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Illuminating the dark arts of war : terrorism, sabotage, and subversion in homeland security and the new conflict
Since 9/11, the dominant view is that we have entered an era of new conflict in which technology has empowered non-state actors who now pose unprecedented and unmanageable threats to U.S. national security. This unique work studies a range of threats, from homegrown and foreign terrorism to the possibility of cyber- or Chinese sabotage and fears of religious subversion to challenge every aspects of this new conflict argument and expose its underlying exaggerations and misunderstandings. Examining such issues as political violence, the role of religion in terrorism, the impact of technology, and the political aspects of homeland security, this unique survey demonstrates how such activities as terrorism are limited by their clandestine nature. It also addresses why we need to switch our strategic focus and increase the role citizens have in dealing with such threats.
Book
Black Women against the Land Grab
In Brazil and throughout the African diaspora, black women, especially poor black women, are rarely considered leaders of social movements let alone political theorists. But in the northeastern city of Salvador, Brazil, it is these very women who determine how urban policies are established. Focusing on the Gamboa de Baixo neighborhood in Salvador's city center,Black Women against the Land Grabexplores how black women's views on development have radicalized local communities to demand justice and social change.
InBlack Women against the Land Grab, Keisha-Khan Y. Perry describes the key role of local women activists in the citywide movement for land and housing rights. She reveals the importance of geographic location for understanding the gendered aspects of urban renewal and the formation of black women-led social movements. How have black women shaped the politics of urban redevelopment, Perry asks, and what does this kind of political intervention tell us about black women's agency? Her work uncovers the ways in which political labor at the neighborhood level is central to the mass mobilization of black people against institutional racism and for citizenship rights and resources in Brazil.
Highlighting the political life of black communities, specifically those in urban contexts often represented as socially pathological and politically bankrupt,Black Women against the Land Graboffers a valuable corrective to how we think about politics and about black women, particularly poor black women, as a political force.
eBook
The new politics of transnational labor : why some alliances succeed
\"This book explains why workers' international cooperation sometimes succeeds in compelling employers to improve working conditions and uphold labor rights\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Art of Not Being Governed
For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an \"anarchist history,\" is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.
In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of \"internal colonialism.\" This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.
eBook
Fighting for Foreigners
Although stereotypically homogenized and hostile to immigrants, Japan has experienced an influx of foreigners from Asia and Latin America in recent decades. InFighting for Foreigners, Apichai W. Shipper details how, in response, Japanese citizens have established a variety of local advocacy groups-some faith based, some secular-to help immigrants secure access to social services, economic equity, and political rights.
Drawing on his years of ethnographic fieldwork and a pragmatic account of political motivation he calls associative activism, Shipper asserts that institutions that support illegal foreigners make the most dramatic contributions to democratic multiculturalism. The changing demographics of Japan have been stimulating public discussions, the political participation of marginalized groups, and calls for fair treatment of immigrants. Nongovernmental organizations established by the Japanese have been more effective than the ethnically particular associations formed by migrants themselves, Shipper finds. Activists who initially work in concert to solve specific and local problems eventually become more ambitious in terms of political representation and opinion formation.
As debates about the costs and benefits of immigration rage across the developed world, Shipper's research offers a refreshing new perspective: rather than undermining democracy in industrialized society, immigrants can make a positive institutional contribution to vibrant forms of democratic multiculturalism.
eBook
Egypt after Mubarak
Which way will Egypt go now that Husni Mubarak's authoritarian regime has been swept from power? Will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy?Egypt after Mubarakreveals that Egypt's secularists and Islamists may yet navigate a middle path that results in a uniquely Islamic form of liberalism and, perhaps, democracy. Bruce Rutherford draws on in-depth interviews with Egyptian judges, lawyers, Islamic activists, politicians, and businesspeople. He utilizes major court rulings, political documents of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the writings of Egypt's leading contemporary Islamic thinkers. Rutherford demonstrates that, in post-Mubarak Egypt, progress toward liberalism and democracy is likely to be slow.
Essential reading on a subject of global importance, this edition includes a new introduction by Rutherford that takes stock of the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood's victories in the 2011-2012 elections.
eBook
Intellectuals and (counter-)politics
Contemporary forms of capitalism and the state require close analytic attention to reveal the conditions of possibility for effective counter-politics. On the other hand the practice of collective politics needs to be studied through historical ethnography if we are to understand what might make people's actions effective. This book suggests a research agenda designed to maximize the political leverage of ordinary people faced with ever more remote states and technologies that make capitalism increasingly rapacious. Gavin Smith opens and closes this series of interlinked essays by proposing a concise framework for untangling what he calls \"the society of capital\" and subsequently a potentially controversial way of seeing its contemporary features. This book tackles the political conundrums of our times and asks what roles intellectuals might play therein.
eBook