Overcoming the Oppressors
Overcoming the Oppressors

Author: Robert I. Rotberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0197674208

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"This book is about southern Africa's long walk to freedom, about the overturning of colonial rule in the northern territories and the dissolution of backs-to-the-wall white settler suzerainty first in what became Zimbabwe and then in South Africa. Chapters on the individual countries detail the stages along their sometimes complicated and tortuous struggle to attain the political New Zion. We learn how and why the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, how and why apartheid eventually collapsed, and exactly how the various components of this heavily white conquered and later white oppressed domain transitioned via diverse fits and starts into today's assemblage of proud, politically-charged, and still mostly fragmented nation-states. But what did the new republics make of their hard won freedoms? That is the subject of more than half of this book. Having liberated themselves successfully, several soon dismantled democratic safeguards, established effective single-party states, closed their economies, deprived citizens of human rights and civil liberties, and exchanged economic progress for varieties of central planning experiments and stunted forms of protected economic endeavors. Only Botswana, of the new entities, embraced full democracy and good governance. The others, even South Africa, at first tightly regimented their economies and attempted severely to limit the degrees of economic freedom and social progress that citizens could enjoy. Corruption prevailed everywhere except Botswana. Today, as the chapters on contemporary southern Africa reveal, most of the southern half of the African continent is returning, if sometimes struggling, to return to the patterns probity and good governance that many countries abandoned in the decades after independence. Now there is a resurgence of high performance, which this book celebrates"--

Analyzing Oppression
Analyzing Oppression

Author: Ann E. Cudd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0195187431

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Analyzing Oppression presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? Cudd argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.

Powerarchy
Powerarchy

Author: Melanie Joy

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1523086688

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Harvard-educated psychologist and bestselling author Melanie Joy exposes the psychology that underlies all forms of oppression and abuse and the belief system that gives rise to this psychology—which she calls powerarchy. Melanie Joy had long been curious as to why people who were opposed to one or more forms of oppression—such as racism, sexism, speciesism, and so forth—often stayed mired in many others. She also wondered why people who were working toward social justice sometimes engaged in interpersonal dynamics that were unjust. Or why people who valued freedom and democracy might nevertheless vote and act against these values. Where was the disconnect? In this thought-provoking analysis, Joy explains how we've all been deeply conditioned by the invisible system of powerarchy to believe in a hierarchy of moral worth—to view some individuals and groups as either more or less worthy of moral consideration—and to treat them accordingly. Powerarchy conditions us to engage in power dynamics that violate integrity and harm dignity, and it creates unjust power imbalances among social groups and between individuals. Joy describes how powerarchies—both social and interpersonal—perpetuate themselves through cognitive distortions, such as denial and justification; narratives that reinforce the belief in a hierarchy of moral worth; and privileges that are granted to some and not others. She also provides tools for transformation. By illuminating powerarchy and the psychology it creates, Joy helps us to work more fully toward transformation for ourselves, others, and our world.

Burdened Virtues
Burdened Virtues

Author: Lisa Tessman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-10-06

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0198039824

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Lisa Tessman's Burdened Virtues is a deeply original and provocative work that engages questions central to feminist theory and practice, from the perspective of Aristotelian ethics. Focused primarily on selves who endure and resist oppression, she addresses the ways in which devastating conditions confronted by these selves both limit and burden their moral goodness, and affect their possibilities of flourishing. She describes two different forms of "moral trouble" prevalent under oppression. The first is that the oppressed self may be morally damaged, prevented from developing or exercising some of the virtues; the second is that the very conditions of oppression require the oppressed to develop a set of virtues that carry a moral cost to those who practice them--traits that Tessman refers to as "burdened virtues." These virtues have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer's own well being. Tessman's work focuses on issues that have been missed by many feminist moral theories, and her use of the virtue ethics framework brings feminist concerns more closely into contact with mainstream ethical theory. This book will appeal to feminist theorists in philosophy and women's studies, but also more broadly, ethicists and social theorists.

No Friend but the Mountains
No Friend but the Mountains

Author: Behrouz Boochani

Publisher: House of Anansi

Published: 2019-02-11

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1487006845

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Winner of Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison. Composed entirely by text message, this work represents the harrowing experience of stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. In 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island, a refugee detention centre off the coast of Australia. He has been there ever since. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of five years of incarceration and exile. Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, No Friend but the Mountains is an extraordinary account — one that is disturbingly representative of the experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. “Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.” — From the Foreword by Man Booker Prize–winning author Richard Flanagan

Why Civil Resistance Works
Why Civil Resistance Works

Author: Erica Chenoweth

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-08-09

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 0231527489

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For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

Hope Under Oppression
Hope Under Oppression

Author: Katie Stockdale

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-06-17

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0197563597

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We have all been told, at one time or another, to "never give up hope." It's a common injunction to children, but as we grow older, sustaining hope becomes more challenging, particularly in a world we come to see as often frightening, dark, and unjust. But what is this thing "hope," and why is hope so valuable that we are so often urged to preserve and protect it? This book explores the nature and essential role of hope in human life under conditions of oppression. Oppression is often a threat and damage to hope, yet many members of oppressed groups, including prominent activists pursuing a more just world, find hope valuable and even essential to their personal and political lives. Katie Stockdale offers a unique evaluative framework for hope that captures its intrinsic value, the rationality and morality of hope, and ultimately how we can hope well in the non-ideal world we share. She develops an account of the relationship between hope and anger about oppression and argues that when people are angry about oppression, they tend to also harbour hope for repair. When people's hopes for repair are not realized, as is often the case for those who are oppressed, their anger can evolve into bitterness. They feel unresolved anger as a result of losing hope that injustice will be sufficiently acknowledged and addressed. Fortunately, things do not have to be this way. Even when people may feel that they have lost all hope, faith can help them to be resilient in the face of oppression. They can join with others who share their experiences or commitments for a better world, uniting with them in collective action. By doing so, they can strengthen hope for the future when hope might otherwise be lost. Ultimately, this work illustrates the crucial value of hope for both individuals and collectives in the pursuit of justice, and in an increasingly uncertain world.

Survivor's Odyssey
Survivor's Odyssey

Author: Richard Wiener

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1479794724

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This book transports the reader to the very beginnings of the Nazi regime, as seen through the eyes of a young boy -- the only Jew in a school of Hitler Youths in a small medieval German town. It is his life journey -- his traumatic experience of Kristallnacht . . . the destruction of his home . . . separation from his parents . . . exile . . . post-war reconciliation with his ex-classmates . . . forgiveness . . . and ultimate grant of honorary citizenship -- that provides the reader with a rich, inspiring you-are-there experience seldom encountered in the Holocaust canon.