Author: Tamas Wells
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048553792
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.
Author: Karen Connelly
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
ISBN: 0385533276
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Orange Prize–winner Karen Connelly’s compelling memoir about her journey to Burma, where she fell in love with a leader of the Burmese rebel army. When Karen Connelly goes to Burma in 1996 to gather information for a series of articles, she discovers a place of unexpected beauty and generosity. She also encounters a country ruled by a brutal military dictatorship that imposes a code of censorship and terror. Carefully seeking out the regime’s critics, she witnesses mass demonstrations, attends protests, interviews detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and flees from police. When it gets too risky for her to stay, Connelly flies back to Thailand, but she cannot leave Burma behind. Connelly’s interest in the political turns more personal on the Thai-Burmese border, where she falls in love with Maung, the handsome and charismatic leader of one of Burma’s many resistance groups. After visiting Maung’s military camp in the jungle, she faces an agonizing decision: Maung wants to marry Connelly and have a family with her, but if she marries this man she also weds his world and his lifelong cause. Struggling to weigh the idealism of her convictions against the harsh realities of life on the border, Connelly transports the reader into a world as dangerous as it is enchanting. In radiant prose layered with passion, regret, sensuality and wry humor, Burmese Lessons tells the captivating story of how one woman came to love a wounded, beautiful country and a gifted man who has given his life to the struggle for political change.
Author: Nicole Curato
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198842481
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
This book is about the ways in which disaster-affected communities perform their misery to secure political gains. It argues that democratic politics can take root in contexts of widespread depravity and dispossession and is a testament to both the resilience and fragility of the democratic project when faced with existential threats.
Author: Sophie Lemière
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048542669
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
Bringing together a group of both international and Malaysian scholars, this book offers an up-to-date and broad analysis of the contemporary state of Malaysian politics and society. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, it offers a look at Malaysian politics not only through the lens of political science but also anthropology, cultural studies, international relations, political economy and legal studies touching on both overlooked topics in Malaysian political life as well as the emerging trends which will shape Malaysia's future. Covering silat martial arts, Malaysia's constitutional identity, emergency legislation, the South China Sea dilemma, ISIS discourse, zakat payment, the fallout from the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia's green movement, Illusions of Democracy charts the complex and multi-faceted nature of political life in a semi-authoritarian state, breaking down the illusions which keep it functioning, to uncover the mechanisms which really underlie the paradoxical longevity of Malaysia's political, economic and social system.
Author: Adriane Lentz-Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
For many of the 200,000 black soldiers sent to Europe with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, encounters with French civilians and colonial African troops led them to imagine a world beyond Jim Crow. They returned home to join activists working to make that world real. In narrating the efforts of African American soldiers and activists to gain full citizenship rights as recompense for military service, Adriane Lentz-Smith illuminates how World War I mobilized a generation. Black and white soldiers clashed as much with one another as they did with external enemies. Race wars within the military and riots across the United States demonstrated the lengths to which white Americans would go to protect a carefully constructed caste system. Inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of self-determination but battered by the harsh realities of segregation, African Americans fought their own “war for democracy,” from the rebellions of black draftees in French and American ports to the mutiny of Army Regulars in Houston, and from the lonely stances of stubborn individuals to organized national campaigns. African Americans abroad and at home reworked notions of nation and belonging, empire and diaspora, manhood and citizenship. By war’s end, they ceased trying to earn equal rights and resolved to demand them. This beautifully written book reclaims World War I as a critical moment in the freedom struggle and places African Americans at the crossroads of social, military, and international history.
Author: Tamas Wells
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789463726153
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
1. Asian Studies Amongst area studies scholars, a number of books examine the axis of struggle between authoritarian governments and citizen movements in Asia, including Ma and Cheng's (2017) work in the Global Asia series. And in Myanmar contests between Burmese military elites, ethnic minorities, and the democracy movement in Myanmar have also been closely examined (Roman and Holliday 2019, Lintner 2012, Callahan, 2003, Steinberg 1990, 2001, Rotberg 1998, Fink 2001, Thawnghmung 2004, Houtman 1999, Sadan 2013). Yet the distinct contribution of this book is in addressing other axes of democratic struggles in Myanmar, those within the democracy movement, and between the movement and its international allies. Walton's 2016 work Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar provides the account most relevant to the contribution of the book, through examining the role of Buddhism in the country's politics and political thinking. Yet this book does not explicitly engage with contemporary activists and political leaders and how meanings of democracy are used as political tools to forward the agenda of particular coalitions of actors. In this sense, Myanmar's other struggles for democracy provides a fresh and unique account of the country's transitions, which will be of interest to readers both theoretically and empirically. 2. Democratization Myanmar's Other Struggles for Democracy engages widely with works from the democratization literature and engages with these volumes theoretically, through extending attention to the role of narrative in meanings of democracy, and empirically, through deeply informed, long-term inquiry into the case of Myanmar. The book draws upon the theoretical works of Whitehead (2002) Democratization, and Kurki (2005) Democratic Futures: Revisioning democracy promotion. The book also sits within an emerging stream of interpretive studies of meanings of democracy that are grounded in in-depth contextual analysis (Frechette 2007, Michelutti 2008, Browers 2006, Bell 2009, Baaz and Lilja 2014, Sadiki 2009, Paley 2001). Of most note is the way that this book extends Schaffer's seminal work Democracy in Translation (1997) by introducing narrative theory into the task of examining meanings of democracy and their contests. 3. Interpretive methodology In illuminating other these struggles for democracy, the book makes innovative use of narrative theory. Narrative theory has been widely drawn on within the social sciences and yet, surprisingly, has not been systematically applied in interpretive studies of meanings of democracy. Myanmar's Other Struggles for Democracy argues that narrative theory can reveal new dimensions to the way democracy is given meaning by political actors. The book uncovers diverging constructions of plot and characters, situates these narratives in the cultural and historical context of Myanmar, and exposes the often-covert conceptual contests between political actors over the meaning of democracy. The book provides a model for the way interpretive scholars in other contexts might use a narrative approach to elucidate contrasting meanings of democracy.
Author: Tim Harper
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674724615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 873
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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A major historian tells the dramatic and untold story of the shadowy networks of revolutionaries across Asia who laid the foundations in the early twentieth century for the end of European imperialism on their continent. This is the epic tale of how modern Asia emerged out of conflict between imperial powers and a global network of revolutionaries in the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century. In 1900, European empires had not yet reached their territorial zenith. But a new generation of Asian radicals had already planted the seeds of their destruction. They gained new energy and recruits after the First World War and especially the Bolshevik Revolution, which sparked utopian visions of a free and communist world order led by the peoples of Asia. Aided by the new technologies of cheap printing presses and international travel, they built clandestine webs of resistance from imperial capitals to the front lines of insurgency that stretched from Calcutta and Bombay to Batavia, Hanoi, and Shanghai. Tim Harper takes us into the heart of this shadowy world by following the interconnected lives of the most remarkable of these Marxists, anarchists, and nationalists, including the Bengali radical M. N. Roy, the iconic Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and the enigmatic Indonesian communist Tan Malaka. He recreates the extraordinary milieu of stowaways, false identities, secret codes, cheap firearms, and conspiracies in which they worked. He shows how they fought with subterfuge, violence, and persuasion, all the while struggling to stay one step ahead of imperial authorities. Underground Asia shows for the first time how Asia’s national liberation movements crucially depended on global action. And it reveals how the consequences of the revolutionaries’ struggle, for better or worse, shape Asia’s destiny to this day. Previous praise for Tim Harper Praise for Forgotten Wars: “[A] compelling book.”—Philip Delves Broughton, Wall Street Journal “Lucid...majestic.”—Peter Preston, The Observer “Authoritative.”—Pankaj Mishra, New Yorker Praise for Forgotten Armies: “Panoramic... Vivid.”—Benjamin Schwarz, New York Times Book Review “A spectacular book.”—Martin Jacques, The Guardian
Author: Edward Aspinall
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732994
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
Democracy for Sale is an on-the-ground account of Indonesian democracy, analyzing its election campaigns and behind-the-scenes machinations. Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot assess the informal networks and political strategies that shape access to power and privilege in the messy political environment of contemporary Indonesia. In post-Suharto Indonesian politics the exchange of patronage for political support is commonplace. Clientelism, argue the authors, saturates the political system, and in Democracy for Sale they reveal the everyday practices of vote buying, influence peddling, manipulating government programs, and skimming money from government projects. In doing so, Aspinall and Berenschot advance three major arguments. The first argument points toward the role of religion, kinship, and other identities in Indonesian clientelism. The second explains how and why Indonesia's distinctive system of free-wheeling clientelism came into being. And the third argument addresses variation in the patterns and intensity of clientelism. Through these arguments and with comparative leverage from political practices in India and Argentina, Democracy for Sale provides compelling evidence of the importance of informal networks and relationships rather than formal parties and institutions in contemporary Indonesia.
Author: Joshua D. Zimmerman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674275853
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 641
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Book Description
The story of the enigmatic Jozef Pilsudski, the founding father of modern Poland: a brilliant military leader and high-minded statesman who betrayed his own democratic vision by seizing power in a military coup. In the story of modern Poland, no one stands taller than Jozef Pilsudski. From the age of sixteen he devoted his life to reestablishing the Polish state that had ceased to exist in 1795. Ahead of World War I, he created a clandestine military corps to fight Russia, which held most Polish territory. After the war, his dream of an independent Poland realized, he took the helm of its newly democratic political order. When he died in 1935, he was buried alongside Polish kings. Yet Pilsudski was a complicated figure. Passionately devoted to the idea of democracy, he ceded power on constitutional terms, only to retake it a few years later in a coup when he believed his opponents aimed to dismantle the democratic system. Joshua Zimmerman’s authoritative biography examines a national hero in the thick of a changing Europe, and the legacy that still divides supporters and detractors. The Poland that Pilsudski envisioned was modern, democratic, and pluralistic. Domestically, he championed equality for Jews. Internationally, he positioned Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1926 he seized power violently, then ruled as a strongman for nearly a decade, imprisoning opponents and eroding legislative power. In Zimmerman’s telling, Pilsudski’s faith in the young democracy was shattered after its first elected president was assassinated. Unnerved by Poles brutally turning on one another, the father of the nation came to doubt his fellow citizens’ democratic commitments and thereby betrayed his own. It is a legacy that dogs today’s Poland, caught on the tortured edge between self-government and authoritarianism.
Author: Stephen Campbell
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501711113
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Border Capitalism, Disrupted -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Map -- Introduction -- 1. Producing the Border -- 2. Capitalist Recuperation -- 3. Mobility Struggles -- 4. Coercive Policing -- 5. Class Recomposition -- 6. Organizing under Flexibilization -- Conclusion -- Postscript -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
