This volume is a successor volume to The Reason of States. Part 1 discusses ways in which to understand the nature, possibility and limits of community beyond the state. Specific chapters are devoted to the practical attempts of statesmen, lawyers, strategists and economists to devise morally defensible international policies on the basis of interest. Part 3 challenges the conventional morality of states from alternative standpoints: Kantian morality, a reconsideration of the contemporary relevance of natural law, an examination of the concept of responsibility in international politics and an analysis of the role of language in the development of communities. .
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Why are some states able to deliver public services to their citizens while others cannot? Why are some states beset by internal conflict that leaves many impoverished? Much of what has become known as the failed states literature attempts to engage with these questions, but does so in way that betrays a particular bias, engaging in advocacy for intervention rather than analysis. The Idea of Failed States directly challenges existing thinking about conventional state strength as it finds that institutional approaches to state strength obscure as much as they reveal. The question of why some states are strong and others weak has traditionally been addressed using measures of economic growth, resources, and quality of life. This book compares the dimensions of state strength characterised by community, society, and nation and uses social capital concepts to further illuminate them. Applying this approach across forty-two countries shows ‘weak’ states exhibiting a consistent and unique patterns of relationships between community, society, and nation as well as equally consistent and unique relationships in strong states. A blend of theory and empirics, The Idea of Failed States present a new way to think about the state – one that applies to both strong and weak alike. This work should be of interest to students and scholars researching social capital, public policy, international development and security studies.
One of the leading thinkers to emerge in the postwar conservative intellectual revival was the sociologist Robert Nisbet. His book The Quest for Community, published in 1953, stands as one of the most persuasive accounts of the dilemmas confronting modern society. Nearly a half century before Robert Putnam documented the atomization of society in Bowling Alone, Nisbet argued that the rise of the powerful modern state had eroded the sources of community—the family, the neighborhood, the church, the guild. Alienation and loneliness inevitably resulted. But as the traditional ties that bind fell away, the human impulse toward community led people to turn even more to the government itself, allowing statism—even totalitarianism—to flourish. This edition of Nisbet’s magnum opus features a brilliant introduction by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and three critical essays. Published at a time when our communal life has only grown weaker and when many Americans display cultish enthusiasm for a charismatic president, this new edition of The Quest for Community shows that Nisbet’s insights are as relevant today as ever.
Focusing especially on the era since the Cold War, political scientists, other scholars, and government officials examine both empirically and conceptually the causes and impacts of people striving for self-determination and autonomy. They consider the legal, political-administrative, ethnic-cultural, economic, and strategic dimensions; and try to consider examples from all major regions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.
Health is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation of dueling public sentiments—all conflicts that are often narrated from a national, top-down view. In All Health Politics Is Local, Merlin Chowkwanyun shifts our focus, taking us to four very different places—New York City, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Central Appalachia—to experience a national story through a regional lens. He shows how racial uprisings in the 1960s catalyzed the creation of new medical infrastructure for those long denied it, what local authorities did to curb air pollution so toxic that it made residents choke and cry, how community health activists and bureaucrats fought over who'd control facilities long run by insular elites, and what a national coal boom did to community ecology and health. All Health Politics Is Local shatters the notion of a single national health agenda. Health is and has always been political, shaped both by formal policy at the highest levels and by grassroots community battles far below.
Although science may claim to be "objective," scientists cannot avoid the influence of their own values on their research. In The State of Nature, Gregg Mitman examines the relationship between issues in early twentieth-century American society and the sciences of evolution and ecology to reveal how explicit social and political concerns influenced the scientific agenda of biologists at the University of Chicago and throughout the United States during the first half of this century. Reacting against the view of nature "red in tooth and claw," ecologists and behavioral biologists such as Warder Clyde Allee, Alfred Emerson, and their colleagues developed research programs they hoped would validate and promote an image of human society as essentially cooperative rather than competitive. Mitman argues that Allee's religious training and pacifist convictions shaped his pioneering studies of animal communities in a way that could be generalized to denounce the view that war is in our genes.
States over the past 500 years have become the dominant institutions on Earth, exercising vast and varied authority over the economic well-being, health, welfare, and very lives of their citizens. This concise and engaging book explains how power became centralized in states at the expense of the myriad of other polities that had battled one another over previous millennia. Richard Lachmann traces the contested and historically contingent struggles by which subjects began to see themselves as citizens of nations and came to associate their interests and identities with states, and explains why the civil rights and benefits they achieved, and the taxes and military service they in turn rendered to their nations, varied so much. Looking forward, Lachmann examines the future in store for states: will they gain or lose strength as they are buffeted by globalization, terrorism, economic crisis and environmental disaster? This stimulating book offers a comprehensive evaluation of the social science literature that addresses these issues and situates the state at the center of the world history of capitalism, nationalism and democracy. It will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and political sciences.
“Concise, clear and convincing. . . a vision for the country as a whole.” —James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review A leading sociologist's brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California Once upon a time, any mention of California triggered unpleasant reminders of Ronald Reagan and right-wing tax revolts, ballot propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, and racist policing that sparked two of the nation's most devastating riots. In fact, California confronted many of the challenges the rest of the country faces now—decades before the rest of us. Today, California is leading the way on addressing climate change, low-wage work, immigrant integration, overincarceration, and more. As white residents became a minority and job loss drove economic uncertainty, California had its own Trump moment twenty-five years ago, but has become increasingly blue over each of the last seven presidential elections. How did the Golden State manage to emerge from its unsavory past to become a bellwether for the rest of the country? Thirty years after Mike Davis's hellish depiction of California in City of Quartz, the award-winning sociologist Manuel Pastor guides us through a new and improved California, complete with lessons that the nation should heed. Inspiring and expertly researched, State of Resistance makes the case for honestly engaging racial anxiety in order to address our true economic and generational challenges, a renewed commitment to public investments, the cultivation of social movements and community organizing, and more.
