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Riots, rebellions, and revolutions have always captured our attention. But moments of upheaval do not contrast as strongly with "normal" times as many social historians, sociologists, and political scientists have assumed. Offering examples from South Asia, these essays examine subtle forms of the "everyday resistance" and varieties of the everyday use of power that mark the patterns of ordinary life in the region. These essays are part of a larger effort to understand the history of subordination in India. They focus on peasants and urban laborers, courtesans and merchants, sometimes employing unconventional sources and methods. By depicting a rich variety of non-confrontational forms of resistance and contestatory behaviors, the authors challenge our usual assumptions about the overt nature of resistance to dominant powerholders. Taken together, the essays suggest that we must consider a much wider range of socio-cultural practices if we wish to understand how the world of dominated groups is constrained, modified, and conditioned by power relations. Identifying the "everydayness" of resistance in social life thus reveals a social structure formed from a constellation of contradictory and contestatory processes, rather than a seamless, functional whole. At the same time, struggle is portrayed as something that is constantly being conditioned by the structures of social and political power. As the editors note, "neither domination nor resistance is autonomous; the two are entangled together so that it becomes difficult to analyze one without discussing the effects of the other".
Argues that ordinary people exercise extraordinary political courage and power in American politics when, frustrated by politics as usual, they rise up in anger and hope, and defy the authorities and the status quo rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives. By doing so, they disrupt the workings of important institutions and become a force in American politics. Drawing on critical episodes in U.S. history, Piven shows that it is in fact precisely at those seismic moments when people act outside of political norms that they become empowered to their full democratic potential.
This book provides a concise but rigorous appraisal about the future of nuclear power and the presumed nuclear renaissance. It does so by assessing the technical, economic, environmental, political, and social risks related to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mills and mines to nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage facilities. In each case, the book argues that the costs of nuclear power significantly outweigh its benefits. It concludes by calling for investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency as a better path towards an affordable, secure, and socially acceptable future.The prospect of a global nuclear renaissance could change the way that energy is produced and used the world over. Sovacool takes a hard look at who would benefit — mostly energy companies and manufacturers — and who would suffer — mostly taxpayers, those living near nuclear facilities, and electricity customers. This book is a must-read for anyone even remotely concerned about a sustainable energy future, and also for those with a specific interest in modern nuclear power plants.
The ARML (American Regions Math League) Power Contest is truly a unique competition in which a team of students is judged on its ability to discover a pattern, express the pattern in precise mathematical language, and provide a logical proof of its conjectures. Just as a team of students can be self-directed to solve each problem set, a teacher, math team coach, or math circle leader could take these ideas and questions and lead students into problem solving and mathematical discovery. This book contains thirty-seven interesting and engaging problem sets from the ARML Power Contests from 1994 to 2013. They are generally extensions of the high school mathematics classroom and often connect two remote areas of mathematics. Additionally, they provide meaningful problem situations for both the novice and the veteran mathlete. Thomas Kilkelly has been a mathematics teacher for forty-three years. During that time he has been awarded several teaching honors and has coached many math teams to state and national championships. He has always been an advocate for more discovery, integration, and problem solving in the mathematics classroom. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession. Titles in this series are co-published with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI).
During war, space for debate shrinks. Narrow ideas of patriotism and democracy marginalize and silence opposition to militarism abroad and repression at home. Although powerful, these ideas encounter widespread resistance. Analyzing the official statements of 15 organizations from 1990-2005, the authors show that the U.S. peace movement strongly contested taken-for-granted assumptions regarding nationalism, religion, security, and global justice. Contesting Patriotism engages cutting-edge theories in social movements research to understand the ways that activists promote peace through their words. Concepts of culture, power, strategy, and identity are used to explain how movement organizations and activists contribute to social change. The diversity of organizations and conflicts studied make this book a unique and important contribution to peace building and to social movements scholarship.
Mirabai, an iconic sixteenth-century Indian poet-saint, is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Defying attempts to constrain and even kill her, she could not be silenced. Though verifiable facts regarding her life are few, her fame spread across social, linguistic, and religious boundaries, and stories about her multiplied across the subcontinent and the centuries. In Mirabai, Nancy M. Martin traces the story of this immensely popular Indian saint from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist developments to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence. This book examines Mirabai's place as both insider and outsider to the developing strands of devotional Hinduism and her role in contested terrain of debates around the education and independence of women and the crafting of Indian and Hindu identities. Mirabai offers a comprehensive and multi-layered portrait of this remarkable and still controversial woman, who continues to be a source of inspiration and catalyst for self-actualization for spiritual seekers, artists, activists, and so many others in India and around the world today.
Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.
This book examines some of the following issues: Is political theory 'Western-centric'? What can we learn from non-Western traditions of political thought? How do we compare different strands of national and regional political thought? Political thought in China, India, the Middle East and Latin America ; Islamic political thought and more. Political thought in the wake of post-colonialism. This is a much-needed overview of this key emerging area and will be of interest to all tsudents of political theory, thought and philosophy.
This book illustrates the limits to the 1990s UNTAC peacekeeping intervention in Cambodia and raises a critical challenge to the assumptions underpinning key tenets of the 'Liberal Project' as a mechanism for resolving complex, severe struggles for elite political power in developing countries. The book highlights the limitations of externally imposed power-sharing. In the case of Cambodia, the imagined effect was a coalition that would share power democratically. However, this approach was appropriate only for resolving the superpower conflict that had created Cambodia's war. Rather than bringing long-term peace to Cambodia, Roberts argues, it created the temporary illusion of a democratic system that in fact recreated the military conflict and housed it in a superficial coalition. The book challenges assumptions regarding the inevitability of the globalization of liberalism as a means of ordering non-western societies. It explains the failure of democratic transition in terms of the impropriety and weakness of the plan which preceded it, and in terms of the elite's traditional reliance on absolutism and resistance to the concept of 'Opposition'.
Geographies of Developing Areas is a thought provoking and accessible introductory text, presenting a fresh view of the Global South that challenges students' pre-conceptions and promotes lively debate. Rather than presenting the Global South as a set of problems, from rapid urbanization to poverty, this book focuses on the diversity of life in the South, and looks at the role the South plays in shaping and responding to current global change. The core contents of the book integrate 'traditional' concerns of development geographers, such as economic development and social inequality, with aspects of the global South that are usually given less attention, such as cultural identity and political conflict. This edition has been fully updated to reflect recent changes in the field and highlight issues of security, risk and violence; environmental sustainability and climate change; and the impact of ICT on patterns of North-South and South-South exchange. It also challenges students to think about how space is important in both the directions and the outcomes of change in the Global South, emphasizing the inherently spatial nature of political, economic and socio-cultural processes. Students are introduced to the Global South via contemporary debates in development and current research in cultural, economic and political geographies of developing areas. The textbook consider how images of the so-called 'Third World' are powerful, but problematic. It explores the economic, political and cultural processes shaping the South at the global scale and the impact that these have on people's lives and identities. Finally, the text considers the possibilities and limitations of different development strategies. The main arguments of the book are richly illustrated through case study material drawn from across the Global South as well as full colour figures and photos. Students are supported throughout with clear examples, explanations of key terms, ideas and debates, and introductions to the wider literature and relevant websites in the field. The pedagogical features of the book have been further developed through discussion questions and activities that provide focused tasks for students' research, including investigation based around the book's case studies, and in-depth exploration of debates and concepts it introduces.