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Since 1990, thousands of Hungarians have vacationed at summer camps devoted to Hungarian folk dance in the Transylvanian villages of neighboring Romania. This folk tourism and connected everyday practices of folk dance revival take place against the backdrop of an increasingly nationalist political environment in Hungary. In Movement of the People, Mary N. Taylor takes readers inside the folk revival movement known as dancehouse (táncház) that sustains myriad events where folk dance is central and championed by international enthusiasts and UNESCO. Contextualizing táncház in a deeper history of populism and nationalism, Taylor examines the movement's emergence in 1970s socialist institutions, its transformation through the postsocialist period, and its recent recognition by UNESCO as a best practice of heritage preservation. Approaching the populist and popular practices of folk revival as a form of national cultivation, Movement of the People interrogates the everyday practices, relationships, institutional contexts, and ideologies that contribute to the making of Hungary's future, as well as its past.
In this eye-opening and poignant true story about the experiences of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver—two who have legal documentation, two who don’t—Helen Thorpe “puts a human face on a frequently obtuse conversation” (O, The Oprah Magazine), exploring themes of identity and friendship and exposing the reality of life for many undocumented immigrants seeking the American dream. Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. We meet the girls on the eve of their senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, b...
Discover the hidden forces that shaped one of the most significant health care reforms in US history. In A Government of Insiders, William Genieys traces the winding path from the failed health policy priorities of the Clinton administration to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Genieys uncovers the pivotal role of a committed group of unelected governmental elites known as "long-term insiders" who meticulously developed policy ideas and political connections. During George W. Bush's presidency, these insiders reconceptualized the foundations of a far-reaching health coverage reform both within and outside the public sector. When President Obama took office, these insiders returne...
In Fields of Authority, Jack Lucas provides the first systematic exploration of local special purpose bodies in Ontario. Lucas uses a policy fields approach to explain how these local bodies in Ontario have developed from the nineteenth century to the present. "
Empirically thorough and conceptually clear, Crafting State-Nations will have a substantial impact on the study of comparative political institutions and the conception and understanding of nationalism and democracy.
This comprehensive work on security in the English-speaking Caribbean, offers a wealth of information about the history, politics, economics and geography of the entire region. The author examines security problems in the region as a geopolitical unit, not on a selective case-study basis, as is usually done. He assesses Caribbean security within a theoretical framework where four factors are critical: perceptions of the political elites; capabilities of the states; the geopolitics of the area; and the ideological orientations of the parties in power. Political and economic issues are judged to be as relevant to security as military factors. The author identifies safeguards which countries in the region may take in the coming decade.
Focusing empirically on how political and economic forces are always mediated and interpreted by agents, both in individual countries and in the international sphere, Constructing the International Economy sets out what such constructions and what various forms of constructivism mean, both as ways of understanding the world and as sets of varying methods for achieving that understanding. It rejects the assumption that material interests either linearly or simply determine economic outcomes and demands that analysts consider, as a plausible hypothesis, that economies might vary substantially for nonmaterial reasons that affect both institutions and agents' interests. Constructing the Internat...
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology will serve as a resource for social researchers interested in how cognitive sociology can contribute to research within their substantive areas of focus, and for faculty and graduate students interested in cognitive sociology's main contributions and the central debates within the field. In particular, the volume includes a broad range of cognitive sociological perspectives as the classical sociological and newer interdisciplinary approaches to cognition are often covered separately by scholars.
The discussion about a constitution for the European Union and its rejection by referendum in two of the EU founding member states has once again spurred public and scholarly interest in the democratic quality and potential of the European Union. Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union brings together distinguished thinkers from law, political science, sociology, and political philosophy to explore the potential for democratically legitimate governance in the European Union. Drawing on different theoretical perspectives and strands from democratic theory, this volume is the first of its kind to overcome the present state of fragmentation in the debate about the conditions an...
The importance of subnational regions to politics, governance, and economic development in Western Europe has long been recognized. However, far less is known about recent steps to introduce a regional level of politics in East Central Europe. Reforms there are part of the larger process of crafting democracy; that is, regional reforms are linked to the economic and political transition away from communism and toward “Europe,” specifically the European Union. Crafting Democracy offers an important comparative analysis of the process and outcomes of region-building in the four Visegrád countries. Jennifer A. Yoder investigates why some but not other post-communist countries chose to intr...