Search results for ""ideals""

A groundbreaking study of the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich—and the consequences for music worldwide With National Socialism's arrival in Germany in 1933, Jews dominated music more than virtually any other sector, making it the most important cultural front in the Nazi fight for German identity. This groundbreaking book looks at the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich and the consequences for music throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Because Jewish musicians and composers were, by 1933, the principal conveyors of Germany’s historic traditions and the ideals of German culture, the isolation, exile and persecution of Jewish musicians by the Nazis became an act of musical self-mutilation.Michael Haas looks at the actual contribution of Jewish composers in Germany and Austria before 1933, at their increasingly precarious position in Nazi Europe, their forced emigration before and during the war, their ambivalent relationships with their countries of refuge, such as Britain and the United States and their contributions within the radically changed post-war music environment.

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In Portland’s harbor, environmental justice groups challenge the EPA for a more thorough cleanup of the Willamette River. Near Olympia, the Puyallup assert their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to fish. Seattle housing activists demand that Amazon pay to address the affordability crisis it helped create. Urban Cascadia, the infrastructure, social networks, built environments, and non-human animals and plants that are interconnected in the increasingly urbanized bioregion that surrounds Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, enjoys a reputation for progressive ambitions and forward-thinking green urbanism. Yet legacies of settler colonialism and environmental inequalities contradict these ambitions, even as people strive to achieve those progressive ideals. In this edited volume, historians, geographers, urbanists, and other scholars critically examine these contradictions to better understand the capitalist urbanization of nature, the creation of social and environmental inequalities, and the movements to fight for social and environmental justice. Neither a story of green disillusion nor one of green boosterism, Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice reveals how the region can address broader issues of environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and the politics of environmental change.

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Suicide and martyrdom are closely intertwined with Korean social and political processes. In this first book-length study of the evolving ideals of honorable death and martyrdom from the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910) to contemporary South Korea, interdisciplinary essays explore the changing ways in which Korean historical agents have considered what constitutes a sociopolitically meaningful death and how the surviving community should remember such events. Among the topics covered are the implications of women’s chaste suicides and men’s righteous killings in the evolving Confucian-influenced social order of the latter half of the Chosŏn Dynasty; changing nation-centered constructions of sacrifice and martyrdom put forth by influential intellectual figures in mid-twentieth-century South Korea, which were informed by the politics of postcolonial transition and Cold War ideology; and the decisive role of martyrdom in South Korea’s interlinked democracy and labor movements, including Chun Tae-il’s self-immolation in 1970, the loss of hundreds of lives during the Kwangju Uprising of 1980, and the escalation of protest suicides in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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For decades, amateurism defined the ideals undergirding the Olympic movement. No more. Today's Games present athletes who enjoy open corporate sponsorship and unabashedly compete for lucrative commercial endorsements. Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves analyze how this astonishing transformation took place. Drawing on Olympic archives and a wealth of research across media, the authors examine how an elite--white, wealthy, often Anglo-Saxon--controlled and shaped an enormously powerful myth of amateurism. The myth assumed an air of naturalness that made it seem unassailable and, not incidentally, served those in power. Llewellyn and Gleaves trace professionalism's inroads into the Olympics from tragic figures like Jim Thorpe through the shamateur era of under-the-table cash and state-supported athletes. As they show, the increasing acceptability of professionals went hand-in-hand with the Games becoming a for-profit international spectacle. Yet the myth of amateurism's purity remained a potent force, influencing how people around the globe imagined and understood sport. Timely and vivid with details, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism is the first book-length examination of the movement's foundational ideal.

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The contributors to this volume treat pluralism as a concept that is historically and ideologically produced or, put another way, as a doctrine that is embedded within a range of political, civic, and cultural institutions. Their critique considers how religious difference is framed as a problem that only pluralism can solve. Working comparatively across nations and disciplines, the essays in After Pluralism explore pluralism as a "term of art" that sets the norms of identity and the parameters of exchange, encounter, and conflict. Contributors locate pluralism's ideals in diverse sites--Broadway plays, Polish Holocaust memorials, Egyptian dream interpretations, German jails, and legal theories--and demonstrate its shaping of political and social interaction in surprising and powerful ways. Throughout, they question assumptions underlying pluralism's discourse and its influence on the legal decisions that shape modern religious practice. Contributors do more than deconstruct this theory; they tackle what comes next. Having established the genealogy and effects of pluralism, they generate new questions for engaging the collective worlds and multiple registers in which religion operates.

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A history of Germans’ attempts to transform society through art in an age of revolution. For German philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century, beautiful works of art acted as beacons of freedom, instruments of progress that could model and stimulate the moral autonomy of their beholders. Amid the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Germans struggled to uphold these ideals as they contended with the destruction of art collections, looting, and questions about cultural property. As artworks fell prey to the violence they were supposed to transcend, some began to wonder how art could deliver liberation if it could also quickly become a spoil of war. Alice Goff considers a variety of works—including forty porphyry columns from the tomb of Charlemagne, the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Laocoön group from Rome, a medieval bronze reliquary from Goslar, a Last Judgment from Danzig, and the mummified body of an official from the Rhenish hamlet of Sinzig—following the conflicts over the ownership, interpretation, conservation, and exhibition of German collections during the Napoleonic period and its aftermath.

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Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of “good” music—highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original—and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately.

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WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZESUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERFrom the acclaimed author of Swing Time, White Teeth and Grand Union, discover a brilliantly funny and deeply moving story about love and familyWhy do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?Set between New England and London, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.'I didn't want to finish, I was enjoying it so much' Evening Standard'Thrums with intellectual sass and know-how' Literary Review'Filled with humour, generosity and contemporary sparkle' Daily Telegraph 'Satirical, wise and sexy' Washington Post

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA #1 ABA INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE BESTSELLERFew in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist.As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground conspiracy to overthrow King Louis XVIII, and became an international symbol of liberty. Finally, as a revered elder statesman, he was instrumental in the overthrow of the Bourbon Dynasty in the Revolution of 1830.From enthusiastic youth to world-weary old age, from the pinnacle of glory to the depths of despair, Lafayette never stopped fighting for the rights of all mankind. His remarkable life is the story of where we come from, and an inspiration to defend the ideals he held dear.

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Intended for use in the introduction to ethics course, The Good Life: Options in Ethics, Fifth Edition is designed to engage today's practical-minded student in more fundamental questions. The book ranges from ideals in living (the good) to contemporary moral problems (the right), exploring and analyzing both areas in order to stimulate deeper reflection. The first section of the book clears away the obstacles to pursuing ethical understanding - relativism, determinism, and egoism. Then traditional definitions of the good life are discussed, theories such as hedonism, self-realization, duty, evolutionism, religious ethics, and virtue ethic. The final section addresses today's social problems including abortion, euthanasia, animal welfare, capital punishment, and sexual morality. New to the Fifth Edition: Chapter 6, Following Nature, has been eliminated, and its contents have been integrated into appropriate chapters New section entitled Contemporary Moral Issues includes new chapters on: Contraception and Abortion Punishment and the Death Penalty Sexual Ethics The Natural Environment Racism and Sexism An Instructor's Manual and Test Bank now accompany the text

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In Breaking the Cycle, sex addiction specialist George Collins offers a powerful, no-nonsense program for helping readers identify their unhealthy sexual patterns, overcome sex addiction, and start living more productive livesSex addicts live with a compulsion they just can't shake-an inner voice that compels them to seek pornography, pursue sexual encounters with strangers, and do everything they can to gratify the sexual urges that won't go away. But people with sex addictions can learn to enjoy lives of productivity and purpose and develop true intimate connections with others. Breaking the Cycle helps readers learn to identify the triggers and compulsive thoughts that keep them trapped in the cycle of addiction and offers skills for countering those thoughts instead of simply caving to them. By drawing on their deepest values and ideals, readers find the strength to separate their true selves from their obsessive thoughts. Gradually, using exposure techniques, readers develop resistance to their former triggers and make sex addict behavior, and then the addictive thoughts themselves, a thing of the past.

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Frederic C. Schaffer challenges the assumption often made by American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign countries when criteria such as free elections are met. Elections, he argues, often have cultural underpinnings that are invisible to outsiders. To examine grassroots understandings of democratic institutions and political concepts, Schaffer conducted fieldwork in Senegal, a mostly Islamic and agrarian country with a long history of electoral politics. Schaffer discovered that ideas of "demokaraasi" held by Wolof-speakers often reflect concerns about collective security. Many Senegalese see voting as less a matter of choosing leaders than of reinforcing community ties that may be called upon in times of crisis. By looking carefully at language, Schaffer demonstrates that institutional arrangements do not necessarily carry the same meaning in different cultural contexts. Democracy in Translation asks how social scientists should investigate the functioning of democratic institutions in cultures dissimilar from their own, and raises larger issues about the nature of democracy, the universality of democratic ideals, and the practice of cross-cultural research.

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'A sparkling page-turner full of wit, original insight and unassuming erudition.' Katja Hoyer, the GuardianDemocracy is a living, breathing thing and Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about the role ordinary citizens play in keeping it alive: from her childhood in post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to working in post-communist Poland, with its sudden gaps of wealth and security. This book draws on her experiences and the deep history of self-ruling peoples – going back to ancient Greece, the French revolution and Renaissance Florence – to rethink some of the toughest questions that we face today.What do democratic ideals of equality mean in a world obsessed with competition, wealth, and greatness? How can we hold the powerful to account? Can we find enough common ground to keep sharing democratic power in the future? Challenging well-worn myths of heroic triumph over tyranny, Benner reveals the inescapable vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for and the role each of us must play.

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Guardians of the Peace is a political history of the Irish police force, An Garda Síochana, from its foundation at the birth of the Irish State, through the Irish Civil War, the threat of the fascist ‘Blueshirts’, the continuing campaign of the IRA, de Valera’s entry into the Dáil in 1932 and the creation, effectively of his own police force – ’The Broy Harriers’ – through World War 2. As the author outlines in his insightful introduction, the story told in this book is part of a longer and wider narrative. But it is a story which still has relevance as Ireland moves, hopefully, to a new era of peace and stability. It is above all a chronicle of the idealism and the imperfections of ordinary men presented by history with the discharging of a rather extraordinary task. As the force approaches one hundred years since its founding, it is hoped that this history will evoke the ideals and the founding principles adopted in 1922 and perhaps help to re-interpret and re-apply them in a 21st Century context.

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Throughout Tori Hartman’s work as a seeker, teacher and psychic, she has been continually asked how to apply the Chakra Wisdom system to the tarot deck. Even as a committed tarot user, the time had not been right to make that application—until now. Taking the core ideals of the Chakra Wisdom system—intention setting, personal growth, trusting your intuition—and the seven-chakra structure and applying it to the traditional 78-card tarot system, Chakra Wisdom Tarot is a tremendously insightful and powerful manifesting tool. This deck and its exercises allow the user to seamlessly create what they need in their lives. Honouring the deep tradition and heritage of tarot, Tori’s application of the Chakra Wisdom system to this structure is one that will trigger personal insights, intuitive paths and a powerful awareness of how to manifest the things needed to reach the goals of the modern world. Its overlay of the seven chakras on the Minor and Major arcana is seamless, with The Fool serving as our guide and avatar through the deck.

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With this book Henry A. Giroux argues that insurrection has become a dominant motif for the USA and other countries torn between the promises and ideals of democracy and an emergent authoritarianism. He argues that education is central to the idea of insurrection, showing how on the one hand it contributes to an insurrectional authoritarianism, wedded to a fascist legacy that calls for racial purity, militarism, ultra-nationalism, and state terrorism. On the other hand he presents the idea of insurrectional democracy which has a long legacy in the battle for racial justice, economic equality, and a politics of inclusion. The book explores how both positions are motivated by specific visions, values, and particular understandings of education and agency. He also shows how powerful images, social media, and the internet are in merging political education, power, and cultural politics. Giroux makes an impassioned call for an insurrectional democracy that makes education central to politics and produces an anti-capitalist consciousness as the basis for developing a mass movement in defence of a radical democracy.

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In the tradition of his books On Beauty and On Ugliness and The Infinity of Lists, Umberto Eco presents an enthralling illustrated tour of the fabled places that have awed and eluded us through the ages."Eco is one of the most influential thinkers of our time" Los Angeles Times From the epic poems of Homer to contemporary science fiction, from the Holy Scriptures to modern mythology and fairy tale, literature and art are full of illusory places we have at some time believed are real, and onto which we have projected our dreams, ideals and fears. Umberto Eco leads us on an illuminating journey through these legendary lands - Atlantis, Thule and Hyperborea, the Earth's interior and the Land of Cockaigne - and explores utopias and dystopias where our imagination can confront concepts that are too incredible, or too challenging, for our limited real world. In The Book of Legendary Lands the author's text is accompanied by several hundred carefully assembled works of art and literature; the result is a beautifully illustrated volume with broad and enduring appeal.Translated from Italian by Alastair McEwen

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The controversial subject matter of Grant Allen’s novel, The Woman Who Did, made it a major bestseller in 1895. It tells the story of Herminia Barton, a university-educated New Woman who, because of her belief that marriage oppresses women, refuses to marry her lover even though she shares his bed and bears his child. Her ideals come into disastrous conflict with intensely patriarchal late Victorian England. Indeed, Allen intended his novel to shock readers into a serious exploration of some of the major issues in fin de siècle sexual politics, issues that he himself, in various periodical articles under the rubric of the “Woman Question”, had played a leading role in opening up to public debate.This Broadview edition contains a critical introduction as well as a rich selection of appendices which include excerpts from Allen’s writings on women, sex, and marriage; contemporary writings on the “Sex Problem”; documents pertaining to the Marriage Debate; contemporary responses to the novel; and excerpts from two parodies of the novel.

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The dramatic and chilling story of an American-born Soviet spy in the atom bomb project in World War II, perfect for fans of The Americans.George Koval was born in Iowa. In 1932, his parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated because of anti-Semitism, decided to return home to live out their socialist ideals. George, who was as committed to socialism as they were, went with them. It was there that he was recruited by the Soviet Army as a spy and returned to the US in 1940. A gifted science student, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he knew scientists soon to join the Manhattan Project, America’s atom bomb program. After being drafted into the US Army, George used his scientific background and connections to secure an assignment at a site where plutonium and uranium were produced to fuel the atom bomb. There, and later in a second top-secret location, he had full access to all facilities and he passed highly sensitive information to Moscow. There

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The Soul of the Indian is Charles A. Eastman’s exploration and documentation of religion as he experienced it during the late nineteenth century. A Dakota physician and writer who sought to bring understanding between Native and non-Native Americans, Eastman (1858–1939) became one of the best-known Native Americans of his time and a significant intellectual figure whose clarity of vision endures today. In a straightforward manner Eastman emphasizes the universal quality and personal appeal of his Dakota religious heritage. First published in 1911, The Soul of the Indian draws on his childhood teaching and ancestral ideals to counter the research written by outsiders who treated the Dakotas’ ancient worldviews chiefly as a matter of curiosity. Eastman writes with deep respect for his ancestors and their culture and history, including a profound reverence for the environment, animals, and plants. Though written more than a century ago, Eastman could be speaking to our own time with its spiritual confusion and environmental degradation. The new introduction by Brenda J. Child grounds this important book in contemporary studies.

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A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter—radicalized by the online alt-right—attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam. The Beauty of Your Face is a profound and poignant exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals, an emotionally rich novel that encourages us to reflect on our shared humanity. If others take the time to really see us, to look into our face, they will find something indelibly familiar, something achingly beautiful gazing back.

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The comprehensive and thoroughly accessible International Handbook of Research on Indigenous Entrepreneurship aims to develop a multidisciplinary theory explaining entrepreneurship as a function of cultural perceptions of opportunity.The Handbook presents a multitude of fascinating, superbly illustrated studies on the facets of entrepreneurship amongst indigenous peoples. Chapters elaborating on the history, culture, values and objectives underpinning indigenous entrepreneurship introduce the subject, providing essential background information. A series of sections then convey the variances and idiosyncrasies of indigenous entrepreneurship in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and the South Pacific. The Handbook concludes by drawing on its original, rich and varied empirical studies to explain why people from different cultures possess different indigenous values, and therefore different entrepreneurship experiences and practices, even when exposed to similar stimuli.Proposing that what is an opportunity for some people is less so for others with different ideals, and that opportunity recognition is largely culturally determined, this unique, colourful account of indigenous enterprise will provide an intriguing read for those with an interest in entrepreneurship and development studies.

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There is no normative concept more appealing today than the idea of individual freedom. Political party manifestos are drawn up, legal reforms are defended, military interventions are undertaken, even decisions in personal relationships are justified – all in the name of individual freedom. But our understanding of freedom is impoverished if we try to grasp its essence merely in terms of the subjective rights of the individual.In his new book, Axel Honneth shows that we still have a lot to learn from the tradition of philosophy about a rational concept of freedom. Honneth begins by re-examining the work of Hegel and Marx in order to clarify the concept of freedom. He then explores various social problem areas in which the ideals of freedom are directly confronted by contemporary obstacles. Honneth ends by examining potential forces which could give new impetus to our struggle for freedom.This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, social theory, and the social sciences and humanities generally.

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There is no normative concept more appealing today than the idea of individual freedom. Political party manifestos are drawn up, legal reforms are defended, military interventions are undertaken, even decisions in personal relationships are justified – all in the name of individual freedom. But our understanding of freedom is impoverished if we try to grasp its essence merely in terms of the subjective rights of the individual.In his new book, Axel Honneth shows that we still have a lot to learn from the tradition of philosophy about a rational concept of freedom. Honneth begins by re-examining the work of Hegel and Marx in order to clarify the concept of freedom. He then explores various social problem areas in which the ideals of freedom are directly confronted by contemporary obstacles. Honneth ends by examining potential forces which could give new impetus to our struggle for freedom.This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers writing today will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, political theory, social theory, and the social sciences and humanities generally.

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Radical changes in our understanding of health and healthcare are reshaping twenty-first-century personhood. In the last few years, there has been a great influx of public policy and biometric technologies targeted at engaging individuals in their own health, increasing personal responsibility, and encouraging people to "self-manage" their own care. One Blue Child examines the emergence of self-management as a global policy standard, focusing on how healthcare is reshaping our relationships with ourselves and our bodies, our families and our doctors, companies, and the government. Comparing responses to childhood asthma in New Zealand and the Czech Republic, Susanna Trnka traces how ideas about self-management, as well as policies inculcating self-reliance and self-responsibility more broadly, are assumed, reshaped, and ignored altogether by medical professionals, asthma sufferers and parents, environmental activists, and policymakers. By studying nations that share a commitment to the ideals of neoliberalism but approach children's health according to very different cultural, political, and economic priorities, Trnka illuminates how responsibility is reformulated with sometimes surprising results.

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Local participation is the new democratic imperative. In the United States, three-fourths of all cities have developed opportunities for citizen involvement in strategic planning. The World Bank has invested $85 billion over the last decade to support community participation worldwide. But even as these opportunities have become more popular, many contend that they have also become less connected to actual centers of power and the jurisdictions where issues relevant to communities are decided. With this book, Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza consider the opportunities and challenges of democratic participation. Examining how one mechanism of participation has traveled the world—with its inception in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and spread to Europe and North America—they show how participatory instruments have become more focused on the formation of public opinion and are far less attentive to, or able to influence, actual reform. Though the current impact and benefit of participatory forms of government is far more ambiguous than its advocates would suggest, Popular Democracy concludes with suggestions of how participation could better achieve its political ideals.

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Outsourcing the Polity offers a new account of social outsourcing in post-independence Myanmar, demonstrating how the bankrupt post-socialist junta mediated market reform in the 1990s and 2000s and forced private and non-state actors to take the burden for social welfare. Informed by research during Myanmar's decade of partial civilian rule (2011–2021), Gerard McCarthy examines how ideals and practices of non-state welfare can both sustain democratic resistance and undermine social reform over time. Rather than expand government-led social action funded by direct taxation, grassroots activists and democratic leaders after 2011 variously framed government social action as ineffective, undesirable, and even corrosive of civic norms. They instead encouraged citizens to be "self-reliant" and support each other, including during disasters. Powerful tycoons filled the social gap, using public philanthropy to remake their reputations and to defend their ongoing expropriation of land and state assets from potential democratic redistribution. With non-state social actors more important than ever following Myanmar's return to dictatorship in 2021, Outsourcing the Polity casts new light on the lasting legacies of outsourcing for distributive politics.

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The ancient city of Rome was the site of daily activities as well as famous historical events. It was not merely a backdrop, but rather an active part of the experiences of its inhabitants, shaping their actions and infusing them with meaning. During each period in Rome's imperial history, her emperors also used the city as a canvas to be painted on, transforming it according to their own ideals or ambitions. Rather than being organized by sites or monuments, Rome: A Sourcebook on the Ancient City is divided into thematic chapters. At the intersection of topography and socio-cultural history, this volume examines the cultural and social significance of the sites of ancient Rome from the end of the Republic in the age of Cicero and Julius Caesar, to the end of the fourth century. Drawing on literary and historical sources, this is not simply a tour of the baths and taverns, the amphitheatres and temples of ancient Rome, but rather a journey through the city that is fully integrated with Roman society.

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What unites and what divides Americans as a nation? Who are we, and can we strike a balance between an emphasis on our divergent ethnic origins and what we have in common? Opening with a survey of American literature through the vantage point of ethnicity, Werner Sollors examines our evolving understanding of ourselves as an Anglo-American nation to a multicultural one and the key role writing has played in that process. Challenges of Diversity contains stories of American myths of arrival (pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, slave ships at Jamestown, steerage passengers at Ellis Island), the powerful rhetoric of egalitarian promise in the Declaration of Independence and the heterogeneous ends to which it has been put, and the recurring tropes of multiculturalism over time (e pluribus unum, melting pot, cultural pluralism). Sollors suggests that although the transformation of this settler country into a polyethnic and self-consciously multicultural nation may appear as a story of great progress toward the fulfillment of egalitarian ideals, deepening economic inequality actually exacerbates the divisions among Americans today.

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“Disability is not our worst-case scenario – our worst-case scenario would be its annihilation.” This is the starting point for this powerful collection of writing by and about Catherine Frazee, disability activist, Officer of the Order of Canada, and poetic scholar of justice. For Frazee, disability is not something to be dreaded or overcome but a force to be reckoned with – a prism of insight and experience that refracts new light upon our fundamental ideals of justice, beauty, and community.Catherine Frazee has been a central figure in the disability rights landscape in Canada for decades. Her reasoned and passionate insights are topical and often ahead of their time. Always bold, always progressive, and frequently provocative, Frazee’s work presents an unwavering, fierce commitment to engage in public debate from a position that centres the lives of disabled people. Taken together, these writings chronicle the rising consciousness of a social movement of disabled people staking their claim in public policy and popular culture, a claim that is overdue for honest recognition.

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It was a war that shaped the modern world, fought on five continents, claiming the lives of ten million people. Two great nations met each other on the field of battle for the first time. But were they so very different? For the first time, and drawing widely on archive material in the form of original letters and diaries, Peter Doyle and Robin Schäfer bring together the two sides, ‘Fritz’ and ‘Tommy’, to examine cultural and military nuances that have until now been left untouched: their approaches to war, their lives at the front, their greatest fears and their hopes for the future. The soldiers on both sides went to war with high ideals; they experienced horror and misery, but also comradeship/Kameradschaft. And with increasing alienation from the people at home, they drew closer together, ‘the Hun’ transformed into ‘good old Jerry’ by the war’s end. This unique collaboration is a refreshing yet touching examination of how little truly divided the men on either side of no-man’sland during the First World War.

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China's rapid rise as a regional and global power is one of the most important political developments of the twenty-first century. Yet the West still largely overlooks or oversimplifies the complex ideas and ideals that have shaped the country’s national and international transformation from antiquity to the present day. In this beautifully written introductory text, Youngmin Kim offers a uniquely incisive survey of the major themes in Chinese political thought from customary community to empire, exploring their theoretical importance and the different historical contexts in which they arose. Challenging traditional assumptions about Chinese nationalism and Marxist history, Kim shows that "China" does not have a fixed, single identity, but rather is a constantly moving target. His probing, interdisciplinary approach traces the long and nuanced history of Chinese thought as a true tradition anchored in certain key themes, many of which began in the early dynasties and still resonate in China today. Only by appreciating this rich history, he argues, can we begin to understand the intricacies and contradictions of contemporary Chinese politics, economy, and society.

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“I like a little rebellion now and then”—so wrote Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, enlisting in a tradition that throughout American history has led writers to rage and reason, prophesy and provoke. This is the first anthology to collect and examine an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future. American Protest Literature presents sources from eleven protest movements—political, social, and cultural—from the Revolution to abolition to gay rights to antiwar protest. Each section reprints documents from the original phase of the movement as well as evidence of its legacy in later times. Informative headnotes place the selections in historical context and draw connections with other writings within the anthology and beyond. Sources include a wide variety of genres—pamphlets, letters, speeches, sermons, legal documents, poems, short stories, photographs, posters—and a range of voices from prophetic to outraged to sorrowful, from U.S. Presidents to the disenfranchised. Together they provide an enlightening and inspiring survey of this most American form of literature.

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American Maggie Monroe is a journalist for New York's hard-hitting current affairs show Newsline. Independent and fearless, the more cutting-edge the story, the happier she is. But when her next assignment turns out to be an in-depth documentary on the decline of England's ruling classes, she's furious at being sent to cover a bloody tea party. Meet the Earl and Countess of Bevan, eccentric, maddening and with family secrets to hide. Meet Daniel Bevan - their eldest son. Funny, attractive and hopelessly alcoholic. Meet Daniel's responsible brother Rory - angry, self-mocking and strictly teetotal. When Maggie discovers Rory to be an uninvited chaperone on the first stop of her journey the two look set to clash. Maggie finds herself torn between her journalist ideals and coming to terms with a greater understanding. This unlikely romantic comedy paints an endearing portrait of a family, which like so many others, holds itself together despite its evident frailties. ‘Hilariously accurate . . . A gifted writer with a pithy, poetic style’ Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

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A thought-provoking reflection on why secular national liberation movements are so often challenged by militant religious revivals Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America’s foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks, Why have these secular democratic movements been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic—thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.

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In Portland’s harbor, environmental justice groups challenge the EPA for a more thorough cleanup of the Willamette River. Near Olympia, the Puyallup assert their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to fish. Seattle housing activists demand that Amazon pay to address the affordability crisis it helped create. Urban Cascadia, the infrastructure, social networks, built environments, and non-human animals and plants that are interconnected in the increasingly urbanized bioregion that surrounds Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, enjoys a reputation for progressive ambitions and forward-thinking green urbanism. Yet legacies of settler colonialism and environmental inequalities contradict these ambitions, even as people strive to achieve those progressive ideals. In this edited volume, historians, geographers, urbanists, and other scholars critically examine these contradictions to better understand the capitalist urbanization of nature, the creation of social and environmental inequalities, and the movements to fight for social and environmental justice. Neither a story of green disillusion nor one of green boosterism, Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice reveals how the region can address broader issues of environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and the politics of environmental change.

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Around the world, blue-collar politics have become associated with resistance to the multicultural. While this may also be true in Edinburgh, Scotland, a closer look reveals the growth of liberal democratic ideals in the working-class population, which has a much different goal: How can this European city keep the entrepreneurial forces of globalization from commodifying what is distinctly theirs?In Tenement Nation, Christa Ballard Tooley explores the battle for a neighborhood called the Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town. Tooley's insightful study of the working-class Canongate community as they negotiate gentrification plans offers a complex view of class and nation. The threat of the Canongate's redevelopment motivated many throughout Edinburgh to lend their support to the residents' campaign. Against such development projects, alliances formed between upper-class heritage supporters and working-class urban residents, all of whom turned to institutions such as the European Union and UNESCO for support in restricting commercial development. Tenement Nation explores these negotiations between socioeconomic classes and even nationalities to show what Tooley calls a "working-class cosmopolitanism" in pursuit of social, economic, and political inclusion.

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For decades, amateurism defined the ideals undergirding the Olympic movement. No more. Today's Games present athletes who enjoy open corporate sponsorship and unabashedly compete for lucrative commercial endorsements. Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves analyze how this astonishing transformation took place. Drawing on Olympic archives and a wealth of research across media, the authors examine how an elite--white, wealthy, often Anglo-Saxon--controlled and shaped an enormously powerful myth of amateurism. The myth assumed an air of naturalness that made it seem unassailable and, not incidentally, served those in power. Llewellyn and Gleaves trace professionalism's inroads into the Olympics from tragic figures like Jim Thorpe through the shamateur era of under-the-table cash and state-supported athletes. As they show, the increasing acceptability of professionals went hand-in-hand with the Games becoming a for-profit international spectacle. Yet the myth of amateurism's purity remained a potent force, influencing how people around the globe imagined and understood sport. Timely and vivid with details, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism is the first book-length examination of the movement's foundational ideal.

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In the early twentieth-century United States, to speak of 'mother love' was to invoke an idea of motherhood that served as an all-encompassing identity, rooted in notions of self-sacrifice and infused with powerful social and political meanings. Sixty years later, mainstream views of motherhood had been transformed, and Mother found herself to blame for a wide array of social and psychological ills. Here, Rebecca Jo Plant traces this huge turn through several key moments in American history and popular culture. Exploring such topics as maternal caregiving, childbirth, and women's political roles, "Mom" vividly brings to life the varied groups that challenged older ideals of motherhood, including male critics who railed against female moral authority, psychological experts who hoped to expand their influence, and women who wished to be defined as more than wives and mothers. In her careful analysis of how motherhood came to be viewed as a more private and partial component of modern female identity, Plant ultimately engages the question of what it means to be a woman in American civic and social life.

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In recent years, federal mandates on education have become the subject of increasing debate. Adam R. Nelson's The Elusive Ideal - a postwar history of federal involvement in the Boston public school system - provides lessons from the past that shed light on the continuing struggles of urban public schools today. This wide-reaching analysis examines the failure of educational policy at local, state, and federal levels to afford all students equal educational opportunity. Exploring a deep-seated tension between the educational ideals of integration and academic achieyement over time, Nelson considers the development and implementation of policies targeted at diverse groups of urban students, including policies related to racial desegregation, bilingual education, special education, school funding, and standardized testing. An ambitious study that spans more than thirty years and examines all facets of educational policy from legality to funding, The Elusive Ideal provides a model from which future inquiries will proceed. A probing and provocative work of urban history with deep relevance for urban public schools today, Nelson's book reveals why equal educational opportunity remains such an elusive ideal.

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What did it mean to be a man in medieval England? Most would answer this question by alluding to the power and status men enjoyed in a patriarchal society, or they might refer to iconic images of chivalrous knights. While these popular ideas do have their roots in the history of the aristocracy, the experience of ordinary men was far more complicated.Marshalling a wide array of colorful evidence - including legal records, letters, medical sources, and the literature of the period - Derek G. Neal here plumbs the social and cultural significance of masculinity during the generations born between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation. He discovers that social relations between men, founded on the ideals of honesty and self-restraint, were at least as important as their domination and control of women in defining their identities. By carefully exploring the social, physical, and psychological aspects of masculinity, "The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England" offers a uniquely comprehensive account of the exterior and interior lives of medieval men.

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Though often thought of as rivals, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka shared a range of interests, especially a passion for music. Jazz, in particular, was a decisive influence on their thinking, and, as "The Shadow and the Act" reveals, they drew on their insights into the creative process of improvisation to analyze race and politics in the civil rights era. In this inspired study Walton M. Muyumba situates these thinkers as a jazz trio, demonstrating how Ellison, Baraka, and Baldwin's individual works form a series of calls and responses with each other. Muyumba connects their writings on jazz to the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, particularly its support for more freedom for individuals and more democratic societies. He examines the way they responded to and elaborated on that lineage, showing how they significantly broadened it by addressing the African American experience, especially its aesthetics. Ultimately, Muyumba contends, the trio enacted pragmatist principles by effectively communicating the social and political benefits of African Americans fully entering society, thereby compelling America to move closer to its democratic ideals.

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Losing weight and changing your sexual orientation are both notoriously difficult to do successfully. Yet many faithful evangelical Christians believe that thinness and heterosexuality are godly ideals - and that God will provide reliable paths toward them for those who fall short. "Seeking the Straight and Narrow" is a fascinating account of the world of evangelical efforts to alter our strongest bodily desires. Drawing on fieldwork at First Place, a popular Christian weight-loss program, and Exodus International, a network of ex-gay ministries, Lynne Gerber explores why some Christians feel that being fat or gay offends God, what exactly they do to lose weight or go straight, and how they make sense of the program's results - or, frequently, their lack. Gerber notes the differences and striking parallels between the two programs, and, more broadly, she traces the ways that other social institutions have attempted to contain the excesses associated with fatness and homosexuality. Challenging narratives that place evangelicals in constant opposition to dominant American values, Gerber shows that these programs reflect the often overlooked connection between American cultural obsessions and Christian ones.

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The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of its homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity. By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel's most marginalized stakeholders - Palestinian Israelis; Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews - Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peace building. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice - one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

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Despite expectations that the deeply held political and religious organizing principles at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood would prove incompatible and contentious should the organization ever come to power, the Brotherhood succeeded in maintaining a united identity following the 2011 ousting of Hosni Mubarak and the election of a Brotherhood-majority government. To understand how the movement threaded these disparate missions, Sumita Pahwa examines the movement’s internal debates on preaching, activism, and social reform from the 1980s through the 2000s. In doing so, she finds that the framing of political work as ethical conduct has been critical to the organization’s functioning. Through a comprehensive analysis of texts, speeches, public communications, interviews, and internal training documents, Pahwa shows how Islamic and religious ideals have been folded into the political discourse of the Brotherhood, enabling the leadership to shift the boundaries of justifiable and righteous action. Over a period of three decades, the movement has built an influential Islamic political project and carved a unified identity around how to "work for God.

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Bridglal (Bridge) Pachai, a life long advocate of social justice, was born in a thatched roof cottage in Umbulwana, South Africa. His journey has taken him from South Africa to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Along the way he has taught history at universities in South Africa, Malawi, The Gambia and Halifax. He has also served as director of the Black Cultural Centre in Nova Scotia and as director of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.In the words of Tom McInnis, his senior when Bridge was director of the Human Rights Commission, he could "dance with the lords and be with the paupers." "Bridge does not divine a purpose in the accidental opportunities he has encountered. Rather he accepts the mystery of their almost haphazardness and stresses the importance of seizing the opportunities that the opening doors present. Certainly his ideals and convictions shine through like a beacon and firmly hold him on his journey. But there is also an anchor of pragmatism and this probably accounts for the successes of his remarkable career." - J. Colin Dodds, President, Saint Mary's University (from the Preface)

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Challenges conventional views of Hans Kelsen and foreign-policy realism in International Relations theory Focuses on Kelsen as a political thinker and actor Introduces Kelsen as a political realist Shows how Kelsen thought of human nature the state, and war Challenges today's Schmittians and conventional views of foreign-policy realism Highlights the possibility for progress and peace in a rough world A lively account of Kelsen's life and political thinking This book is the first work to show this iconic legal philosopher's significance as a progressive political realist. In a lively account of Kelsen's life and political thinking, Robert Schuett introduces him as a political realist and brings his thought on human nature, the state and war into productive tension with today's Schmittians and conventional views of foreign policy realism. At a precarious moment in world history, where Western liberal principles are challenged by visions of illiberal democracy at home and abroad, this new reading of the Pure theory of law, state and international legal order is a timely defense of the ideals of an open society through a realistic style of politics.

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From sweatshops to fur farming, from polluting chemicals to painful garments, the fashion industry is associated with activities which have had devastating effects on workers, consumers, and the natural world. This ground-breaking volume provides a framework for examining the ethical, social, and environmental dangers that arise as fashion products are designed, manufactured, distributed, and sold within retail outlets, before being consumed and disposed of. Encompassing the cultural, psychological, and physiological aspects of fashion, it offers a comprehensive exploration of the hazards of a global industry. Drawing together an international team of leading textile and apparel experts, The Dangers of Fashion presents original perspectives on a wide range of topics from piracy and counterfeiting to human trafficking; from the effects of globalization on local industry to the peer pressure that governs contemporary ideals of beauty. Rooted in research into industry and consumer practices, it discusses innovative solutions—both potential and existing—to fashion’s dangers and moral dilemmas from the viewpoint of individuals, companies, societies, and the global community.

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