Embodying Democracy

Embodying Democracy analyzes the politics of electoral reform in eight post-communist states including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine. By exploring the multiple factors that shaped the design of electoral institutions during the first ten years of post-communist transition, it accounts for an important element of the post-communist reform process and illuminates general features of institutional design in post-transition states.

Where are all the bodies? Political institutions are populated by living, breathing human beings, who eat, sleep, gesture, desire and suffer. And yet participants of the political realm are often depicted as disembodied minds, detached and distinct from their corporeal existence. Amanda Machin considers six embodied modes of democratic politics: representation, deliberation, disagreement, protest, occupation and counsel. Drawing on diverse thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler, she offers an absorbing illustration of the ways human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics, but the generative subjects of democracy.

Amanda Machin considers six embodied modes of democratic politics: identification, deliberation, disagreement, protest, occupation and counsel. Drawing on diverse thinkers, she offers an absorbing illustration of the ways that human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics but also the generative subjects of democracy.

Embodied Power explores dimensions of politics seldom addressed in political science, illuminating state practices that produce hierarchically-organized groups through racialized gendering—despite guarantees of formal equality. Challenging disembodied accounts of citizenship, the book traces how modern science and law produce race, gender, and sexuality as purportedly natural characteristics, masking their political genesis. Taking the United States as a case study, Hawkesworth demonstrates how diverse laws and policies concerning civil and political rights, education, housing, and welfare, immigration and securitization, policing and criminal justice create finely honed hierarchies of difference that structure the life prospects of men and women of particular races and ethnicities within and across borders. In addition to documenting the continuing operation of embodied power across diverse policy terrains, the book investigates complex ways of seeing that render raced-gendered relations of domination and subordination invisible. From common assumptions about individualism and colorblind perception to disciplinary norms such as methodological individualism, methodological nationalism, and abstract universalism, problematic presuppositions sustain mistaken notions concerning formal equality and legal neutrality that allow state practices of racialized gendering to escape detection with profound consequences for the life prospects of privileged and marginalized groups. Through sustained critique of these flawed suppositions, Embodied Power challenges central beliefs about the nature of power, the scope of state action, and the practice of liberal democracy and identifies alternative theoretical frameworks that make racialized-gendering visible and actionable. Key Features: Demonstrates how understandings of politics change when the experiences of men and women of diverse classes, races, and ethnicities are placed at the center of analysis. Explains why race-neutral and gender-neutral policies fail to eliminate entrenched inequalities. Shows how accredited methods in political science (and the social sciences more generally) mask state practices that create and sustain racial and gender inequality. Traces how mistaken notions of biological determinism have diverted attention from political processes of racialization, gendering, and sexualization. Argues that the intersecting categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality are essential to all subfields of political science if contemporary power is to be studied systematically.

This antiquarian volume contains a comprehensive treatise on democracy and education, being an introduction to the 'philosophy of education'. Written in clear, concise language and full of interesting expositions and thought-provoking assertions, this volume will appeal to those with an interest in the role of education in society, and it would make for a great addition to collections of allied literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Education as a Necessity of Life'; 'Education as a Social Function'; 'Education as Direction'; 'Education as Growth'; 'Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline'; 'Education as Conservative and Progressive'; 'The Democratic Conception in Education'; 'Aims in Education', etcetera. We are republishing this vintage book now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

The Anabaptist tradition, originating as part of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, has from its beginning presented an alternative approach to Christian faith. Jesus-centered Anabaptist convictions such as pacifism, simple living, and community remain of vital concern for twenty-first-century Christians. Embodying the Way of Jesus: Anabaptist Convictions for the Twenty-First Century traces the origins and historical expressions of Anabaptist faith and then suggests ways Anabaptist convictions speak to our contemporary world. Ted Grimsrud proposes a fourfold approach to interpreting Anabaptist theology, considering themes from the Bible, from the tradition's history, from present experience, and from envisioning a hopeful future. What emerges is an engaging portrait of a living tradition that speaks with urgency and relevance to a world badly in need of a message of peace.

In a world where privatisation and capitalism dominate the global economy, the essays in this book ask how to make socially responsive communication, design and art that counters the role of the food industry as a machine of consumption. Food Democracy brings together contributions from leading international scholars and activists, critical case studies of emancipatory food practices and reflections on possible models for responsive communication design and art. A section of visual communication works, creative writings and accounts of participatory art for social and environmental change – curated by the Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Communication and Art on the theme of "Food Democracy" – are also included here. The beautifully designed book also includes a unique and delicious compilation of socially engaged recipes by the academic, artist and activist community. Aiming not just to advance scholarship, but to push ahead real change in the world, Food Democracy is essential reading for scholars and citizens alike.

Freedom in the World is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The methodology of this survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories.