We regard genocidal violence as worse than other sorts of violenceperhaps the worst there is. But what does this say about what we value about the genos on which nations are said to be founded? This is an urgent question for democracies. We value the mode of being in time that anchors us in the past and in the future, that is, among those who have been and those who might yet be. If the genos is a group constituted by this generational time, the demos was invented as the anti-genos, with no criterion of inheritance and instead only occurring according to the interruption of revolutionary time. Insofar as the demos persists, we experience it as a sort of genos, for example, the democratic nation state. As a result, democracies are caught is a bind, disavowing genos-thinking while cherishing the temporal forms of genos-life; they abhor genocidal violence but perpetuate and disguise it. This is the genocide paradox. OByrne traces the problem through our commitment to existential categories from Aristotle to the life taxonomies of Linneaus and Darwin, through anthropologies of kinship that tether us to the social world, the shortfalls of ethical theory, into the history of democratic theory and the defensive tactics used by real existing democracies when it came to defining genocide for the U.N. Genocide Convention. She argues that, although models of democracy all make room for contestation, they fail to grasp its generational structure or acknowledge the generational content of our lives. They cultivate ignorance of the contingency and precarity of the relations that create and sustain us. The danger of doing so is immense. It leaves us unprepared for confronting democracys deficits and its struggle to entertain multiple temporalities. In addition, it leaves us unprepared for understanding the relation between demos and violence, and the ability of good enough citizens to tolerate the slow-burning destruction of marginalized peoples. What will it take to envision an anti-genocidal democracy?
: Aslam Ali : Ordinary Democracy ISBN: 0190601817 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780190601812 : Oxford Academ : : 76030.00 T : . : Written with and for citizens who feel overwhelmed by political and economic forces outside of their control, Ordinary Democracy makes a compelling argument for the adequacy of democratic politics to address the challenges associated with neoliberalism and the growth of emergency politics.
: Ariadne Vromen : Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement ISBN: 1137488646 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781137488640 : Springer : : 107130.00 T : . : This book considers the radical effects the emergence of social media and digital politics have had on the way that advocacy organisations mobilise and organise citizens into political participation. It argues that these changes are due not only to technological advancement but are also underpinned by hybrid media systems, new political narratives, and a new networked generation of political actors. The author empirically analyses the emergence and consolidation within advanced democracies of online campaigning organisations, such as MoveOn, 38 Degrees, Getup and AVAAZ. Vromen shows that they have become leading political advocates, and influential on both national and international level governance. The book critically engages with this digital disruption of traditional patterns of political mobilisation and organisation, and highlights the challenges in embracing new ideas such as entrepreneurialism and issue-driven politics. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in political participation and citizen politics, interest groups, civil society organisations, e-government and politics and social media.
: Woodford, Clare : Dis-orienting democracy ISBN: 0415634296 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780415634298 : Taylor&Francis : : 153120.00 T : . : The book aims to present a new and accessible way of interpreting and supplementing Jacques Ranciere`s work in response to the growing inequality in Western democracy, and offers solutions to general readers, activists, and policy makers alike.
: L. Morales; M. Giugni : Social Capital, Political Participation and Migration in Europe ISBN: 1349318795 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781349318797 : Springer : : 79190.00 T : . : How can European societies more effectively promote the active engagement of immigrants and their children in the political and civic life of the countries where they live? This book examines the effect of migrants` individual attributes and resources, their social capital and the political opportunities on their political integration.
: Performing Citizenship ISBN: 0815370644 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780815370642 : Taylor&Francis : : 51030.00 T : . : Presenting empirically rich case studies, leading experts analyze the ways in which the shifting balance of power between nation-state, economy and civil society over the past half century affected social movements in their choice of addressees and repertoires of action.
: The Differentiated Politicisation of European Governance ISBN: 0367029227 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780367029227 : Taylor&Francis : : 46950.00 T : . : The book takes stock of politicisation research on European governance, mapping empirically the growing salience of EU governance, polarisation of opinion and expansion of actors and audiences engaged in monitoring and influencing EU affairs across countries, time and arenas.
: David Altman : Citizenship and Contemporary Direct Democracy ISBN: 1108496636 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781108496636 : Cambridge Academ : : 99270.00 T : . : Citizenship and Contemporary Direct Democracy is for anyone who studies democracy, elections, or political institutions. Its original data makes it indispensable for researchers, while the accessible, non-technical approach makes it suitable for students and teachers alike. The normative argument will appeal to political theorists and philosophers.
: Pieter de Wilde, Ruud Koopmans, Wolfgang Merkel, Oliver Strijbis, Michael Zurn : The Struggle Over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism ISBN: 1108483771 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781108483773 : Cambridge Academ : : 82370.00 T : . : This book presents a comprehensive analysis of how economic, cultural and political globalization have transformed democratic politics. Appealing to political scientists, sociologists and international relations scholars, the book is also an accessible introduction to debates on globalization, political conflict and populism for students in these fields.
: Pieter de Wilde, Ruud Koopmans, Wolfgang Merkel, Oliver Strijbis, Michael Zurn : The Struggle Over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism ISBN: 1108718221 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781108718226 : Cambridge Academ : : 28510.00 T : . : This book presents a comprehensive analysis of how economic, cultural and political globalization have transformed democratic politics. Appealing to political scientists, sociologists and international relations scholars, the book is also an accessible introduction to debates on globalization, political conflict and populism for students in these fields.
More than forty years after the major victories of the civil rights movement, African Americans have a vexed relation to the civic myth of the United States as the land of equal opportunity and justice for all. In Sites of Slavery Salamishah Tillet examines how contemporary African American artists and intellectuals—including Annette Gordon-Reed, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Bill T. Jones, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kara Walker—turn to the subject of slavery in order to understand and challenge the ongoing exclusion of African Americans from the founding narratives of the United States. She explains how they reconstruct "sites of slavery"—contested figures, events, memories, locations, and experiences related to chattel slavery—such as the allegations of a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the characters Uncle Tom and Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, African American tourism to slave forts in Ghana and Senegal, and the legal challenges posed by reparations movements. By claiming and recasting these sites of slavery, contemporary artists and intellectuals provide slaves with an interiority and subjectivity denied them in American history, register the civic estrangement experienced by African Americans in the post–civil rights era, and envision a more fully realized American democracy.
: Hanagan Nora : Democratic Responsibility: The Politics of Many Hands in America ISBN: 0268106053 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780268106058 : Mare Nostrum (Eurospan) : : 41800.00 T : . : American society is often described as one that celebrates self-reliance and personal responsibility. However, abolitionists, progressive reformers, civil rights activists, and numerous others often held their fellow citizens responsible for shared problems such as economic exploitation and white supremacy. Moreover, they viewed recognizing and responding to shared problems as essential to achieving democratic ideals. In Democratic Responsibility, Nora Hanagan examines American thinkers and activists who offered an alternative to individualistic conceptions of responsibility and puts them in dialogue with contemporary philosophers who write about shared responsibility. Drawing on the political theory and practice of Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King Jr., and Audre Lorde, Hanagan develops a distinctly democratic approach to shared responsibility. Cooperative democracy is especially relevant in an age of globalization and hyperconnectivity, where societies are continually threatened with harmssuch as climate change, global sweatshop labor, and structural racismthat result from the combined interactions of multiple individuals and institutions, and which therefore cannot be resolved without collective action. Democratic Responsibility offers insight into how political actors might confront seemingly intractable problems, and challenges conventional understandings of what commitment to democratic ideals entails. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, especially those who look to the history of political thought for resources that might promote social justice in the present.
