Examines contemporary development theory and discourse and explores its relationship to processes of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa. Focuses on the emergence and implementation of the good governance discourse. Draws on examples from four countries to demonstrate the impact of structural adjustment on economic and social conditions and describes the activities of democracy movements opposed to adjustment programmes. Concludes that the good governance agenda has been largely unsuccessful in promoting stable multi-party democracies in Africa.
Global politics is a crowded stage of players competing for power and authority. Who is in charge of what? How do they stay in charge and what are the effects? This volume raises these questions in case studies on regimes of torture and surveillance in women's rights, border control, media, global capital and religion.
Voicing the Silences of Social and Cognitive Justice: Dartmouth Dialogues represents another transformative dialogue that results from a political project that was designed to prepare critical, transformative leaders, policy makers, and analysts in South Coast Massachusetts. In this volume, a diverse group of scholars debates crucial issues within and beyond our field, in an effort to help develop a multiplicity of analyses dissecting the challenges facing a strong epistemologically just theory and pedagogy of society. The volume explores why it has been historically difficult to produce a hegemonic critical theory and pedagogy of society. The volume also examines how social justice has been de-politicized from the cultural politics of everyday life through teacher-proof curricula that ‘forces’ a segregated uniformity; examines the multi-dimensional nature of language within relationships of power and discourses of reproduction, production, and resistance; unpacks how democracy has been challenged by an eugenic educational system; dissects the impact of corporate models of education on learning processes; examines how the use of zero tolerance policies in the U.S.’s public schools has led to the criminalization of non-violent acts within the nation’s public schools, thereby creating oppressed student populations; unveils how alternative proficiency assessment is not a good measure of student progress; and dissects the rationale behind standardized testing and its corresponding profits, suggesting other motives for high-stakes testing mandates. “In these challenging times, João Paraskeva and Elizabeth Janson’s book lifted me up with its sharp theoretical and historical critique of education from elementary schools through doctoral programs. Every chapter provided original critiques of the dominant neoliberal approach to organizing schools and society and provided ideas for how to challenge anti-intellectualism and neoliberalism. As a long time teacher of every level and subject, I appreciated the empirical research and detailed narrative descriptions of programs and classes. I know I will keep the book nearby as I reread chapters helping me to both expand my theoretical critique and critical practice. A must read for all educators really committed with critical transformative leadership.” – David Hursh, Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, author of, most recently, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education
Despite being one of the world's most vibrant democracies, police estimate between five and ten percent of the murders in South Africa result from vigilante violence. This is puzzling given the country's celebrated transition to democracy and massive reform of the state's legal institutions. Where most studies explain vigilantism as a response to state or civic failure, in Contradictions of Democracy, Nicholas Rush Smith illustrates that vigilantism is actually a response to the processes of democratic state formation. In the context of densely networked neighborhoods, vigilante citizens often interpret the technical success of legal institutions-for instance, the arrest and subsequent release of suspects on bail-as failure and work to correct such perceived failures on their own. Smith also shows that vigilantism provides a new lens through which to understand democratic state formation. Among young men of color in some parts of South Africa, fear of extra-judicial police violence is common. Amid such fear, instead of the state seeming protective, it can appear as something akin to a massive vigilante organization. An insightful look into the high rates of vigilantism in South Africa and the general challenges of democratic state building, Contradictions of Democracy explores fundamental questions about political order, the rule of law, and democratic citizenship.
Drawing on the rich resources of the ten-volume series of The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science, this one-volume distillation provides a comprehensive overview of all the main branches of contemporary political science: political theory; political institutions; political behavior; comparative politics; international relations; political economy; law and politics; public policy; contextual political analysis; and political methodology. Sixty-seven of the top political scientists worldwide survey recent developments in those fields and provide penetrating introductions to exciting new fields of study. Following in the footsteps of the New Handbook of Political Science edited by Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann a decade before, this Oxford Handbook will become an indispensable guide to the scope and methods of political science as a whole. It will serve as the reference book of record for political scientists and for those following their work for years to come.
The book outlines, in a sweeping continental survey and with telling detail, how the democratic commitment has transformed Africa's legacy of dictatorship, military regimes and single-party rule. Yet, at the same time as 'we are all democrats now', Ake shows how cleverly conservative autocrats have stolen the democratic message and subverted its promise. The danger of trivializing democracy into successive multi-party elections, where one narrow elite succeeds another, is a real one in present-day Africa, and the book spells out the hazards that lie ahead for nascent democratic movements at the grassroots.
"Through a study of the mobilization of the Italian and British labor movements during World War I, this book explores whether war advances democracy. It explains why Italy descended into fascism and Britain made minimal democratic advances" --
Perhaps the most commonly held assumption in the field of development is that middle classes are the bounty of economic modernization and growth. As countries gradually transcend their agrarian past and become urbanized and industrialized, so the logic goes, middle classes emerge and gain in number, complexity, cultural influence, social prominence, and political authority. Yet this is only half the story. Middle classes shape industrial and economic development, they are not merely its product; the particular ways in which middle classes shape themselves - and the ways historical conditions shape them - influence development trajectories in multiple ways. This is the story of South Korea's and Taiwan's economic successes and Argentina's and Mexico's relative 'failures' through an examination of their rural middle classes and disciplinary capacities. Can disciplining continue in a context where globalization squeezes middle classes and frees capitalists from the state and social contracts in which they have been embedded?
CHOICE 1998 Outstanding Academic Books For both teachers and the public, school discipline and classroom management are acute problems in contemporary schools, often taking precedence over issues of curriculum and pedagogy. Yet, surprisingly, discipline and management have escaped sustained critical analysis. This book is a unique, heuristic effort to break the silence regarding modes of classroom control, explicitly bringing democratic, moral, and political perspectives to bear on the issues. It analyzes classroom relationships in terms of ethical and political considerations, arguing that current behaviorist and "teacher-tricks" approaches to classroom control fundamentally contradict expectations of moral development and democratic ends. Classroom Discipline in American Schools rekindles a debate that has atrophied in the last several decades. It invites teachers and scholars in many fields to examine the moral stances and politics that are enacted daily through the implicit curriculum of mainstream modes of control, and to create new frameworks more consonant with the aspirations and ideals of democratic life.
This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.
