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28 books match the query 'Polity'

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Brazil Since 1985

Edited by Maria D'Alva G. Kinzo and James Dunkerley

University of London Press, 2003

Looking into Brazil's recent experience of democracy is an arduous undertaking, given the complexities of a country of continental size and great regional contrasts, where areas of prosperity and wealth mingle with underdevelopment and poverty. This book looks at some of the important issues involved in building up a democracy and keeping it working. How should we assess Brazil's experience of democracy? To what extent has the emergence of a democratic regime improved Brazilians' social, economic, and political life? Has democracy been consolidated to the point of making a political breakdown unthinkable or improbable? These are questions that any student of Brazil has to address. The answers to them, however, are far from simple.
Contributors include Edmund Amann (School of Economic Studies, University of Manchester, UK), Maria Celi Scalon (Insituto Universitario de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Carlos Antonio Costa Ribeiro (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil), Mauricio Coutinho (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil), Argelina Cheibub Figueiredo (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), James Dunkerley (Institute of Latin American Studies and Queen Mary, University of London, UK), Antonio Sergio A. Guimaraes (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Anthony Hall (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Fernando Limongi (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Fiona Macaulay (Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford and Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, UK), Celso Martone (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Leandro Piquet Carneiro (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Mauro Porto (Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil), and Brasilio Sallum Jr. (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil).

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Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca

Arthur A. Joyce

University Press of Colorado, 2012

Encapsulating two decades of research, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca is the first major treatment of the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca, investigating its social, political, and ecological history. Tracing Formative period developments from the earliest known evidence of human presence to the collapse of Río Viejo (the region's first centralized polity), the volume synthesizes the archaeological and paleoecological evidence from the valley.

This period saw the earliest agricultural settlements in the region as well as the origins of sedentism and social complexity, and witnessed major changes in floodplain and coastal environments that expanded the productivity of subsistence resources. The book addresses theoretically significant questions of broad relevance such as the origins and spread of agriculture, the social negotiation of complex political formations, the effects of long-distance trade and interaction, the macroregional effects of landscape change, and prehispanic ideology and political power.

Focusing on questions of interregional interaction, environmental change, and political centralization, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca provides a comprehensive understanding of the Formative period archaeology of this important and long neglected region of Oaxaca.

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