Captives of Sovereignty

Captives of Sovereignty PDF Author: Jonathan Havercroft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503502
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes.

Captives of Sovereignty

Captives of Sovereignty PDF Author: Jonathan Havercroft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503502
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes.

The Captive and the Gift

The Captive and the Gift PDF Author: Bruce Grant
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501702866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands.In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film. Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders.Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence. The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.

Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson PDF Author: Rowlandson
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528785886
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description
Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of the “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (1682). Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637-1711), nee Mary White, was born in Somerset, England. Her family moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the United States, and she settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts, marrying in 1656. It was here that Native Americans attacked during King Philip’s War, and Mary and her three children were taken hostage. This text is a profound first-hand account written by Mary detailing the experiences and conditions of her capture, and chronicling how she endured the 11 weeks in the wilderness under her Native American captors. It was published six years after her release, and explores the themes of mortal fragility, survival, faith and will, and the complexities of human nature. It is acknowledged as a seminal work of American historical literature.

Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage

Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage PDF Author: Sherwin K. Bryant
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469607735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
In this pioneering study of slavery in colonial Ecuador and southern Colombia--Spain's Kingdom of Quito--Sherwin Bryant argues that the most fundamental dimension of slavery was governance and the extension of imperial power. Bryant shows that enslaved black captives were foundational to sixteenth-century royal claims on the Americas and elemental to the process of Spanish colonization. Following enslaved Africans from their arrival at the Caribbean port of Cartagena through their journey to Quito, Bryant explores how they lived during their captivity, formed kinships and communal affinities, and pressed for justice within a slave-based Catholic sovereign community. In Cartagena, officials branded African captives with the royal insignia and gave them a Catholic baptism, marking slaves as projections of royal authority and majesty. By licensing and governing Quito's slave trade, the crown claimed sovereignty over slavery, new territories, natural resources, and markets. By adjudicating slavery, royal authorities claimed to govern not only slaves but other colonial subjects as well. Expanding the diaspora paradigm beyond the Atlantic, Bryant's history of the Afro-Andes in the early modern world suggests new answers to the question, what is a slave?

The Politics of HBO's The Wire

The Politics of HBO's The Wire PDF Author: Shirin Deylami
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136025928
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This innovative new work suggests that The Wire reflects, not simply a cultural take on contemporary America, but a structural critique of the conditions of late-modernity and global capitalism. As such, it is a visual text worth investigating and exploring for its nuanced examination of power, difference and inequality. Deylami & Havercroft bring together nine essays addressing issues of interest to a range of academic fields in order to engage with this important cultural intervention that has transfixed audiences and sparked debate within the social scientific community. While the TV show is primarily focused upon the urban politics of Baltimore, the contributors to this volume read Baltimore as a global city. That is, they argue that the relations between race, class, power, and violence that the series examines only make sense if we understand that inner city Baltimore is a node in a larger global network of violence and economic inequality. The book is divided into three interrelated sections focusing on systemic and cultural violence, the rise and decline of national and state formations, and the dysfunctional and destructive forces of global capitalism. Throughout the series the relation of the urban to the global is constantly being explored. This innovative new volume explains clearly how The Wire portrays this interaction, and what this representation can show social scientists interested in race, neo-liberal processes of globalization, criminality, gender, violence and surveillance.

Hobbes Today

Hobbes Today PDF Author: S. A. Lloyd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139851330
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century brings together an impressive group of political philosophers, legal theorists and political scientists to investigate the many ways in which the work of Thomas Hobbes, the famed seventeenth-century English philosopher, can illuminate the political and social problems we face today. Its essays demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Hobbes' political thought on such issues as justice, human rights, public reason, international warfare, punishment, fiscal policy and the design of positive law, among others. The volume's contributors include both Hobbes specialists and philosophers bringing their expertise to consideration of Hobbes' texts for the first time. This volume will stimulate renewed interest in Hobbes studies among a new generation of thinkers.

Sovereignty as Symbolic Form

Sovereignty as Symbolic Form PDF Author: Jens Bartelson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317685830
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
This book is a critical inquiry into sovereignty and argues that the meaning and functions performed by this concept have changed significantly during the past decades, with profound implications for the ontological status of the state and the modus operandi of the international system as a whole. Although we have grown accustomed to regarding sovereignty as a defining characteristic of the modern state and as a constitutive principle of the international system, Sovereignty as Symbolic Form argues that recent changes indicate that sovereignty has been turned into something granted, contingent upon its responsible exercise in accordance with the norms and values of an imagined international community. Hence we need a new understanding of sovereignty in order to clarify the logic of its current usage in theory and practice alike, and its connection to broader concerns of social ontology: what kind of world do we inhabit, and of what kind of entities is this world composed? This book will be of interest to students of International Relations, Critical Security and International Politics.

Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty

Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty PDF Author: Bruce Clark
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773562540
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The cornerstone of Clark's argument is the 1763 Royal Proclamation which forbade non-natives under British authority to molest or disturb any tribe or tribal territory in British North America. Clark contends that this proclamation had legislative force and that, since imperial law on this matter has never been repealed, the right to self-government continues to exist for Canadian natives.

Silent Cells

Silent Cells PDF Author: Anthony Ryan Hatch
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452960941
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
A critical investigation into the use of psychotropic drugs to pacify and control inmates and other captives in the vast U.S. prison, military, and welfare systems For at least four decades, U.S. prisons and jails have aggressively turned to psychotropic drugs—antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives, and tranquilizers—to silence inmates, whether or not they have been diagnosed with mental illnesses. In Silent Cells, Anthony Ryan Hatch demonstrates that the pervasive use of psychotropic drugs has not only defined and enabled mass incarceration but has also become central to other forms of captivity, including foster homes, military and immigrant detention centers, and nursing homes. Silent Cells shows how, in shockingly large numbers, federal, state, and local governments and government-authorized private agencies pacify people with drugs, uncovering patterns of institutional violence that threaten basic human and civil rights. Drawing on publicly available records, Hatch unearths the coercive ways that psychotropics serve to manufacture compliance and docility, practices hidden behind layers of state secrecy, medical complicity, and corporate profiteering. Psychotropics, Hatch shows, are integral to “technocorrectional” policies devised to minimize public costs and increase the private profitability of mass captivity while guaranteeing public safety and national security. This broad indictment of psychotropics is therefore animated by a radical counterfactual question: would incarceration on the scale practiced in the United States even be possible without psychotropics?

Politics, Metaphysics, and Death

Politics, Metaphysics, and Death PDF Author: Andrew Norris
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386739
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is having an increasingly significant impact on Anglo-American political theory. His most prominent intervention to date is the powerful reassessment of sovereignty and the politics of life and death laid out in his multivolume Homo Sacer project. Agamben argues that in both the modern world and the ancient, politics inevitably involves a sovereign decision that bans some individuals from the political and human communities. For Agamben, the Nazi concentration camps—in which some inmates are reduced to a form of living death—are not a political aberration but instead the place where this essential political decision about life most clearly reveals itself. Engaging specifically with Homo Sacer, the essays in this collection draw out and contend with the wide-ranging implications of Agamben’s radical and controversial interpretation of modern political life. The contributors analyze Agamben’s thought from the perspectives of political theory, philosophy, jurisprudence, and the history of law. They consider his work not only in relation to that of his major interlocutors—Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger—but also in relation to the thought of Plato, Pindar, Heraclitus, Descartes, Kafka, Bataille, and Derrida. The essayists’ approaches are varied, as are their ultimate evaluations of the cogency and accuracy of Agamben’s arguments. This volume also includes an original essay by Agamben in which he considers the relation of Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” to Schmitt’s Political Theology. Politics, Metaphysics, and Death is a necessary, multifaceted exposition and evaluation of the thought of one of today’s most important political theorists. Contributors: Giorgio Agamben, Andrew Benjamin, Peter Fitzpatrick, Anselm Haverkamp, Paul Hegarty, Andreas Kalyvas, Rainer Maria Kiesow , Catherine Mills, Andrew Norris, Adam Thurschwell, Erik Vogt, Thomas Carl Wall