Rival Visions

The emergence of the early American republic as a new nation on the world stage conjured rival visions in the eyes of leading statesmen at home and attentive observers abroad. Thomas Jefferson envisioned the newly independent states as a federation of republics united by common experience, mutual interest, and an adherence to principles of natural rights. His views on popular government and the American experiment in republicanism, and later the expansion of its empire of liberty, offered an influential account of the new nation. While persuasive in crucial respects, his vision of early America did not stand alone as an unrivaled model. The contributors to Rival Visions examine how Jefferson’s contemporaries—including Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall—articulated their visions for the early American republic. Even beyond America, in this age of successive revolutions and crises, foreign statesmen began to formulate their own accounts of the new nation, its character, and its future prospects. This volume reveals how these vigorous debates and competing rival visions defined the early American republic in the formative epoch after the revolution.

The authors of this book set out on an expedition of sorts to study rival hypothesis thinking or "rivaling," an important literate practice in which people explore open questions through an analysis of multiple perspectives and evidence.

The emergence of the early American republic as a new nation on the world stage conjured rival visions in the eyes of leading statesmen at home and attentive observers abroad. Thomas Jefferson envisioned the newly independent states as a federation of republics united by common experience, mutual interest, and an adherence to principles of natural rights. His views on popular government and the American experiment in republicanism, and later the expansion of its empire of liberty, offered an influential account of the new nation. While persuasive in crucial respects, his vision of early America did not stand alone as an unrivaled model. The contributors to Rival Visions examine how Jefferson's contemporaries--including Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall--articulated their visions for the early American republic. Even beyond America, in this age of successive revolutions and crises, foreign statesmen began to formulate their own accounts of the new nation, its character, and its future prospects. This volume reveals how these vigorous debates and competing rival visions defined the early American republic in the formative epoch after the revolution.

Goethe’s 1832 poem Faust offers a vision of humanity realising freedom and prosperity through transcending natural adversity. Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development returns to Faust as a way of exploring the rise and fall of European humanist aspirations to build free and prosperous national political communities protected from natural disasters. Faust stories emerged in early modern Europe linked to the shaking of the traditional religious and political order, and the pursuit of new areas of human knowledge and activity which led to a shift from viewing disasters as acts of God to acts of nature. Faust’s dam building and land reclamation project in Goethe’s poem was inspired by Dutch hydro-engineering and in turn inspired others. Faustian dreams of an engineered future were pursued by the American Yugoslav inventor Nikola Tesla and the country of his birth towards establishing its national independence and escaping the fate of being a borderland. Faust remains a compelling reference point to explore European visions of disaster and development. If Faust captured the European spirit of earlier centuries, what is today’s outlook? Ambitious Faustian development visions to eradicate natural disasters have been replaced by anti-Faustian risk cosmopolitanism sceptical towards human activity in ways counter to building collective protection from disaster. Tesla’s country of birth fears returning to being an insecure borderland of Europe. This powerful and timely book calls for a rekindling of European humanism and Faust’s vision of ‘free people standing on free land’.

There is within the corporate world an evolving international restructuring race,between industrial complexes,that is set to intensify over the coming years.An industrial complex consists of suppliers,distributors,governments,financiers and trade unions.It is the reorganisation of the relationship between the core firm and the above components that is set to change before very long. In this book, Winfied Ruigrok and Rob van Tulder address many current debates on topics such as "Post-Fordism","globalisation" and "lean production".They also identify a number pf rival internationalisation strategies that have been adopted by different companies.Moreover,they present an abundance of new,as well as historical data,on the world's one hundred largest core companies.This data shows that none of the largest core firms is truly "global" or "borderless",and that virtually all of them in their history have benefited decisively from Governmental trade or industrial policies. The authors offer a highly interdisciplinary effort to link three previously isolated debates on industrial restructuring,globalisation and international trade policies.The Logic of International Restructuring is aimed at a wide academic,post-graduate and professional audience working in the areas of business,economics,organisational studies and international relations.

Political elites have been evading the causes of climate change through deceptive fixes. Their market-type instruments such as carbon trading aim to incentivise technological innovation which will supposedly decarbonize or replace dominant high-carbon systems. In practice this techno-market framework has perpetuated climate change and social injustices, thus provoking public controversy. Using this opportunity, social movements have counterposed low-carbon, resource-light, socially just alternatives. Such transformative mobilisations can fulfil the popular slogan, ‘System Change Not Climate Change’. This book develops key critical concepts through case studies such as GM crops, biofuels, waste incineration and Green New Deal agendas.

Now that Reagan's achievements and failures have become more obvious, it is time for a new nonpartisan appraisal of his leadership and its impact on the nation. That is precisely what John Sloan delivers. Sloan focuses especially on the questions raised in the highly polemical debates between conservatives and liberals concerning Reagan's economic policies. He gives equal time to both sides, showing how liberals were wrong in their predictions of gloom, while conservatives continue to grant Reagan more credit and status than he deserves.

This book focuses on the attempts of three asceticsÑJohn Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus ConfessorÑto determine the ChurchÕs power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.