Alternate Civilities

Alternate Civilities PDF Author: Robert Paul Weller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429982003
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Alternate Civilities is an anthropologist's answer to the argument that China's cultural tradition renders it incapable of achieving an open political system. Robert Weller draws on his knowledge of both China and Taiwan to show how such sweeping claims fail to take account of potential democratic stimuli among local-level associations such as business organizations, religious groups, environmental movements, and women's networks. These groups were pivotal in Taiwan's democratic transition, and they are thriving in the new free space that has opened up in China. They do not promise a clone of Western civil society, but they do show the possibility of an alternate civility.

Alternate Civilities

Alternate Civilities PDF Author: Robert Paul Weller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429982003
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
Alternate Civilities is an anthropologist's answer to the argument that China's cultural tradition renders it incapable of achieving an open political system. Robert Weller draws on his knowledge of both China and Taiwan to show how such sweeping claims fail to take account of potential democratic stimuli among local-level associations such as business organizations, religious groups, environmental movements, and women's networks. These groups were pivotal in Taiwan's democratic transition, and they are thriving in the new free space that has opened up in China. They do not promise a clone of Western civil society, but they do show the possibility of an alternate civility.

Sufi Civilities

Sufi Civilities PDF Author: Annika Schmeding
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503637549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Despite its pervasive reputation as a place of religious extremes and war, Afghanistan has a complex and varied religious landscape where elements from a broad spectrum of religious belief vie for a place in society. It is also one of the birthplaces of a widely practiced variant of Islam: Sufism. Contemporary analysts suggest that Sufism is on the decline due to war and the ideological hardening that results from societies in conflict. However, in Sufi Civilities, Annika Schmeding argues that this is far from a truthful depiction. Members of Sufi communities have worked as resistance fighters, aid workers, business people, actors, professors, and daily workers in creative and ingenious ways to keep and renew their networks of community support. Based on long-term ethnographic field research among multiple Sufi communities in different urban areas of Afghanistan, the book examines navigational strategies employed by Sufi leaders over the past four decades to weather periods of instability and persecution, showing how they adapted to changing conditions in novel ways that crafted Sufism as a force in the civil sphere. This book offers a rare on-the-ground view into how Sufi leaders react to moments of transition within a highly insecure environment, and how humanity shines through the darkness during times of turmoil.

The Civil Sphere in East Asia

The Civil Sphere in East Asia PDF Author: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108427839
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Examines a range of contemporary social and cultural conflicts in East Asia and the echoes they have throughout the world.

Against Civility

Against Civility PDF Author: Alex Zamalin
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807026549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
The first history of racial injustice to examine how civility and white supremacy are linked, and a call for citizens who care about social justice to abandon civility and practice civic radicalism The idea and practice of civility has always been wielded to silence dissent, repress political participation, and justify violence upon people of color. Although many progressives today are told that we need to be more polite and thoughtful, less rancorous and angry, when we talk about race in America, civility maintains rather than disrupts racial injustice. Spanning two hundred years, Zamalin’s accessible blend of intellectual history, political biography, and contemporary political criticism shows that civility has never been neutral in its political uses and impacts. The best way to tackle racial inequality is through “civic radicalism,” an alternative to civility found in the actions of Black radical leaders including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde. Civic radicals shock and provoke people. They name injustice and who is responsible for it. They protest, march, strike, boycott, and mobilize collectively rather than form alliances with those who fundamentally oppose them. In Against Civility, citizens who care deeply about racial and socioeconomic equality will see that they need to abandon this concept of discreet politeness when it comes to racial justice and instead more fully support disruptive actions and calls for liberation, which have already begun with movements like #MeToo, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and Black Lives Matter.

Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society

Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society PDF Author: Simone Chambers
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691220131
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
The idea of civil society has long been central to the Western liberal-democratic tradition, where it has been seen as a crucial site for the development and pursuit of basic liberal values such as individual freedom, social pluralism, and democratic citizenship. This book considers how a host of other ethical traditions define civil society. Unlike most studies of the subject, which focus on a particular region or tradition, it considers a range of ethical traditions rarely addressed in one volume: libertarianism, critical theory, feminism, liberal egalitarianism, natural law, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Confucianism. It considers the extent to which these traditions agree or disagree on how to define civil society's limits and how to evaluate its benefits and harms. A variety of distinguished advocates and interpreters of these traditions present in-depth explorations of how these various traditions think of ethical pluralism within societies, asking how a society should respond to diversity among its members. Together they produce a work rich with original insights on a wide range of subjects about which little has been written to date. An excellent starting point for a comparative ethics of civil society, this book concludes that while the concept of civil society originated in the liberal tradition, it is quickly becoming an important focus for a truly cross-cultural dialogue. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Michael Banner, Hasan Hanafi, Loren E. Lomasky, Richard Madsen, Michael A. Mosher, Michael Pakaluk, Anne Philips, Adam B. Seligman, Suzanne Last Stone, and Michael Walzer.

Religion in Global Civil Society

Religion in Global Civil Society PDF Author: Mark Juergensmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195188357
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The worlds religions are becoming increasingly globalized. One can no longer equate particular faiths with corresponding geographic locations. Islam is as much a south or southeast Asian religion as it is a middle eastern one. And Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while it declines in Europe. In addition to these major population shifts, small communities of adherents of every religion are scattered across the globe, where they mingle with and adapt to local cultures.What are we to make of this new religious world? The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions offers a comprehensive look at world religious societies in their contemporary global diversity. Comprising 60 essays, each by a leading scholar, the volume focuses on communities rather than beliefs, symbols, or rites. Communities in the diaspora and at the periphery are covered, as well as the central geographic regions of all the major living religious traditions. It is organized into six sections: the Indic cultural region, the Buddhist/Confucian, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim regions, and the African cultural region. In each section an introductory essay discusses the social development of that religious tradition historically. The other essays cover the basic social factsthe communitys size, location, organizational and pilgrimage centers, authority figures, patterns of governance, major subgroups and schismsas well as issues regarding boundary maintenance, political involvement, role in providing cultural identity, and encounters with modernity.The worlds religious communities are more diverse than ever before, and there is no other volume that covers the tremendous variety of faith communities discussed in this Handbook. This volume will be indispensable to anyone interested in contemporary religion.

Civil Society Networks in China and Vietnam

Civil Society Networks in China and Vietnam PDF Author: A. Wells-Dang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230380212
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This book brings a fresh, original approach to understand social action in China and Vietnam through the conceptual lens of informal environmental and health networks. It shows how citizens in non-democratic states actively create informal pathways for advocacy and the development of functioning civil societies.

Civil Society and Political Change in Asia

Civil Society and Political Change in Asia PDF Author: Muthiah Alagappa
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804750974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
A systematic investigation of the connection between civil society and political change in Asia - change toward open, participatory, and accountable politics. Its findings suggest that the link between a vibrant civil society and democracy is indeterminate: certain civil society organizations support democracy; thers could undermine it.

Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China

Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China PDF Author: Susanne Brandtstädter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315391937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book examines facets of popular politics that are, above all, animated by a quest for justice as law, fairness and public virtue. The aim is to better understand how "the political" emerges in the interstices of state law and local moralities. The contributors to the book focus on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law, and between ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage,’ to explore how the common quest for justice, which takes on state slogans but cannot be absorbed by state institutions, changes Chinese society from the bottom-up by creating self-reflective new publics.

State-centric to Contested Social Governance in Korea

State-centric to Contested Social Governance in Korea PDF Author: Hyuk-Rae Kim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113512518X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In this interdisciplinary study of governance, Hyuk-Rae Kim traces how civil society and NGOs have evolved over time, how they differ in motivation from their Western counterparts, and the role civil society NGOs have played in consolidating democracy as the governance system in Korea changes from a state-centric to a contested one. This book presents civil society's rise in Korea through in-depth analyses of today's most pressing issues, in order to chart the shifting role of a formerly state-centric to a contested governance system in modern Korea. With detailed case studies and policy discussions, this book explores the role of NGOs in campaigning for political reform and the eradication of political corruption; the provision of public goods and services; challenging the government’s policies on migration; tackling the issue of North Korean refugees and human rights; and the provision of regional environmental governance. These case studies demonstrate that the state is no longer the sole guardian and provider of public institutions and goods and underline the growing role of civil society in Korea. Both a study of contested governance and an exploration of contemporary Korean society, this book will be of imminent interest to students and scholars alike of Korean politics, East Asian politics, governance, and civil society.