Legitimizing The Order

The various strategies as to how the Ottoman sultans and the ruling elite tried to inculcate their understanding of authority and legitimacy into the Ottoman population are the focus of the articles in this collected volume.

In recent years, we have witnessed the mushrooming of pro- democracy and protest movements not only in the Arab world, but also within Europe and the Americas. Such movements have ranged from popular upheavals, like in Tunisia and Egypt, to the organization of large-scale demonstrations against unpopular policies, as in Spain, Greece and Poland. What connects these different events are not only their democratic aspirations, but also their innovative forms of communication and organization through online means, which are sometimes considered to be outside of the State’s control. At the same time, however, it has become more and more apparent that countries are attempting to increase their understanding of, and control over, their citizens’ actions in the digital sphere. This involves striving to develop surveillance instruments, control mechanisms and processes engineered to dominate the digital public sphere, which necessitates the assistance and support of private actors such as Internet intermediaries. Examples include the growing use of Internet surveillance technology with which online data traffic is analysed, and the extensive monitoring of social networks. Despite increased media attention, academic debate on the ambivalence of these technologies, mechanisms and techniques remains relatively limited, as is discussion of the involvement of corporate actors. The purpose of this edited volume is to reflect on how Internet-related technologies, mechanisms and techniques may be used as a means to enable expression, but also to restrict speech, manipulate public debate and govern global populaces. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics.

This timely and original volume fills the gaps in the existing theoretical and philosophical literature on international relations by problematizing civilization as a new unit of research in global politics. It interrogates to what extent and in what ways civilization is becoming a strategic frame of reference in the current world order. The book complements and advances the existing field of study previously dominated by other approaches – economic, national, class-based, racial, and colonial – and tests its key philosophical suppositions against countries that exhibit civilizational ambitions. The authors are all leading international scholars in the fields of political theory, IR, cultural analysis, and area studies who deal with various aspects of the civilizational arena. Offering key chapters on ideology, multipolarity, modernity, liberal democracy, and capitalism, this book extends the existing methodological, theoretical, and empirical debates for IR and area studies scholars globally. It will be of great interest to politicians, public opinion makers, and all those concerned with the evolution of world affairs.

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of social psychological research on inequality for a graduate student and professional audience. Drawing on all of the major theoretical traditions in sociological social psychology, its chapters demonstrate the relevance of social psychological processes to this central sociological concern. Each chapter in the volume has a distinct substantive focus, but the chapters will also share common emphases on: • The unique contributions of sociological social psychology • The historical roots of social psychological concepts and theories in classic sociological writings • The complementary and conflicting insights that derive from different social psychological traditions in sociology. This Handbook is of interest to graduate students preparing for careers in social psychology or in inequality, professional sociologists and university/college libraries.

The Alawis or Alawites are a minority Muslim sect, predominantly based in Syria, Turkey and Lebanon. Over the course of the 19th century, they came increasingly under the attention of the ruling Ottoman authorities in their attempts to modernize the Empire, as well as Western Protestant missionaries. Using Ottoman state archives and contemporary chronicles, this book explores the Ottoman government's attitudes and policies towards the Alawis, revealing how successive regimes sought to bring them into the Sunni mainstream fold for a combination of political, imperial and religious reasons. In the context of increasing Western interference in the empire's domains, Alkan reveals the origins of Ottoman attempts to 'civilize' the Alawis, from the Tanzimat period to the Young Turk Revolution. He compares Ottoman attitudes to Alawis against its treatment of other minorities, including Bektashis, Alevis, Yezidis and Iraqi Shi'a. An important new contribution to the literature on the history of the Alawis and Ottoman policy towards minorities, this book will be essential reading for scholars of the late Ottoman Empire and minorities of the Middle East.

The contributors to this collection offer seven case studies that treat different aspects of political and ritual legitimation in China and Europe over the past two millennia. With a primary focus on crisis and change, the contributors analyze how rulers and states work to produce a popular political consensus that accepts their rule.

Emerging traits of late global modernity such as transnationalism, multiculturalism, individualization and supranational contexts of action raise the question of what holds society together. Responses have typically made reference to legitimization, but the modern world presents challenges to such responses, for in such a differentiated, globalized setting, legitimization can no longer appeal to the previous national, ideological or religious foundations of early modernity. From a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this book explores the manner in which legitimization can be constructed by people, groups or institutions under the contemporary pressures and possibilities of modern world society. Drawing on cosmopolitan theory, postcolonial sociology, systems theory, and historical sociology, it engages with questions of human rights, processes of individualization and the constitution of transnational spaces in its examination of the challenges to legitimization. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, political science and social and legal theory, concerned with questions of globalization and the problems of social cohesion and legitimacy.

As mankind finds ever more impious ways to kill and maim, some look to non-lethal weapons as a fix. Brian Rappert discusses the technologies involved and the ethics of, for example blinding someone with a laser, leaving them blind forever, versus killing them outright.