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87 books match the query 'Political Freedom' and 20 start with t

cover of Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation

Thai Military Power

A Culture of Strategic Accommodation

Gregory Vincent Raymond

National University of Singapore Press, 2018

Thailand remains important by virtue of its location at the centre of the Asia–Pacific region, an area playing a vital role in world affairs. And yet, although Thailand has a comparatively large population and has powerful military forces performing significant roles in state and society, the country itself is seen as having little military power; it is a minor player. Why is this? Using strategic culture as an analytical framework, this book produces a portrait of the Thai state as an accommodative actor. During the period of Western imperial dominance in Asia, Thailand ‘bent in the wind’ to preserve its independence by a limited trading of territory and sovereignty. This accommodative policy continues to the present day in different forms. A key feature is that military organisational culture reinforces a state ideology of royalist nationalism that in turn reinforces the national strategic culture. Significant here is internal political acceptance of not just military domination in civil–military relations but also of the Thai military’s limitations in state-on-state combat. The author finds such ‘underbalancing’ – not responding to threat, or responding to it inadequately – elsewhere in Southeast Asia, too, especially in Indonesia. Although ASEAN’s two largest economies, and despite the challenges presented by a rising China, neither country is acting to significantly build alliances or rapidly strengthen their military forces. Pointing as well to other Southeast Asian nations with weak civil control of their militaries, including Myanmar, the Philippines and Cambodia, the book sets out a case that the interplay of civil–military relations and military organisational culture retards the development of strong external defence postures.
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cover of The ANC and the Liberation Struggle: A Critical Political Biography

The ANC and the Liberation Struggle

A Critical Political Biography

Dale T. McKinley

Pluto Press, 1997

'Written from inside the movement of which it is so critical, McKinley's book is
eloquent testimony of the  continuing vitality of the South African left' Modern African Studies

The African National Congress, the ANC, negotiated a transition of government and power in South Africa in the early 1990s and gained widespread respect and legitimacy when Nelson Mandela was voted in as President in 1994.

In this controversial and radical critique of the ANC and the struggle for liberation in South Africa, Dale T. McKinley challenges conventional public perceptions of the organisation and its celebrated rise to power.  McKinley offers the first detailed analysis of the ANC's leadership, tactics and strategies from the 1920s, through the years of exile, to the 1990s, focusing on its close alliance with the South African Communist Party.  he reveals that the organisation, despite historical claims to the contrary, failed to stay in touch with the south African masses.  The ANC made fundamental compromises to gain political power, and in so doing has ensured that the economic power-base of the ruling elites in South Africa remains essentially unaltered.
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cover of The Autonomous Animal: Self-Governance and the Modern Subject

The Autonomous Animal

Self-Governance and the Modern Subject

Claire E. Rasmussen

University of Minnesota Press, 2011

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

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

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cover of The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom

The Bastille

A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom

Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt

Duke University Press, 1997

This book is both an analysis of the Bastille as cultural paradigm and a case study on the history of French political culture. It examines in particular the storming and subsequent fall of the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789 and how it came to represent the cornerstone of the French Revolution, becoming a symbol of the repression of the Old Regime. Lüsebrink and Reichardt use this semiotic reading of the Bastille to reveal how historical symbols are generated; what these symbols’ functions are in the collective memory of societies; and how they are used by social, political, and ideological groups.

To facilitate the symbolic nature of the investigation, this analysis of the evolving signification of the Bastille moves from the French Revolution to the nineteenth century to contemporary history. The narrative also shifts from France to other cultural arenas, like the modern European colonial sphere, where the overthrow of the Bastille acquired radical new signification in the decolonization period of the 1940s and 1950s. The Bastille demonstrates the potency of the interdisciplinary historical research that has characterized the end of this century, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, and taking its methodological tools from history, sociology, linguistics, and cultural and literary studies.

 

 

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cover of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson: Volume 1

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson

Volume 1

Jane E. Calvert

University of Delaware Press, 2011

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, vol. 1 inaugurates a multivolume documentary edition that will, for the first time ever, provide the complete collection of everything Dickinson published on public affairs over the course of his life. The documents include essays, articles, broadsides, resolutions, petitions, declarations, constitutions, regulations, legislation, proclamations, songs and odes. Among them are many of the seminal state papers produced by the first national congresses and conventions. Also included are correspondences between Dickinson and some of the key figures of his era. This edition should raise Dickinson to his rightful place among America’s founding fathers, rivaled in reputation only by Benjamin Franklin before 1776. Dickinson was celebrated throughout the colonies, as well as in England and France, as the great American spokesman for liberty, and the documents in this edition evidence his tireless political work and unmatched corpus.
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cover of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson: Volume 2

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson

Volume 2

Jane E. Calvert

University of Delaware Press, 2021

John Dickinson’s entry into public life in Delaware and Pennsylvania is a highlight of the ninety-eight documents written over four years printed in Volume Two of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson. The volume opens with Dickinson’s legal notes as he established himself as one of the most prominent and learned lawyers in colonial British North America. His cases dealt with, among other issues, interpretation of wills, disputes over land, sailors suing for wages, a fine on a Quaker who refused military service, and a notorious murder in a prominent Philadelphia family. It concludes with Dickinson offering thoughtful advice to a young man who was considering the arduous work in becoming a lawyer. “I think,” he wrote, “those must be infinitely the most happy, whose fatigues are softend by a conscious Benevolence of mind wishing & endeavouring to [pro]mote the Happiness of others as well as their own.”
 
Dickinson’s hard work on behalf of his clients brought him success in other areas of his public life. In October 1759, he was elected to his first public position as a representative for Kent County, Del., the following year he was elevated to the position of speaker, and in 1762, he became a representative for Philadelphia County, Pa. As a legislator in two colonies, learning his craft as a global war unfolded, he contributed to bills on military and defense, Indian relations, infrastructure improvements and city management, and served on various committees. The death of George II occasioned debates over laws and judges, in which Dickinson participated. This era concludes with Dickinson playing a central role in managing the unfolding Paxton Riots, in which frontiersmen massacred peaceful Indians and threatened the Quaker leadership of Pennsylvania.
 
In private, Dickinson lost the two most prominent male figures in his life in 1760, his father, Samuel, and soon thereafter, his mentor, colleague, and friend, John Moland. In honor of Moland, Dickinson published a poem and became a proxy head to Moland’s large family. Though his extant correspondence during this period is small, he exchanged letters with Mary Cadwalader Dickinson, Israel Pemberton, William Allason, George Read, Thomas McKean, and others. Perhaps most significant, he wrote a lengthy, unpublished essay on the flag-of-truce trade and also maintained commonplace books as he considered his place within the British Empire, opening up the next phase in Dickinson’s life as a leader of the resistance against Britain.

Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
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cover of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson: Volume 3

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson

Volume 3

Jane E. Calvert

University of Delaware Press, 2024

During the years 1764 through 1766, John Dickinson became a leading figure in the Pennsylvania Assembly and in the growing American resistance to unjust British taxation. The documents in this volume show that, in both roles, he sought to protect the fundamental rights of ordinary Americans. In the 1764 Assembly, after working to punish those responsible for the slaughter of peaceful Indians, Dickinson challenged Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Galloway in their plan to abolish Pennsylvania’s unique Quaker constitution that secured liberty of conscience and place the colony under the control of the Crown. Then, in 1765, he served as primary draftsman at the Stamp Act Congress in New York, producing the first official American documents of the Revolutionary Era. In his private capacity, Dickinson continued to write through 1765 and 1766, publishing, among other documents, the first practical advice to Americans on how to resist Great Britain. The present volume also contains draft legislation, fascinating case notes from his legal practice, and personal correspondence.
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cover of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson: Volume 4, 1767-1769

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson

Volume 4, 1767-1769

John Dickinson

University of Delaware Press, 0

In 1767, John Dickinson began publishing his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which earned him international celebrity as the leader of the American resistance to Britain. They educated Americans about their rights and how to defend them without violence. Importantly, they also taught the colonists to unite and understand themselves first and foremost as Americans rather than as Britons. He followed with letters on religious liberty in the Episcopal controversy and America’s first patriotic song, the “Liberty Song.” This volume documents the overwhelming public response around the Atlantic World to his writings. It was largely positive, with readers paying tribute to him in numerous ways, beginning with the Massachusetts circular letter to the other colonies advocating a nonimportation agreement. Most of the negative responses came from Dickinson’s enemy from the 1764 royal government controversy in Pennsylvania, Joseph Galloway, who orchestrated a smear campaign against “the Farmer.” Dickinson’s legal notes from this period include several interesting cases, such as his defense of a mixed-race servant woman charged with infanticide. Although there is limited extant correspondence, it includes letters concerning his courtship of his future wife, Mary Norris.
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cover of The Eagle Has Eyes: The FBI Surveillance of César Estrada Chávez of the United Farm Workers Union of America, 1965–1975

The Eagle Has Eyes

The FBI Surveillance of César Estrada Chávez of the United Farm Workers Union of America, 1965–1975

José Angel Gutiérrez

Michigan State University Press, 2019

This book is the first of its kind to bring transparency to the FBI’s attempts to destroy the incipient Chicano Movement of the 1960s. While the activities of the deep state are current research topics, this has not always been the case. The role of the U.S. government in suppressing marginalized racial and ethnic minorities began to be documented with the advent of the Freedom of Information Act and most recently by disclosures of whistle blowers. This book utilizes declassified files from the FBI to investigate the agency’s role in thwarting Cesar E. Chavez’s efforts to build a labor union for farm workers and documents the roles of the FBI, California state police, and local police in assisting those who opposed Chavez. Ultimately, The Eagle Has Eyes is a must-read for academics and activists alike.
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cover of The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security

The Ethics of Care

A Feminist Approach to Human Security

Fiona Robinson

Temple University Press, 2011

In The Ethics of Care, Fiona Robinson demonstrates how the responsibilities of sustaining life are central to the struggle for basic human security. She takes a unique approach, using a feminist lens to challenge gender biases in rights-based, individualist approaches.Robinson's thorough and impassioned consideration of care in both ethical and practical terms provides a starting point for understanding and addressing the material, emotional and psychological conditions that create insecurity for people. The Ethics of Careexamines “care ethics” and “security” at the theoretical level and explores the practical implications of care relations for security in a variety of contexts: women's labor in the global economy, humanitarian intervention and peace building, healthcare, and childcare.

Theoretically-innovative and policy-relevant, this critical analysis demonstrates the need to understand the obstacles and inequalities that obstruct the equitable and adequate delivery of care around the world.

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cover of The Indecent Screen: Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century

The Indecent Screen

Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century

Chris, Cynthia

Rutgers University Press, 2019

The Indecent Screen explores clashes over indecency in broadcast television among U.S.-based media advocates, television professionals, the Federal Communications Commission, and TV audiences. Cynthia Chris focuses on the decency debates during an approximately twenty-year period since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which in many ways restructured the media environment. Simultaneously, ever increasing channel capacity, new forms of distribution, and time-shifting (in the form of streaming and on-demand viewing options) radically changed how, when, and what we watch. But instead of these innovations quelling concerns that TV networks were too often transmitting indecent material that was accessible to children, complaints about indecency skyrocketed soon after the turn of the century. Chris demonstrates that these clashes are significant battles over the role of family, the role of government, and the value of free speech in our lives, arguing that an uncensored media is so imperative to the public good that we can, and must, endure the occasional indecent screen. 
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cover of The Intimate Life of Dissent: Anthropological Perspectives

The Intimate Life of Dissent

Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by Harini Amarasuriya, Tobias Kelly, Sidharthan Maunaguru, Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic and Jonathan Spencer

University College London, 2020

The Intimate Life of Dissent examines the meanings and implications of public acts of dissent, which, the authors argue, are never simply about abstract principles, but also come at great personal risk to both the dissidents and to those close to them. Dissent is, therefore, embedded in deep, complex, and sometimes contradictory intimate relations. This book puts acts of high principle back into the personal relations out of which they emerge and take effect, raising new questions about the relationship between intimacy and political commitment. It does so through examinations of practical examples, including Sri Lankan leftists, Soviet dissidents, Tibetan exiles, Kurdish prisoners, British pacifists, Indonesian student activists, and Jewish peace activists. The Intimate Life of Dissent will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in anthropology, history, political theory, and sociology, as well as to those teaching introductory undergraduate courses on political anthropology.
 
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cover of The Kurdish Women’s Movement: History, Theory, Practice

The Kurdish Women’s Movement

History, Theory, Practice

Dilar Dirik

Pluto Press, 2021

'One the foremost writers and participants in the Kurdish women's movement' - Harsha Walia

The Kurdish women's movement is at the heart of the most exciting revolutionary experiment in the world today: Rojava. Forged over decades of struggle, most recently in the fight against ISIS, Rojava embodies a radical commitment to ecology, democracy and gender equality. But while striking images of Kurdish women in desert fatigues proliferate, a true understanding of the women's movement remains elusive.

Taking apart the superficial and Orientalist frameworks that dominate, Dilar Dirik offers instead an empirically rich account of the women's movement in Kurdistan. Drawing on original research and ethnographic fieldwork, she surveys the movement's historical origins, ideological evolution, and political practice over the past forty years. Going beyond abstract ideas, Dirik locates the movement's culture and ideology in its concrete work for women's liberation and radical democracy.

Taking the reader from the guerrilla camps in the mountains to radical women's academies and self-organized refugee camps, the book invites readers around the world to engage with the revolution in Kurdistan, both theoretically and practically, as a vital touchstone in the wider struggle for a militant anti-fascist, anti-capitalist feminist internationalism.

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cover of The Social Programs of Sweden: A Search for Security in a Free Society

The Social Programs of Sweden

A Search for Security in a Free Society

Albert H. RosenthalForeword by Marquis Childs

University of Minnesota Press, 1967

The Social Programs of Sweden was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In his forward to this book, Marquis Childs, author of the classic work Sweden: The Middle Way,comments: "There has been a great deal of emotional writing about the effort of the labor government in Stockholm to regulate capitalism and provide a decent standard of living for every citizen. Much of this emotional writing has come from those who for one reason or another have sought to discredit the Swedish experiment ... The net result of much of this highly colored writing has been to ignore the real contribution that Sweden has made in a half dozen fields and particularly in the fields of social security and health. But now comes an author ideally equipped to appraise this contribution by reason of his background. This is the great virtue of this book. It is a careful and thorough examination of Sweden's achievement by a specialist familiar with our own social security, public health and welfare systems ... No subsequent appraisal of what Sweden has done can be made henceforth without this basic work."

The author traces the development of the Swedish programs and provides detailed descriptions of the social security, health insurance, public health, and welfare programs, with case examples. He evaluates and compares the programs with their American counterparts, and, in conclusion, considers the effects of the Swedish system on personal freedom. The work is based on extensive research done in Sweden.

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cover of The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia

The Theatre of Genocide

Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia

Edited and with an introduction by Robert Skloot

University of Wisconsin Press, 2008

In this pioneering volume, Robert Skloot brings together four plays—three of which are published here for the first time—that fearlessly explore the face of modern genocide. The scripts deal with the destruction of four targeted populations: Armenians in Lorne Shirinian’s Exile in the Cradle, Cambodians in Catherine Filloux’s Silence of God, Bosnian Muslims in Kitty Felde’s A Patch of Earth, and Rwandan Tutsis in Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito. Taken together, these four plays erase the boundaries of theatrical realism to present stories that probe the actions of the perpetrators and the suffering of their victims. A major artistic contribution to the study of the history and effects of genocide, this collection carries on the important journey toward understanding the terror and trauma to which the modern world has so often been witness.
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cover of The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security

The Transparent Traveler

The Performance and Culture of Airport Security

Rachel Hall

Duke University Press, 2015

At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot—whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion—are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance. 
 
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cover of The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual: U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-07

The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual

U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-07

The United States Army

University of Michigan Press, 2009

Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations, represents a milestone in Army doctrine.

With a focus on transforming conflict, managing violence when it does occur and maintaining stable peace, The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual (otherwise known as FM 3-07) signals a stark departure from traditional military doctrine. The Army officially acknowledges the complex continuum from conflict to peace, outlines the military's responsibility to provide stability and security, and recognizes the necessity of collaboration, coordination, and cooperation among military, state, commercial, and non-government organizations in nation-building efforts.

The manual reflects a truly unique collaboration between the Army and a wide array of experts from hundreds of groups across the United States Government, the intergovernmental and non-governmental communities, America's allies around the world, and the private sector. All branches of the armed forces, U.S. agencies ranging from the State Department to Homeland Security to Health and Human Services, international agencies from the United Nations to the Red Cross to the World Bank, countries from the United Kingdom to India to South Africa, private think tanks from RAND to the United States Institute of Peace to the Center for New American Security, all took part in the shaping of this document.

The U.S. Army Stability Operations FieldManual, marks just the second time in modern history that the U.S. Army has worked with a private publisher to produce a military doctrinal document.

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV is Commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Michèle Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Shawn Brimley, Fellow, Center for a New American Security

Janine Davidson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Plans

"It is a roadmap from conflict to peace, a practical guidebook for adaptive, creative leadership at a critical time in our history. It institutionalizes the hard-won lessons of the past while charting a path for tomorrow. This manual postures our military forces for the challenges of an uncertain future, an era of persistent conflict where the unflagging bravery of our Soldiers will continue to carry the banner of freedom, hope, and opportunity to the people of the world."
—From the foreword by Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV, Commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

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cover of The University and Social Justice: Struggles Across the Globe

The University and Social Justice

Struggles Across the Globe

Aziz Choudry

Pluto Press, 2020

Higher education has long been contested terrain. From student movements to staff unions, the fight for accessible, critical and quality public education has turned university campuses globally into sites of struggle.

Whether calling for the decommodification or the decolonization of education, many of these struggles have attempted to draw on (and in turn, resonate with) longer histories of popular resistance, broader social movements and radical visions of a fairer world. In this critical collection, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally and a host of international contributors bring grounded, analytical accounts of diverse struggles relating to higher education into conversation with each other.

Featuring contributions written by students and staff members on the frontline of struggles from 12 different countries, including Canada, Chile, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the USA, the book asks what can be learned from these movements' strategies, demands and visions.
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cover of The World after Iraq: A Special Issue, Volume 14

The World after Iraq

A Special Issue, Volume 14

Nikolaos A. Stavrou, ed.

Duke University Press, 0

Assembling high-profile policymakers, diplomats, and renowned foreign policy specialists, The World after Iraq investigates the state of global security in the wake of the U.S.-led war on Iraq and the ongoing “war on terrorism.” The collection examines the historical roots of global security as it relates to the Middle East and studies its implications for international relations and policy in a post–September 11 world. Given the complexity of the issues addressed, these essays do not pretend to offer definitive, prescriptive answers. Rather, the collection is intended to raise more questions than can be answered, thus setting in motion a serious and ongoing dialogue regarding the future of global security and the U.S. roles and responsibilities within it.

Contributors from the Mediterranean Basin and the U.S.—both supporters and critics of U.S. foreign policy in pre- and postwar Iraq—investigate the U.S.’s “war on terrorism” and its associated concept of “preemptive war” as viable political strategies. Other essays weigh the ramifications of recent U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for the institutions that have governed international relations since World War II and consider the political, social, and economic costs of this policy both for the U.S. itself and for the countries it targets.

Contributors. Stephen C. Calleya, Vincent M. Cannistraro, Ted Galen Carpenter, Mohamed A. El-Khawas, Ivan Eland, William H. Lewis, Raymond Muhula, Bernard Reich, Burton M. Sapin, Joseph J. Sisco, Nikolaos A. Stavrou, Stansfield Turner

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cover of Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World

Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World

John C. Torpey

Temple University Press, 2016

Today’s warfare has moved away from being an event between massed national populations and toward small numbers of combatants using high-tech weaponry. The editors of and contributors to the timely collection Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World show that this shift reflects changes in the technological, strategic, ideological, and ethical realms.

The essays in this volume discuss:

·the waning connection between citizenship and soldiering; 

·the shift toward more reconstructive than destructive activities by militaries; 

·the ethics of irregular or asymmetrical warfare; 

·the role of novel techniques of identification in military settings; 

·the stress on precision associated with targeted killings and kidnappings; 

·the uses of the social sciences in contemporary warfare. 

In his concluding remarks, David Jacobson explores the extent to which the contemporary transformation of warfare is a product of a shift in the character of the combatants themselves. 

Contributors include: Ariel Colonomos, Roberto J. González, Travis R. Hall, Saskia Hooiveld, Rob Johnson, Colonel C. Anthony Pfaff, Ian Roxborough, and the editors

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