audiences. Denuncias are a form of public shaming or exposé that channels popular anger against the powers that be. By showing how denuncias mobilize dissent, Deadline weaves a much larger tale about the relationship between the press, popular outrage, and the politics of security in the twenty-first century.
[more]

front cover of The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil
The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil
Barry Ames
University of Michigan Press, 2002
Many countries have experimented with different electoral rules in order either to increase involvement in the political system or make it easier to form stable governments. Barry Ames explores this important topic in one of the world's most populous and important democracies, Brazil. This book locates one of the sources of Brazil's "crisis of governance" in the nation's unique electoral system, a system that produces a multiplicity of weak parties and individualistic, pork-oriented politicians with little accountability to citizens. It explains the government's difficulties in adopting innovative policies by examining electoral rules, cabinet formation, executive-legislative conflict, party discipline and legislative negotiation.
The book combines extensive use of new sources of data, ranging from historical and demographic analysis in focused comparisons of individual states to unique sources of data for the exploration of legislative politics. The discussion of party discipline in the Chamber of Deputies is the first multivariate model of party cooperation or defection in Latin America that includes measures of such important phenomena as constituency effects, pork-barrel receipts, ideology, electoral insecurity, and intention to seek reelection. With a unique data set and a sophisticated application of rational choice theory, Barry Ames demonstrates the effect of different electoral rules for election to Brazil's legislature.
The readership of this book includes anyone wanting to understand the crisis of democratic politics in Brazil. The book will be especially useful to scholars and students in the areas of comparative politics, Latin American politics, electoral analysis, and legislative studies.
Barry Ames is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Comparative Politics and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
[more]

front cover of Deaf and Disability Studies
Deaf and Disability Studies
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Susan Burch
Gallaudet University Press, 2010

This collection presents 14 essays by renowned scholars on Deaf people, Deafhood, Deaf histories, and Deaf identity, but from different points of view on the Deaf/Disability compass. Editors Susan Burch and Alison Kafer have divided these works around three themes. The first, Identities and Locations, explores Deaf identity in different contexts. Topics range from a history of activism shaped by the ableism of Deaf elites in the United States from 1880–1920, to a discussion of the roles that economics, location, race, and culture play in the experiences of a Deaf woman from northern Nigeria now living in Washington, D.C.

     Alliances and Activism showcases activism organized across differences. Studies include a feminist analysis of how deaf and hearing women working together share responsibility, and an examination of how intra-cultural variations in New York City and Quebec affect deaf-focus HIV/AIDS programs. The third theme, Boundaries and Overlaps, explicitly addresses the relationships between Deaf Studies and Disability Studies. Interviews with scholars from both disciplines help define these relationships. Another contributor calls for hearing/not-deaf people with disabilities to support their Deaf peers in gaining langue access to the United Nations. Deaf and Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives reveals that different questions often lead to contrary conclusions among their authors, who still recognize that they all have a stake in this partnership.


[more]

front cover of Dealing with Risk
Dealing with Risk
Why the Public and the Experts Disagree on Environmental Issues
Howard Margolis
University of Chicago Press, 1996
For decades, policymakers and analysts have been frustrated by the stubborn and often dramatic disagreement between experts and the public on acceptable levels of environmental risk. Most experts, for instance, see no severe problem in dealing with nuclear waste, given the precautions and safety levels now in place. Yet public opinion vehemently rejects this view, repudiating both the experts' analysis and the evidence.

In Dealing with Risk, Howard Margolis moves beyond the usual "rival rationalities" explanation proffered by risk analysts for the rift between expert and lay opinion. He reveals the conflicts of intuition that undergird those concerns, and proposes a new approach to the psychology of persuasion and belief. Examining the role of intuition, mental habits, and cognitive frameworks in the construction of public opinion, this compelling account bridges the public policy impasse that has plagued controversial environmental issues.
[more]

front cover of The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois
The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois
Paul Powell, Clyde L. Choate, John H. Stelle
Robert E. Hartley
Southern Illinois University Press, 2016
Winner, ISHS Annual Award for a Scholarly Publication, 2017

Many people are unaware that from 1945 to 1975, downstate lawmakers dominated the Illinois political arena. In The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois, Robert E. Hartley details the lives and contributions of three influential southern Illinois politicians, Paul Powell, Clyde Choate, and John Stelle. He describes how these “dealmakers” were able to work with Democrats and Republicans throughout the state to bring jobs and facilities to their region. Using a variety of coalitions, they maintained downstate political strength in the face of growing Chicago influence.
 
Hartley traces the personal histories of Powell, Choate, and Stelle, shows how they teamed up to advance a downstate political agenda, and reviews their challenges and successes. Beginning with an account of early experiences, including the battlefield courage that earned Choate the Medal of Honor as well as Stelle’s World War I experience and later entrepreneurship, the book continues with an exploration of the groundwork for their collaborative legislative agenda and their roles in the growth of Southern Illinois University and the passage of income tax legislation. Hartley reviews the importance of Powell’s relationship with Governor Stratton, Choate’s leadership of the 1972 Democratic National Convention and his relationships with Governor Walker and with Chicago interests. 
 
The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois is a vivid, straightforward tale of fighting in the legislative chambers, backstabbing behind the scenes, and trading special favors for votes in pursuit of not only personal gain but also the advancement of a regional agenda.
[more]

front cover of Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920
Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920
Michael K. Rosenow
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Michael K. Rosenow investigates working people's beliefs, rituals of dying, and the politics of death by honing in on three overarching questions: How did workers, their families, and their communities experience death? Did various identities of class, race, gender, and religion coalesce to form distinct cultures of death for working people? And how did people's attitudes toward death reflect notions of who mattered in U.S. society?
 
Drawing from an eclectic array of sources ranging from Andrew Carnegie to grave markers in Chicago's potter's field, Rosenow portrays the complex political, social, and cultural relationships that fueled the United States' industrial ascent. The result is an undertaking that adds emotional depth to existing history while challenging our understanding of modes of cultural transmission.
[more]

front cover of The Death and Life of Malcolm X
The Death and Life of Malcolm X
Peter Goldman
University of Illinois Press, 2013
The Death and Life of Malcolm X provides a dramatic portrait of one of the most important black leaders of the twentieth century. Focusing on Malcolm X's rise to prominence and the final year of his life, the book details his rift with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, leading to death threats and eventually assassination at the hands of a death squad. In a new preface for this edition, Peter Goldman reflects on the forty years since the book's first publication and considers new information based on FBI surveillance that has since come to light.
[more]

front cover of The Death and Life of the Single-Family House
The Death and Life of the Single-Family House
Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City
Nathanael Lauster
Temple University Press, 2016

Vancouver today is recognized as one of the most livable cities in the world as well as an international model for sustainability and urbanism. Single-family homes in this city are “a dying breed.” Most people live in the various low-rise and high-rise urban alternatives throughout the metropolitan area.

The Death and Life of the Single-Family House explains how residents in Vancouver attempt to make themselves at home without a house. Local sociologist Nathanael Lauster has painstakingly studied the city’s dramatic transformation to curb sprawl. He tracks the history of housing and interviews residents about the cultural importance of the house as well as the urban problems it once appeared to solve.

Although Vancouver’s built environment is unique, Lauster argues that it was never predestined by geography or demography. Instead, regulatory transformations enabled the city to renovate, build over, and build around the house. Moreover, he insists, there are lessons here for the rest of North America. We can start building our cities differently, and without sacrificing their livability.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Death Foretold
The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador
Martha Doggett
Georgetown University Press, 1993

The case of the six Jesuits and two women murdered at Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador on November 16, 1989, has come to signify, by extension, a class-action suit on behalf of the 70,000 people tortured and executed over the course of a decade by the Salvadoran Armed Forces, with the complicity of the government. The identification of all those responsible for the Jesuit murders—the intellectual authors as well as the triggermen—would provide a first step toward purging and reforming a system that has made these kinds of crimes possible. This report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which served as legal counsel to the Jesuits since December 1989, documents the story of the Jesuit murders in the most comprehensive history and analysis to date.

Martha Doggett establishes the background leading up to the murders—the preceding years of human rights abuses and of political distortions promulgated about the Jesuits. She then sifts through the evidence of the crime, scrutinizes the subsequent efforts at cover-up, analyzes the process of the trial itself, and identifies the high-level officials thought to be ultimately responsible for ordering and concealing the truth about the murders. She concludes that a number ofcivilians as well as military paraticlipated and that the decision was made some time before the night of the actual murders. Drawing on primary and journalistic sources, investigative reports, U.S. and Salvadoran government documents, and interviews conducted by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and other organizations, Doggett traces the military's repeated obstruction of justice and the ambivalent responses by U.S. officials courting political expediency. She observes the effects of international protests (including the report by U.S. Congressman Joe Moakley) and outlines the limitations inherent in El Salvador's legal system.

Bringing the chronicle up to the present, this volume includes the first published English-language translation of the portion of the Truth Commission report dealing with the Jesuits' case, an analysis of the Truth Commission's conclusions, and reactions to the amnesty and release from prison of all persons convicted for the crime. Appendixes include chronologies of the case and of attacks on El Salvador's Jesuits; lists of the names of all the persons figuring in the case and profiles of the defendants; the report of the Lawyers Committee's trial observer; and a list of previous publications on the case by the Lawyers Committee and UCA, as well as reports of trial observers from other organizations.

[more]

front cover of The Death Gap
The Death Gap
How Inequality Kills
David A. Ansell, MD
University of Chicago Press, 2017
We hear plenty about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor in America and about the expanding distance separating the haves and the have-nots. But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical—their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David A. Ansell, MD,  has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

While the contrasts and disparities among Chicago’s communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic—as Ansell shows, there is a thirty-five-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods. If you are poor, where you live in America can dictate when you die. It doesn’t need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence—the racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—that is really to blame. Inequality is a disease, Ansell argues, and we need to treat and eradicate it as we would any major illness. To do so, he outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation—for all.

Inequality is all around us, and often the distance between high and low life expectancy can be a matter of just a few blocks. But geography need not be destiny, urges  Ansell. In The Death Gap he shows us how we can face this national health crisis head-on and take action against the circumstances that rob people of their dignity and their lives.
[more]

front cover of Death in the Congo
Death in the Congo
Murdering Patrice Lumumba
Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick
Harvard University Press, 2015

Death in the Congo is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history. It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century.

When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic. Yet stability immediately broke down. A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether. Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage. A coup in September, secretly aided by the UN, toppled Lumumba’s government. In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him. His rule as Africa’s first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks.

More than fifty years later, the murky circumstances and tragic symbolism of Lumumba’s assassination still trouble many people around the world. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick pursue events through a web of international politics, revealing a tangled history in which many people—black and white, well-meaning and ruthless, African, European, and American—bear responsibility for this crime.

[more]

front cover of Death Investigation in America
Death Investigation in America
Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuit of Medical Certainty
Jeffrey M. Jentzen
Harvard University Press, 2009

A death occurs at home, in a hospital, on a street: why? As Jeffrey Jentzen reveals, we often never know. Why is the American system of death investigation so inconsistent and inadequate? What can the events of the assassination of President Kennedy, killing of Bobby Kennedy, and Chappaquiddick reveal about the state of death investigation?

If communities in early America had a coroner at all, he was politically appointed and poorly trained. As medicine became more sophisticated and the medical profession more confident, physicians struggled to establish a professionalized, physician-led system of death investigation. The conflict between them and the coroners, as well as politicians and law enforcement agencies, led to the patchwork of local laws and practices that persist to this day.

In this unique political and cultural history, Jentzen draws on archives, interviews, and his own career as a medical examiner to look at the way that a long-standing professional and political rivalry controls public medical knowledge and public health.

[more]

front cover of Death of a Nation
Death of a Nation
American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism
David W. Noble
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
A trenchant examination of epic shifts in American thought by a major scholar in the field. In the 1940s, American thought experienced a cataclysmic paradigm shift. Before then, national ideology was shaped by American exceptionalism and bourgeois nationalism: elites saw themselves as the children of a homogeneous nation standing outside the history and culture of the Old World. This view repressed the cultures of those who did not fit the elite vision: people of color, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. David W. Noble, a preeminent figure in American studies, inherited this ideology. However, like many who entered the field in the 1940s, he rejected the ideals of his intellectual predecessors and sought a new, multicultural, postnational scholarship. Throughout his career, Noble has examined this rupture in American intellectual life. In Death of a Nation, he presents the culmination of decades of thought in a sweeping treatise on the shaping of contemporary American studies and an eloquent summation of his distinguished career. Exploring the roots of American exceptionalism, Noble demonstrates that it was a doomed ideology. Capitalists who believed in a bounded nationalism also depended on a boundless, international marketplace. This contradiction was inherently unstable, and the belief in a unified national landscape exploded in World War II. The rupture provided an opening for alternative narratives as class, ethnicity, race, and region were reclaimed as part of the nation's history. Noble traces the effects of this shift among scholars and artists, and shows how even today they struggle to imagine an alternative postnational narrative and seek the meaning of local and national cultures in an increasingly transnational world. While Noble illustrates the challenges that the paradigm shift created, he also suggests solutions that will help scholars avoid romanticized and reductive approaches toward the study of American culture in the future. David W. Noble is professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including The End of American History (1985) and The Free and the Unfree: A Progressive History of the United States (with Peter N. Carroll, 2001).
[more]

front cover of The Death of Asylum
The Death of Asylum
Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago
Alison Mountz
University of Minnesota Press, 2020

Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations

 

Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant “reception center” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. 

In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights.

Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.

[more]

front cover of Death Penalty in Decline?
Death Penalty in Decline?
The Fight against Capital Punishment in the Decades since Furman v. Georgia
Austin Sarat
Temple University Press, 2024
How have prospects for abolishing the death penalty changed since the 1972 Supreme Court decision, Furman v Georgia? The editor and contributors to Death Penalty in Decline? assess the contemporary death penalty landscape and look at the trends in and attitudes toward capital punishment and its abolition. They highlight factors that are propelling alternatives to the death penalty as well as the obstacles to ending it.

At a time when the United States is undertaking an unprecedented national reconsideration of the death penalty, Death Penalty in Decline? seeks to evaluate how abolitionists might succeed today.

Contributors: John Bessler, Corinna Barrett Lain, James R. Martel, Linda Ross Meyer, Carol S. Steiker, Jordan M. Steiker, and the editor
[more]

logo for Pluto Press
A Death-Dealing Famine
The Great Hunger in Ireland
Christine Kinealy
Pluto Press, 1997

front cover of Deathwork
Deathwork
Defending The Condemned
Michael Mello
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
A gripping exposé of what lawyers face when they defend prisoners in capital cases. Legal cases are stories, and some of the most compelling-and the most disturbing-are those that take place on death row: the innocent man executed, juveniles and the mentally ill condemned to die, a smoking electric chair, a napping defense attorney, a senile hit man. These are the stories in which Michael Mello, as a capital public defender, played a crucial role, and they are the cases that make up Deathwork, a moment-by-moment, behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a death row lawyer and his clients. Part memoir, part legal casebook, Deathwork offers a gritty, often anguishing picture of what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called the American legal "machinery of death." The stories Mello tells raise questions about legal issues-from prosecutorial misconduct to the racial inequities of sentencing, from the rules of evidence to the rights of the mentally ill-that here take on a life-and-death urgency. They describe in detail how constitutional issues are raised postconviction, and how those issues are adjudicated by the courts and in accordance with bizarre claims of objectivity. And they show, with a painful immediacy and authenticity, what it is like to live and work under an impending death sentence, the adrenaline rush of the stay or unexpected success, the inconsolable sadness upon the execution of the sick, the afflicted, the innocent. As DNA reversals, last-minute confessions, and revelations of corruption are bringing capital punishment to the forefront of public debate nationwide, this firsthand account of the legalities and realities of the death penalty is as relevant as it is enthralling, as edifying as it is impossible to ignore. Michael Mello is professor of law at the University of Vermont Law School. He is the author of The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row (2001), Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out against Capital Punishment (1999), and The United States of America versus Theodore John Kaczynski: Ethics, Power, and the Invention of the Unabomber (1999).
[more]

front cover of Debating Moderate Islam
Debating Moderate Islam
The Geopolitics of Islam and the West
M A Muqtedar Khan
University of Utah Press, 2007
Utah Series in Middle East Studies

After 9/11, many Americans took the view that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the leading edge of a new war: Islam versus the West. Yet the attacks were also part of the current struggle within Islam between fundamentalist and moderate approaches and were staged for maximum effect in the Muslim world.

This book is based on a special-topic issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (Fall 2005), and brings together prominent Muslim voices from the policy and academic communities to debate the nature of moderate Islam and what moderation means in both a theological and a geopolitical sense. Participants reflect on the future of political Islam, its role in Muslim politics, western policies in the Muslim world, and the future of American-Muslim relations. This book and the debate it presents are vital to understanding these complex issues.
[more]

front cover of Debating the End of History
Debating the End of History
The Marketplace, Utopia, and the Fragmentation of Intellectual Life
David W. Noble
University of Minnesota Press, 2012

Why do modern people assume that there will be perpetual economic growth? Because, David W. Noble tells us in this provocative study of cultural criticism, such a utopian conviction is the necessary foundation for bourgeois culture. One can imagine the existence of modern middle classes only as long as the capitalist marketplace is expanding. For Noble, the related—and relevant—question is, how can the middle classes believe that a finite earth is an environment in which infinite growth is possible? The answer, which Noble so painstakingly charts, is nothing less than a genealogy of the uses and abuses of knowledge that lie at the heart of so many of our political problems today.

As far back as Plato and as recently as Alan Greenspan, Noble finds proponents of the idea of a world of independent, rational individuals living in timeless simplicity, escaping from an old world of interdependence and generations. Such notions, although in sync with Newtonian science, have come up against the subsequent conclusions of geology, biology, and the physics of Einstein. In a survey of the responses to this quandary of historians, economists, literary critics, and ecologists, Noble reveals how this confrontation, and its implications for a single global marketplace, has forced certain academic disciplines into unnatural—and untenable—positions.

David Noble’s work exposes the cost—not academic at all—of the segregation of the physical sciences from the humanities and social sciences, even as it demonstrates the required movement of the humanities toward the ecological vision of a single, interconnected world.

[more]

front cover of Debt Wish
Debt Wish
Entrepreneurial Cities, U.S. Federalism, and Economic Development
Alberta M. Sbragia
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996

Albert Sbragia considers American urban government as an investor whether for building infrastructure or supporting economic development.  Over time, such investment has become disconnected from the normal political and administrative processes of local policymaking through the use of special public spending authorities like water and sewer commissions and port, turnpike, and public power authorities.

Sbragia explores how this entrepreneurial activity developed and how federal and state policies facilitated or limited it.  She also analyzes the implications of cities creating innovative, special-purpose quasi-governments to circumvent and dilute state control over city finances, diluting their own authority in the process.

[more]

front cover of Decency and Difference
Decency and Difference
Humanity and the Global Challenge of Identity Politics
Steven C. Roach
University of Michigan Press, 2019

Decency remains one of the most prevalent yet least understood terms in today’s political discourse. In evoking respect, kindness, courage, integrity, reason, and tolerance, it has long expressed an unquestioned duty and belief in promoting and protecting the dignity of all persons. Today this unquestioned belief is in crisis. Tribalism and identity politics have both hindered and threatened its moral stability and efficacy. Still, many continue to undertheorize its political character by isolating it from the effects of identity politics. Decency and Difference argues that decency is a primary source of the political tension that has long shaped the struggles for power, identity, and justice in the global arena. It distinguishes among basic, conservative, and liberal strands of decency to critically examine the many conflicting and competing applications of decency in global politics. Together these different strands reflect a long and uneven evolution from the British and American empires to a global network of justice. This powerful book exposes the gaps of decency and the disparate ways it is practiced, thus addressing the global challenge of configuring a diverse political ethic of decency.

 

[more]

logo for Pluto Press
Decent Capitalism
A Blueprint for Reforming our Economies
Sebastian Dullien, Hansjorg Herr, and Christian Kellermann
Pluto Press, 2011

The recent crisis, created by finance capitalism, has brought us to the economic abyss. The excessive freedom of international markets has rapidly transformed into international panic, with states struggling to rescue and bail out a globalised financial sector. Reform is promised by our leaders, but in governments dominated by financial interests there is little hope of meaningful change.

Decent Capitalism argues for a response that addresses capitalism’s systemic tendency towards crisis, a tendency which is completely absent from the mainstream debate. The authors develop a concept of a moderated capitalism that keeps its core strengths intact while reducing its inherent destructive political force in our societies. This book argues that reforming the capitalist system will have to be far more radical than the current political discourse suggests.

Decent Capitalism is a concept and a slogan that will inspire political activists, trade unionists and policy makers to get behind a package of reforms that finally allows the majority to master capitalism.

[more]

front cover of Decentering the Regime
Decentering the Regime
Ethnicity, Radicalism, and Democracy in Juchitán, Mexico
Jeffrey W. Rubin
Duke University Press, 1997
Since 1989 an indigenous political movement—the Coalition of Workers, Peasants, and Students of the Isthmus (COCEI)—has governed the southern Mexican city of Juchitán. In Decentering the Regime, Jeffrey W. Rubin examines this Zapotec Indian movement and shows how COCEI forged an unprecedented political and cultural path—overcoming oppression in the 1970s to achieve democracy in the 1990s. Rubin traces the history and rise to power of this grassroots movement, and describes a Juchitán that exists in substantial autonomy from the central Mexican government and Mexican nationalism—thereby debunking the notion that a state- and regime-centered approach to power can explain the politics of domination and resistance in Mexico.
Employing an interdisciplinary approach, Rubin shows that the Juchitecos’ ability to organize and sustain a radical political movement grew out of a century-long history of negotiation of political rule. He argues that factors outside the realm of formal politics—such as ethnicity, language, gender, and religion—play an important part in the dynamics of regional political struggles and relationships of power. While offering a detailed view of the Zapotec community and its interactions, Rubin reconceptualizes democracy by considering the question of how meaningful autonomy, self-government, cultural expression, and material well-being can be forged out of violence and repression.
[more]

front cover of Decentralisation in Africa
Decentralisation in Africa
A Pathway out of Poverty and Conflict?
Thomas Lawo
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Decentralization and Popular Democracy
Decentralization and Popular Democracy
Governance from Below in Bolivia
Jean-Paul Faguet
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Bolivia decentralized in an effort to deepen democracy, improve public services, and make government more accountable. Unlike many countries, Bolivia succeeded. Over the past generation, public investment shifted dramatically toward primary services and resource distribution became far more equitable, partly due to the creation of new local governments. Many municipalities responded to decentralization with transparent, accountable government, yet others suffered ineptitude, corruption, or both. Why? Jean-Paul Faguet combines broad econometric data with deep qualitative evidence to investigate the social underpinnings of governance. He shows how the interaction of civic groups and business interests determines the quality of local decision making.

In order to understand decentralization, Faguet argues, we must understand governance from the ground up. Drawing on his findings, he offers an evaluation of the potential benefits of decentralization and recommendations for structuring successful reform.

[more]

logo for University of Michigan Press
Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa
Kristen Kao and Ellen M. Lust, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2025
While many scholars, policymakers, and development practitioners view decentralization as a way to increase participation, strengthen political representation, and improve social welfare, little is known about the experiences of communities in the context of decentralization – particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume directs our attention toward the ways in which decentralization is “lived locally” by citizens of the MENA region, underscoring the simultaneous influences of individual-level factors (e.g., gender, education) and local context (e.g., development levels, electoral institutions) on governance processes and outcomes. 

A group of international scholars brings together methodologically diverse, original research in Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia to expand the literature on decentralization. Following a preface by Moulay Hicham, the empirical chapters are arranged into three thematic sections focused on subnational variations in the relationships between central and local actors, citizen engagement with state and non-state institutions, and the extent to which representatives reflect their local communities. Together, these chapters provide important insights into governance, participation, and representation in the MENA and open new questions for furthering the study of governance and local development. Only by unpacking perspectives and governance experiences at the micro-level can we understand how decentralization policies affect citizens’ everyday lives.
[more]

front cover of Deception and Abuse at the Fed
Deception and Abuse at the Fed
Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank
By Robert D. Auerbach
University of Texas Press, 2008

The Federal Reserve—the central bank of the United States—is the most powerful peacetime bureaucracy in the federal government. Under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), the Fed achieved near mythical status for its part in managing the economy, and Greenspan was lauded as a genius. Few seemed to notice or care that Fed officials operated secretly with almost no public accountability. There was a courageous exception to this lack of oversight, however: Henry B. Gonzalez (D-TX)—chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services (banking) Committee.

In Deception and Abuse at the Fed, Robert Auerbach, a former banking committee investigator, recounts major instances of Fed mismanagement and abuse of power that were exposed by Rep. Gonzalez, including:

  • Blocking Congress and the public from holding powerful Fed officials accountable by falsely declaring—for 17 years—it had no transcripts of its meetings;
  • Manipulating the stock and bond markets in 1994 under cover of a preemptive strike against inflation;
  • Allowing $5.5 billion to be sent to Saddam Hussein from a small Atlanta branch of a foreign bank—the result of faulty bank examination practices by the Fed;
  • Stonewalling Congressional investigations and misleading the Washington Post about the $6,300 found on the Watergate burglars.

Auerbach provides documentation of these and other abuses at the Fed, which confirms Rep. Gonzalez's belief that no government agency should be allowed to operate with the secrecy and independence in which the Federal Reserve has shrouded itself. Auerbach concludes with recommendations for specific, broad-ranging reforms that will make the Fed accountable to the government and the people of the United States.

[more]

front cover of Deciding to Decide
Deciding to Decide
Agenda Setting in the United States Supreme Court
H.W. Perry Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1991

Of the nearly five thousand cases presented to the Supreme Court each year, less than 5 percent are granted review. How the Court sets its agenda, therefore, is perhaps as important as how it decides cases. H. W. Perry, Jr., takes the first hard look at the internal workings of the Supreme Court, illuminating its agenda-setting policies, procedures, and priorities as never before. He conveys a wealth of new information in clear prose and integrates insights he gathered in unprecedented interviews with five justices. For this unique study Perry also interviewed four U.S. solicitors general, several deputy solicitors general, seven judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and sixty-four former Supreme Court law clerks.

The clerks and justices spoke frankly with Perry, and his skillful analysis of their responses is the mainspring of this book. His engaging report demystifies the Court, bringing it vividly to life for general readers—as well as political scientists and a wide spectrum of readers throughout the legal profession. Perry not only provides previously unpublished information on how the Court operates but also gives us a new way of thinking about the institution. Among his contributions is a decision-making model that is more convincing and persuasive than the standard model for explaining judicial behavior.

[more]

front cover of Deciding to Intervene
Deciding to Intervene
The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy
James M. Scott
Duke University Press, 1996
Whether to intervene in conflicts in the developing world is a major and ongoing policy issue for the United States. In Deciding to Intervene, James M. Scott examines the Reagan Doctrine, a policy that provided aid to anti-Communist insurgents—or “Freedom Fighters” as President Reagan liked to call them—in an attempt to reverse Soviet advances in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. Conceived early in the Reagan presidency as a means to win the Cold War, this policy was later singled out by Reagan and several of his advisors as one of the administration’s most significant efforts in the the Cold War’s final phase.
Using a comparative case study method, Scott examines the historical, intellectual, and ideological origins of the Reagan Doctrine as it was applied to Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. Scott draws on many previously unavailable government documents and a wide range of primary material to show both how this policy in particular, and American foreign policy in general, emerges from the complex, shifting interactions between the White House, Congress, bureaucratic agencies, and groups and individuals from the private sector.
In evaluating the origins and consequences of the Reagan Doctrine, Deciding to Intervene synthesizes the lessons that can be learned from the Reagan administration’s policy and places them within the broad perspective of foreign policy-making today. Scott’s measured treatment of this sensitive and important topic will be welcomed by scholars in policy studies, international affairs, political science, and history, as well as by any reader with an interest in the formation of American foreign policy.
[more]

front cover of Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder
Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder
Political Decision-Making in Times of Crisis
Julius Maximilian Rogenhofer
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder examines how democratic representatives make decisions in crisis situations. By analyzing parliamentary asylum debates from Germany’s Asylum Compromise in 1992-1993 and the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, Julius Rogenhofer identifies representatives’ ability to project decisiveness as a crucial determinant for whether the rights and demands of irregular migrants were adequately considered in democratic decision-making. Both crisis situations showcase an emotive dimension to the parliamentary meaning-making process. As politicians confront fears of social and political disorder, they focus on appearing decisive in the eyes of the public and fellow representatives, even at the expense of human rights considerations and inclusive deliberation processes. 

Rogenhofer shows how his theoretical approach allows us to reinterpret a range of crisis situations beyond the irregular migration context, including democracies’ initial responses to Covid-19, the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, and United States climate politics. These additional case studies help position concerns with decisiveness amid the challenges that populism and technocracy increasingly pose to representative democracies.
[more]

front cover of The Declaration of America
The Declaration of America
Our Principles in Thought and Action
Richard Ferrier
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
Richard Ferrier expounds on the basic truth learned from Alan Keyes during work on his political campaign in 1996. "He taught us to see what President Lincoln saw 160 years ago: an American should always take his principles and form his sentiments from those expressed in the Declaration of Independence." Whereas it might seem America is the product of political divorce, the Declaration instead endows our nation with the qualities of a marriage. We are a deliberate union, Ferrier says, and we must strive to live well politically by doing right by the pledge contained in the Declaration.

Here Ferrier transforms decades of teaching American history and its founding into a reflection on its most important document. Our troubled times call for a return to America's fundamental principles. This book shows their sources, their truth, and their lasting power. It is a labor of love, and of hope. 

Anyone seeking opportunity in the United States should read this book and be reminded of the privilege and obligation of the American way of life, all contained in the Declaration of Independence. 
[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America
Preface by Cass R. Sunstein
Georgetown University Press, 2003

Never in history have 1,322 words held out such extraordinary determination to be free as those found in the Declaration of Independence. In 1787, "We the people" were the three words that not only engendered a new and cohesive nation; they went on to change the face of the world as well. In 1791, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, known to us as the Bill of Rights introduced the world to the concept of those singular rights that ought to belong to every free individual.

In one compact volume, the full texts of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America with all ratified twenty-seven Amendments to the Constitution are side by side—along with another of America's seminal documents, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, an additional world-changing statement that codified for the first time that one cannot be required by law to support or prefer any belief or be punished for those one does profess—and the basis for what we have come to know as the "wall of separation" between church and state.

Who we are and what we are free to be as citizens of the United States of America is contained between these covers. Cass R. Sunstein prefaces the volume with a succinct history and interpretation of the place and meaning of both the Declaration and the Constitution in American life. Enhanced by an index and suggestions for further reading, this volume, small in size but overwhelming in the impact of its contents, belongs in the home of every citizen of the United States.

[more]

front cover of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic
The Decline and Fall of the American Republic
Bruce Ackerman
Harvard University Press, 2010

Bruce Ackerman shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. ­Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another—from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century—and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward.

The book aims to begin a new constitutional debate. Americans should not suppose that Barack Obama’s centrism and constitutionalism will typify the presidencies of the twenty-first century. We should seize the present opportunity to confront deeper institutional pathologies before it is too late.

[more]

front cover of The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996
The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996
Fifth Edition
Martin P. Wattenberg
Harvard University Press, 1998

"The major theme of Chapter 12, new to this edition, is the missed opportunities for the parties in the 1996 elections. The year started with a highly visible confrontation over the budget that could have revitalized the party coalitions if the issues had been carried over to the election. However, the candidate-centered campaign of 1996 ultimately did little to resolve these issues or to reinvigorate partisanship in the electorate. In spite of the opportunities for getting new voters to the polls created by the Motor Voter Act, voter turnout in 1996 was the lowest since 1924. Turning out the vote is one of the most crucial functions of political parties, and their inability to mobalize more than half of the eligible electorate strongly indicates their future decline in importance to voters. Until citizens support the parties more by showing up to cast votes for their candidates, the decline of American political parties must be considered to be an ongoing phenomenon."

--From the preface

[more]

front cover of The Decline of Comity in Congress
The Decline of Comity in Congress
Eric M. Uslaner
University of Michigan Press, 1996
Why do members of Congress resort to name-calling? In this provocative book, Eric M. Uslaner proposes that Congress is mirroring the increased incivility of American society. He points to five core values—American exceptionalism, enlightened individualism, egalitarianism, science as social engineering, and religion—that have been eroded since the 1960s. The author argues that a lack of trust permeates members of Congress to the point that they would rather seek control than compromise. This, Uslaner contends, is the real cause of gridlock in Washington. The Decline in Comity in Congress demonstrates why institutional reform will not correct this problem and why Americans need to change before their government can.
[more]

front cover of The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States
The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States
Michael Goldfield
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Michael Goldfield challenges standard explanations for union decline, arguing that the major causes are to be found in the changing relations between classes. Goldfield combines innovative use of National Labor Relations Board certification election data, which serve as an accurate measure of new union growth in the private sector, with a sophisticated analysis of the standard explanations of union decline. By understanding the decline of U.S. labor unions, he maintains, it is possible to begin to understand the conditions necessary for their future rebirth and resurgence.
[more]

front cover of Decline Of The Nation-State
Decline Of The Nation-State
Gurutz Jáuregui Bereciartu
University of Nevada Press, 1994

This scholarly work explains the historical and contemporary causes that have given rise to the current explosion of nationalist movements in western Europe. The text also discusses the course these movements may take in the future. The current world political order, maintained by the separation of and frequent antagonism between sovereign nation-states, is increasingly inadequate given the profound social, economic, and technological transformations which have occurred in recent years. The nation-state is no longer the axis of political systems. Existing nation-states are currently undergoing a process similar to the one that caused the disappearance of traditional social forms and territorial entities which were subsumed into broader political structures. The goal of contemporary nationalist movements to create their own nation-states may therefore constitute an anachronistic aspiration and historical error. This crisis of the nation-state, as a form of universal juridico-political organization, and its replacement by supranational structures, is fraught with its own dangers. The latter purports to construct a supranational Europe. However, this new Europe cannot be established in opposition to the nations and regions; rather, it must form a kind of consensual melting pot resulting from the mixture of the complex social and cultural traditions of the different communities constituting European society. Decline of the Nation-State was translated into English by William A. Douglass. It was published originally as Contra el estado-nación: En orno al hecho y la cuestion naciónal in 1986.

[more]

front cover of The Declining Significance of Race
The Declining Significance of Race
Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Third Edition
William Julius Wilson
University of Chicago Press, 2012

When first published in 1980, The Declining Significance of Race immediately sparked controversy with its contentious thesis that race was becoming less of a deciding factor in the life chances of black Americans than class. This new edition of the seminal book includes a new afterword in which William Julius Wilson not only reflects on the debate surrounding the book, but also presents a provocative discussion of race, class, and social policy.

“The intellectual strength of this book lies in his capacity to integrate disparate findings from historical studies, social theory and research on contemporary trends into a complex and original synthesis that challenges widespread assumptions about the cause of black disadvantage and the way to remove it.”—Paul Starr, New York Times Book Review

“This publication is easily one of the most erudite and sober diagnoses of the American black situation. Students of race relations and anybody in a policy-making position cannot afford to bypass this study.”—Ernest Manheim, Sociology

[more]

front cover of Decoding the Digital Church
Decoding the Digital Church
Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump
Stephanie A. Martin
University of Alabama Press, 2021
A nuanced look at the rhetorical narratives used by conservative Republicans and evangelicals to make both personal and political choices
 
As a political constituency, white conservative evangelicals are generally portrayed as easy to dupe, disposed to vote against their own interests, and prone to intolerance and knee-jerk reactions. In Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump, Stephanie A. Martin challenges this assumption and moves beyond these overused stereotypes to develop a refined explanation for this constituency’s voting behavior.

This volume offers a fresh perspective on the study of religion and politics and stems from the author’s personal interest in the ways her experiences with believers differ from how scholars often frame this group’s rationale and behaviors. To address this disparity, Martin examines sermons, drawing on her expertise in rhetoric and communication studies with the benefits of ethnographic research in an innovative hybrid approach she terms a “digital rhetorical ethnography.” Martin’s thorough research surveys more than 150 online sermons from America’s largest evangelical megachurches in 37 different states. Through listening closely to the words of the pastors who lead these conservative congregations, Martin describes a gentler discourse less obsessed with issues like abortion or marriage equality than stereotypes of evangelicals might suggest. Instead, the politicaleconomic sermons and stories from pastors encourage true believers
to remember the exceptional nature of the nation’s founding while also deemphasizing how much American citizenship really means.

Martin grapples with and pays serious, scholarly attention to a seeming contradiction: while the large majority of white conservative evangelicals voted in 2016 for Donald J. Trump, Martin shows that many of their pastors were deeply concerned about the candidate, the divisive nature of the campaign, and the potential effect of the race on their congregants’ devotion to democratic process itself. In-depth chapters provide a fuller analysis of our current political climate, recapping previous scholarship on the history of this growing divide and establishing the groundwork to set up the dissonance between the political commitments of evangelicals and their faith that the rhetorical ethnography addresses.
[more]

front cover of Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands
Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands
Adam Cathcart
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
In the past decade, the Chinese-North Korean border region has undergone a gradual transformation into a site of intensified cooperation, competition, and intrigue. These changes have prompted a significant volume of critical scholarship and media commentary across multiple languages and disciplines. Drawing on existing studies and new data, this volume brings much of this literature into concert by pulling together a wide range of insight on the region's economics, security, social cohesion, and information flows. Drawing from multilingual sources and transnational scholarship, the volume is enhanced by the extensive fieldwork undertaken by the editors and contributors in their quest to decode the borderland. In doing so, the volume emphasizes the link between theory, methodology, and practice in the field of Area Studies and social science more broadly.
[more]

front cover of A Decolonial Feminism
A Decolonial Feminism
Francoise Verges
Pluto Press, 2021
For too long feminism has been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. In this powerful manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be accomplices of capitalism, racism, colonialism and imperialism: it is time to fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women’s bodies. A Decolonial Feminism grapples with the central issues in feminist debates today: from Eurocentrism and whiteness, to power, inclusion and exclusion. Delving into feminist and anti-racist histories, Verges also assesses contemporary activism, movements and struggles, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike. Centring anticolonialism and anti-racism within an intersectional Marxist feminism, the book puts forward an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.
[more]

front cover of Decolonising the Caribbean
Decolonising the Caribbean
Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective
Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
Oostindie and Klinkers add depth to the study of post-World War II Caribbean decolonization with their comparative analysis of the former Dutch colonies of Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba. Their detailed analysis of Dutch decolonization policies of the 1940s cover such issues as the political processes of decolonization, development aid, the Dutch Caribbean exodus to the metropolis, and cultural antagonisms. Putting these issues within a larger context, the authors skillfully contrast the decolonization process of Dutch Caribbean states with the current policies pursued in the non-sovereign Caribbean by France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
[more]

front cover of Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940–1993
Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940–1993
B. A. Ogot
Ohio University Press, 1995

This is a sharply observed assessment of the history of the last half century by a distinguished group of historians of Kenya. At the same time the book is a courageous reflection in the dilemmas of African nationhood.

Professor B. A. Ogot says:

“The main purpose of the book is to show that decolonization does not only mean the transfer of alien power to sovereign nationhood; it must also entail the liberation of the worlds of spirit and culture, as well as economics and politics.

“The book also raises a more fundamental question, that is: How much independence is available to any state, national economy or culture in today’s world? It asks how far are Africa’s miseries linked to the colonial past and to the process of decolonization?

“In particular the book raises the basic question of how far Kenya is avoidably neo-colonial? And what does neo-colonial dependence mean? The book answers these questions by discussing the dynamic between the politics of decolonization, the social history of class formation and the economics of dependence. The book ends with a provocative epilogue discussing the transformation of the post-colonial state from a single-party to a multi-party system.”

[more]

front cover of Decolonization and the Decolonized
Decolonization and the Decolonized
Albert Memmi
University of Minnesota Press, 2006
In this time of global instability and widespread violence, Albert Memmi—author of the highly influential and groundbreaking work The Colonizer and the Colonized—turns his attention to the present-day situation of formerly colonized peoples. In Decolonization and the Decolonized, Memmi expands his intellectual engagement with the subject and examines the manifold causes of the failure of decolonization efforts throughout the world.As outspoken and controversial as ever, Memmi initiates a much-needed discussion of the ex-colonized and refuses to idealize those who are too often painted as hapless victims. He shows how, in light of a radically changed world, it would be problematic—and even irresponsible—to continue to deploy concepts that were useful and valid during the period of anticolonial struggle.Decolonization and the Decolonized contributes to the most current debates on Islamophobia in France, the “new” anti-Semitism, and the unrelenting poverty gripping the African continent. Memmi, who is Jewish, was born and raised in Tunis, and focuses primarily on what he calls the Arab-Muslim condition, while also incorporating comparisons with South America, Asia, Black Africa, and the United States. In Decolonization and the Decolonized, Memmi has written that rare book—a manifesto informed by intellect and animated by passion—that will propel public analysis of the most urgent global issues to a new level.Albert Memmi is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Paris, Nanterre, and the author of Racism (Minnesota, 1997).Robert Bononno, a teacher and translator, lives in New York City.
[more]

front cover of Decolonization and World Peace
Decolonization and World Peace
By Brian Urquhart
University of Texas Press, 1989

Brian Urquhart's remarkable career in the United Nations began when the UN was founded in 1945 and ended in 1986 after a twelve-year tenure as Under Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs—the equivalent of commander of UN peacekeeping operations. Among the many revolutions he observed during that period was the process of decolonization, which completely changed the geopolitical map of the world and the conditions under which governments seek to assure world peace. In Decolonization and World Peace, he charts the rapid progress of decolonization in Africa, the Middle East, and other areas of the Third World and describes some of its repercussions.

One of the most serious repercussions has been the chain of regional conflicts arising from the creation of postcolonial power vacuums in various parts of the world. Attributing the difficulty in resolving many of these conflicts—including the Palestine conflict and the Iran-Iraq War—to the climate of Cold War that paralyzed UN authority from the 1960s through the early 1980s, Urquhart is encouraged by what he calls a "new summer of international relations" brought on by the warming of relations between the US and the USSR.

The four chapters of Decolonization and World Peace are based on the Tom Slick World Peace lectures that Urquhart delivered at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin in 1988. The appendices offer further insights into the peacekeeping potential of the UN. Included are his remarks at the Nobel Prize Banquet in Norway, on the occasion of the award of the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize to UN peacekeeping forces.

[more]

front cover of The Decolonized Eye
The Decolonized Eye
Filipino American Art and Performance
Sarita Echavez See
University of Minnesota Press, 2009

From the late 1980s to the present, artists of Filipino descent in the United States have produced a challenging and creative movement. In The Decolonized Eye, Sarita Echavez See shows how these artists have engaged with the complex aftermath of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines.

Focusing on artists working in New York and California, See examines the overlapping artistic and aesthetic practices and concerns of filmmaker Angel Shaw, painter Manuel Ocampo, installation artist Paul Pfeiffer, comedian Rex Navarrete, performance artist Nicky Paraiso, and sculptor Reanne Estrada to explain the reasons for their strangely shadowy presence in American culture and scholarship. Offering an interpretation of their creations that accounts for their queer, decolonizing strategies of camp, mimesis, and humor, See reveals the conditions of possibility that constitute this contemporary archive.

By analyzing art, performance, and visual culture, The Decolonized Eye illuminates the unexpected consequences of America's amnesia over its imperial history.

[more]

front cover of Decolonizing Diasporas
Decolonizing Diasporas
Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature
Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez
Northwestern University Press, 2021

Winner, MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies 

Mapping literature from Spanish-speaking sub-Saharan African and Afro-Latinx Caribbean diasporas, Decolonizing Diasporas argues that the works of diasporic writers and artists from Equatorial Guinea, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba offer new worldviews that unsettle and dismantle the logics of colonial modernity. With women of color feminisms and decolonial theory as frameworks, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez juxtaposes Afro-Latinx and Afro-Hispanic diasporic artists, analyzing work by Nelly Rosario, Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, Trifonia Melibea Obono, Donato Ndongo, Junot Díaz, Aracelis Girmay, Loida Maritza Pérez, Ernesto Quiñonez, Christina Olivares, Joaquín Mbomio Bacheng, Ibeyi, Daniel José Older, and María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Figueroa-Vásquez’s study reveals the thematic, conceptual, and liberatory tools these artists offer when read in relation to one another.

Decolonizing Diasporas examines how themes of intimacy, witnessing, dispossession, reparations, and futurities are remapped in these works by tracing interlocking structures of oppression, including public and intimate forms of domination, sexual and structural violence, sociopolitical and racial exclusion, and the haunting remnants of colonial intervention. Figueroa-Vásquez contends that these diasporic literatures reveal violence but also forms of resistance and the radical potential of Afro-futurities.

This study centers the cultural productions of peoples of African descent as Afro-diasporic imaginaries that subvert coloniality and offer new ways to approach questions of home, location, belonging, and justice.

[more]

front cover of Decolonizing Independence
Decolonizing Independence
Statecraft in Nigeria’s First Republic and Israeli Interventions
Lynn Schler
Michigan State University Press, 2022
Even before it gained independence in 1960, the process of nation-building in Nigeria was plagued by regional, ethnic, and class conflict. Decolonizing Independence: Statecraft in Nigeria’s First Republic and Israeli Interventions examines how many of the leading figures of what would become Nigeria’s First Republic (1963–1966) formed relations with Israel to help navigate the challenges of statecraft and development. As Nigeria transitioned to independence, the dealings between its political elite and Israeli diplomats helped advance the ideological aspirations, economic ventures, development schemes, and political agendas that defined the era. Moving beyond the familiar history of Nigeria’s struggle with former colonizer Britain, Decolonizing Independence uses Israeli-Nigerian diplomatic relations to provide a novel window into the political cultures, ideologies, and leadership strategies that shaped statecraft in Nigeria. Tracing the events and dynamics that increasingly ensnared Israel in the smoldering political landscape of the First Republic, this volume sheds light on the postcolonial imaginaries of the Nigerian elite as they attempted to lead a divided nation through the process of decolonization.
[more]

front cover of Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine
Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine
Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State
Jeff Halper
Pluto Press, 2021
'Extremely convincing' - Electronic Intifada

For decades we have spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine conflict', but what if our understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence.

Jeff Halper argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community.

To show how this can be done, Halper uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its post-colonial conclusion. Halper's unflinching reframing will empower activists fighting for the rights of the Palestinians and democracy for all.
[more]

front cover of Decolonizing the University
Decolonizing the University
Edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Kerem Nisancioglu and Dalia Gebrial
Pluto Press, 2018
"A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonize."—Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. Their battle cry, #RhodesMustFall, sparked an international movement calling for the decolonization of universities all over the world.
 
Today, as the movement develops beyond the picket line, how might it go on to radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists, and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, demanding diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education. Chapters include:
 
*Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change (Dalia Febrial)
*Race and the Neoliberal University ((John Holmwood)
*Black/Academia (Robbie Shilliam)
*The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University (Kehinde Andrews)
*Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum (Pat Lockley)
*Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention (Carol Azumah Dennis)
*Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science (William Jamal Richardson)
 
As the book’s insightful Introduction states, "Taking colonialism as a global project as a starting point, it becomes difficult to turn away from the Western university as a key site through which colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized." Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist colonialism inside and outside the classroom, Decolonizing the University provides the tools for radical change in educational disciplines, pedagogies, and institutions.  
 
[more]

logo for Pluto Press
Deconstructing Disney
Martin McQuillan and Eleanor Byrne
Pluto Press, 1999

front cover of Deconstructing the High Line
Deconstructing the High Line
Postindustrial Urbanism and the Rise of the Elevated Park
Lindner, Christoph
Rutgers University Press, 2017
2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

The High Line, an innovative promenade created on a disused elevated railway in Manhattan, is one of the world’s most iconic new urban landmarks. Since the opening of its first section in 2009, this unique greenway has exceeded all expectations in terms of attracting visitors, investment, and property development to Manhattan’s West Side. Frequently celebrated as a monument to community-led activism, adaptive re-use of urban infrastructure, and innovative ecological design, the High Line is being used as a model for numerous urban redevelopment plans proliferating worldwide.

Deconstructing the High Line is the first book to analyze the High Line from multiple perspectives, critically assessing its aesthetic, economic, ecological, symbolic, and social impacts. Including several essays by planners and architects directly involved in the High Line’s design, this volume also brings together a diverse range of scholars from the fields of urban studies, geography, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. Together, they offer insights into the project’s remarkable success, while also giving serious consideration to the critical charge that the High Line is “Disney World on the Hudson,” a project that has merely greened, sanitized, and gentrified an urban neighborhood while displacing longstanding residents and businesses.

Deconstructing the High Line is not just for New Yorkers, but for anyone interested in larger issues of public space, neoliberal redevelopment, creative design practice, and urban renewal.  
 
[more]

front cover of Dedan Kimathi on Trial
Dedan Kimathi on Trial
Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion
Julie MacArthur
Ohio University Press, 2017

The transcript from this historic trial, long thought destroyed or hidden, unearths a piece of the British colonial archive at a critical point in the Mau Mau Rebellion. Its discovery and landmark publication unsettles an already contentious Kenyan history and its reverberations in the postcolonial present.

Perhaps no figure embodied the ambiguities, colonial fears, and collective imaginations of Kenya’s decolonization era more than Dedan Kimathi, the self-proclaimed field marshal of the rebel forces that took to the forests to fight colonial rule in the 1950s. Kimathi personified many of the contradictions that the Mau Mau Rebellion represented: rebel statesman, literate peasant, modern traditionalist. His capture and trial in 1956, and subsequent execution, for many marked the end of the rebellion and turned Kimathi into a patriotic martyr.

Here, the entire trial transcript is available for the first time. This critical edition also includes provocative contributions from leading Mau Mau scholars reflecting on the meaning of the rich documents offered here and the figure of Kimathi in a much wider field of historical and contemporary concerns. These include the nature of colonial justice; the moral arguments over rebellion, nationalism, and the end of empire; and the complexities of memory and memorialization in contemporary Kenya.

Contributors: David Anderson, Simon Gikandi, Nicholas Githuku, Lotte Hughes, and John Lonsdale. Introductory note by Willy Mutunga.

[more]

front cover of Dedicated to the People of Darfur
Dedicated to the People of Darfur
Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope
Edited and with an Introduction by Luke Reynolds and Jennifer Reynolds
Rutgers University Press, 2009
Life's changes. They happen every day. Some large, some small. A few are very personal. Others impact the world. Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope includes original and inspiring essays that celebrate the glories gained from taking risks, breaking down barriers, and overcoming any obstacles.

Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, a gallery of O.Henry award recipients, and many best-selling authors come together to share personal and compelling challenges and experiences. From contemplations on past drug use to reflections on gun control, social justice, passion and its sacrifices, and adventures such as skydiving, mountain climbing, and golfing, the topics vary greatly. This kaleidoscopic anthology is a commentary on the lives of prominent literary artists and ordinary citizens who have made simple, yet powerful choices that provoked change in one's self and for humanityùmuch the same way that Luke and Jennifer Reynolds do by building this invaluable collection for readers and the world of human rights.

Not too long ago, as struggling graduate students, Luke and Jennifer Reynolds conceived this uniquely themed volume as a way to raise funds to support ending the genocide in Darfur. Some people carry signs, others make speeches, many take action. What is most special about this book is that it extends beyond words and ideas, into a tangible effort to effect change. To this end, all royalties from the sales of Dedicated to the People of Darfur:Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope will benefit The Save Darfur Coalition, an organization that seeks to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

[more]

front cover of Deeds Done in Words
Deeds Done in Words
Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson
University of Chicago Press, 1990
"Deeds Done in Words is an impressive piece of work. It is the first attempt to identify and assess the principal genres of rhetoric, and to interpret the panoply of those genres in terms of the needs of, and the needs for, ritual in American politics."—Jeffrey Tulis, author of The Rhetorical Presidency

"Deeds Done in Words is a thoughtful survey of how a democracy uses language to transact its business. Based on an enlivened understanding of genre theory and on numerous pieces of original criticism, Campbell and Jamieson vividly show how central public discourse has become the lifeblood of the American polity."—Roderick Hart, author of The Sound of Leadership

"The rhetoric that issues from the White House is becoming an ever more salient part of what the presidency means and does. This acute inquiry provides a great many insights into the forms, meanings, and functions of presidential discourse. It is an enlightening contribution to our understanding of American politics."—Murray Edelman, author of Constructing the Political Spectacle
[more]

front cover of Deep Currents and Rising Tides
Deep Currents and Rising Tides
The Indian Ocean and International Security
John Garofano and Andrea J. Dew, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2013

The Indian Ocean region has rapidly emerged as a hinge point in the changing global balance of power and the geographic nexus of economic and security issues with vital global consequences. The security of energy supplies, persistent poverty and its contribution to political extremism, piracy, and related threats to seaborne trade, competing nuclear powers, and possibly the scene of future clashes between rising great powers India and China—all are dangers in the waters or in the littoral states of the Indian Ocean region.

This volume, one of the first attempts to treat the Indian Ocean Region in a coherent fashion, captures the spectrum of cooperation and competition in the Indian Ocean Region. Contributors discuss points of cooperation and competition in a region that stretches from East Africa, to Singapore, to Australia, and assess the regional interests of China, India, Pakistan, and the United States. Chapters review possible “red lines” for Chinese security in the region, India’s naval ambitions, Pakistan’s maritime security, and threats from non-state actors—terrorists, pirates, and criminal groups—who challenge security on the ocean for all states.

This volume will interest academics, professionals, and researchers with interests in international relations, Asian security, and maritime studies.

[more]

front cover of Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico
Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico
An Anthropology of Nationalism
Claudio Lomnitz
University of Minnesota Press, 2001

In Mexico, as elsewhere, the national space, that network of places where the people interact with state institutions, is constantly changing. How it does so, how it develops, is a historical process-a process that Claudio Lomnitz exposes and investigates in this book, which develops a distinct view of the cultural politics of nation building in Mexico. Lomnitz highlights the varied, evolving, and often conflicting efforts that have been made by Mexicans over the past two centuries to imagine, organize, represent, and know their country, its relations with the wider world, and its internal differences and inequalities. Firmly based on particulars and committed to the specificity of such thinking, this book also has broad implications for how a theoretically informed history can and should be done.

An exploration of Mexican national space by way of an analysis of nationalism, the public sphere, and knowledge production, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico brings an original perspective to the dynamics of national cultural production on the periphery. Its blending of theoretical innovation, historical inquiry, and critical engagement provides a new model for the writing of history and anthropology in contemporary Mexico and beyond.

Public Worlds Series, volume 9


 
[more]

front cover of Deepening Democracy Latin America
Deepening Democracy Latin America
Kurt von Mettenheim
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998
Ten leading scholars of the region present original research to argue that theories of democratic consolidation or institutionalization are too often Euro- and ethno-centric; that simple appeals for greater participation are insufficient; and that recent critics of populism, patronage, and presidentialism fail to capture new opportunities for democracies in the region.
[more]

front cover of Deeper Freedom
Deeper Freedom
Liberal Democracy as an Everyday Morality
Charles W. Anderson
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Today those who believe in liberal democracy must reexamine and reaffirm their commitments. Here, Charles Anderson probes our urgent concerns and questions. Even those who believe that liberal democracy is the best form of government may think that liberal individualism leads to selfishness, permissiveness, and irresponsibility. Many would teach a cultural or religious counter-ethic to offset the excesses of freedom.
    Grounding his view in classic philosophic and religious ideals, Anderson argues that a deeper vision of individuality and freedom can lead to both a sound public philosophy and a worthy personal ethic. In the same way that we as humans try to understand our place in nature and the cosmos, Anderson seeks to understand how we, as unique individuals, can understand our place among our fellow humans. Beginning with friendship and love, he extends his inquiry to the relationships of teaching, community, work, and democracy. Anderson shows how the natural desire of free people to find meaning in relationships with one another can lead to depth and fullness both in private and public life.

[more]

front cover of The Deepest Dye
The Deepest Dye
Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World
Aisha Khan
Harvard University Press, 2021

How colonial categories of race and religion together created identities and hierarchies that today are vehicles for multicultural nationalism and social critique in the Caribbean and its diasporas.

When the British Empire abolished slavery, Caribbean sugar plantation owners faced a labor shortage. To solve the problem, they imported indentured “coolie” laborers, Hindus and a minority Muslim population from the Indian subcontinent. Indentureship continued from 1838 until its official end in 1917. The Deepest Dye begins on post-emancipation plantations in the West Indies—where Europeans, Indians, and Africans intermingled for work and worship—and ranges to present-day England, North America, and Trinidad, where colonial-era legacies endure in identities and hierarchies that still shape the post-independence Caribbean and its contemporary diasporas.

Aisha Khan focuses on the contested religious practices of obeah and Hosay, which are racialized as “African” and “Indian” despite the diversity of their participants. Obeah, a catch-all Caribbean term for sub-Saharan healing and divination traditions, was associated in colonial society with magic, slave insurrection, and fraud. This led to anti-obeah laws, some of which still remain in place. Hosay developed in the West Indies from Indian commemorations of the Islamic mourning ritual of Muharram. Although it received certain legal protections, Hosay’s mass gatherings, processions, and mock battles provoked fears of economic disruption and labor unrest that led to criminalization by colonial powers. The proper observance of Hosay was debated among some historical Muslim communities and continues to be debated now.

In a nuanced study of these two practices, Aisha Khan sheds light on power dynamics through religious and racial identities formed in the context of colonialism in the Atlantic world, and shows how today these identities reiterate inequalities as well as reinforce demands for justice and recognition.

[more]

front cover of Defacing Power
Defacing Power
The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics
Brent J. Steele
University of Michigan Press, 2012

"Combining a rich and varied set of theoretical insights with a subtle analysis of the politics of American foreign policy, Defacing Power marks an important contribution toward understanding the power of identity in world politics. Engagingly written and rigorously argued, Steele's challenging analysis is incisive, important, and rewarding."
---Michael C. Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

"Brent Steele's marvelous excavation of the aesthetic dimensions of power is strikingly irreverent, inasmuch as he displays no commitment to ex ante disciplinary or substantive constraints in his quest to disclose those moments of creative action so often overlooked by theories and theorists wedded to the grandiose and the transhistorical. Steele samples and remixes a myriad of sources, arranging them so as to produce a transgressively insightful account of how 'work on the Self,' often condemned as self-indulgent by prior generations of intellectuals, might just point in the direction of a more sustainably secure world."
---Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, School of International Service, American University

"Defacing Power successfully integrates work from Dewey to Morgenthau to Foucault, as well as a wide range of contemporary international relations scholars, in its genealogy of power conceptualizations and characteristics. This book is theoretically sophisticated and serious. It should be of interest to students of international politics, international theory, social theory, and foreign policy."
---Cecelia Lynch, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine

Defacing Power investigates how nation-states create self-images in part through aesthetics and how these images can be manipulated to challenge those states' power. Although states have long employed media, such as radio, television, and film, for their own image-making purposes, counterpower agents have also seized upon new telecommunications technologies. Most recently, the Internet has emerged as contested territory where states and other actors wage a battle of words and images.

Moving beyond theory, Brent Steele illustrates his provocative argument about the vulnerability of power with examples from recent history: the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive, September 11 and the al-Qaeda communiqués, the atrocities at Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. response to the Asian tsunami of December 2004. He demonstrates how a nation-state---even one as powerful as the United States---comes to feel threatened not only by other nation-states or terrorist organizations but also by unexpected events that challenge its self-constructed image of security. At the same time, Steele shows that as each generation uses available media to create and re-create a national identity, technological innovations allow for the shifting, upheaval, and expansion of the cultural structure of a nation.

Brent J. Steele is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.

[more]

front cover of Defeat Is the Only Bad News
Defeat Is the Only Bad News
Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931
Alison Des Forges
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

A Rwandan proverb says “Defeat is the only bad news.” For Rwandans living under colonial rule, winning called not only for armed confrontation, but also for a battle of wits—and not only with foreigners, but also with each other. In Defeat Is the Only Bad News Alison Des Forges recounts the ambitions, strategies, and intrigues of an African royal court under Yuhi Musinga, the Rwandan ruler from 1896 to 1931. These were turbulent years for Rwanda, when first Germany and then Belgium pursued an aggressive plan of colonization there. At the time of the Europeans’ arrival, Rwanda was also engaged in a succession dispute after the death of one of its most famous kings. Against this backdrop, the Rwandan court became the stage for a drama of Shakespearean proportions, filled with deceit, shrewd calculation, ruthless betrayal, and sometimes murder.

            Historians who study European expansion typically focus on interactions between colonizers and colonized; they rarely attend to relations among the different factions inhabiting occupied lands. Des Forges, drawing on oral histories and extensive archival research, reveals how divisions among different groups in Rwanda shaped their responses to colonial governments, missionaries, and traders. Rwandans, she shows, used European resources to extend their power, even as they sought to preserve the autonomy of the royal court. Europeans, for their part, seized on internal divisions to advance their own goals. Des Forges’s vividly narrated history, meticulously edited and introduced by David Newbury, provides a deep context for understanding the Rwandan civil war a century later.
 
[more]

front cover of The Defence of Constitutionalism
The Defence of Constitutionalism
Or the Czech Question in Post-National Europe
Jirí Pribán
Karolinum Press, 2018
More than a century after the publication of Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s study The Czech Question, Czech politics—instead of the nation’s historical struggle for survival and independence—has become a pragmatic question of democratic constitutionalism and civility. Originally published in major Czech newspapers, these essays on contemporary European politics demonstrate that this new understanding involves both technical questions of power making and critical questions of its meaning. Democracy, Přibáň shows, is the process of permanent self-correction. It possesses both the capacity to respond to unexpected problems and crises and intrinsic tensions between principled arguments and everyday administrative processes. Defending constitutionalism, therefore, draws on principles of civil rights and freedoms, limited government, and representative democracy, the validity and persuasive force of which are at stake not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the post-national European Union and our global society at large.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter