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Journeys of Fear
Understanding democracy, human rights, and development in the conflict-ridden societies of the third world is at the heart of Journeys of Fear, a stimulating collection of papers prepared by Canadian and Guatemalan scholars. Edited and with contributions by Liisa North and Alan Simmons, this collection explores the participation of the oppressed and marginalised Guatemalan refugees, most of them indigenous Mayas who fled from the army's razed-earth campaign of the early 1980s, in government negotiations regarding the conditions for return. The essays adopt the refugees' language concerning return – defining it as a self-organized and participatory collective act that is very different from...
Gramsci's Critique of Civil Society
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker whose radical ideas on how to build an alternative world from below remain vigorously relevant today. Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis critically dissects the institutions of modern liberal democracy to reveal what is perhaps its deepest secret: it is the most successful political system in modernity at preserving an objective condition of domination while transforming it into a subjective conviction of freedom. Based on a careful reading of Gramsci's The Prison Notebooks, Marco Fonseca shows hegemony as more than leadership of elites over subaltern majorities based on "consent". Following Gramsci’s critique of citizenship, civil society and d...
The Elgar Companion to Antonio Gramsci
Affirming Antonio Gramsci’s continuing influence, this adroitly cultivated Companion offers a comprehensive overview of Gramsci’s contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of critical social science, social and political thought, economics and emancipatory politics. Within the tradition of historical materialism, it explores the continuing impact of Gramscian perspectives in the present day.
Deconstructing Happiness
This book offers an original account of the good life in late modernity through a uniquely sociological lens. It considers the various ways that social and cultural factors can encourage or impede genuine efforts to live a good life by deconstructing the concepts of happiness and contentment within cultural narratives of the good life. While empirical studies have dominated the discourse on happiness in recent decades, the emphasis on finding causal and correlational relationships has led to a field of research that arguably lacks a reliable theoretical foundation. Deconstructing Happiness offers a step toward developing that foundation by offering characteristically sociological perspectives on the contemporary fascination with happiness and well-being. In doing so, it seeks to understand the good life as a socially mediated experience rather than a purely personal or individually defined way of living. The outcome is a book on happiness, contentment and the good life that considers the influence of democracy, capitalism and progress, while also focusing on the more theoretical challenges of self-knowledge, reason and interaction.
Liberty, Toleration and Equality
The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. Liberty, Toleration and Equality examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast, Locke was able to develop, over time, a perspective on toleration which allowed him to concede liberty to competing views which he, personally, perceived to be "false and absurd". In this respect, Locke sought to affirm what has since become the basic liberal principle that liberty and toleration are most significant when they are accorded to views to which we ourselves are profoundly at odds. John William Tate seeks to show how Locke was able to develop this position on toleration over a long intellectual career. Tate also challenges some of the most prominent contemporary perspectives on Locke, within the academic literature, showing how these fall short of perceiving what is essential to Locke’s position.
Novels and the Sociology of the Contemporary
This book substantiates two claims. First, the modern world was not simply produced by "objective" factors, rooted in geographical discoveries and scientific inventions, to be traced to economic, technological or political factors, but is the outcome of social, cultural and spiritual processes. Among such factors, beyond the Protestant ethic (Max Weber), the rise of the absolutist state and its disciplinary network (Michel Foucault), or court society (Norbert Elias), a prime role is played by theatre. The modern reality is deeply theatricalized. Second, a special access for studying this theatricalized world is offered by novels. The best classical novels not simply can be interpreted as des...
Gramsci and South Asia
Gramsci’s theory of common sense is a metanarrative that can be used to explain both religion and political formations. This book examines Gramsci’s perspective and how his theories translate into South Asian society. It explores Gramsci’s historicism, which is sensitive to historical, regional and national differences, and its relevance in post-colonial societies. The volume discusses themes like common sense, religious common sense, folk religion, dialogue and common sense concerning civil/political society through the lens of Gramsci’s historical perspectives. It also looks at Gramscian critique of political secularism, the ideology and politics of Hindutva, civil society in a non-Western context and modes of political society in India. Lucid and topical, this book is a must-read for scholars and researchers of political studies, political philosophy, post-colonial studies, South Asian politics, cultural studies and political sociology.
Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena
This collection of essays addresses the inclusion and exclusion of peoples, populations and regions in an era of global economic and social integration. Although many publications have discussed the way in which globalization has changed the nature of boundaries, space and the movement of peoples, there is a wide gap in a literature that rarely addresses the reaction of local communities and inclusion for some stakeholders in decision making while excluding others, particularly in regard to global integration of industry, the legislation of planning, and trade. This gap has often led to narrow and sometimes misleading ways of presenting the results of globalizing processes. This collection a...
China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought
China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought examines the ideas of China in the works of three major thinkers in the early European Enlightenment of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries: Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Baron de Montesquieu. Unlike surveys which provide only cursory overviews of Enlightenment views of China, or individual studies of each thinker which tend to address their conceptions of China in individual chapters, this is the first book to provide in-depth comparative analyses of these seminal Enlightenment thinkers that specifically link their views on China to their political concerns. Against the backdrop especially of the Jesuit account...
Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies, and Desire
Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies and Desire excavates epistemologies which attempt to explain changes in emotional regimes from medieval society to late modernity. Key in this debate is the concept of intimacy. The book shows that different historical periods are characterized by emotional regimes where intimacy in the form of desire, sex, passion, and sex largely exist outside marriage, and that marriage and traditional normative values and structures are fundamentally incompatible with the expression of intimacy in the history of emotional regimes. The book draws on the work of a number of theorists who assess change in emotional regimes by drawing on intimacy including Michel Foucault,...
