Polity press jan 1997 (5 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Direct democracy involves citizens in discussion and decisions about what the government is to do, rather than leaving this to officials or parliaments. It thus challenges the restrictions placed by representative democracies such as Britain and the United States on political consultation and popular participation. Why should responsible adults not take public decisions as well as making their own individual choices One affects them just as much as the other. Can ordinary citizens make good public policy though Many lack education and expertise and may not even be interested in politics. Even without these individual defects, mass debate may by its very nature lead to arbitrary or downright bad decisions. This book confronts these arguments in light of new communication developments which for the first time make direct democracy technically feasible in a mass society. The result is a highly original and innovative account of the possibility of the direct involvement of citizens in the governance of their own affairs.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Most interpretations of ethnicity concentrate either on particular societies or on specific dimensions of 'world society'. This work takes quite a different approach, arguing that variations within and across societies are vital for understanding contemporary dilemmas of ethnicity. The author aims to develop a new analysis of the relation between the nation on the one hand, and ethnicity and citizenship on the other. Oommen conceives of the nation as a product of a fusion of territory and language. He demonstrates that neither religion nor race determines national identities. As territory is seminal for a nation to emerge and exist, the dissociation between people and their 'homeland' makes them an ethnie. Citizenship is conceptualized both as a status to which nationals and ethnies ought to be entitled and a set of obligations, a role they are expected to play. Analyses of three historical episodes - colonialism and European expansion, Communist internationalism and the nation-state and its project of cultural unity - are examined to provide the empirical content of the argument. This book will be essential reading for second-year undergraduates and above in the areas of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This is the first major collection of Karl Marx's writings since the fall of Communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. That event notwithstanding, Marx remains one of the towering figures of modern intellectual culture. His work is still the most systematic, comprehensive and sustained assault upon the central tenets of capitalism. Many ideas in political life at the end of the twentieth century, heard often enough from the mouths of the most trenchantly anti-Marxist politicians, can be straightforwardly traced to the writings in this volume. The extensive readings collected here cover all the main areas of Marx's work, stretching from the early 1840s to the early 1880s. Longer selections from the major texts, such as Capital, The Communist Manifesto and The German Ideology, are complemented with shorter but crucial passages from his less familiar works. Pierson's extensive introduction guides the novice reader through the most important and exciting elements in Marx's work. He offers not just a concise and lucid guide to Marx's thought but also shows us why we still need to read Marx after the collapse of Communism. Whatever has been the fate of Marxism, Marx remains, as this book shows, a key figure for our own times.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Bech proposes a novel interpretation of the nature of masculinity and its connections with homosexuality. Besides a critical discussion of existing theories in the area, the author also analyses a rich variety of other materials, including novels, films and other literature. When Men Meet represents both an analysis of the places in which encounters occur - the railway station, the park, the disco, the consulting room, the stadium - but is also a metaphor for key aspects of modernity. In analysing the nature of the modern social world, Bech makes use of insights from Adorno and Benjamin as well as Sartre and Heidegger. Modernity and sexuality, Bech argues, are both intertwined and changing. He concludes by proposing that, having been created by modernity, 'the homosexual' is now disappearing in conjunction with the changes transforming modernity itself.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - From a tiny group of Germanic bands to the mightiest governmental system the world had ever known - what caused the momentous rise of the European states Drawing on Toynbee's theory of civilizations, Victor Lee Burke develops an account of the origins and transformation of governments in Europe between the eighth and seventeenth centuries. Borrowing also from Charles Tilly's and Anthony Giddens's works, he shows the importance of wars in the rise of the European state system. Burke provides a panoramic sociological history of the rise of European states. He relates the origins and development of European governments to the social conflict among the European, Viking, Islamic, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Mongol civilizations. He assesses the impact of the Crusades on the rise of the monarchy and the origins of democratic regimes. In contrast to European-centred interpretations of history, the author argues that the conflict among other civilizations forged the rise and growth of Western European governments. The book will appeal to advanced undergraduate students and academics across all social sciences and particularly in political and economic sociology, social and political theory, European studies and Western civilization.…