The Propriety of Liberty: Persons, Passions, and Judgement in Modern Political Thought
Author: Duncan Kelly In this book, Duncan Kelly excavates, from the history of modern political thought, a largely forgotten claim about liberty as a form of propriety. By rethinking the intellectual and historical foundations of modern accounts of freedom, he brings into focus how this major vision of liberty developed between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. In his framework, celebrated political writers, including John Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Hill Green pursue the claim that freedom is best understood as a form of responsible agency or propriety, and they do so by reconciling key moral and philosophical claims with classical and contemporary political theory. Their approach broadly assumes that only those persons who appropriately regulate their conduct can be thought of as free and responsible. At the same time, however, they recognize that such internal forms of self-propriety must be judged within the wider context of social and political life. Kelly shows how the intellectual and practical demands of such a synthesis require these great writers to consider freedom as part of a broader set of arguments about the nature of personhood, the potentially irrational impact of the passions, and the obstinate problems of individual and political judgement. By exploring these relationships, The Propriety of Liberty not only revises the intellectual history of modern political thought, but also sheds light on contemporary debates about freedom and agency.
Author: Steven A. Epstein
Purity Lost investigates the porous nature of social, political, and religious boundaries prevalent in the eastern Mediterraneanfrom the Black Sea to Egyptduring the Middle Ages. In this intriguing study, Steven A. Epstein finds that people consistently defied, overlooked, or transcended restrictions designed to preserve racial and cultural purity in order to establish relationships with those different from themselves. These mixed relationshipsamong people who did not share language, creed, or skin colorundermined the pervasive claims of purity. They forced people to reflect on their own identities and the bondswhether social, political, religious, or racialthat defined their lives. Drawing on examples from daily life and interstate politics, Epstein takes a close look at the renegades and rule-breakers of this era. He explores race, master/slave relationships, diplomatic relations between Christian Italians and Muslim Turks, religious conversions from Christian to Muslim and vice versa, and religious boundaries of the human and the angelic. Epstein reveals the modern view of cultural, ethnic, and religious purity in the early modern Mediterranean as a mirage, and he offers new insights into how present-day conceptions about creed, color, ethnicity, and language originated.
Author: Edited by Rachel G Bratt, Michael E Stone, and Chester Hartman
An examination of America's housing crisis by the leading progressive housing activists in the country
Author: Naomi Paxton
Drawing upon previously unseen archival material, this book brings to life the story of the Actresses' Franchise League from 1908-1958, building a picture of this diverse, exciting and innovative organisation that opens up and extends previous scholarship of the suffrage movement, and of political and feminist networks in twentieth century theatre.
Author: Paul D. Escott
Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the New York Times in 1862, What shall we do with the negro? The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for those in both the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. What Shall We Do with the Negro? demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue.
Author: Neil J. Smelser
Terrorism is the most clear and present danger we confront today, yet no phenomenon is more poorly understood by policymakers, the media, and the general public. The Faces of Terrorism is the first serious interdisciplinary examination of terrorism in all its facets. What gives rise to it, who are its proponents and how do they think, and how--and why--does it work? Neil Smelser begins by tackling the fundamental problem of defining what exactly terrorism is. He shows why a precise definition has eluded us until now, and he proposes one that takes into account the full complexities of this unconventional and politically charged brand of violence. He explores the root causes and conditions of terrorism, and examines the ideologies that inspire and fuel it throughout the world. Smelser looks closely at the terrorists themselves--their recruitment, their motivations, the groups they form, their intended audiences, and their uses of the media in pursuing their agendas. He studies the target societies as well, unraveling the complicated social and psychological impacts of having to cope with the ever-present threat of a terrorist strike--and responding when one occurs. He explains what it means to live under constant threat of terrorism, and addresses the thorny domestic and foreign policy challenges this poses. Throughout, Smelser draws from the latest findings in sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, psychology, psychiatry, and history. The Faces of Terrorism provides the breadth of scope necessary to understand--and ultimately eliminate--this most pressing global threat.
Author: By Jeffrey Glover
In many accounts of Native American history, treaties are synonymous with tragedy. From the beginnings of settlement, Europeans made and broke treaties, often exploiting Native American lack of alphabetic literacy to manipulate political negotiation. But while colonial dealings had devastating results for Native people, treaty making and breaking involved struggles more complex than any simple contest between invaders and victims. The early colonists were often compelled to negotiate on Indian terms, and treaties took a bewildering array of shapes ranging from rituals to gestures to pictographs. At the same time, Jeffrey Glover demonstrates, treaties were international events, scrutinized by faraway European audiences and framed against a background of English, Spanish, French, and Dutch imperial rivalries.To establish the meaning of their agreements, colonists and Natives adapted and invented many new kinds of political representation, combining rituals from tribal, national, and religious traditions. Drawing on an archive that includes written documents, printed books, orations, landscape markings, wampum beads, tally sticks, and other technologies of political accounting, Glover examines the powerful influence of treaty making along the vibrant and multicultural Atlantic coast of the seventeenth century.
Author: Pyong Gap Min
Generations of immigrants have relied on small family businesses in their pursuit of the American dream. This entrepreneurial tradition remains highly visible among Korean immigrants in New York City, who have carved out a thriving business niche for themselves operating many of the citys small grocery stores and produce markets. But this success has come at a price, leading to dramatic, highly publicized conflicts between Koreans and other ethnic groups. In Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival, Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businessesespecially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groupspowerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups. Korean produce merchants, caught between white distributors, black customers, Hispanic employees, and assertive labor unions, provide a unique opportunity to study the formation of group solidarity in the face of inter-group conflicts. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival draws on census and survey data, interviews with community leaders and merchants, and a review of ethnic newspaper articles to trace the growth and evolution of Korean collective action in response to challenges produce merchants received from both white suppliers and black customers. When Korean produce merchants first attempted to gain a foothold in the citys economy, they encountered pervasive discrimination from white wholesale suppliers at Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. In response, Korean merchants formed the Korean Produce Association (KPA), a business organization that gradually evolved into a powerful engine for promoting Korean interests. The KPA used boycotts, pickets, and group purchasing to effect enduring improvements in supplier-merchant relations. Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years has been accompanied by a corresponding reduction in Korean collective action, suggesting that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational. This important new book charts a novel course in immigrant research by demonstrating how business conflicts can give rise to demonstrations of group solidarity. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of storiesabout immigration, race, work, and the American dream.
Author: Paul M. Farber
The Berlin Wall is arguably the most prominent symbol of the Cold War era. Its construction in 1961 and its dismantling in 1989 are broadly understood as pivotal moments in the history of the last century. In A Wall of Our Own, Paul M. Farber traces the Berlin Wall as a site of pilgrimage for American artists, writers, and activists. During the Cold War and in the shadow of the Wall, figures such as Leonard Freed, Angela Davis, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Audre Lorde weighed the possibilities and limits of American democracy. All were sparked by their first encounters with the Wall, incorporated their reflections in books and artworks directed toward the geopolitics of division in the United States, and considered divided Germany as a site of intersection between art and activism over the respective courses of their careers. Departing from the well-known stories of Americans seeking postWorld War II Paris for their own self-imposed exile or traveling the open road of the domestic interstate highway system, Farber reveals the divided city of Berlin as another destination for Americans seeking a critical distance. By analyzing the experiences and cultural creations of American Berliner artists and activists, Farber offers a new way to view not only the Wall itself but also how the Cold War still structures our thinking about freedom, repression, and artistic resistance on a global scale.
Author: Jason Whitmarsh
Volume 13 in the Swenson Award Series, Tomorrow's Living Room offers a pleasantly disorienting verbal territory. The collection is alternately wry and dark, hopeful and bleak, full of unexpected light and laugh-out-loud incongruities. We begin to see that the shape and the furniture of Jason Whitmarsh's world reflect our own (they may in fact be universal), but we're considering them through completely new terms of engagement.Selected by, and with a foreword by, Billy Collins.The annual Swenson competition, named for May Swenson, honors her as one of Americas most provocative and vital writers. In John Hollanders words, she was one of our few unquestionably major poets.