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389 books match the query 'State' and 10 start with n

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Narratives of Justice

Legislators' Beliefs about Distributive Fairness

Grant Reeher

University of Michigan Press, 1996

Narratives of Justice offers a provocative, contemporary look at the timeless questions of justice and fairness. Using face-to-face interviews, Grant Reeher plumbs the minds of legislators for their beliefs about distributive justice and attempts to discover the ways in which those beliefs influence their behavior. The book calls into question many notions of American political ideology and, in particular, the idea of an "American exceptionalism" regarding views from the political left, and the dominance in the United States of a "liberal tradition."

Political philosophers have amassed a large body of work on justice and fairness from a theoretical perspective, but there is comparatively little empirical work on the subject. The work that does exist concentrates on the beliefs of the public. We know very little concerning the beliefs about justice held by political elites. This work offers a window into the beliefs of legislators, a group for which such an inquiry is rarely undertaken.

The book is based on a set of extended, in-depth interviews with the members of the Connecticut State Senate as well as a year of close observation of the Senate in action. The interviews averaged four hours in length and covered a variety of topics related to fairness. Through this material, Reeher employs a narrative-based framework to understand the patterns in the senators' interview responses, and develops a typology of the senator's narratives. These narratives vary in both content and form, and as a whole present a surprising range of views.

Narratives of Justice will be of interest to those concerned with justice, political ideologies, and political beliefs, as well as state and local politics and, more generally, American politics. Its wide research and thorough documentation make it a useful guide to the literature within and beyond political science concerning beliefs, ideologies, legislative behavior, and qualitative research methods.

Grant Reeher is Assistant Professor, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, and currently a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan.

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National Healing

Race, State, and the Teaching of Composition

Claude Hurlbert

Utah State University Press, 2013

In National Healing, author Claude Hurlbert persuasively relates nationalism to institutional racism and contends that these are both symptoms of a national ill health afflicting American higher education and found even in the field of writing studies. Teachers and scholars, even in progressive fields like composition, are unwittingly at odds with their own most liberatory purposes, he says, and he advocates consciously broadening our understanding of rhetoric and writing instruction to include rhetorical traditions of non-Western cultures.

Threading a personal narrative of his own experiences as a student, professor, and citizen through a wide ranging discussion of theory, pedagogy, and philosophy in the writing classroom, Hurlbert weaves a vision that moves beyond simple polemic and simplistic multiculturalism. National Healing offers a compelling new aesthetic, epistemological, and rhetorical configuration.

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Nationalism and the State

John Breuilly

University of Chicago Press, 1993

Since its publication this important study has become established as a central work on the vast and contested subject of modern nationalism. Placing historical evidence within a general theoretical framework, John Breuilly argues that nationalism should be understood as a form of politics that arises in opposition to the modern state. In this updated and revised edition, he extends his analysis to the most recent developments in central Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also addresses the current debates over the meaning of nationalism and their implications for his position.

Breuilly challenges the conventional view that nationalism emerges from a sense of cultural identity. Rather, he shows how elites, social groups, and foreign governments use nationalist appeals to mobilize popular support against the state. Nationalism, then, is a means of creating a sense of identity. This provocative argument is supported with a wide-ranging analysis of pertinent examples—national opposition in early modern Europe; the unification movement in Germany, Italy, and Poland; separatism under the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires; fascism in Germany, Italy, and Romania; post-war anti-colonialism and the nationalist resurgence following the breakdown of Soviet power.

Still the most comprehensive and systematic historical comparison of nationalist politics, Nationalism and the State is an indispensable book for anyone seeking to understand modern politics.

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Nationalist Voices in Jordan

The Street and the State

By Betty S. Anderson

University of Texas Press, 2005

According to conventional wisdom, the national identity of the Jordanian state was defined by the ruling Hashemite family, which has governed the country since the 1920s. But this view overlooks the significant role that the "Arab street"—in this case, ordinary Jordanians and Palestinians—played and continues to play in defining national identity in Jordan and the Fertile Crescent as a whole. Indeed, as this pathfinding study makes clear, "the street" no less than the state has been a major actor in the process of nation building in the Middle East during and after the colonial era.

In this book, Betty Anderson examines the activities of the Jordanian National Movement (JNM), a collection of leftist political parties that worked to promote pan-Arab unity and oppose the continuation of a separate Jordanian state from the 1920s through the 1950s. Using primary sources including memoirs, interviews, poetry, textbooks, and newspapers, as well as archival records, she shows how the expansion of education, new jobs in the public and private sectors, changes in economic relationships, the establishment of national militaries, and the explosion of media outlets all converged to offer ordinary Jordanians and Palestinians (who were under the Jordanian government at the time) an alternative sense of national identity. Anderson convincingly demonstrates that key elements of the JNM's pan-Arab vision and goals influenced and were ultimately adopted by the Hashemite elite, even though the movement itself was politically defeated in 1957.

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Natives Making Nation

Gender, Indigeneity, and the State in the Andes

Andrew Canessa

University of Arizona Press, 2005

In Bolivia today, the ability to speak an indigenous language is highly valued among educated urbanites as a useful job skill, but a rural person who speaks a native language is branded with lower social status. Likewise, chewing coca in the countryside spells “inferior indian,” but in La Paz jazz bars it’s decidedly cool. In the Andes and elsewhere, the commodification of indianness has impacted urban lifestyles as people co-opt indigenous cultures for qualities that emphasize the uniqueness of their national culture.

This volume looks at how metropolitan ideas of nation employed by politicians, the media and education are produced, reproduced, and contested by people of the rural Andes—people who have long been regarded as ethnically and racially distinct from more culturally European urban citizens. Yet these peripheral “natives” are shown to be actively engaged with the idea of the nation in their own communities, forcing us to re-think the ways in which indigeneity is defined by its marginality.

The contributors examine the ways in which numerous identities—racial, generational, ethnic, regional, national, gender, and sexual—are both mutually informing and contradictory among subaltern Andean people who are more likely now to claim an allegiance to a nation than ever before. Although indians are less often confronted with crude assimilationist policies, they continue to face racism and discrimination as they struggle to assert an identity that is more than a mere refraction of the dominant culture. Yet despite the language of multiculturalism employed even in constitutional reform, any assertion of indian identity is likely to be resisted. By exploring topics as varied as nation-building in the 1930s or the chuqila dance, these authors expose a paradox in the relation between indians and the nation: that the nation can be claimed as a source of power and distinct identity while simultaneously making some types of national imaginings unattainable.

Whether dancing together or simply talking to one another, the people described in these essays are shown creating identity through processes that are inherently social and interactive. To sing, to eat, to weave . . . In the performance of these simple acts, bodies move in particular spaces and contexts and do so within certain understandings of gender, race and nation. Through its presentation of this rich variety of ethnographic and historical contexts, Natives Making Nation provides a finely nuanced view of contemporary Andean life.

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New Jersey Politics and Government, 4th edition

The Suburbs Come of Age

Salmore, Barbara G

Rutgers University Press, 2013

This fourth edition is thoroughly updated to reflect the challenges New Jersey has overcome and those it continues to face: sustaining growth and opportunity in a multicultural society, providing quality education, and protecting the environment. State politics and government have been almost entirely reshaped in recent decades, and those changes are analyzed in every chapter of this edition.

Offering a comprehensive overview of New Jersey politics and government, chapters cover the state’s political history; campaigns and elections; interest groups; the constitution; the development of government institutions; relationships with neighboring states, the federal government, and its own municipalities and counties; tax and spending policies; education; and quality of life issues.

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New Jersey Politics and Government

The Suburbs Come of Age

Salmore, Barbara G

Rutgers University Press, 2008

As the United States moves toward becoming a nation of suburbs, New Jersey is a place more Americans should get to know. The challenges it has overcome and those it continues to face provide lessons that will help states across the country address the struggles of providing quality education, protecting the environment, improving the quality of life, and accommodating a multicultural society while sustaining growth and opportunity. Written by two of the most respected political analysts in the state, this is the only book available that provides a comprehensive overview of politics and government in New Jersey. This thoroughly revised third edition, published for the first time by Rutgers University Press, also highlights recent scandals within the government and the high profile of the governorship.

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New Jersey

A Guide to the State

Westergaard, Barbara

Rutgers University Press, 2006

In the third edition of this classic guide, Barbara Westergaard surveys the state’s rich diversity while providing the most up-to-date information on several hundred of New Jersey’s towns, cities, and parks. Entries are arranged alphabetically with concise yet thorough descriptions detailing what there is to see and do in each community and its surrounding area and how each place is connected to its past. The book lists museums, parks, historical points of interest, natural and recreational areas, and many other attractions. There is even a guided tour of the New Jersey Turnpike—the most heavily traveled toll road in the country. Updated for this edition, the book includes new points of interest and population figures.

Whether you are a longtime resident or newcomer to New Jersey, a commuter, a visitor, or a neighbor from a nearby state, this easy-to-use, town-by-town guide will lead you to new discoveries.

Includes information on:

· towns and cities

· museums

· arts centers

· historic sites

· lighthouses

· nature centers

· animal refuges and zoos

· amusement parks

· wineries

· sports facilities

· planetariums

· parks and gardens

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New Languages of the State

Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia

Bret Gustafson

Duke University Press, 2009

During the mid-1990s, a bilingual intercultural education initiative was launched to promote the introduction of indigenous languages alongside Spanish in public elementary schools in Bolivia’s indigenous regions. Bret Gustafson spent fourteen years studying and working in southeastern Bolivia with the Guarani, who were at the vanguard of the movement for bilingual education. Drawing on his collaborative work with indigenous organizations and bilingual-education activists as well as more traditional ethnographic research, Gustafson traces two decades of indigenous resurgence and education politics in Bolivia, from the 1980s through the election of Evo Morales in 2005. Bilingual education was a component of education reform linked to foreign-aid development mandates, and foreign aid workers figure in New Languages of the State, as do teachers and their unions, transnational intellectual networks, and assertive indigenous political and intellectual movements across the Andes.

Gustafson shows that bilingual education is an issue that extends far beyond the classroom. Public schools are at the center of a broader battle over territory, power, and knowledge as indigenous movements across Latin America actively defend their languages and knowledge systems. In attempting to decolonize nation-states, the indigenous movements are challenging deep-rooted colonial racism and neoliberal reforms intended to mold public education to serve the market. Meanwhile, market reformers nominally embrace cultural pluralism while implementing political and economic policies that exacerbate inequality. Juxtaposing Guarani life, language, and activism with intimate portraits of reform politics among academics, bureaucrats, and others in and beyond La Paz, Gustafson illuminates the issues, strategic dilemmas, and imperfect alliances behind bilingual intercultural education.

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