Organizing Democracy: Reflections on the Rise of Political Organizations in the Nineteenth Century
Author: Henk Te Velde File Type: pdf This book explores the new types of political organization that emerged in Western Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century, from popular meetings to single-issue organizations and political parties. The development of these has often been used to demonstrate a movement towards democratic representation or political institutionalization. This volume challenges the idea that the development of democracy is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people. Taking the perspective of nineteenth-century organizers as its point of departure, this study shows that contemporaries hardly distinguished between petitioning, meeting and association. The attraction of organizing was that it promised representation, accountability and popular participation. Only in the twentieth century did parties reliable partners for the state in averting revolution, managing the unpredictable effects of universal suffrage, and reforming society. This collection analyzes them in their earliest stage, as just one of several types of civil society organizations, that did not differ that much from each other. The promise of organization, and the experiments that resulted from it, deeply impacted modern politics. **From the Back Cover This book explores the new types of political organization that emerged in Western Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century, from popular meetings to single-issue organizations and political parties. The development of these has often been used to demonstrate a movement towards democratic representation or political institutionalization. This volume challenges the idea that the development of democracy is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people. Taking the perspective of nineteenth-century organizers as its point of departure, this study shows that contemporaries hardly distinguished between petitioning, meeting and association. The attraction of organizing was that it promised representation, accountability and popular participation. Only in the twentieth century did parties reliable partners for the state in averting revolution, managing the unpredictable effects of universal suffrage, and reforming society. This collection analyzes them in their earliest stage, as just one of several types of civil society organizations, that did not differ that much from each other. The promise of organization, and the experiments that resulted from it, deeply impacted modern politics. About the Author Maartje Janse is Lecturer of Dutch History at Leiden University, Netherlands. Her research focuses on popular participation in politics in Europe and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. She has published books and articles on a range of topics including the origins and political implications of reform movements abolitionism as a transnational phenomenon and the development of protest repertoires. Janse has held visiting fellowships at Harvard and at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study and coordinates the Global Abolitionisms Network. Henk te Velde is Professor of Dutch History at Leiden University, Netherlands. He has written a number of articles about the transnational study of parliamentary and political culture, published three books on comparative Dutch history, and many edited volumes. His most recent examines the history of British and French parliamentary rhetoric and culture in the nineteenth century, Sprekende politiek Redenaars en hun publiek in de parlementaire gouden eeuw (2015). He has been visiting fellow and visiting professor in Paris, Oxford and Berlin, and is one of the founders of the international Association for Political History.
Author: Brian Payton
File Type: epub
A thrilling account of suffering and survival, The Ice Passage charts an epic quest from desire to destiny.It begins as a mission of mercy. Four and a half years after the disappearance of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and his two ships, HMS Investigator sets sail in search of them. Instead of rescuing lost comrades, the Investigators officers and crew soon find themselves trapped in their own ordeal, facing starvation, madness, and death on the unknown Polar Sea. If only they can save themselves, they will bring back news of perhaps the greatest maritime achievement of the age their discovery of the elusive Northwest Passage between Europe and the Orient.In addition to their Great Success, the Investigators are the first Europeans to contact the Inuit of the western Arctic archipelago, and the first to record sustained observations of the local wildlife and climate. But the cost of hubris, ignorance, daring, and deceit is soon laid bare. In the face of catastrophe, a desperate rescue plan is made to send away the weakest men to meet their fate on the ice. In a narrative rich with insight and grace, Brian Payton reconstructs the final voyage of the Investigator and the trials of her officers and crew. Drawing on long-forgotten journals, transcripts, and correspondence some never before published Payton weaves an astonishing tale of endurance. Along the way, he vividly evokes an Arctic wilderness we now stand to lose.From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Christopher Hilliard
File Type: pdf
The Littlehampton Libels tells the story of a poison-pen mystery that led to a miscarriage of justice in the years following the First World War. There would be four criminal trials before the real culprit was finally punished, with the case challenging the police and the prosecuting lawyers as much any capital crime. When a leading Metropolitan Police detective was tasked with solving the case, he questioned the residents of the seaside town of Littlehampton about their neighbours vocabularies, how often they wrote letters, what their handwriting was like, whether they swore-and how they swore, for the letters at the heart of the case were often bizarre in their abuse. The archive that the investigation produced shows in extraordinary detail how ordinary people could use the English language in inventive and surprising ways at a time when universal literacy was still a novelty. Their personal lives, too, had surprises. The detectives inquiries and the courtroom dramas laid bare their secrets and the intimate details of neighbourhood and family life. Drawing on these records, The Littlehampton Libels traces the tangles of devotion and resentment, desire and manipulation, in a working-class community. We are used to emotional complexity in books about the privileged, but history is seldom able to recover the inner lives of ordinary people in this way. **
Author: Salvador Jimenez MurguĂa
File Type: pdf
Under the Franco regime (1939-1976), films produced in Spain were of poor quality, promoted the regimes agenda, or were heavily censored. After the dictators death, the Spanish film industry transitioned into a new era, one in which artists were able to more freely express themselves and tackle subjects that had been previously stifled. Today, films produced in Spain are among the most highly regarded in world cinema.The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Films features nearly 300 entries on the written by a host of international scholars and film critics. Beginning with movies released after Francos death, this volume documents four decades of films, directors, actresses and actors of Spanish cinema. Offering a comprehensive survey of films, the entries address such topics as art, culture, society and politics. Each includes comprehensive production details and provides brief suggestions for further reading.Through its examination of the films of the post-Franco period, this volume offers readers valuable insights into Spanish history, politics, and culture. An indispensable guide to one of the great world cinemas, The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Films will be of interest to students, academics, and the general public alike. **About the Author Salvador Jimenez Murguia is associate professor of sociology at Akita International University. He is the editor of The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films (2016) and The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films (2018), both published by Rowman & Littlefield. Alex Pinar is assistant professor of Intercultural Communication and Spanish at Akita International University. His research interests are world literature, and world cinema, film adaptations, and cultural studies.
Author: Jeremy Wade Morris
File Type: epub
Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture documents the transition of recorded music on CDs to music as digital files on computers. More than two decades after the first digital music files began circulating in online archives and playing through new software media players, we have yet to fully internalize the cultural and aesthetic consequences of these shifts. Tracing the emergence of what Jeremy Wade Morris calls the digital music commodity, Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture considers how a conflicted assemblage of technologies, users, and industries helped reformat popular musics meanings and uses. Through case studies of five key technologiesWinamp, metadata, Napster, iTunes, and cloud computingthis book explores how music listeners gradually came to understand computers and digital files as suitable replacements for their stereos and CD. Morris connects industrial production, popular culture, technology, and commerce in a narrative involving the aesthetics of music and computers, and the labor of producers and everyday users, as well as the value that listeners make and take from digital objects and cultural goods. Above all, Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture is a sounding out of musics encounters with the interfaces, metadata, and algorithms of digital culture and of why the shifting form of the music commodity matters for the music and other media we love.**
Author: Jan Harold Brunvand
File Type: epub
If you enjoy these too-good-to-be-true tales, Brunvands new book will give you hours of pleasure.*Chicago Tribune*A fabulously entertaining book from the ultimate authority on those almost believable tales that always happen to a friend of a friend. Alligators in the sewers? A pet in the microwave? A tragic misunderstanding of the function of cruise control? No, it didnt really happen to your friends sisters neighbor its an urban legend. And no matter how savvy you think you are, you are sure to find in this collection of over 200 tales at least one story you would have sworn was true. Jan Harold Brunvand has been collecting and studying this modern folklore for over twenty years. In Too Good to Be True he captures the best stories in their best retellings, along with their latest variations and examples of how the stories have changed as they move from person to person and place to place. To help you find your favorite, Brunvand has arranged the tales thematically. Bringing Up Baby is full of episodes of child-rearing gone wrong, including the grisly tale of the drugged out baby-sitter who mistakes the kid for a turkey. Funny Business showcases stories of infamous lapses in customer service, such as the story of the shockingly expensive chocolate chip cookie recipe. And The Criminal Mind features both brilliant --if they were real --scams, as well as the purported antics of the less mentally gifted. Whether you want to become an expert debunker or just have plenty of laughs, this book will surprise and entertain you. Illustrated throughout. Informative and entertaining.... Brunvand has collected more than 200 of the most-repeated and best-known examples of modern folk-myth.Tampa Tribune [N]ot only an entertaining anthology, but an excellent introduction to the study of folklore itself.Publishers Weekly A fun read... . All the classics are here from the killer upstairs to the Kentucky Fried Rat.New City Resonant stories that express our hidden anxieties ... make us laugh, [or] arouse our fascinated horror.San Francisco Chronicle Book Review Informative and entertaining... . Brunvand has collected more than 200 of the most-repeated and best-known examples of modern folk-myth.Tampa Tribune [N]ot only an entertaining anthology, but an excellent introduction to the study of folklore itself.Publishers Weekly 70 bw illustrations **
Author: Bell Hooks
File Type: pdf
What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.
Author: Michael John O'Brien
File Type: pdf
It is difficult for todays students of archaeology to imagine an era when chronometric dating methods were unavailable. However, even a casual perusal of the large body of literature that arose during the first half of the twentieth century reveals a battery of clever methods used to determine the relative ages of archaeological phenomena, often with considerable precision. Stratigraphic excavation is perhaps the best known of the various relative-dating methods used by prehistorians. Although there are several techniques of using artifacts from superposed strata to measure time, these are rarely if ever differentiated. Rather, common practice is to categorize them under the heading `stratigraphic excavation. This text distinguishes among the several techniques and argues that stratigraphic excavation tends to result in discontinuous measures of time - a point little appreciated by modern archaeologists. Although not as well known as stratigraphic excavation, two other methods of relative dating have figured important in Americanist archaeology seriation and the use of index fossils. The latter (like stratigraphic excavation) measures time discontinuously, while the former - in various guises - measures time continuously. Perhaps no other method used in archaeology is as misunderstood as seriation, and the authors provide detailed descriptions and examples of each of its three different techniques. Each method and technique of relative dating is placed in historical perspective, with particular focus on developments in North America, an approach that allows a more complete understanding of the methods described, both in terms of analytical technique and disciplinary history. This text will appeal to all archaeologists, from graduate students to seasoned professionals, who want to learn more about the backbone of archaeological dating.Review`...is a very useful book. North American Archaeologist, 224 (2001)