Keeping Democracy at Bay

Keeping Democracy at Bay PDF Author: Suzanne Pepper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742508774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
This thoroughly researched study provides an invaluable account of Hong Kong's political evolution from its founding as a British colony to the present. Exploring the interplay between colonial, capitalist, communist, and democratic forces in shaping Hong Kong's political institutions and culture, Suzanne Pepper offers a fresh perspective on the territory's development and a gripping account of the transition from British to Chinese rule. The author carries her narrative forward through the lives of significant figures, capturing the personalities and issues central to understanding Hong Kong's political history. Bringing a balanced view to her often contentious subject, she places Hong Kong's current partisan debates between democrats and their opponents within the context of China's ongoing search for a viable political form. The book considers Beijing's increasing intervention in local affairs and focuses on the challenge for Hong Kong's democratic reformers in an environment where ultimate political power resides with the communist-led mainland government and its appointees.

Keeping Democracy at Bay

Keeping Democracy at Bay PDF Author: Suzanne Pepper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742508774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Get Book Here

Book Description
This thoroughly researched study provides an invaluable account of Hong Kong's political evolution from its founding as a British colony to the present. Exploring the interplay between colonial, capitalist, communist, and democratic forces in shaping Hong Kong's political institutions and culture, Suzanne Pepper offers a fresh perspective on the territory's development and a gripping account of the transition from British to Chinese rule. The author carries her narrative forward through the lives of significant figures, capturing the personalities and issues central to understanding Hong Kong's political history. Bringing a balanced view to her often contentious subject, she places Hong Kong's current partisan debates between democrats and their opponents within the context of China's ongoing search for a viable political form. The book considers Beijing's increasing intervention in local affairs and focuses on the challenge for Hong Kong's democratic reformers in an environment where ultimate political power resides with the communist-led mainland government and its appointees.

Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Cafe

Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Cafe PDF Author: M. Henderson Ellis
Publisher: New Europe Books
ISBN: 0982578199
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Not long ago, John Shirting--quiet young Chicagoan, wizard of self-medication--held down a beloved job as a barista at Capo Coffee Family, a coffee chain and global business powerhouse. When he is deemed "too passionate" about his job, he is let go. Shirting makes it his mission to return to the frothy Capo's fold by singlehandedly breaking into a new market and making freshly post-communist Prague safe for free-market capitalism. Unfortunately, his college nemesis, Theodore Mizen, a certified socialist, has also moved there, and is determined to reverse the Velvet Revolution, one folk song at a time. After Shirting experiences the loss of his sole "new-hire" -- a sad, arcade game-obsessed prostitute -- it is not long before his grasp on his mission and, indeed, his sanity, comes undone, leaving him at the mercy of two-bit Mafiosi, a pair of Golem trackers, and his own disgruntled phantom. A dazzling combination of Everything is Illuminated and Don Quixote, with a jigger of Confederacy of Dunces, and Lord of the Barnyard, Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Café is the first novel to so exquisitely capture the ambiance of expat Prague. Poised to be an underground classic, it asks: what does it mean to be sane in a fast-changing world? From the Trade Paperback edition.

C Street

C Street PDF Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316179736
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
C Street - where piety, politics, and corruption meet Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside the C Street House, the Fellowship residence known simply by its Washington, DC address. The house has lately been the scene of notorious political scandal, but more crucially it is home to efforts to transform the very fabric of American democracy. And now, after laying bare its tenants' past in The Family, Sharlet reports from deep within fundamentalism in today's world, revealing that the previous efforts of religious fundamentalists in America pale in comparison with their long-term ambitions. When Barack Obama entered the White House, headlines declared the age of culture wars over. In C Street, Sharlet shows why these conflicts endure and why they matter now - from the sensationalism of Washington sex scandals to fundamentalism's long shadow in Africa, where Ugandan culture warriors determined to eradicate homosexuality have set genocide on simmer. We've reached a point where piety and corruption are not at odds but one and the same. Reporting with exclusive sources and explosive documents from C Street, the war on gays in Uganda, and the battle for the soul of America's armed forces - waged by a 15,000-strong movement of officers intent on "reclaiming territory for Christ in the military" Sharlet reveals not the last gasp of old-time religion but the new front lines of fundamentalism.

Hong Kong Documentary Film

Hong Kong Documentary Film PDF Author: Ian Aitken
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 074866470X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Described as the 'lost genre', the tradition of documentary film making in Hong Kong is far less known than its martial arts films. However documentary film has always existed in Hong Kong and often trenchantly represents its troubled relationship to itself, China and the west. Including the period of colonial film-making, the high points of television documentary and the tradition of independent documentary film-making, this book is the first to present a comprehensive study of this lost genre. It explores the role of public-service television (including representations of the massacre at Tiananmen Square) and presents critical analysis of key films. Based on original archival research, it will be an invaluable resource for students and academics who work in the fields if film studies, colonial studies and Hong Kong cinema.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology PDF Author: Edwin Amenta
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111925065X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology is a complete reference guide, reflecting the scope and quality of the discipline, and highlighting emerging topics in the field. Global in focus, offering up-to-date topics from an interdisciplinary, international set of scholars addressing key issues concerning globalization, social movements, and citizenship The majority of chapters are new, including those on environmental politics, international terrorism, security, corruption, and human rights Revises and updates all previously published chapters to include new themes and topics in political sociology Provides an overview of scholarship in the field, with chapters working independently and collectively to examine the full range of contributions to political sociology Offers a challenging yet accessible and complete reference guide for students and scholars

Decolonisation in the age of globalisation

Decolonisation in the age of globalisation PDF Author: Chi-kwan Mark
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526171317
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
In the 1980s, Britain actively engaged with China in order to promote globalisation and manage Hong Kong’s decolonisation. Influenced by neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher saw Britain as a global trading nation, which was well placed to serve China’s reform. During the negotiations over Hong Kong’s future, British diplomats aimed to educate the Chinese in free-market capitalism. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping held an alternative vision of globalisation, one that privileged sovereignty and socialism over market liberalism and democracy. By drawing extensively upon the declassified British archives along with Chinese sources, this book explores how Britain and China negotiated for Hong Kong’s future, and how Anglo-Chinese relations flourished after 1984 but suffered a setback as a result of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. This original study argues that Thatcher was a pragmatic neoliberal, and the British diplomacy of ‘educating’ China yielded mixed results.

The Art of Being Free

The Art of Being Free PDF Author: Mark Reinhardt
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501743066
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The "art of being free" is an essential part of democracy. It involves, Mark Reinhardt believes, bringing into being the multiple spaces in and practices through which individuals and groups help to constitute their lives, their selves, their worlds. Americans are presently witnessing a contraction of officially sanctioned spaces for citizen action. It is now crucial, Reinhardt argues, to identify ways of opening new spaces for the direct practice of democratic politics. Reinhardt treats the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt as exemplary sources for an expansion of political possibility. These writers indicate where and how the new spaces can be brought into being, and they reveal acts of making space as some of the prime moments of politics. Reinhardt's extended readings of these writers, never previously treated together, are quite unlike the familiar understandings of their thought. "Taking liberties," he brings the literary and political sensibility usually associated with postmodernism to a sympathetic if critical encounter with eminently modern thinkers. The result is a strong and idiosyncratic book, accessible and stylish, that mixes acute readings of canonical thinkers with more practical applications and illustrations. Reinhardt combines attention to textual detail and nuance with concern for contemporary politics, discussing as an unusually inventive example the AIDS activist group ACT UP.

Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists: 1937–1997

Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists: 1937–1997 PDF Author: C. Chu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230113915
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This book examines Chinese Communist activities in Hong Kong from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the handover in 1997. It reveals a peculiar part of Chinese Communist history, and traces six decades of astounding united front between the Chinese Communists and the Hong Kong tycoons and upper-class business elite.

Memory and Modern British Politics

Memory and Modern British Politics PDF Author: Matthew Roberts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350190489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
This edited collection explores absence, presence and remembrance in British political culture and memory studies. Comprehensive in its scope, it covers the entire modern period, bringing together the 19th and 20th centuries as well as Britain, Ireland and the Atlantic World. As the first comparative and in-depth study to explore the central and contested place of memory and the invention of tradition in modern British politics, chapters include memorialisation, statue-mania, anniversaries and on the wider impact and invoking of 'dead generations'. In doing so, this book provides a new, exciting and accessible way of engaging with the history of British political culture.

Hong Kong Society

Hong Kong Society PDF Author: Stephen WK Chiu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811657076
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This book borrows the concept of “high-definition” from digital broadcasting to highlight our unique approach to Hong Kong society, which gives a sharper image than analyses. It intends to highlight contrasts with many common and taken-for-granted stories, myths and representations of Hong Kong— which often presented with a low level of detail, lacking proper connections between grounded personal experiences and the macro social context. With chapters covering various salient dimensions of Hong Kong’s society, including migration, economy, inequality, identity and social movements, our “high-definition” approach presents images with high enough “resolution” to match multiple layers of experiences from walks of life of Hong Kong people, contributing to an understanding of how global transformation impacts local people’s experiences, as well as Hong Kong’s significance in the regional and global system.