Reconsidering American Power
Reconsidering American Power

Author: John D. Kelly

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-12-05

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 0199097798

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Postcolonial studies, postmodern studies, even posthuman studies emerge, and intellectuals demand that social sciences be remade to address fundamentals of the human condition, from human rights to global environmental crises. Since these fields owe so much to American state sponsorship, is it easier to reimagine the human and the modern than to properly measure the pervasive American influence? Reconsidering American Power offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana and the influence of Pax Americana on the social sciences. With the thematic image for this enterprise as the ‘fiery hunt’ for Ahab’s whale, the contributors pursue realities behind the theories, and reconsider the real origins and motives of their fields with an eye on what will deter or repurpose the ‘fiery hunts’ to come, by offering a critical insider’s view.

Reconsidering the Life of Power
Reconsidering the Life of Power

Author: James Garrison

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1438482124

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Reconsidering the Life of Power examines Chinese perspectives on bodily self-cultivation and explores how these can be resources for working past the ritual scripts of everyday life. In recent decades, European and American thinkers like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler have called attention to the way that people live out ritual scripts in order to be recognized by other people such that they might survive. Philosophers in China, however, have a long history of considering ritual not just in terms of confining power structures but also in terms of empowering artistic self-cultivation. Out of this convergence, a response to Butler's The Psychic Life of Power becomes possible, along with fascinating implications for improving real-world experience. James Garrison looks at art and aesthetics as a way of responding positively to the vicissitudes of everyday life. This means reframing ritual practice in domains like meditation, yoga, tai chi chuan, dance, calisthenics, fashion, and beyond as a kind of work that delves into and unearths society's long-accruing unconscious habits in a way that makes conscious one's everyday speech, comportment, countenance, and presence. The everyday body thus becomes an artwork, speaking in novel ways to the everyday self by revealing an alternative to the programmed ritual scripts through which most of us tend to survive. Reconsidering the Life of Power offers a compelling contemporary intercultural perspective on body, art, self, and society that bridges theory and practice by providing an actionable yet deeply philosophical approach to enhancing life.

American Power in the 21st Century
American Power in the 21st Century

Author: David Held

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2004-11-30

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0745633463

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America wields a combination of military, economic and cultural power that many consider unprecedented. The way America uses this power has repercussions on every major issue of world affairs, including the prospects of regional security, the spread of democratic governance, and the provision of global public goods in economic and environmental domains. This volume explores the questions raised by American power from a variety of perspectives. Is the emphasis laid on military power likely to be self-defeating for the United States in the long run? Is "soft power" or persuasion a more effective way to promote American interests and goals? How is American predominance perceived in Europe, China and the Arab world? Will it last or will other powers coalesce to resist US hegemony? The authors address these and other fundamental questions in rigorous and historically sensitive analyses of this critical juncture in global politics. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars in political science and international relations, as well as all those concerned with and by one of the key topics of our time. Contributors include: Robert Cooper, Michael Cox, Zhiyuan Cui, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, G. John Ikenberry, Robert Kagan, Mary Kaldor, Joseph S. Nye, Thomas Risse.

The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered
The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered

Author: Robert Mason

Publisher:

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813064444

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Here, leading scholars-including Hodgson himself-confront the longstanding theory that a liberal consensus shaped the United States after World War II. The essays draw on fresh research to examine how the consensus related to key policy areas, how it was viewed by different factions and groups, what its limitations were, and why it fell apart in the late 1960s.

Reconsidering Southern Labor History
Reconsidering Southern Labor History

Author: Matthew Hild

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0813065771

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United Association for Labor Education Best Book Award The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of the working classes. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine vagrancy laws in the early republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, and strikes and the often-violent strikebreaking that followed. They also look at pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers. The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today. Contributors: David M. Anderson | Deborah Beckel | Thomas Brown | Dana M. Caldemeyer | Adam Carson | Theresa Case | Erin L. Conlin | Brett J. Derbes | Maria Angela Diaz | Alan Draper | Matthew Hild | Joseph E. Hower | T.R.C. Hutton | Stuart MacKay | Andrew C. McKevitt | Keri Leigh Merritt | Bethany Moreton | Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan | Michael Sistrom | Joseph M. Thompson | Linda Tvrdy

Reconsidering the American Way of War
Reconsidering the American Way of War

Author: Antulio J. EchevarriaII

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2014-05-28

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1626160686

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Challenging several longstanding notions about the American way of war, this book examines US strategic and operational practice from 1775 to 2014. It surveys all major US wars from the War of Independence to the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as most smaller US conflicts to determine what patterns, if any, existed in American uses of force. Contrary to many popular sentiments, Echevarria finds that the American way of war is not astrategic, apolitical, or defined by the use of overwhelming force. Instead, the American way of war was driven more by political considerations than military ones, and the amount of force employed was rarely overwhelming or decisive. As a scholar of Clausewitz, Echevarria borrows explicitly from the Prussian to describe the American way of war not only as an extension of US policy by other means, but also the continuation of US politics by those means. The book’s focus on strategic and operational practice closes the gap between critiques of American strategic thinking and analyses of US campaigns. Echevarria discovers that most conceptions of American strategic culture fail to hold up to scrutiny, and that US operational practice has been closer to military science than to military art. Providing a fresh look at how America’s leaders have used military force historically and what that may mean for the future, this book should be of interest to military practitioners and policymakers, students and scholars of military history and security studies, and general readers interested in military history and the future of military power.

Reconsidering Roots
Reconsidering Roots

Author: Erica Ball

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0820350834

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These essays--from scholars in history, sociology, film, and media studies--interrogate Roots, assessing the ways that the book and its dramatization recast representations of slavery, labor, and the black family; reflected on the promise of freedom and civil rights; and engaged discourses of race, gender, violence, and power.

Bound To Lead
Bound To Lead

Author: Joseph S. Nye

Publisher:

Published: 1991-08-06

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0465007449

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Is America still Number 1? A leading scholar of international politics and former State Department official takes issue with Paul Kennedy and others and clearly demonstrates that the United States is still the dominant world power, with no challenger in sight. But analogies about decline only divert policy makers from creating effective strategies for the future, says Nye. The nature of power has changed. The real-and unprecedented-challenge is managing the transition to growing global interdependence.

America Unrivaled
America Unrivaled

Author: G. John Ikenberry

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780801488023

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American power today is without historical precedent, dominating the world system. No other nation has enjoyed such formidable advantages in military, economic, technological, cultural, and political capabilities. How stable is this unipolar American order? Will the age-old dynamic of the balance of power reemerge as the other great powers rise up to challenge American preeminence? America Unrivaled examines these questions. The experts in this volume contend that full-scale balancing in this new world order has not yet occurred. They ask if a backlash against American dominance is just around the corner, or if characteristics of the current situation alter or eliminate the entire logic of power balancing. American power poses threats, as do the likely responses to that power, the experts argue in America Unrivaled. The definition of these threats is critical to understanding future political trends and learning whether an original (and stable) world system has already come into existence. Most of the contributors agree that novel features of the American hegemony and the wider global order make an automatic return to a traditional balance of power order unlikely.

Woodrow Wilson and the Great War
Woodrow Wilson and the Great War

Author: Robert W. Tucker

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780813926292

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In recent years, and in light of U.S. attempts to project power in the world, the presidency of Woodrow Wilson has been more commonly invoked than ever before. Yet "Wilsonianism" has often been distorted by a concentration on American involvement in the First World War. In Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America's Neutrality, 1914-1917, prominent scholar Robert Tucker turns the focus to the years of neutrality. Arguing that our neglect of this prewar period has reduced the complexity of the historical Wilson to a caricature or stereotype, Tucker reveals the importance that the law of neutrality played in Wilson's foreign policy during the fateful years from 1914 to 1917, and in doing so he provides a more complete portrait of our nation's twenty-eighth president. By focusing on the years leading up to America's involvement in the Great War, Tucker reveals that Wilson's internationalism was always highly qualified, dependent from the start upon the advent of an international order that would forever remove the specter of another major war. World War I was the last conflict in which the law of neutrality played an important role in the calculations of belligerents and neutrals, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that this law--or rather Woodrow Wilson's version of it--constituted almost the whole of his foreign policy with regard to the war. Wilson's refusal to find any significance, moral or otherwise, in the conflict beyond the law and its violation led him to see the war as meaningless, save for the immense suffering and sense of utter futility it fostered. Treating issues of enduring interest, such as the advisability and effectiveness of U.S. interventions in, or initiation of, conflicts beyond its borders, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War will appeal to anyone interested in the president's power to determine foreign policy, and in constitutional history in general.