Despite winning control of twenty-four new state governments since 1992, Republicans have failed to enact policies that substantially advance conservative goals. This book offers the first systematic assessment of the geography and consequences of Republican ascendance in the states and yields important lessons for both liberals and conservatives.
Part of Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is an intimate exploration of the Windy City's history and identity. "Required reading"-- The Chicago Tribune Officially,
On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans watched on television as polling results divided the nation's map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become symbolic of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes--pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist blue-state Democrats woefully out of touch with heartland values. With wit and prodigious number crunching, Andrew Gelman debunks these and other political myths. This expanded edition includes new data and easy-to-read graphics explaining the 2008 election. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is a must-read for anyone seeking to make sense of today's fractured political landscape.
Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements. Drawing from rich archival material, William Roy shows that the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 40s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s implemented folk music's social relationships--specifically between those who sang and those who listened--in different ways, achieving different outcomes. Roy explores how the People's Songsters envisioned uniting people in song, but made little headway beyond leftist activists. In contrast, the Civil Rights Movement successfully integrated music into collective action, and used music on the picket lines, at sit-ins, on freedom rides, and in jails. Roy considers how the movement's Freedom Songs never gained commercial success, yet contributed to the wider achievements of the Civil Rights struggle. Roy also traces the history of folk music, revealing the complex debates surrounding who or what qualified as "folk" and how the music's status as racially inclusive was not always a given. Examining folk music's galvanizing and unifying power, Reds, Whites, and Blues casts new light on the relationship between cultural forms and social activity.
This story of the origins and evolution of the American blues tradition draws on oral history interviews and research into neglected primary sources. Book jacket.
WINNER OF: Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book from the Caribbean Philosophical Association Canadian Political Science Association’s C.B. MacPherson Prize Studies in Political Economy Book Prize Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term “recognition” shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples’ right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics—one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a “place-based” modification of Karl Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation” throws light on Indigenous–state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.
The scholars included in A Paler Shade of Red cover the 2008 presidential election with detailed, state-by-state analyses of how the presidential election, from the nomination struggle through the casting of votes in November, played out in the South. The book also includes examinations of important elections other than for president, and in addition to the single-state perspectives, there are three chapters that look at the region as a whole. Contributors are Scott E. Buchanan, John A. Clark, Patrick R. Cotter, Charles Bullock III, Rogert E. Hogan and Eunice H. McCarney, David A. Breaux and Stephen D. Shaffer, Cole Blease Graham, Jay Barth, Janine A. Parry and Todd G. Shields, Jonathan Knuckey, Charles Prysby, Ronald Keith Gaddie, Brian Arbour and Mark McKenzie, and John J. McGlennon, all collected here to provide powerful insight into southern politics today.
Columbus is the third-largest city in Georgia, and Red Clay, White Water, and Blues is its first comprehensive history. Virginia E. Causey documents the city's founding in 1828 and brings its story to the present, examining the economic, political, social, and cultural changes over the period. It is the first history of the city that analyzes the significant contributions of all its citizens, including African Americans, women, and the working class. Causey, who has lived and worked in Columbus for more than forty years, focuses on three defining characteristics of the city's history: the role that geography has played in its evolution, specifically its location on the Chattahoochee River along the Fall Line, making it an ideal place to establish water-powered textile mills; the fact that the control of city's affairs rested in the hands of a particular business elite; and the endemic presence of violence that left a "bloody trail" throughout local history. Causey traces the life of Columbus: its founding and early boom years; the Civil War and its aftermath; conflicts as a modern city emerged in the first half of the twentieth century; racial tension and economic decline in the mid-to-late 1900s; and rebirth and revival of the city in the twenty-first century. Peppered throughout are compelling anecdotes about the city's most colorful characters, including Sol Smith and His Dramatic Company, music phenom Blind Tom Wiggins, suffragist Augusta Howard, industrialist and philanthropist G. Gunby Jordan, peanut purveyor Tom Huston, blueswoman Ma Rainey, novelist Carson McCullers, and insurance magnate John Amos.
Refugees from high-tax Massachusetts turned New Hampshire blue. Democratic voters from Yankee states are swamping Tennessee and Georgia. Government employees and refugees from Maryland have turned Virginia from a conservative Southern state into left-leaning Democrat territory. Escapees from California have transformed Colorado, and they’re aiming for Texas next. One state after another is turning from red to purple to blue. America is being radically changes by people leaving blue states for better living conditions and opportunities in red states—only to import to their new homes the very policies that created the misery they fled from in the first place. The direction of the change is undeniable: • A 2019 poll found that 53 percent of residents are considering leaving California on account of the exorbitant cost of living • From 2008-2018, Houston's population surged more than 15 percent, and the top metro areas of origin for those new Texas residents were Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago • Migration from blue states is changing the Texas electorate: between 2010 and 2018, votes for Democrats went up 50 percent, while Republican votes increased by just 10 percent • Boom is turning to bust in cities like Denver, as hip blue state refugees to red states raise the cost of living by voting in liberal policies The liberal invasion of the conservative states is having major impacts on our elections, our economy, and our standard of living. And yet few Americans are even aware of the trend, and fewer still have any idea of the significant implications for the future of the United States. Now, in The Liberal Invasion of Red State America, indefatigable reporter Kristin Tate delves into the data, lays out the astonishing statistics, and explores the likely consequences of this under-the-radar trend. If you want to understand the movement that is reshaping our country, read this groundbreaking book.
Policy change is not predictable from election results or public opinion. The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking.
