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An intelligent, engaging, and in-depth reading of the nature of the state and the establishment of the modern political order in the mid-nineteenth century. Previous studies have covered in great detail how the modern state slowly emerged from the early Renaissance through the seventeenth century, but we know relatively little about the next great act: the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. And in an era where our democratic institutions are rife with conflict, it’s more important now than ever to understand how our institutions came into being. Stephen W. Sawyer’s Demos Assembled provides us with a fresh, transatlantic understanding of that political order’s gene...
Three years before his death, Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures at the Catholic University of Louvain that until recently remained almost unknown. These lectures—which focus on the role of avowal, or confession, in the determination of truth and justice—provide the missing link between Foucault’s early work on madness, delinquency, and sexuality and his later explorations of subjectivity in Greek and Roman antiquity. Ranging broadly from Homer to the twentieth century, Foucault traces the early use of truth-telling in ancient Greece and follows it through to practices of self-examination in monastic times. By the nineteenth century, the avowal of wrongdoing was no longer s...
The question of how the American state defines its powernot what it is but what it "does"has become central to a range of historical discourses, from the founding of the Republic and the role of the educational system, to the functions of agencies and America s place in the world. Here, James Sparrow, William J. Novak, and Stephen Sawyer assemble some definitional work in this area, showing that the state is an integral actor in physical, spatial, and economic exercises of power. They further imply that traditional conceptions of the state cannot grasp the subtleties of power and its articulation. Contributors include C.J. Alvarez, Elisabeth Clemens, Richard John, Robert Lieberman, Omar McRoberts, Gautham Rao, Gabriel Rosenberg, Jason Scott Smith, Tracy Steffes, and the editors."
An exploration of hypothetical turning points in history from Ancient Greece to September 11 What if history, as we know it, had run another course? Touching on alternate histories of the future and the past, or uchronias, A Past of Possibilities encourages deeper consideration of watershed moments in the course of history. Wide-ranging in scope, it examines the Boxer Rebellion in China, the 1848 revolution in France, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, and integrates science fiction, history, historiography, sociology, anthropology, and film. In probing the genre of literature and history that is fascinated with hypotheticals surrounding key points in history, Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravélou reach beyond a mere reimagining of history, exploring the limits and potentials of the futures past. From the most bizarre fiction to serious scientific hypothesis, they provide a survey of the uses of counterfactual histories, methodological issues on the possible in social sciences, and practical proposals for using alternate histories in research and the wider public.
A pioneering study in the history of social rights, filling a significant gap in human rights scholarship and practice.
The work of Pierre Rosanvallon has increasingly found itself at the center of debates in democratic and political theory - although only few of his numerous monographs have thus far been translated from French. This interdisciplinary volume, the first comprehensive collection on his political thought in English, seeks to lay the groundwork for the study of this eminent political thinker and historian. Following a hitherto untranslated opening essay by Rosanvallon, the chapters - written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including political theory, political science, philosophy, and history - cover a wide range of topics from the history of democracy to sovereignty, populism, and the function of the press in liberal democratic regimes.
This book offers a sampling of cutting-edge research on the state, pointing to future directions for research and providing innovative ways of theorizing states.
Few philosophers have garnered as much attention globally as Michel Foucault. But even within this wide reception, the consideration given to his relationship to neoliberalism has been noteworthy. However, the debate over this relationship has given rise to a great deal of polemics and confusion. This volume brings together leading figures in the field to provide a reliable guide to one of the most controversial subjects in recent continental thought. It puts across the case for Foucault’s importance for post-colonial, race, queer and feminist studies, among other areas, and opens up his relationship to neoliberalism to offer a broader picture of tensions brewing within the left more generally.
Ketchup seems iconically American, but the word comes from a Southeast Asian anchovy sauce, and today it is made largely from Chinese tomato paste. Japan’s beloved ramen arose from the meeting of Chinese noodles and American wheat flour before attaining worldwide popularity in both gourmet and convenience-food forms. The baguette is mythologized as a product of the French Revolution, but in fact it emerged during late-nineteenth-century urbanization. Colonialism brought baguettes to Vietnam, where street vendors devised a new dish: banh mi, which refugees took with them around the world. Telling these tales and many others, What We Eat explores world history through the lens of the global ...
The activist state of the New Deal started forming decades before the FDR administration, demonstrating the deep roots of energetic government in America. In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. A series of legal reforms gradually brought an end to nineteenth-century traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked through legislation, regulation, and public administration. The last time American public life had been so thoroughly altered was in the late eig...