471 books match the query 'Power' and 85 start with p

cover of POWER OF THE PEOPLE: Congressional Competition, Public Attention, and Voter Retribution

POWER OF THE PEOPLE

Congressional Competition, Public Attention, and Voter Retribution

Sean M. Theriault

The Ohio State University Press, 2005

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cover of Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast

Palaces and Power in the Americas

From Peru to the Northwest Coast

Edited by Jessica Joyce Christie and Patricia Joan Sarro

University of Texas Press, 2006

Ancient American palaces still captivate those who stand before them. Even in their fallen and ruined condition, the palaces project such power that, according to the editors of this new collection, it must have been deliberately drawn into their formal designs, spatial layouts, and choice of locations. Such messages separated palaces from other elite architecture and reinforced the power and privilege of those residing in them. Indeed, as Christie and Sarro write, "the relation between political power and architecture is a pervasive and intriguing theme in the Americas."

Given the variety of cultures, time periods, and geographical locations examined within, the editors of this book have grouped the articles into four sections. The first looks at palaces in cultures where they have not previously been identified, including the Huaca of Moche Site, the Wari of Peru, and Chaco Canyon in the U.S. Southwest. The second section discusses palaces as "stage sets" that express power, such as those found among the Maya, among the Coast Salish of the Pacific Northwest, and at El Tajín on the Mexican Gulf Coast. The third part of the volume presents cases in which differences in elite residences imply differences in social status, with examples from Pasado de la Amada, the Valley of Oaxaca, Teotihuacan, and the Aztecs. The final section compares architectural strategies between cultures; the models here are Farfán, Peru, under both the Chimú and the Inka, and the separate states of the Maya and the Inka.

Such scope, and the quality of the scholarship, make Palaces and Power in the Americas a must-have work on the subject.

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cover of Paper Pusher: Power and Protest in Higher Education

Paper Pusher

Power and Protest in Higher Education

Kathryn J. Gindlesparger

University of Minnesota Press, 2027

Paperwork is the new protest: leveraging bureaucracy for progressive action

In contemporary higher education, power increasingly circulates through documents rather than debate, making paperwork one of the most consequential sites of protest. Yet as universities become more corporatized and subject to authoritarian influence, bureaucratic writing is often treated as passive, procedural, or politically neutral. Paper Pusher shows how paperwork is a central mechanism of governance and therefore a formidable, underused medium for democratic action and protest within bureaucracies.

Kathryn J. Gindlesparger reframes the “paper pusher” from a symbol of compliance into an agent of institutional accountability and resistance. She develops four avenues for protesting through bureaucracy—voice, filing, circulation, and stasis-seeking—showing how everyday documents such as meeting minutes, policy drafts, budgets, and accreditation reports can be used to push back against authoritarian and corporate forces that undermine an institution’s mission. Rather than emphasizing visible confrontation, Paper Pusher demonstrates how activism can operate quietly and credibly from within systems where overt protest may carry professional risk.

Grounded in story and lived experience, this book is a love letter to office workers, staff, and middle managers whose labor sustains institutions and whose expertise is often overlooked. It foregrounds feminist, working-class, queer, disabled, Black, and brown voices, highlighting how marginalized workers have long used bureaucratic knowledge to create access, protection, and change. Practical and people-centered, Paper Pusher calls for bureaucratic literacy to be taught wherever writing is taught, insisting that paperwork is not grunt work but power work.

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cover of Passion And Power: Sexuality in History

Passion And Power

Sexuality in History

Kathy Peiss

Temple University Press, 1989

"Brings together some of the most recent and innovative writing on the history of sexuality and explores the experiences, ideas and conflicts that have shaped the emergence of modern sexual identities." --Dare Passion and Power brings together some of the most recent and innovative writings on the history of sexuality and explores the experiences, ideas, and conflicts that have shaped the emergence of modern sexual identities. Arguing that sexuality is not an unchanging biological reality or a universal natural force, the essays in this volume discuss sexuality as an integral part of the history of human experience. Articles on sexual assault, homosexuality, birth control, venereal disease, sexual repression, pornography, and the AIDS epidemic examine the ways that sexuality has become a core element of modern social identity in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. It is only in recent years that historians have begun to examine the social construction of sexuality. This is the first anthology that addresses this issue from a radical historical perspective, examining sexuality as a field of contention in itself and as part of other struggles rooted in divisions of gender, class, and race. Contents Part I: Sexuality and Historical Meaning 1. Passion and Power: An Introdtion - Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons 2. Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History - Robert A. Padgug Part II: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality, 1790 to 1930 3. "The Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman": Sexual Assault in New York City, 1790 to 1820 - Marybeth Hamilton Arnold 4. "Charity Girls" and City Pleasurer: Historical Notes on Working Class Sexuality, 1880-1920 - Kathy Peiss 5. Movements of Affirmation: Sexual Meanings and Homosexual Identities - Jeffrey Weeks 6. From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female "Deviance" - George Chauncey, Jr. 7. "We Were a Little Band of Willful Women": The Heterodoxy Club of Greenwich Village - Judith Schwartz, Kathy Peiss, and Christina Simmons 8. The Black Community and the Birth Control Movement - Jessie M. Rodrique Part III: Sexual Conflicts and Cultural Authority, 1920 to 1960 9. Modern Sexuality and the Myrh of Victorian Repression - Christina Simmons 10. Venereal Disease: The Wages of Sin? - Elizabeth Fee 11. "Uncontrolled Desires": The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960 - Estelle B. Freedman 12. The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America - John D'Emilio 13. The Reproduction of Butch-Fern Roles: A Social Constructionist Approach - Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis Part IV: Private Passions and Public Debate, 1960 to the Present 14. Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women Is Different - Ann Barr Snitow 15. (De)Constructing Pornography: Feminisms in Conflict - Duphne Read 16. Gay Villain, Gay Hero: Homosexuality and the Social Construction of AIDS - Robert A. Padgug About the Author(s) Kathy Peiss is Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York (Temple). Christina Simmons is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati-Raymond Walters College.
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cover of Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present

Pathos and Power

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present

Benjamin N. Lawrance and Joanna Davidson

Ohio University Press, 2025

The collected essays in Pathos and Power provide a critical exploration of widowhood in Africa through a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book challenges a simplistic understanding of widowhood by highlighting how the experience varies according to age, class, race, religion, and geographic location. The contributors investigate how the category of widowhood can obscure or reveal various social dynamics while demonstrating the diversity of material, symbolic, and embodied circumstances faced by African widows. The volume considers the forces shaping the lives of widows by examining the structural and legal challenges they encounter, including discriminatory practices in social, economic, and political spheres. Through discussions of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts, it explores the intersections of custom, law, patriarchy, and feminism while delving into the potentially liberatory opportunities that widowhood sometimes presents. The book also raises broader questions about gender, personhood, marriage, autonomy, and national identity, emphasizing how widowhood informs key conceptual debates in African studies. Editors Joanna Davidson and Benjamin N. Lawrance bring together scholars across such fields as anthropology, gender studies, history, law, and political science. The authors employ a range of methodologies, including archival research, ethnography, and storytelling, to illuminate widowhood in new and innovative ways. The volume’s rich empirical studies and theoretical insights offer a valuable resource for scholars seeking to understand widowhood and its broader implications in African societies. CONTRIBUTORS Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf Fisayo Ajala Catherine E. Bolten Abbass Braham Mariana Candido Joanna Davidson Mariana Dias Paes Ramadan El-Khouli Casey Golomski Juelma Gomes de Matos Ngãla Benjamin N. Lawrance Kenda Mutongi Richard L. Roberts Enid Schildkrout Kate Skinner Wallace Teska Benjamin Twagira Sarah J. Zimmerman

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cover of Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary China

Paths to Power

Elite Mobility in Contemporary China

By David M. Lampton with the assistance of Yeung Sai-cheung

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Grappling with enduring questions about the means of achieving power in the Chinese Communist hierarchy, this study analyzes the rise of six individuals (Ji Dengkui, Peng Chong, Gu Mu, Yu Qiuli, Xu Shiyou, and Chen Xilian) who held positions of elite political power in the immediate post-Mao Zedong era. In a new preface, the author applies his hypotheses to China’s more recent political developments.
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cover of Pathways of Memory and Power: Ethnography and History among an Andean People

Pathways of Memory and Power

Ethnography and History among an Andean People

Thomas A. Abercrombie

University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

    Pathways of Memory and Power crosses the disciplinary boundary where anthropology and history meet, exploring the cultural frontier of the colonial and postcolonial Andes. Thomas A. Abercrombie uses his fieldwork in the Aymara community of Santa Barbara de Culta, Bolivia, as a starting point for his ambitious examination of the relations between European forms of historical consciousness and indigenous Andean ways of understanding the past. Writing in an inviting first-person narrative style, Abercrombie confronts the ethics of fieldwork by comparing ethnographic experience to the power-laden contexts that produce historical sources.
    Making clear the early and deep intermingling of practices and world views among Spaniards and Andeans, Christians and non-Christians, Abercrombie critiques both the romanticist tendency to regard Andean culture as still separate from and resistant to European influences, and the melodramatic view that all indigenous practices have been obliterated by colonial and national elites. He challenges prejudices that, from colonial days to the present, have seen Andean historical knowledge only in mythic narratives or narratives of personal experience. Bringing an ethnographer’s approach to historiography, he shows how complex Andean rituals that hybridize European and indigenous traditions—such as libation dedications and llama sacrifices held on saints’ day festivals—are in fact potent evidence of social memory in the community.
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cover of Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Devon Curtis

Ohio University Press, 2012

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Essays also address the institutional framework for peacebuilding in Africa and the ideological underpinnings of key institutions, including the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. The volume includes on-the-ground case study chapters on Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Niger Delta, Southern Africa, and Somalia, analyzing how peacebuilding operates in particular African contexts.

The authors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the United Nations. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict. The book systematically showcases the tensions that occur within and between the many actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries. It looks at the multiple ways in which peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are reinforced, questioned, reappropriated, and redesigned by different African actors.

A joint project between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge.

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cover of Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds

Pearls, People, and Power

Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds

Pedro Machado

Ohio University Press, 2019

Pearls, People, and Power is the first book to examine the trade, distribution, production, and consumption of pearls and mother-of-pearl in the global Indian Ocean over more than five centuries. While scholars have long recognized the importance of pearling to the social, cultural, and economic practices of both coastal and inland areas, the overwhelming majority have confined themselves to highly localized or at best regional studies of the pearl trade. By contrast, this book stresses how pearling and the exchange in pearl shell were interconnected processes that brought the ports, islands, and coasts into close relation with one another, creating dense networks of connectivity that were not necessarily circumscribed by local, regional, or indeed national frames.

Essays from a variety of disciplines address the role of slaves and indentured workers in maritime labor arrangements, systems of bondage and transoceanic migration, the impact of European imperialism on regional and local communities, commodity flows and networks of exchange, and patterns of marine resource exploitation between the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression. By encompassing the geographical, cultural, and thematic diversity of Indian Ocean pearling, Pearls, People, and Power deepens our appreciation of the underlying historical dynamics of the many worlds of the Indian Ocean.

Contributors: Robert Carter, William G. Clarence-Smith, Joseph Christensen, Matthew S. Hopper, Pedro Machado, Julia T. Martínez, Michael McCarthy, Jonathan Miran, Steve Mullins, Karl Neuenfeldt, Samuel M. Ostroff, and James Francis Warren.

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cover of Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the Andes

Performing Kinship

Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the Andes

By Krista E. Van Vleet

University of Texas Press, 2008

In the highland region of Sullk'ata, located in the rural Bolivian Andes, habitual activities such as sharing food, work, and stories create a sense of relatedness among people. Through these day-to-day interactions—as well as more unusual events—individuals negotiate the affective bonds and hierarchies of their relationships. In Performing Kinship, Krista E. Van Vleet reveals the ways in which relatedness is evoked, performed, and recast among the women of Sullk'ata.

Portraying relationships of camaraderie and conflict, Van Vleet argues that narrative illuminates power relationships, which structure differences among women as well as between women and men. She also contends that in the Andes gender cannot be understood without attention to kinship.

Stories such as that of the young woman who migrates to the city to do domestic work and later returns to the highlands voicing a deep ambivalence about the traditional authority of her in-laws provide enlightening examples of the ways in which storytelling enables residents of Sullk'ata to make sense of events and link themselves to one another in a variety of relationships. A vibrant ethnography, Performing Kinship offers a rare glimpse into an compelling world.

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cover of Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen

Peripheral Visions

Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen

Lisa Wedeen

University of Chicago Press, 2008

The government of Yemen, unified since 1990, remains largely incapable of controlling violence or providing goods and services to its population, but the regime continues to endure despite its fragility and peripheral location in the global political and economic order. Revealing what holds Yemen together in such tenuous circumstances, Peripheral Visions shows how citizens form national attachments even in the absence of strong state institutions.

Lisa Wedeen, who spent a year and a half in Yemen observing and interviewing its residents, argues that national solidarity in such weak states tends to arise not from attachments to institutions but through both extraordinary events and the ordinary activities of everyday life. Yemenis, for example, regularly gather to chew qat, a leafy drug similar to caffeine, as they engage in wide-ranging and sometimes influential public discussions of even the most divisive political and social issues. These lively debates exemplify Wedeen’s contention that democratic, national, and pious solidarities work as ongoing, performative practices that enact and reproduce a citizenry’s shared points of reference. Ultimately, her skillful evocations of such practices shift attention away from a narrow focus on government institutions and electoral competition and toward the substantive experience of participatory politics.
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cover of Persian Cultures of Power and the Entanglement of the Afro-Eurasian World

Persian Cultures of Power and the Entanglement of the Afro-Eurasian World

Matthew P. Canepa

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2024

A cutting-edge analysis of 2,500 years of Persian visual, architectural, and material cultures of power and their role in connecting the world.

With the rise of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE), Persian institutions of kingship became the model for legitimacy, authority, and prestige across three continents. Despite enormous upheavals, Iranian visual and political cultures connected an ever-wider swath of Afro-Eurasia over the next two millennia, exerting influence at key historical junctures. This book provides the first critical exploration of the role Persian cultures played in articulating the myriad ways power was expressed across Afro-Eurasia between the sixth century BCE and the nineteenth century CE.

Exploring topics such as royal cosmologies, fashion, banqueting, manuscript cultures, sacred landscapes, and inscriptions, the volume’s essays analyze the intellectual and political exchanges of art, architecture, ritual, and luxury material within and beyond the Persian world. They show how Perso-Iranian cultures offered neighbors and competitors raw material with which to formulate their own imperial aspirations. Unique among studies of Persia and Iran, this volume explores issues of change, renovation, and interconnectivity in these cultures over the longue durée.
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cover of Peruvian Lives across Borders: Power, Exclusion, and Home

Peruvian Lives across Borders

Power, Exclusion, and Home

M. Cristina Alcalde

University of Illinois Press, 2018

In Peruvian Lives across Borders, M. Cristina Alcalde examines the evolution of belonging and the making of home among middle- and upper-class Peruvians in Peru, the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Alcalde draws on interviews, surveys, participant observation, and textual analysis to argue that to belong is to exclude. To that end, transnational Peruvians engage in both subtle and direct policing along the borders of belonging. These acts allow them to claim and maintain the social status they enjoyed in their homeland even as they profess their openness and tolerance. Alcalde details these processes and their origins in Peru's gender, racial, and class hierarchies. As she shows, the idea of return—whether desired or rejected, imagined or physical—spurs constructions of Peruvianness, belonging, and home.

Deeply researched and theoretically daring, Peruvian Lives across Borders answers fascinating questions about an understudied group of migrants.

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cover of Peruvian Street Lives: Culture, Power, and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco

Peruvian Street Lives

Culture, Power, and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco

Linda J. Seligmann

University of Illinois Press, 2004

For more than twenty years, Linda J. Seligmann walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets in Cuzco's Andean highlands. Her combination of ethnographic analysis, insightful and human vignettes, and superb photographs offers a humane yet incisive portrait of the women's lives against the backdrop of globalization and other powerful forces.

In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann argues that the sometimes invisible and informal economic, social, and political networks market women establish may appear disorderly and chaotic, but in fact often keep dysfunctional economies and corrupt bureaucracies from utterly destroying the ability of citizens to survive from day to day. Seligmann asks why the constructive efforts of market women to make a living provoke such negative social perceptions from some members of Peruvian society, who see them as symbols and actual catalysts of social disorder. At the same time, Seligmann shows how market women eke out a living, combat discrimination, and transgress racial and gender ideologies within the rich and expressive cultural traditions they have developed.

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cover of Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

Perversion of Power

Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea

Vanderbilt University Press, 2007

Since 2002, the Roman Catholic Church has been in crisis over the sexual abuse of minors by priests and the cover-up of those crimes by bishops. Over 11,000 alleged victims have reported their experiences to the Church, and more than 4,700 priests since 1950 have been credibly accused of sexually victimizing minors. The Church has paid over one billion dollars to adults who claim to have been sexually abused by priests and there is no end in sight to these lawsuits.

Celibacy, homosexuality in the priesthood, the infiltration into the priesthood of secular moral relativism, too much liberalism in the Church since Vatican II, damaging rollback of Vatican II reforms by conservative prelates--all have been suggested as causes for the crisis. This book, however, begins with the premise that, because the pattern of abuse and cover-up was so similar across the world, there is something fundamentally awry with Church traditions and power structures in relationship to sexuality and sexual abuse.

Specifically, in chapters on suffering and sadomasochism, bodies and gender, desire and sexuality, celibacy and homosexuality, the author concludes that aspects of the Catholic theology of sexuality set the stage for the abuse of minors and its cover-up. Frawley-O'Dea also analyzes the American bishops' lack of pastoral care and tendency towards clerical narcissism--the belief that the needs of the hierarchy represent the needs of the wider Church--as central factors in the scandal. She balances this criticism with a discussion of the backgrounds of the bishops presiding over the crisis and the challenges they faced in their relationships with the Pope and Vatican officials.

Drawing on twenty years of clinical experience, she imagines the dynamics of sexual abuse both from the victim's point of view and from the priest's, and she probes why the Church hierarchy, fellow priests, and lay people were silent for so long. Finally, Frawley-O'Dea examines factors internal to the Church and outside of it that drew this scandal into the public square and kept it there.

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cover of Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries

Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries

Muñiz, Ana

Rutgers University Press, 2015

Based on five years of ethnography, archival research, census data analysis, and interviews, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries reveals how the LAPD, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered “dangerous” and how they should be policed in Los Angeles. Sociologist Ana Muñiz shows how these influential groups used policies and everyday procedures to criminalize behaviors commonly associated with blacks and Latinos and to promote an exceedingly aggressive form of policing.
 
Muñiz illuminates the degree to which the definitions of “gangs” and “deviants” are politically constructed labels born of public policy and court decisions, offering an innovative look at the process of criminalization and underscoring the ways in which a politically powerful coalition can define deviant behavior. As she does so, Muñiz also highlights the various grassroots challenges to such policies and the efforts to call attention to their racist effects. Muñiz describes the fight over two very different methods of policing: community policing (in which the police and the community work together) and the “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” approach (which aggressively polices minor infractions—such as loitering—to deter more serious crime). Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries also explores the history of the area to explain how Cadillac-Corning became viewed by outsiders as a “violent neighborhood” and how the city’s first gang injunction—a restraining order aimed at alleged gang members—solidified this negative image. As a result, Muñiz shows, Cadillac-Corning and other sections became a test site for repressive practices that eventually spread to the rest of the city.
 
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cover of Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power

Political Ethnography

What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power

Edited by Edward Schatz

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Scholars of politics have sought in recent years to make the discipline more hospitable to qualitative methods of research. Lauding the results of this effort and highlighting its potential for the future, Political Ethnography makes a compelling case for one such method in particular. Ethnography, the contributors amply demonstrate in a wide range of original essays, is uniquely suited for illuminating the study of politics.

Situating these pieces within the context of developments in political science, Edward Schatz provides an overarching introduction and substantive prefaces to each of the volume’s four sections. The first of these parts addresses the central ontological and epistemological issues raised by ethnographic work, while the second grapples with the reality that all research is conducted from a first-person perspective. The third section goes on to explore how ethnographic research can provide fresh perspectives on such perennial topics as opinion, causality, and power. Concluding that political ethnography can and should play a central role in the field as a whole, the final chapters illuminate the many ways in which ethnographic approaches can enhance, improve, and, in some areas, transform the study of politics.

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cover of Political Style: The Artistry of Power

Political Style

The Artistry of Power

Robert Hariman

University of Chicago Press, 1995

In this book, Robert Hariman demonstrates how matters of style—of diction, manners, sensibility, decor, and charisma—influence politics.

In critical studies of classic texts, Hariman identifies four dominant political styles. The realist style, as found in Machiavelli's The Prince, creates a world of sheer power, constant calculation, and emotional control; this style is the common sense of modern political science. The courtly style, depicted in Kapuscinski's The Emperor, is characterized by high decorousness, hierarchies, and fixation on the body of the sovereign; this style infuses mass media coverage of the American presidency. The republican style, reflected in Cicero's letters to Atticus, promotes the art of oratory, consensus, and civility; it informs our ideal of democratic conversation. The bureaucratic style, as captured in Kafka's The Castle, emphasizes institutional procedures, official character, and the priority of writing; this style structures everday life.

Hariman looks at effective political artistry in figures from antiquity to modern politicians such as Vaclav Havel, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He discusses the crises to which each style is susceptible, as well as the social and moral consequences of each style's success.
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cover of Polities and Power: Archaeological Perspectives on the Landscapes of Early States

Polities and Power

Archaeological Perspectives on the Landscapes of Early States

Edited by Steven E. Falconer and Charles L. Redman

University of Arizona Press, 2009

This distinctive book is the first to address the topic of landscape archaeology in early states from a truly global perspective. It provides an excellent introduction to—and overview of—the discipline today. The volume grew out of the Fifth Biennial Meeting of the Complex Societies Group, whose theme, States and the Landscape, paid tribute to the work of Robert McC. Adams. When Adams began publishing in the 1960s, the interdependence of cities and their countrysides, and the information revealed through the spatial patterning of communities, went largely unrecognized. Today, as this useful collection makes clear, these interpretive insights are fundamental to all archaeologists who investigate the roles of complex polities in their landscapes.

Polities and Power features detailed studies from an intentionally disparate array of regions, including Mesoamerica, Andean South America, southwestern Asia, East Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Each chapter or pair of chapters is followed by a critical commentary. In concert, these studies strive to infer social, political, and economic meaning from archaeologically discerned landscapes associated with societies that incorporate some expression of state authority. The contributions engage a variety of themes, including the significance of landscapes as they condition and reflect complex polities; the interplay of natural and cultural elements in defining landscapes of state; archaeological landscapes as ever-dynamic entities; and archaeological landscapes as recursive structures, reflected in palimpsests of human activity.

Individually, many of these contributions are provocative, even controversial. Taken together, they reveal the contours of landscape archaeology at this particular evolutionary moment.
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cover of Power

Power

Keith Dowding

University of Minnesota Press, 1996

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cover of Power & Persuasion Late Antiquity: Towards A Christian Empire

Power & Persuasion Late Antiquity

Towards A Christian Empire

Peter Brown

University of Wisconsin Press, 1992

Peter Brown, perhaps the greatest living authority on Mediterranean civilization in late antiquity, traces the growing power of Christian bishops as they wrested influence from philosophers, who had traditionally advised the rulers of Graeco-Roman society.  In the new “Christian empire,” the ancient bonds of citizen to citizen and of each city to its benefactors were replaced by a common Christianity and common loyalty to a distant, Christian autocrat.  This transformation of the Roman empire from an ancient to a medieval society, he argues, is among the most far-reaching consequences of the rise of Christianity.
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cover of Power Of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville

Power Of Blackness

Hawthorne, Poe, Melville

Harry Levin

Ohio University Press, 1980

The Power of Blackness is a profound and searching reinterpretation of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville, the three classic American masters of fiction. It is also an experiment in critical method, an exploration of the myth-making process by way of what may come to be known as literary iconology.
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cover of Power Of Prayer Around The World

Power Of Prayer Around The World

Glenn Mosley

Templeton Press, 2005

 

Universally, the power of prayer has been recognized by many cultures for immeasurable time. Whether it be a part of a formal service recited with a congregation of worshipers or an individual, quiet moment, prayer is part of the lives of people from a variety of religions.

There seems to be an innate urge among humanity to connect with a higher source of energy and love when we need guidance or direction, and this is called prayer. By reading the prayers from religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, from cultures in Africa, India, Egypt, and China, we begin to share the sense of a common experience.

The deepest inner feelings and longings are similar—concern for family, assistance in healing, a longing for peace, or a wish for greater wisdom. For some people, prayer can be thought of as a way to ask for specific goals or special favors. This type of prayer may or may not be effective. Another type of prayer exists when all selfish desire is put aside and we feel ourselves in communion with God. At this point, our greatest wish is that God's will be done.

There may be pressing concerns that make us turn our sights upward, but we learn to let go of the end result. At this point, prayer becomes a way of opening up to the universal, loving, creative energy that exists and is far greater than any person could imagine. This is the source of miracles, of faith and unconditional love. Prayer then becomes more than a means to an end; it becomes a state of humility and of awe. It can exist whether we are washing the floor or composing a symphony. Prayer is communion with the Divine, a universal loving creative force that exists in a variety of ways for people around the world.

This book brings together an inspirational collection of prayer suitable for all ages and traditions. In addition, it offers insight and guidance about the nature of prayer that will be useful for the serious seeker.

 

 

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cover of Power and Elusiveness in Shelley

Power and Elusiveness in Shelley

Oscar W. Firkins

University of Minnesota Press, 1937

Power and Elusiveness in Shelley was first published in 1937. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This is a discussion in measured prose of the strange yet frequent union of various abstract elements in Shelley's poetry. The study contains an interesting analysis of the thesis that Shelley's "love of abstraction is only one form—probably the most obvious and the most significant form—of a larger and more general tendency." The object of this essay, in the author's words, "is to collect and combine the manifestations of this larger tendency."

The two great "abstractions" that Firkins selects as the touchstones in his study he generalizes as "power" and "elusiveness," and he shows how these seemingly antithetical qualities are united in both the structure and the style of all Shelley's chief poems.

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cover of Power and Empowerment: A Radical Theory of Participatory Democracy

Power and Empowerment

A Radical Theory of Participatory Democracy

Peter Bachrach

Temple University Press, 1992

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cover of Power and Everyday Life: The Lives of Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Power and Everyday Life

The Lives of Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Dias, Maria Odila Silva

Rutgers University Press, 1995

This important new work is a study of the everyday lives of the inhabitants of São Paulo in the nineteenth century. Full of vivid detail, the book concentrates on the lives of working women--black, white, Indian, mulatta, free, freed, and slaves, and their struggles to survive. Drawing on official statistics, and on the accounts of travelers and judicial records, the author paints a lively picture of the jobs, both legal and illegal, that were performed by women. Her research leads to some surprising discoveries, including the fact that many women were the main providers for their families and that their work was crucial to the running of several urban industries. This book, which is a unique record of women’s lives across social and race strata in a multicultural society, should be of interest to students and researchers in women’s studies, urban studies, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

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cover of Power and Everyday Life: The Lives of Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Power and Everyday Life

The Lives of Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Dias, Maria Odila Silva

Rutgers University Press, 1995

This important new work is a study of the everyday lives of the inhabitants of São Paulo in the nineteenth century. Full of vivid detail, the book concentrates on the lives of working women--black, white, Indian, mulatta, free, freed, and slaves, and their struggles to survive. Drawing on official statistics, and on the accounts of travelers and judicial records, the author paints a lively picture of the jobs, both legal and illegal, that were performed by women. Her research leads to some surprising discoveries, including the fact that many women were the main providers for their families and that their work was crucial to the running of several urban industries. This book, which is a unique record of women’s lives across social and race strata in a multicultural society, should be of interest to students and researchers in women’s studies, urban studies, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

[more]
cover of Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450-1650

Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain

Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450-1650

Edited by Helen Nader

University of Illinois Press, 2003

The Mendoza family was one of Spain's most prominent Renaissance dynasties, and this collection, a groundbreaking overview of two hundred years of Spanish history, provides in-depth portraits of eight of its female members.
 
These essays explore the lives of powerful women whose lineage gave them status within a patriarchal society designed to keep women from public life. Each of the influential and literary women discussed in this volume handled her status differently, and their concerns were not dissimilar from the concerns of feminists today: the blurring of the personal and the political, public versus private space, language and voice, and property.
 
Spanning the two centuries between Juana Pimentel, a widow who manipulated the patronage system to her own ends, and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, who rejected both convent and marriage in favor of missionary work, Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain reveals a complex society in which women were limited by law, and yet their social status made those laws negotiable.
 
These women found that their personal agendas had a broad societal impact, challenging the laws of the land and patriarchal assumptions about women's inferiority.
 
[more]
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Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East

Sara Mohr

University Press of Colorado, 2022

Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East rethinks the dichotomy between antiquated terms such as “core” and “periphery,” explores lived realities in the margins of central authority, and centers those margins as places of resistance and power in their own right.
 
The borderlands of hegemonic entities within the Near East and Egypt pressed against each other, creating cities and societies with influence from several competing polities. The peoples, cities, and cultures that resulted present a unique lens by which to examine how states controlled and influenced the lives, political systems, and social hierarchies of these subjects (and vice versa). This volume addresses the distinct traditions and experiences of areas beyond the core; terminology used when discussing empire, core, periphery, borderlands, and frontiers; conceptualization of space; practices and consequences of warfare, captive-taking, and slavery; identity- and secondary state–formation; economy and society; ritual; diplomacy; and the negotiation of claims to power.
 
It is imperative that historians and social scientists understand the ways in which these cultures developed, spread, and interacted with others along frontier edges. Using an intersectional approach across disciplines, Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East brings together professionals from archaeology, religious studies, history, sociology, and anthropology to make new contributions to the study of the frontier.
 
Contributors: Alexander Ahrens, Peter Dubovský, Avraham Faust, Daniel E. Fleming, Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Alvise Matessi, Ellen Morris, Valeria Turriziani, Eric M. Trinka
 
[more]
cover of Power and Identity in Archaeological Theory and Practice: Case Studies from Ancient Mesoamerica

Power and Identity in Archaeological Theory and Practice

Case Studies from Ancient Mesoamerica

Eleanor Harrison-Buck

University of Utah Press, 2012

The contributions to this volume represent a diverse array of Mesoamerican archaeological studies that are all theo-retically rooted to larger, global debates concerning issues of power and identity—two logically paired concepts. While social identity has been the focus of more critical analysis in recent years, the concept of power has received far less attention. Most studies focus on large-scale, institutional forms of power and the ruling body. Here, the focus is on relations of power, addressing broader segments of society outside the dominant group, that often are ignored in traditional reconstructions of past societies.

Harrison-Buck has compiled works that address a common criticism of social theory in the field of anthropological archaeology—the lack of strong case studies and corroborating facts supporting the abstract and often complex social theoretical concepts presented by scholars. Each contributor offers innovative method and theory and provides alternative and varied approaches to understanding power and identity in the archaeological record. They draw from a wide range of related disciplines and theoretical frameworks, including feminism, queer theory, cognitive studies, and postcolonial theory. The provocative case studies and exciting theoretical applications presented here will stimulate lively debate among scholars working both in and outside of Mesoamerica.
 

[more]
cover of Power and Invention: Situating Science

Power and Invention

Situating Science

Isabelle Stengers

University of Minnesota Press, 1997

[more]
cover of Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics

Power and Its Disguises

Anthropological Perspectives on Politics

John Gledhill

Pluto Press, 2000

In this fully updated edition of Power and Its Disguises, John Gledhill explores both the complexities of local situations and the power relations that shape the global order. He shows how historically informed anthropological perspectives can contribute to debates about democratisation by incorporating a ‘view from below’ and revealing forces that shape power relations behind the formal facade of state institutions. Examples are drawn from Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sri Lanka, amongst others.
[more]
cover of Power and Just Transitions: Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley

Power and Just Transitions

Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley

John Gaventa and Gabe Schwartzman

University of Illinois Press, 2026

Published in 1982, John Gaventa’s award-winning Power and Powerlessness examined the dominance of the absentee coal industry in Central Appalachia. Gaventa and Gabe Schwartzman update the story through coal’s decline and into the present while focusing on how power relations and community mobilizing have changed and evolved during this era of transition. Their analysis tracks the impact on a place where a fossil fuel–based economy shaped political and social structures for over a century. As they show, new forms of power emerged while old ones remained, and both affected the popular struggle for a future that’s both just and more inclusive. Original and timely, Power and Just Transitions merges historical perspective with interviews and engagement to look at how coal’s decline impacted power and resistance in an Appalachian community.
[more]
cover of Power and Knowledge Under Communism: A Political History of Economic and Sociological Research in Hungary

Power and Knowledge Under Communism

A Political History of Economic and Sociological Research in Hungary

Gyorgy Peteri

Central European University Press, 2026

This book examines the transformation of economic and sociological knowledge under Hungarian state socialism from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. It argues that the fate of the social sciences was determined less by episodic repression than by successive academic regimes asserting political authority through epistemological criteria and professional ethos. We follow the trajectory of economics from the Stalinist imposition of radical class-relativism, through the erosion of this epistemology during the New Course and the restoration of empirical research and professional communities as sources of policy-relevant knowledge. The post-Stalinist academic order was based on patronage, managed pluralism, and selective purges, culminating in the disciplining of both reform economics and critical sociology. The book demonstrates how limited professional autonomy could coexist with political control—and why such autonomy remained structurally fragile. It offers a historically grounded account of how modern states can govern social knowledge without fully suppressing it.
[more]
cover of Power and Negotiation

Power and Negotiation

I. William Zartman and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2002

The editors to this volume begin their introduction with an age-old puzzle in negotiation: “How can weaker parties negotiate with stronger parties and still get something?” Addressing this and other paradoxes, Power and Negotiation produces new findings about the concept of power and about its applications in negotiations between countries. Rejecting the notions of power as a resource and power as an ability, the work defines power as an act that is designed to cause another party to move in a desired direction, thus separating the concept both from its source and from its effects and leaving it open to much more detailed analysis.Using this new definition of the concept of power, this book examines the relations between parties in symmetrical and asymmetrical negotiations. I. William Zartman and Jeffrey Z. Rubin argue that negotiations between countries that are not equal in power tend to be more efficient and effective than symmetrical negotiations, as weaker and stronger parties negotiating together know their roles and are able to get appropriate benefits to each side in a negotiated agreement. In cases of symmetry or near symmetry the countries, whether they are equally weak or equally strong, tend to spend most of their time maintaining their status and waste inordinate amounts of time before they ever come to an agreement. At the same time, Power and Negotiation also examines perceived power on the basis of which symmetries and asymmetries in the relations between parties can be identified. It then looks at six cases of clear asymmetry, two cases of symmetry, and one mixed situation. The book ends with a careful examination of lessons for practice and lessons for theory. The book will appeal to students of negotiation strategy and international relations.
[more]
cover of Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire

Power and Performance

Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire

Johannes Fabian

University of Wisconsin Press, 1990

In 1985 Johannes Fabian, while engaged in fieldwork in the Shaba province of Zaire, first encountered this saying. Its implications—for the charismatic religious movements Fabian was examining, for the highly charged political atmosphere of Zaire, and for the cultures of the Luba peoples—continued to intrigue him, though its meaning remained elusive.  On a later visit, he mentioned the saying to a company of popular actors, and triggered an ethnographic brainstorm.  “Spontaneously, they decided it would be just the right topic for their next play.  On the spot they began planning—suggestions for a plot were made, problems of translating the French term ‘pouvoir’ were debated, several actors cited sayings and customs from their home villages. . . .” 

Power and Performance
examines traditional proverbs about power as it illustrates how the performance of Le pouvoir se mange entier was created, rehearsed, and performed. The play deals with the issue of power through a series of conflicts between villagers and their chief. Both rehearsal and performance versions of the text of this drama are included, in Swahili and in English translation.

[more]
cover of Power and Possibility: Essays, Reviews, and Interviews

Power and Possibility

Essays, Reviews, and Interviews

Elizabeth Alexander

University of Michigan Press, 2007

A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

Elizabeth Alexander is considered one of the country's most gifted contemporary poets, and the publication of her essays in The Black Interior in 2004 established her as an astute critic and cultural commentator as well. Arnold Rampersad has called Alexander "one of the brightest stars in our literary sky . . . a superb, invaluable commentator on the American scene." In this new collection of her essays, reviews, and interviews, Alexander again focuses on African American artistic production, particularly poetry, and the cultural contexts in which it is created and experienced.

The book's first section, "Black Arts 101," takes up the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Rita Dove (among others); artist Romare Bearden; dancer Bill T. Jones; and dramatist August Wilson. A second section, "Black Feminist Thinking," provides engaging meditations ranging from "My Grandmother's Hair" and "A Very Short History of Black Women and Food" to essays on the legacies of Toni Cade, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan. The collection's final section, "Talking," includes interviews, a commencement address---"Black Graduation"---and the essay "Africa and the World."

Elizabeth Alexander received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published four books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990); Body of Life (1996); Antebellum Dream Book (2001); and, most recently, American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her play, Diva Studies, was produced at the Yale School of Drama. She is presently Professor of American and African American Studies at Yale University.

[more]
cover of Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley

Power and Powerlessness

Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley

John Gaventa

University of Illinois Press, 1980

Using Clear Fork Valley in central Appalachia as an empirical example, Gaventa attempts to discern the "hidden faces of power" - those forces which shape actions and consciousness in ways not readily apparent in formal American political processes. He seeks to clarify and expand upon past theories (by such writers as Bachrach and Lukes) on the nature and maintenance of power.

The region studied here is characterized by stark incongruity - the co-existence of massive natural wealth (coal and land) with pervasive human poverty attended by high unemployment, limited education, malnutrition, and the prevalent hazards of mining coal: black lung, dismemberment, death, and ecological ruin. This has been the region's status quo under the decades of domination by a British company and its absentee owners. Despite these departure conditions and frequently violent union struggles, culminating in the 1969 murder of UMW reformist Jock Yablonski, acquiescence to this status quo has been maintained. Gaventa searches out the answers to how and why wealth and poverty continue to coexist and the powerless continue to accede to the powerful. His astute analysis poses broader questions about the politics of poverty, working-class consciousness, and corporate power in America.

[more]
cover of Power and Protest in the Countryside: Studies of Rural Unrest in Asia, Europe, and Latin America

Power and Protest in the Countryside

Studies of Rural Unrest in Asia, Europe, and Latin America

Robert P. Weller and Scott Guggenheim

Duke University Press, 1993

“Constitutes an important and timely addition to the literature on peasant rebellion; wisely, the editors have been eclectic in drawing from some of the leading historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists active in the field an analysis of the forms that rural violence has taken through the past three centuries.”—Pacific Affairs
[more]
cover of Power and Society in Greater NY

Power and Society in Greater NY

David C. Hammack

Russell Sage Foundation, 1982

Who has ruled New York? Has power become more concentrated—or more widely and democratically dispersed—in American cities over the past one hundred years? How did New York come to have its modern physical and institutional shape? Focusing on the period when New York City was transformed from a nineteenth-century mercantile center to a modern metropolis, David C. Hammack offers an entirely new view of the history of power and public policy in the nation's largest urban community. Opening with a fresh and original interpretation of the metropolitan region's economic and social history between 1890 and 1910, Hammack goes on to show how various population groups used their economic, social, cultural, and political resources to shape the decisions that created the modern city. As New York grew in size and complexity, its economic and social interests were forced to compete and form alliances. No single group—not even the wealthy—was able to exercise continuing control of urban policy. Building on his account of this interplay among numerous elites, Hammack concludes with a new interpretation of the history of power in New York and other American cities between 1890 and 1950. This book makes a major contribution to the study of community power, of urban and regional history, and of public policy. And by taking the meaning and distribution of power as his theme, Hammack is able to reintegrate economic, social, and political history in a rich and comprehensive work.   "Lucid, instructive, and discerning....The most commanding analysis of its subject that I know." —John M. Blum, professor of history, Yale University "A powerful and persuasive treatment of a marvelous subject." —Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science, University of California, Berkeley
[more]
cover of Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force

Power and Terror

Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force

Noam Chomsky

Pluto Press, 2011

[more]
cover of Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History

Power and Time

Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History

Edited by Dan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha Wheatley

University of Chicago Press, 2020

A collection of essays that challenges how we interpret history by focusing on the nexus of two concepts— “power” and “time”—as they manifest in a wide variety of case studies.

Time is the backdrop of historical inquiry, yet it is much more than a featureless setting for events. Different temporalities interact dynamically; sometimes they coexist tensely, sometimes they clash violently. In this innovative volume, editors Dan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha Wheatley challenge how we interpret history by focusing on the nexus of two concepts—“power” and “time”—as they manifest in a wide variety of case studies. Analyzing history, culture, politics, technology, law, art, and science, this engaging book shows how power is constituted through the shaping of temporal regimes in historically specific ways. Power and Time includes seventeen essays on human rights; sovereignty; Islamic, European, Chinese, and Indian history; slavery; capitalism; revolution; the Supreme Court; the Anthropocene; and even the Manson Family. Power and Time will be an agenda-setting volume, highlighting the work of some of the world’s most respected and original contemporary historians and posing fundamental questions for the craft of history.

[more]
cover of Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960

Power in Colonial Africa

Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960

Elizabeth A. Eldredge

University of Wisconsin Press, 2007

Even in its heyday European rule of Africa had limits. Whether through complacency or denial, many colonial officials ignored the signs of African dissent. Displays of opposition by Africans, too indirect to counter or quash, percolated throughout the colonial era and kept alive a spirit of sovereignty that would find full expression only decades later.
    In Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960, Elizabeth A. Eldredge analyzes a panoply of archival and oral resources, visual signs and symbols, and public and private actions to show how power may be exercised not only by rulers but also by the ruled. The BaSotho—best known for their consolidation of a kingdom from the 1820s to 1850s through primarily peaceful means, and for bringing colonial forces to a standstill in the Gun War of 1880–1881—struggled to maintain sovereignty over their internal affairs during their years under the colonial rule of the Cape Colony (now part of South Africa) and Britain from 1868 to 1966. Eldredge explores instances of BaSotho resistance, resilience, and resourcefulness in forms of expression both verbal and non-verbal. Skillfully navigating episodes of conflict, the BaSotho matched wits with the British in diplomatic brinksmanship, negotiation, compromise, circumvention, and persuasion, revealing the capacity of a subordinate population to influence the course of events as it selectively absorbs, employs, and subverts elements of the colonial culture.


“A refreshing, readable and lucid account of one in an array of compositions of power during colonialism in southern Africa.”—David Gordon, Journal of African History

“Elegantly written.”—Sean Redding, Sub-Saharan Africa

“Eldredge writes clearly and attractively, and her studies of the war between Lerotholi and Masupha and of the conflicts over the succession to the paramountcy are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand those crises.”—Peter Sanders, Journal of Southern African Studies
[more]
cover of Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance

Power in Concert

The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance

Jennifer Mitzen

University of Chicago Press, 2013

How states cooperate in the absence of a sovereign power is a perennial question in international relations. With Power in Concert, Jennifer Mitzen argues that global governance is more than just the cooperation of states under anarchy: it is the formation and maintenance of collective intentions, or joint commitments among states to address problems together. The key mechanism through which these intentions are sustained is face-to-face diplomacy, which keeps states’ obligations to one another salient and helps them solve problems on a day-to-day basis.

Mitzen argues that the origins of this practice lie in the Concert of Europe, an informal agreement among five European states in the wake of the Napoleonic wars to reduce the possibility of recurrence, which first institutionalized the practice of jointly managing the balance of power. Through the Concert’s many successes, she shows that the words and actions of state leaders in public forums contributed to collective self-restraint and a commitment to problem solving—and at a time when communication was considerably more difficult than it is today. Despite the Concert’s eventual breakdown, the practice it introduced—of face to face diplomacy as a mode of joint problem solving—survived and is the basis of global governance today.

[more]
cover of Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies

Power in Modernity

Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies

Isaac Ariail Reed

University of Chicago Press, 2020

In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination.  Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you” as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money.

He mobilizes this theory to investigate the onset of modernity in the Atlantic world, with a focus on rebellion, revolution, and state formation in colonial North America, the early American Republic, the English Civil War, and French Revolution. Modernity, Reed argues, dismantled the “King’s Two Bodies”—the monarch’s physical body and his ethereal, sacred second body that encompassed the body politic—as a schema of representation for forging power relations. Reed’s account then offers a new understanding of the democratic possibilities and violent exclusions forged in the name of “the people,” as revolutionaries sought new ways to secure delegation, build hierarchy, and attack alterity.

Reconsidering the role of myth in modern politics, Reed proposes to see the creative destruction and eternal recurrence of the King’s Two Bodies as constitutive of the modern attitude, and thus as a new starting point for critical theory. Modernity poses in a new way an eternal human question: what does it mean to be the author of one’s own actions?
[more]
cover of Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative

Power in the Blood

A Family Narrative

Linda Tate

Ohio University Press, 2009

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate’s journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate distant relatives — fifth, sixth, seventh cousins, all descended from her great-greatgrandmother Louisiana — they gathered in kitchens and living rooms, held family reunions, and swapped stories. A past that had long been buried slowly came to light as family members shared the pieces of the family’s tale that had been passed along to them.

Power in the Blood is a dramatic family history that reads like a novel, as Tate’s compelling narrative reveals one mystery after another. Innovative and groundbreaking in its approach to research and storytelling, Power in the Blood shows that exploring a family story can enhance understanding of history, life, and culture and that honest examination of the past can lead to healing and liberation in the present.

[more]
cover of Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others

Power in the Wild

The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others

Lee Alan Dugatkin

University of Chicago Press, 2022

From the shell wars of hermit crabs to little blue penguins spying on potential rivals, power struggles in the animal kingdom are as diverse as they are fascinating, and this book illuminates their surprising range and connections.
 
The quest for power in animals is so much richer, so much more nuanced than who wins what knock-down, drag-out fight. Indeed, power struggles among animals often look more like an opera than a boxing match. Tracing the path to power for over thirty different species on six continents, writer and behavioral ecologist Lee Alan Dugatkin takes us on a journey around the globe, shepherded by leading researchers who have discovered that in everything from hyenas to dolphins, bonobos to field mice, cichlid fish to cuttlefish, copperhead snakes to ravens, and meerkats to mongooses, power revolves around spying, deception, manipulation, forming and breaking up alliances, complex assessments of potential opponents, building social networks, and more. Power pervades every aspect of the social life of animals: what they eat, where they eat, where they live, whom they mate with, how many offspring they produce, whom they join forces with, and whom they work to depose. In some species, power can even change an animal’s sex. Nor are humans invulnerable to this magnificently intricate melodrama: Dugatkin’s tales of the researchers studying power in animals are full of unexpected pitfalls, twists and turns, serendipity, and the pure joy of scientific discovery.
[more]
cover of Power of Freedom: Hu Shih's Political Writings

Power of Freedom

Hu Shih's Political Writings

Chih-p'ing Chou and Carlos Yu-Kai Lin, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2022

Dr. Hu Shih (1891–1962) was one of China’s top scholars and diplomats and served as the Republic of China’s ambassador to the United States during World War II.  As early as 1941, Hu Shih warned of the fundamental ideological conflict between dictatorial totalitarianism and democratic systems, a view that later became the foundation of the Cold War narrative.  In the 1950s, after Mao’s authoritarian regime was established, Hu Shih started to analyze the development and nature of Communism, delivering a series of lectures and addresses to reveal what he called Stalin’s “grand strategy” for facilitating the International Communist Movement.

For decades—and today to a certain extent—Hu Shih’s political writings were considered sensitive and even dangerous.  As a strident critic of the Chinese Communist Party’s oligarchical practices, he was targeted by the CCP in a concerted national campaign to smear his reputation, cast aspersions on his writings, and generally destroy any possible influence he might have in China.  This volume brings together a collection of Hu Shih’s most important, mostly unpublished, English-language speeches, interviews, and commentaries on international politics, China-U.S. relations, and the International Communist Movement.  Taken together, these works provide an insider’s perspective on Sino-American relations and the development of the International Communist Movement over the course of the 20th century.
[more]
cover of Power of Material - Politics of Materiality

Power of Material - Politics of Materiality

Edited by Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier

Diaphanes, 2014

In the last years a new focus on material phenomena has become increasingly oberservable in the arts and sciences. Most diverse disciplines are stressing the momentum and the agency of matter, material and things and underline their status as agents within the web of relationships of culture and nature. The book "Power of Material / Politics of Materiality“ deepens this current discourse and for the time brings materialist tendencies within the arts, design and architecture into a direct dialogue with a range of scientific approaches from a "New Materialism“ within the humanities and social sciences.

This publication is the result of the first year of program at the newly established cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

[more]
cover of Power of Nature: Archaeology and Human-Environmental Dynamics

Power of Nature

Archaeology and Human-Environmental Dynamics

edited by Monica L. Smith

University Press of Colorado, 2022

In The Power of Nature archaeologists address the force and impact of nature relative to human knowledge, action, and volition. Case studies from around the world focusing on different levels of sociopolitical complexity—ranging from early agricultural societies to states and empires—address the ways in which nature retains the upper hand in human agentive environmental discourse, providing an opportunity for an insightful perspective on the current anthropological emphasis on how humans affect the environment.
 
Climatic events, pathogens, and animals as nonhuman agents, ranging in size from viruses to mega-storms, have presented our species with dynamic conditions that overwhelm human capacities. In some cases, people have modified architecture to deal with a constant onslaught of storms, as in Japan or the Caribbean; in other cases, they have welcomed the occasional natural disaster as a chance to start fresh or to put into place new ideas and practices, as in the case of ancient Roman cities. Using the concept of “agency” as one in which multiple sentient and nonhuman actors interact in a landscape, and exploring locations such as the Caribbean, the Pacific, South Asia, the Andes, the Mediterranean, Mesoamerica, North America, and the Arctic, the authors provide compelling explanations of the effect of an entire realm of natural powers that beset human societies past and present—from storms, earthquakes, and fires to vegetation, domestic animals, and wild birds. Throughout, the emphasis is on the philosophical and engineering adjustments that people make to stay resilient when facing the perpetual changes of the natural world.
 
Using an archaeological perspective, The Power of Nature illustrates and analyzes the many
ways that people do not control their environments. It will be of interest to archaeologists, as well as scholars in science, biology, botany, forestry, urban studies, and disaster management.
 
Contributors: Steven Ammeran, Traci Ardren, Katelyn J. Bishop, Karen Mohr Chávez, Sergio Chávez, Stanislava Chávez, Emelie Cobb, Jago Cooper, Harper Dine, Chelsea Fisher, Jennifer Huebert, Dale L. Hutchinson, Sara L. Juengst, Kanika Kalra, François Oliva, Matthew C. Peros, Jordan Pickett, Seth Quintus, John Robb, Monica L. Smith, Jillian A. Swift, Silvia Tomášková, Kyungsoo Yoo
 
 
[more]