Fencing in Democracy
Fencing in Democracy

Author: Miguel Díaz-Barriga

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-01-31

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 1478007478

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Border walls permeate our world, with more than thirty nation-states constructing them. Anthropologists Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga argue that border wall construction manifests transformations in citizenship practices that are aimed not only at keeping migrants out but also at enmeshing citizens into a wider politics of exclusion. For a decade, the authors studied the U.S.-Mexico border wall constructed by the Department of Homeland Security and observed the political protests and legal challenges that residents mounted in opposition to the wall. In Fencing in Democracy Dorsey and Díaz-Barriga take us to those border communities most affected by the wall and often ignored in national discussions about border security to highlight how the state diminishes citizens' rights. That dynamic speaks to the citizenship experiences of border residents that is indicative of how walls imprison the populations they are built to protect. Dorsey and Díaz-Barriga brilliantly expand conversations about citizenship, the operation of U.S. power, and the implications of border walls for the future of democracy.

Fences and Windows
Fences and Windows

Author: Naomi Klein

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-08-27

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0307366537

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate brings together two years of Naomi Klein’s writings and tracks the globalization conflict from Seattle to September 11th and beyond. Since the publication of No Logo, Naomi Klein has continued tirelessly as a brilliant and informed contributor to contemporary debate. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, intended as a companion to No Logo, includes her most notable essays, speeches and articles on issues from NAFTA to Genetically Modified Organisms to the violence in Genoa. It offers introduction and explanation, looking at where the movement has come from and where it is going. More than any other single voice, Naomi Klein articulates the concerns and complaints of a generation: about economic fundamentalism, the criminalization of dissent and the effects of Free Trade. But this book also reflects on the nature of resistance: the street protests that shocked and energized millions, carnival-style subversion and the apparent disorganization that is anti-globalization’s great strength. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate is provocative, intelligent and passionate, a document, in its own right, of a unique time in our history.

The Burden of Democracy
The Burden of Democracy

Author: Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited

Published: 2017-09-30

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9387326446

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After nearly seven decades of its existence, there is a pervasive feeling that India's democracy is in crisis. But what is the nature of this threat? In this essay, republished now with a new foreword from the author, Pratap Bhanu Mehtareminds us what a bold experiment bringing democracy to a largely illiterate and unpropertied India was. He argues that the sphere of politics has truly created opportunities for people to participate in society. Looking at various facts, he also finds that persistent social inequality on the one hand and a mistaken view of the state's proper function and organization on the other have modified and hindered the workings of democracy and its effects in innumerable ways. Posting the quest for self-respect as democracy's deepest aspiration, this essay explores how inequality and the crisis of accountability have together impeded collective action to achieve such an end. To recover this sense of moral well-being and responsibility, Mehta suggests, is the core of the democratic challenge before us. Optimistic, lively and closely argued, The Burden of Democracy offers a new ideological imagination that throws light on our discontents. By returning to the basics of democracy it serves to illuminate our predicament, even while perceiving the broad contours for change.

Border Walls
Border Walls

Author: Reece Jones

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2012-07-12

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1848138261

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

*** Winner of the 2013 Julian Minghi Outstanding Research Award presented at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting *** Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, why are leading democracies like the United States, India, and Israel building massive walls and fences on their borders? Despite predictions of a borderless world through globalization, these three countries alone have built an astonishing total of 5,700 kilometers of security barriers. In this groundbreaking work, Reece Jones analyzes how these controversial border security projects were justified in their respective countries, what consequences these physical barriers have on the lives of those living in these newly securitized spaces, and what long-term effects the hardening of political borders will have in these societies and globally. Border Walls is a bold, important intervention that demonstrates that the exclusion and violence necessary to secure the borders of the modern state often undermine the very ideals of freedom and democracy the barriers are meant to protect.

Authoritarianism Goes Global
Authoritarianism Goes Global

Author: Larry Diamond

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 142141998X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With democracy in decline, authoritarian governments are staging a comeback around the world. Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians. As undemocratic regimes become more assertive, they are working together to repress civil society while tightening their grip on cyberspace and expanding their reach in international media. These political changes have fostered the emergence of new counternorms—such as the authoritarian subversion of credible election monitoring—that threaten to further erode the global standing of liberal democracy. In Authoritarianism Goes Global, a distinguished group of contributors present fresh insights on the complicated issues surrounding the authoritarian resurgence and the implications of these systemic shifts for the international order. This collection of essays is critical for advancing our understanding of the emerging challenges to democratic development. Contributors: Anne Applebaum, Anne-Marie Brady, Alexander Cooley, Javier Corrales, Ron Deibert, Larry Diamond, Patrick Merloe, Abbas Milani, Andrew Nathan, Marc F. Plattner, Peter Pomerantsev, Douglas Rutzen, Lilia Shevtsova, Alex Vatanka, Christopher Walker, and Frederic Wehrey

Strange Bedfellows
Strange Bedfellows

Author: Russell Leslie Peterson

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0813542847

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A significant number of Americans get some of their "news" about politics and national affairs from comedy shows. Is "infotainment" a debasement, or a replacement, for traditional news outlets?

Framing Borders
Framing Borders

Author: Ian Kalman

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1487539924

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Framing Borders addresses a fundamental disjuncture between scholastic portrayals of settler colonialism and what actually takes place in Akwesasne Territory, the largest Indigenous cross-border community in Canada. Whereas most existing portrayals of Indigenous nationalism emphasize border crossing as a site of conflict between officers and Indigenous nationalists, in this book Ian Kalman observes a much more diverse range of interactions, from conflict to banality to joking and camaraderie. Framing Borders explores how border crossing represents a conversation where different actors "frame" themselves, the law, and the space that they occupy in diverse ways. Written in accessible, lively prose, Kalman addresses what goes on when border officers and Akwesasne residents meet, and what these exchanges tell us about the relationship between Indigenous actors and public servants in Canada. This book provides an ethnographic examination of the experiences of the border by Mohawk community members, the history of local border enforcement, and the paradoxes, self-contradictions, and confusions that underlie the border and its enforcement.

Say It Louder!
Say It Louder!

Author: Tiffany Cross

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0062976788

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A breakout media and political analyst delivers a sweeping snapshot of American Democracy and the role that African Americans have played in its shaping while offering concrete information to help harness the electoral power of the country’s rising majority and exposing political forces aligned to subvert and suppress Black voters. Black voters were critical to the Democrats’ 2018 blue wave. In fact, 90 percent of Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to just 53 percent of all voters. Despite media narratives, this was not a fluke. Throughout U.S. history, Black people have played a crucial role in the shaping of the American experiment. Yet still, this powerful voting bloc is often dismissed as some “amorphous” deviation, argues Tiffany Cross. Say It Louder! is her explosive examination of how America’s composition was designed to exclude Black voters, but paradoxically would likely cease to exist without them. With multiple tentacles stretching into the cable news echo chamber, campaign leadership, and Black voter data, Cross creates a wrinkle in time with a reflective look at the timeless efforts endlessly attempting to deny people of color the right to vote—a basic tenet of American democracy. And yet as the demographics of the country are changing, so too is the electoral power construct—by evolution and by force, Cross declares. Grounded in the most-up-to-date research, Say It Louder! is a vital tool for a wide swath of constituencies.

Against Democracy
Against Democracy

Author: Jason Brennan

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-09-26

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1400888395

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines. Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.