Results by title
233 books match the query 'Political culture' and 5 start with o
Oligarchy in America
Power, Justice, and the Rule of the FewLuke Winslow
University of Alabama Press, 2024
Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award for the National Communication Association's Political Communication Division
A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs.
To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy’s deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home.
Winslow argues that generic labels like “billionaires” for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of democratic oligarchy—an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth.
Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others.
Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science.
On the Stump
Campaign Oratory and Democracy in the United States, Britain, and AustraliaSean Scalmer
Temple University Press, 2017
"Stumping," or making political speeches in favor of a candidate, cause, or campaign has been around since before the 1800s, when speechmaking was frequently portrayed as delivered from the base of a tree. The practice, which has been strongly associated with the American frontier, British agitators, and colonial Australia, remains an effective component of contemporary democratic politics.
In his engaging book On the Stump, Sean Scalmer provides the first comprehensive, transnational history of the "stump speech." He traces the development and transformation of campaign oratory, as well as how national elections and public life and culture have been shaped by debate over the past century.
Scalmer presents an eloquent study of how "stumping" careers were made, sustained, remembered, and exploited, to capture the complex rhythms of political change over the years. On the Stump examines the distinctive dramatic and performative styles of celebrity orators including Davy Crockett, Henry Clay, and William Gladstone. Ultimately, Scalmer recovers the history of the stump speech and its historical significance in order to better understand how political change is forged.
Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution
East Germany, 1989Karl-Dieter Opp, Peter Voss, and Christiane Gern
University of Michigan Press, 1995
Our Man in Warszawa
How the West Misread PolandJo Harper
Central European University Press, 2021
Written by a Brit who has lived in Poland for more than twenty years, this book challenges some accepted thinking in the West about Poland and about the rise of Law and Justice (PiS) as the ruling party in 2015. It is a remarkable account of the Polish post-1989 transition and contemporary politics, combining personal views and experience with careful fact and material collections. The result is a vivid description of the events and scrupulous explanations of the political processes, and all this with an interesting twist – a perspective of a foreigner and insider at the same time. Settled in the position of participant observer, Jo Harper combines the methods of macro and micro analysis with CDA, critical discourse analysis. He presents and interprets the constituent elements and issues of contemporary Poland: the main political forces, the Church, the media, issues of gender, the Russian connection, the much-disputed judicial reform and many others.
A special feature of the book is the detailed examination of the coverage of the Poland’s latest two elections, one in 2019 (parliamentary) and the other in 2020 (presidential) in the British media, an insightful and witty specimen of comparative cultural and political analysis.
Our Suffering Brethren
Foreign Captivity and Nationalism in the Early United StatesDavid J. Dzurec III
University of Massachusetts Press, 2019
In October 1785, American statesman John Jay acknowledged that the more his countrymen “are treated ill abroad, the more we shall unite and consolidate at home.” Behind this simple statement lies a complicated history. From the British impressment of patriots during the Revolution to the capture of American sailors by Algerian corsairs and Barbary pirates at the dawn of the nineteenth century, stories of Americans imprisoned abroad helped jumpstart democratic debate as citizens acted on their newly unified identity to demand that their government strengthen efforts to free their fellow Americans. Deliberations about the country's vulnerabilities in the Atlantic world reveal America's commitment to protecting the legacy of the Revolution as well as growing political divisions.
Drawing on newspaper accounts, prisoner narratives, and government records, David J. Dzurec III explores how stories of American captivity in North America, Europe, and Africa played a critical role in the development of American political culture, adding a new layer to our understanding of foreign relations and domestic politics in the early American republic.