Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time

Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time PDF Author: William E. Scheuerman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
"A fine contribution to the literature on the problems of modern liberal democracy."—Choice The pace of American society has quickened exponentially since the Founding Fathers first mapped the constitution. Information travels at the speed of light; so does money. We can hop from one side of the country to the other in a matter of hours, contact our elected officials instantaneously, and share our views with thousands of people at the touch of a button. Both academia and the popular media have grappled with the consequences of this acceleration on every aspect of contemporary life. Most pressing, however, may be its impact on political life. In Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time, William Scheuerman offers a sophisticated assessment of the implications of social and technological celerity in the operation of liberal democracies. Specifically, he asks what is acceleration's main impact on the traditional liberal democratic model of the separation of powers? According to Scheuerman, high speed has created an imbalance. The executive branch was intended to react with dispatch; by contrast, legislatures and the courts were designed to be more deliberate and thoughtful. While this system of checks and balances was effective in the age of horse and buggy, Scheuerman argues that the very features that were these institutions' strengths may now be a liability. Throughout this book, Scheuerman offers a constructive critique which articulates ways in which "liberal democracy might be recalibrated in accordance with the tempo of modern society.

Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time

Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time PDF Author: William E. Scheuerman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A fine contribution to the literature on the problems of modern liberal democracy."—Choice The pace of American society has quickened exponentially since the Founding Fathers first mapped the constitution. Information travels at the speed of light; so does money. We can hop from one side of the country to the other in a matter of hours, contact our elected officials instantaneously, and share our views with thousands of people at the touch of a button. Both academia and the popular media have grappled with the consequences of this acceleration on every aspect of contemporary life. Most pressing, however, may be its impact on political life. In Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time, William Scheuerman offers a sophisticated assessment of the implications of social and technological celerity in the operation of liberal democracies. Specifically, he asks what is acceleration's main impact on the traditional liberal democratic model of the separation of powers? According to Scheuerman, high speed has created an imbalance. The executive branch was intended to react with dispatch; by contrast, legislatures and the courts were designed to be more deliberate and thoughtful. While this system of checks and balances was effective in the age of horse and buggy, Scheuerman argues that the very features that were these institutions' strengths may now be a liability. Throughout this book, Scheuerman offers a constructive critique which articulates ways in which "liberal democracy might be recalibrated in accordance with the tempo of modern society.

Social Acceleration

Social Acceleration PDF Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231148348
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.

Modernity, the Environment, and the Christian Just War Tradition

Modernity, the Environment, and the Christian Just War Tradition PDF Author: Mark Douglas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009098934
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Explicates the way the Christian just war tradition shaped modernity and modernity's blindness to the interpenetration of nature and politics. This book sits uniquely at the intersection of just war thinking, environmental history, and theological ethics.

The Political Value of Time

The Political Value of Time PDF Author: Elizabeth F. Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108329578
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Waiting periods and deadlines are so ubiquitous that we often take them for granted. Yet they form a critical part of any democratic architecture. When a precise moment or amount of time is given political importance, we ought to understand why this is so. The Political Value of Time explores the idea of time within democratic theory and practice. Elizabeth F. Cohen demonstrates how political procedures use quantities of time to confer and deny citizenship rights. Using specific dates and deadlines, states carve boundaries around a citizenry. As time is assigned a form of political value it comes to be used to transact over rights. Cohen concludes with a normative analysis of the ways in which the devaluation of some people's political time constitutes a widely overlooked form of injustice. This book shows readers how and why they need to think about time if they want to understand politics.

Network Democracy

Network Democracy PDF Author: Jared Giesbrecht
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773548548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Network Democracy uses the contemporary tools of ecology and network thinking to unearth the ancient, intellectual ruins of traditional conservative thought. Questioning the West’s veneration of freedom, equality, contractual citizenship, economic progress, cosmopolitanism, secular institutionalism, and reason, Jared Giesbrecht illuminates how these ideals fuel violence and insecurity in our high-speed lives. While the modern age witnesses the rise of a violent conservatism in the form of revolutionary movements enacting terror and vengeance for the interventions of the liberal West, this study reveals a different kind of conservatism - one that has emerged in direct conversation with liberal thought. Giesbrecht highlights the need for intermediate institutions and civil enterprises that form relations and traditions independent of the state in order to develop resistance to the insecurity of the liberal age. This book offers not only a poignant critique, but a constructive and peaceable alternative to the violence of both liberalism and reactionary anti-liberalism. Attuned to the new realities of globalization, advanced technology, and social acceleration, Network Democracy is a masterful hybrid of ancient and cutting-edge political philosophy that casts a new light on the values underlying western civilization.

The Democratic Horizon

The Democratic Horizon PDF Author: Alessandro Ferrara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107035511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Alessandro Ferrara explains what he terms 'the democratic horizon' and reviews the challenges under which democracies must operate.

Global Intellectual Property Protection and New Constitutionalism

Global Intellectual Property Protection and New Constitutionalism PDF Author: Jonathan Griffiths
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198863160
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The constitutionalization of intellectual property law is often framed as a benign and progressive integration of intellectual property with fundamental rights. Yet this is not a full or even an adequate picture of the ongoing constitutionalization processes affecting IP. This collection of essays, written by international experts and covering a range of different areas of intellectual property law, takes a broader approach to the process. Drawing on constitutional theory, and particularly on ideas of "new constitutionalism", the chapters engage with the complex array of contemporary legal constraints on intellectual property law-making. Such constraints arising in international intellectual property law, human rights law (including human rights protection for right-holders), investment treaties, and forms of private ordering. This collection aims to illuminate the complex role of this constitutional framework, by analysing the overlaps, complementarities, and conflicts between such forms of protection and seeking to establish the effects that this assemblage of global and regional norms has on legal reform projects and interpretations of IP law. Some chapters take a broad theoretical perspective on these processes. Others focus on specific situations in which the relationship between intellectual property law and broader constitutional norms is significant. These contexts range from Art 17 of the EU's Digital Single Market Directive, to the implementation of harmonized trade secrets protection, from the role of Canada's Charter of Rights to the impact of the social model of property in Brazil.

Constitutional Sunsets and Experimental Legislation

Constitutional Sunsets and Experimental Legislation PDF Author: Sofia Ranchordás
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783478950
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This innovative book explores the nature and function of 'sunset clauses' and experimental legislation, or temporary legislation that expires after a determined period of time, allowing legislators to test out new rules and regulations within a set time frame and on a small-scale basis.

High-speed Society

High-speed Society PDF Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047704
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Everywhere, life seems to be speeding up: we talk of &“fast food&” and &“speed dating.&” But what does the phenomenon of social acceleration really entail, and how new is it? While much has been written about our high-speed society in the popular media, serious academic analysis has lagged behind, and what literature there is comes more from Europe than from America. This collection of essays is a first step toward exposing readers on this side of the Atlantic to the importance of this phenomenon and toward developing some preliminary conceptual categories for better understanding it. Among the major questions the volume addresses are these: Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all dimensions of life, or is it affecting some more than others? Where is life not speeding up, and what results from this disparity? What are the fundamental causes of acceleration, as well as its consequences for everyday experience? How does it affect our political and legal institutions? How much speed can we tolerate? The volume tackles these questions in three sections. Part 1 offers a selection of astute early analyses of acceleration as experienced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part 2 samples recent attempts at analyzing social acceleration, including translations of the work of leading European thinkers. Part 3 explores acceleration&’s political implications.

Movements in Time

Movements in Time PDF Author: Natalie Churn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443845523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
2011 was a tumultuous year in terms of social protest movements. The Occupy movement spread across the globe with unprecedented support of an enormity not seen since 1968, while revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria and Libya caught the attention of the global media and brought the word “revolution” back into public discussions on social justice and governance. For many people worldwide, it appears that it is time for social, political and economic change. And it is precisely time, in all its forms, which cannot be ignored in this context. As something that surrounds us and affects every aspect of our lives, time is at once a tool for control, for order, for emancipation, for understanding the future and the past, and measuring degrees of freedom and quality of life in the present. This book brings together essays from fields such as politics, cultural studies and philosophy in order to reinterpret and reorient current thinking on the possibilities for new understandings of concepts of time to bring about social change. History as the passing of time, clock time, the exchange value of time, qualitative time, and alternative or marginal notions of temporality are analysed through the lens of various theoretical thinkers and applied to a multitude of political and social case studies. Breaking away from traditional notions of time as linear, and against common socially-constructed understandings of time, these essays suggest that new conceptions of time can have a major influence on creating a more just, tolerant world.