We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times.... —from The Soul at Work
The pirate is the original enemy of humankind. As Cicero famously remarked, there are certain enemies with whom one may negotiate and with whom, circumstances permitting, one may establish a truce. But there is also an enemy with whom treaties are in vain and war remains incessant. This is the pirate, considered by ancient jurists to be "the enemy of all."
Public controversies over issues ranging from global warming to biotechnology have politicized scientific expertise and research. Some respond with calls for restoring a golden age of value-free science. More promising efforts seek to democratize science. But what does that mean? Can it go beyond the typical focus on public participation? How does the politics of science challenge prevailing views of democracy?
Guns and Butter examines the causes and consequences of war from a political economy perspective, taking as its premise that a consideration of the incentives and constraints faced by individuals and groups is paramount in understanding conflict decision making. The chapter authors—leading economists and political scientists—believe that this perspective offers deeper insights into war and peace choices than the standard state-centric approach. Their contributions offer both theoretical and empirical support for the political economy perspective on conflict.
Democracy is not in steady state, and democratizations are open-ended processes; they depend on structures and functions in systemic contexts that idiosyncratically evolve in tone, tenor, direction, and pace over time. They affect and are affected by scores of determinants, both perceived and hypothetical. In interlinked chapters that span a number of disciplines, this volume reexamines the basic traits, the comparable outcomes, and the self-defining dynamics of some of the more widely attempted versions of democracy across the world.
This volume examines continuities and change in the normative underpinnings of both ancient and modern practices of political governance, public duties, private virtues, and personal rights and responsibilities. As such, it stands at the multi-disciplinary intersection between the practice of democratic citizenship and the exercise of political ethics.
Some philosophers conceive freedom as a state; others view it as an ideal. A songwriter sees it as a way of life: "Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free." The embattled statesman and the political idealist perceive causal links among personal freedoms, societal democracy, and global peace. In this cross-disciplinary volume, interlinked contributions reassess and rephrase the conceptualizations and theorizations of freedom and their applicability to daily life.
The ongoing expansion in the field of citizenship studies is one of the most important and remarkable recent trends in social sciences and humanities research. Some scholars raise questions about citizenship within a larger critique of liberalism and its institutions; others point to citizenship's inherently exclusionary nature. This volume examines—without advocating any ideological agenda—the evolving meaning of citizenship, with an eye to the future.
On any given night cable TV news will tell us how polarized American politics is: Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Canada. But in fact, writes Peter Wenz in Beyond Red and Blue, Americans do not divide neatly into two ideological camps of red/blue, Republican/Democrat, right/left. If they did, what could explain Republicans who oppose the Patriot Act and support gay marriage, or liberals and conservatives who agree over genetic engineering?
The unprecedented military, economic, and political power of the United States has led some observers to declare that we live in a unipolar world in which America enjoys primacy or even hegemony. At the same time public opinion polls abroad reveal high levels of anti-Americanism, and many foreign governments criticize U.S. policies. Primacy and Its Discontents explores the sources of American primacy, including the uses of U.S. military power, and the likely duration of unipolarity.
