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The politics of austerity has seen governments across Europe cut back on welfare provision. As the State retreats, this edited collection explores secular and faith-based grassroots social action in Germany and the United Kingdom that has evolved in response to changing economic policy and expanding needs, from basic items such as food to more complex means to move out of poverty. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and practitioners in several areas of social intervention, the book explores how the conceptualization and constitutive practices of citizenship and community are changing because of the retreat of the State and the challenge of meeting social and material needs, creating new opportunities for local activism. The book provides new ways of thinking about social and political belonging and about the relations between individual, collective, and State responsibility.
This work examines local responses to political and economic crises in Germany and the UK. In Germany, the influx of refugees has thrown into question state capacity to cope with crisis and the acceptability of religious diversity.
Neighbours, Distrust, and the State overturns many of our ideas about how the poorer working class lived together, and thought about each other, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The reality was quite different to what has been the accepted historical belief; that of an unbreakable solidarity between neighbours against 'outsiders', particularly in rejecting any interference by government in their lives and communities. But the views of women and others who were less powerful in these neighbourhoods have often been ignored. This study shows the diversity of opinion-and tensions and fears-that existed. In fact, many of the poor wanted the authorities to have a bigger role, ...
Investigates geographic variation in Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 critically examining the logic of political violence.
Why Aren't They There? is a comprehensive study of political representation in a cross-national format, making a cross-country comparison of the representation of women, ethnic groups, and policy positions. It includes an analysis of the representation of women over time, and presents a critical view of the effectiveness of quotas. Using new data on ethnic groups in legislatures, it makes a significant step forward in the analysis of political representation. The representation of issue positions is examined in eight policy domains, and the book's systematic approach allows a groundbreaking examination of how different forms of representation – women, ethnic groups, issue positions – are interlinked. Didier Ruedin examines aspects unattainable in studies focusing only on a single form of representation. The result is a comprehensive understanding of political representation, and important and policy-relevant insights for electoral engineering.
A history of nineteenth-century New Orleans and the people who made it a vital, if unexpected, part of an emerging operatic world. New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 explores the thriving operatic life of New Orleans in the first half of the nineteenth century, drawing out the transatlantic connections that animated it. By focusing on a variety of individuals, their extended webs of human contacts, and the materials that they moved along with them, this book pieces together what it took to bring opera to New Orleans and the ways in which the city’s operatic life shaped contemporary perceptions of global interconnection. The early chapters explore the process o...
In today's world, many believe that everyday life has become selfish and atomised--that individuals live only to consume. Jon Lawrence argues that they are wrong, and that whilst community has changed, it is far from dead. It is time to embrace new communities, and let go of nostalgia for the past.
In a rapidly changing world, in which religious identities emerge as crucial fault lines in political and public discourse, this volume brings together multiple disciplinary perspectives in order to investigate shifting conceptions of, and commitments to, the ideals of religious pluralism. Spanning theology, sociology, politics and anthropology, the chapters explore various approaches to coexistence, political visions of managing diversity and lived experiences of multireligiosity, in order to examine how modes of religious pluralism are being constructed and contested in different parts of the world. Contributing authors analyse challenges to religious pluralism, as well as innovative kinds of conviviality, that produce meaningful engagements with diversity and shared community life across different social, political and economic settings. This book will be relevant to scholars of religion, community life, social change and politics, and will also be of interest to civil society organisations, NGOs, international agencies and local, regional and national policymakers.
Exploring canonical and non-canonical literature, scurrilous pamphlets and court cases, music, religion and politics, consumer culture and sexual subcultures, these essays concern the lives and representations of homosexuals in the long eighteenth century