The Politics Of The Trail

A history of conflict on display through a morning commute through Jerusalem

The modern race for the presidency has become a national sport. We've seen the baby-kissing, the barbecues, and the photo-ops; news cameras have taken us inside Iowan living rooms leading up to the caucuses, and they've given us a bird's-eye view of the grand halls of political conventions. But what is it like to be on the inside of this spectacle? What happens when the candidate is your closest family member? In her account of her father's bid for the presidency, Alexandra Kerry brings us inside the bubble. Her words and images lend an intimacy to our often overblown politics as she sheds light on some of the contradictions, ironies, and saving graces of our electoral process and our country.

Each day, as Oded Löwenheim commutes by mountain bike along dirt trails and wadis in the hills of Jerusalem to Hebrew University, he feels a strong emotional connection to his surroundings. But for him this connection also generates, paradoxically, feelings and emotions of confusion and estrangement. In The Politics of the Trail, Löwenheim confronts this tension by focusing on his encounters with three places along the trail: the separation fence between Israel and the Palestinians; the ruins of the Palestinian village Qalunya, demolished in 1948; and the trail connecting the largest 9/11 memorial site outside the U.S. with a top-secret nuclear-proof bunker for the Israeli cabinet. He shares the stories of the people he meets along the way and considers how his own subjectivity is shaped by the landscape and culture of conflict. Moreover, he deconstructs, challenges, and resists the concepts and institutions that constitute such a culture and invites conversation about the idea of conflict as a culture.

This is a book about the politics of representative democracy, written from the perspective of the politicians who make it work. Typically, political scientists study campaigns from the perspective of the voter and for the purpose of explaining election outcomes. But campaigns also need to be studied from the perspective of the candidate, for the purpose of understanding representation. Richard F. Fenno, Jr., traveled with ten U.S. senators as they campaigned in their home states-using what he calls the "drop in/drop out, tag along/hang around" method of research-to present a developmental picture of their activities. His focus here is on three such activities—pursuing a career, campaigning for office, and building constituency connections. Taken together, the three constitute the political underpinnings of representative democracy. Fenno describes the achievement, the testing, and the maintenance of representational relationships. He examines challengers and incumbents, winners and losers, and motivations, strategies, and behaviors; and he reports on differences, similarities, and patterns among them. In studying the candidates' varied careers, campaigns, and connections in stages and sequences and in depth—and in allowing us to hear them reflect on these experiences—Fenno has been able to offer rare insights into campaigns and elections, insights very different from conventional ones that concentrate on the behavior of voters. In its focus on the process of representative democracy, Senators on the Campaign Trail offers a rich, rounded, developmental view of some high-level individuals who work at the business of representation. For scholars, the book suggests some qualitative confirmation and added stimulation in forging generalizations about politicians. For citizens, the book argues for replacing the conventional blanket condemnation of our politicians, so prevalent today, with more discriminating judgments about what they do, and why and to what purpose they do it.

The autobiography of the first native person elected to federal office in Canada.

Kepel has traveled throughout the Muslim world gathering documents, interviews, and archival materials, in order to give readers a comprehensive understanding of the scope of Islamist movements, their past, and their present. 7 maps.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction: The Place of The Hour of the Furnaces in World Cinema (and in the Political World) -- Chapter 1: To Invent Our Revolution: An Aesthetic-Political Analysis of The Hour of the Furnaces -- Chapter 2: Fanon and The Hour of the Furnaces -- Chapter 3: A Look from Literature on Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's The Hour of the Furnaces -- Chapter 4: Popular Music and Political Militancy in The Hour of the Furnaces -- Chapter 5: The Hour of the Furnaces' Sexualized History -- Chapter 6: The Hour of the Furnaces, May 68, and the Pesaro International Film Festival -- Chapter 7: Tracing the Winding Road of The Hour of the Furnaces in the First World -- Chapter 8: Trails of Ink: An Approximation to the Historiography on The Hour of the Furnaces -- Chapter 9: The Dialogue between The Hour of the Furnaces and the Tradition of Argentine Documentary -- Chapter 10: Solanas' Recent Documentaries -- Chapter 11: Experimenting with TV: The Hour of the Furnaces at the Crossroads of Cinematic Experimentalism and Video Art -- Chapter 12: The Hour of the Furnaces as an Essay Film -- Afterthoughts on The Hour of the Furnaces -- Contributors -- Back Cover.

The author examines his stormy relationship with his mother, describing her role as a pioneering woman journalist, the lavish political soirees that marked his parents' marriage, and his feelings about his mother's perpetual absence throughout his youth.