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In Political Kinship in Pakistan, Stephen M. Lyon illustrates how contemporary politics in Pakistan are built on complex kinship networks created through marriage and descent relations. Lyon points to kinship as a critical mechanism for understanding both Pakistan’s continued inability to develop strong and stable governments, and its incredible durability in the face of pressures that have led to the collapse and failure of other states around the world.
Historians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin’s evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live. Significantly, and in spite of Darwin’s acknowledgement that natural selection was “the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms,” both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly “Darwinian.” By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
This provocative work reveals the origins and development of political theory as it is presently understood—and misunderstood. Tracing the evolution of the field from the nineteenth century to the present, John G. Gunnell shows how current controversies, like those over liberalism or the relationship of theory to practice, are actually the unresolved legacy of a forgotten past. By uncovering this past, Gunnell exposes the forces that animate and structure political theory today. Gunnell reconstructs the evolution of the field by locating it within the broader development of political science and American social science in general. During the behavioral revolution that swept political science in the 1950s, the relationship between political theory and political science changed dramatically, relegating theory to the margins of an increasingly empirical discipline. Gunnell demonstrates that the estrangement of political theory is rooted in a much older quarrel: the authority of knowledge versus political theory is rooted in a much older quarrel: the authority of knowledge versus political authority, academic versus public discourse. By disclosing the origin of this dispute, he opens the way for a clearer understanding of the basis and purpose of political theory. As critical as it is revelatory, this thoughtful book should be read by any one interested in the history of political theory or science—or in the relationship of social science to political practice in the United States.
“A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.
“Concise, clear and convincing. . . a vision for the country as a whole.” —James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review A leading sociologist's brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California Once upon a time, any mention of California triggered unpleasant reminders of Ronald Reagan and right-wing tax revolts, ballot propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, and racist policing that sparked two of the nation's most devastating riots. In fact, California confronted many of the challenges the rest of the country faces now—decades before the rest of us. Today, California is leading the way on addressing climate change, low-wage work, immigrant integration, overincarceration, and more. As white residents became a minority and job loss drove economic uncertainty, California had its own Trump moment twenty-five years ago, but has become increasingly blue over each of the last seven presidential elections. How did the Golden State manage to emerge from its unsavory past to become a bellwether for the rest of the country? Thirty years after Mike Davis's hellish depiction of California in City of Quartz, the award-winning sociologist Manuel Pastor guides us through a new and improved California, complete with lessons that the nation should heed. Inspiring and expertly researched, State of Resistance makes the case for honestly engaging racial anxiety in order to address our true economic and generational challenges, a renewed commitment to public investments, the cultivation of social movements and community organizing, and more.
The concepts of modernity and modernism are among the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this new, muscular intervention, Pollin explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.
From family trees written in early American bibles to birther conspiracy theories, genealogy has always mattered in the United States, whether for taking stock of kin when organizing a family reunion or drawing on membership—by blood or other means—to claim rights to land, inheritances, and more. And since the advent of DNA kits that purportedly trace genealogical relations through genetics, millions of people have used them to learn about their medical histories, biological parentage, and ethnic background. A Nation of Descendants traces Americans' fascination with tracking family lineage through three centuries. Francesca Morgan examines how specific groups throughout history grappled with finding and recording their forebears, focusing on Anglo-American white, Mormon, African American, Jewish, and Native American people. Morgan also describes how individuals and researchers use genealogy for personal and scholarly purposes, and she explores how local businesspeople, companies like Ancestry.com, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Finding Your Roots series powered the commercialization and commodification of genealogy.
Chosen by the Editors at Amazon.com as one of the top 50 Best Books of 2005 - Now in paperback! With the world's economy in a slump, the Middle East's never ending conflict, and the on-going war on terrorism, there is a heightened awareness in the world community of the many sides of the numerous issues that both directly and indirectly affect our lives. Increasingly, people are feeling powerless and underrepresented because they have no voice. Designers, however, have a voice. They are among the most influential bystanders because their skills enable them to communicate a message easily through the Web or through posters and printed pieces. A picture is worth a thousand words and designers have used this adage to their advantage for years by creating simple yet powerful designs that immediately convey the message to the viewer. The Design of Dissent focuses on graphic work that designers have made as a result of social and political concerns. The time is certainly ripe as the U.S., and world, flares in opposition on so many important issues.
What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of “native” and “settler” and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics? Of Irish Descent addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas about ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new applications of genetic research, Nash traces the place of ancestry in interconnected geographies of identity—familial, ethnic, national, and diasporic. Underlying these different practices and narratives are potent and profoundly political questions about who counts as Irish and to whom Ireland belongs. Examining tensions between ideas of plurality and commonality, difference and connection that run through the culture and science of ancestral origins, Of Irish Descent is an original and timely exploration of new configurations of nation and diaspora as communities of shared descent.
A timely and authoritative assessment of the crisis in global cooperation and prospects for its reform and transformation.