Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
The D Word Perspectives On Democracy In Tumultuous Times
Download The D Word Perspectives On Democracy In Tumultuous Times full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The D Word Perspectives On Democracy In Tumultuous Times ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times by : Christi van der Westhuizen
Download or read book The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times written by Christi van der Westhuizen and published by Mandela University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This curated collection engages international debates about the current challenges facing democracy. Given the proliferation of “crisis” literature on democracy, this volume finds its distinctive niche in presenting perspectives from the global margins that bridge disciplinary, sectoral, national and conceptual divides. South Africans enter into conversation with scholars and activists from elsewhere in the Global South, including the Arab world and the rest of Africa, and from the European periphery. Insights on democracy are offered from a diversity of perspectives and voices, spanning philosophy, socio-legal and political studies, sociology, public administration, and queer and gender studies and activism. The book will be of interest to academics, activists, policymakers, development planners, and the general public. The D-Word is a timely contribution addressing burning questions: are current contestations about the relevance of democracy due to systemic flaws in how it is constituted, received, practised and even imagined, and can the democratic “project” be salvaged? The book’s unique approach brings a variety of lenses to bear on the prospects for democracy. The critical reflections it contains make for an enriching, broad canvas of ideas. - Professor Sandy Africa, University of Pretoria
Book Synopsis Rise of Democracy by : Christopher Hobson
Download or read book Rise of Democracy written by Christopher Hobson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores democracy's remarkable rise from obscurity to centre stage in contemporary international relations, from the rogue democratic state of 18th Century France to Western pressures for countries throughout the world to democratise.
Book Synopsis Transformative Civic Education in Democratic Societies by : Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert
Download or read book Transformative Civic Education in Democratic Societies written by Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is neither inevitable nor guaranteed to last. To survive, democracy needs people adequately prepared to enact it. Such preparation for effective citizenship in a complex and plural world requires an adult civic education, one that goes beyond simple knowledge acquisition. It requires a transformative education to help learners become agents and co-shapers of their worlds. This book offers examples of the roles that civic education has played and can play in different communities. In this collection, scholars from around the world report and reflect on civic adult education, examining approaches, paradigms, and concepts that help us to act in culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse societies.
Book Synopsis Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness by : Shona Hunter
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness written by Shona Hunter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers a unique decolonial take on the field of Critical Whiteness Studies by rehistoricising and re-spatialising the study of bodies and identities in the world system of coloniality. Situating the critical study of whiteness as a core intellectual pillar in a broadly based project for racial and social justice, the volume understands whiteness as elaborated in global coloniality through epistemology, ideology and governmentality at the intersections with heteropatriarchy and capitalism. The diverse contributions present Black and other racially diverse scholarship as crucial to the field. The focus of inquiry is expanded beyond Northern Anglophone contexts to challenge centre/margin relations, examining whiteness in the Caribbean, South Africa and the African continent, Asia, the Middle East as well as in the United States and parts of Europe. Providing a transdisciplinary approach and addressing debates about knowledges, black and white subjectivities and newly defensive forms of whiteness, as seen in the rise of the Radical Right, the handbook deepens our understanding of power, place, and culture in coloniality. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, advanced students, and scholars in the fields of Education, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Sciences, Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Feminist and Gender Studies, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, Security Studies, Migration Studies, Media Studies, Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Diversity Studies, and African, Latin American, Asian, American, British and European Studies.
Book Synopsis Midnight in Washington by : Adam Schiff
Download or read book Midnight in Washington written by Adam Schiff and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, from the rise of autocracy unleashed by Trump to the January 6 insurrection, and a warning that those forces remain as potent as ever—from the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump “Engaging and informative . . . a manual for how to probe and question power, how to hold leaders accountable in a time of diminishing responsibility.”—The Washington Post With a new afterword by the author In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump’s Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within. In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step-by-step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis—from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the Constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy. Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president—but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff’s fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president’s principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff’s account of January 6, 2021, and how the antidemocratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever.
Download or read book Why I Write written by George Orwell and published by Renard Press Ltd. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
Book Synopsis Reactionary Democracy by : Aurelien Mondon
Download or read book Reactionary Democracy written by Aurelien Mondon and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands as we are often told. It is rather the logical conclusion of the more or less conscious manipulation by the elite of the concept of 'the people' and the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives place racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, thus exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This in turn has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities. These actions diverts us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors (the media, politicians and academics). While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective, and even powerless, bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.
Book Synopsis How East Asians View Democracy by : Yun-han Chu
Download or read book How East Asians View Democracy written by Yun-han Chu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East Asian democracies are in trouble, their legitimacy threatened by poor policy performance and undermined by nostalgia for the progrowth, soft-authoritarian regimes of the past. Yet citizens throughout the region value freedom, reject authoritarian alternatives, and believe in democracy. This book is the first to report the results of a large-scale survey-research project, the East Asian Barometer, in which eight research teams conducted national-sample surveys in five new democracies (Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mongolia), one established democracy (Japan), and two nondemocracies (China and Hong Kong) in order to assess the prospects for democratic consolidation. The findings present a definitive account of the way in which East Asians understand their governments and their roles as citizens. Contributors use their expert local knowledge to analyze responses from a set of core questions, revealing both common patterns and national characteristics in citizens' views of democracy. They explore sources of divergence and convergence in attitudes within and across nations. The findings are sobering. Japanese citizens are disillusioned. The region's new democracies have yet to prove themselves, and citizens in authoritarian China assess their regime's democratic performance relatively favorably. The contributors to this volume contradict the claim that democratic governance is incompatible with East Asian cultures but counsel against complacency toward the fate of democracy in the region. While many forces affect democratic consolidation, popular attitudes are a crucial factor. This book shows how and why skepticism and frustration are the ruling sentiments among today's East Asians.
Book Synopsis Challenging Authority by : Frances Fax Piven
Download or read book Challenging Authority written by Frances Fax Piven and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008-07-11 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Popular Education, Power and Democracy by : Ann-Marie Laginder
Download or read book Popular Education, Power and Democracy written by Ann-Marie Laginder and published by Niace. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular education, a distinctive Swedish tradition of lifelong learning, has always concerned itself with the relationship between learning, power, and democracy in society, rather than having a purely individualistic and instrumental approach to learning for employability, which has dominated policy and practice. Through the themes of power and democracy, this book examines popular education's contribution to enhancing people's lives in communities. It reflects on the wider significance and explores the impact on the political culture of the state and the cultural politics of society within and outside Sweden, including the US, Japan, Canada, and Tanzania. As a comprehensive and unique collection, the book balances historical reflection, contemporary issues, and the international impact of popular education, combining theoretical analysis and empirical data. *** ...this book provides a wonderful introduction to the historical development and some of the current aspects and examples of Swedish popular education, both in Sweden and beyond....Its various chapters show the continued relevance of popular education approaches to addressing major educational and social issues and their diversity and rich theoretical grounding provide enough stimuli to engage educators and practitioners alike....a key resource in the worldwide struggles for social justice by demonstrating how education can be both (a) a tool for social change as well as for personal transformation and (b) how insights gained from others' actions and struggles can be used by people the world over. -- Tom Nesbit, Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, in the European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 2013
Book Synopsis Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective by : Jørgen Møller
Download or read book Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective written by Jørgen Møller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to theory and research on democracy and democratization. From this foundation, it elucidates a systematic framework to conceptualize democracy for comparative study.
Book Synopsis Direct Democracy Worldwide by : David Altman
Download or read book Direct Democracy Worldwide written by David Altman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the common assumption that models of direct democracy and representative democracy are necessarily at odds, Direct Democracy Worldwide demonstrates how practices of direct and representative democracy interact under different institutional settings and uncovers the conditions that allow them to coexist in a mutually reinforcing manner. Whereas citizen-initiated mechanisms of direct democracy can spur productive relationships between citizens and political parties, other mechanisms of direct democracy often help leaders bypass other representative institutions, undermining republican checks and balances. The book also demonstrates that the embrace of direct democracy is costly, may generate uncertainties and inconsistencies, and can be manipulated. Nonetheless, the promise of direct democracy should not be dismissed. Direct democracy is much more than a simple, pragmatic second choice when representative democracy seems not to be working as expected. Properly designed, it can empower citizens, breaking through some of the institutionalized barriers to accountability that arise in representative systems.
Book Synopsis Supercapitalism by : Robert B. Reich
Download or read book Supercapitalism written by Robert B. Reich and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's foremost economic and political thinkers comes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive and turbo-charged global economy and the effect it is having on American democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich shows how widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical results of a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influence of business lobbyists than to the voters who elected them. Powerful and thought-provoking, Supercapitalism argues that a clear separation of politics and capitalism will foster an enviroment in which both business and government thrive, by putting capitalism in the service of democracy, and not the other way around.
Book Synopsis Surviving Autocracy by : Masha Gessen
Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.
Download or read book Become America written by Eric Liu and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be an engaged American in today’s divided political landscape, and how do we restore hope in our country? In a collection of “civic sermons” delivered at gatherings around the nation, popular advocate for active citizenship Eric Liu takes on these thorny questions and provides inspiration and solace in a time of anger, fear, and dismay over the state of the Union. Here are 19 stirring explorations of current and timeless topics about democracy, liberty, equal justice, and powerful citizenship. This book will energize you to get involved, in ways both large and small, to help rebuild a country that you’re proud to call home. Become America will challenge you to rehumanize our politics and rekindle a spirit of love in civic life.
Book Synopsis Democracy in America (Complete) by : Alexis de Tocqueville
Download or read book Democracy in America (Complete) written by Alexis de Tocqueville and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 1320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader. It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings. The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.
Book Synopsis Democracy in America; Volume 4 by : Alexis De Tocqueville
Download or read book Democracy in America; Volume 4 written by Alexis De Tocqueville and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in America is a classic work of political science written by the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th century. It examines the nature of democracy in the United States, its strengths and weaknesses, and its effects on American society and culture. The book is a landmark in the study of democracy and remains a relevant and insightful analysis of American political life. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
