Sandinista Narratives

Sandinista Narratives is an analysis of the role of agency in the Nicaraguan Revolution and its aftermath. Jean-Pierre Reed argues that the insurrection in Nicaragua was shaped by political contingency, action-specific subjectivity, and popular culture. He also examines how Sandinista ideology contributed to state-building in Nicaragua while tracing the role of post-revolutionary Sandinismo as a political identity.

This book traces the process through which Nicaraguans defeated US aggression in a highly unequal confrontation.

Astrid Bothmann examines historical, political and socioeconomic factors that explain the absence of transitional justice in Nicaragua from 1990 to 2012. The author provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons for the lack of transitional justice in Nicaragua after the end of the Sandinista regime and the civil war (1990). Contrary to other Latin American states of the third wave of democratization, which put the perpetrators of past crimes on trial, established truth commissions, purged political and military officials, and made reparations to the victims, Nicaragua’s first post-war government opted for a policy of national reconciliation that was based on amnesty and oblivion. Subsequent governments followed this course so that the past has not been dealt with until today.

This book shows how dominant narratives have shaped the national security policies of the United States.

Previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly, this volume assesses the nature, power, role and function of names in global politics and the international media. Names are not objective, they accrue subjective associations, for example 'Terrorist' has a very different connotation to 'Freedom-fighter'. The contributors seek the truth beneath the names assigned in an effort to remove the obscurity created by the power of 'the politics of naming' to the reality of the situation, taking examples from Al Qaeda, Russia's demonization of the Chechens and naming in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, among other important contemporary debates. Terrorism and the Politics of Naming makes a substantial contribution towards elucidating the power of naming in the discourse of conflict and will be of great interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, political theory, and politics and the media.

Based on extensive participant observation and ethnographic research, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of early conflict between Miskitu Indians and the Sandinista government, and their subsequent partial reconciliation.

Rhetoric, Media, and the Narratives of US Foreign Policy: Making Enemies studies the process of communicating threats to the US public and explores when and why the American public believes another country or regime is a threat. Through a comparative and historical study, the author focuses on how the media environment enables and constrains rhetorical strategies deployed to construct, reproduce, and change narratives about a threat. Recent literature on threat inflation, securitization, and critical security studies returned to the concept of "threat." Building on this renewed conceptual attention, this book examines why and how policy makers and other public figures, in particular the President, convince the public about a threat and will be of interest to students and academics in the disciplines of political science, international relations, foreign policy, security studies, and contemporary history.

An ethnographic account of indigenous artisans in Nicaragua and the complex ways they have understood and constructed their own identity from the period of the Sandanistas to the present.