Refining Expertise

Refining Expertise PDF Author: Gwen Ottinger
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762611
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Winner of the 2015 Rachel Carson Prize presented by the Society for Social Studies of Science Residents of a small Louisiana town were sure that the oil refinery next door was making them sick. As part of a campaign demanding relocation away from the refinery, they collected scientific data to prove it. Their campaign ended with a settlement agreement that addressed many of their grievances—but not concerns about their health. Yet, instead of continuing to collect data, residents began to let refinery scientists' assertions that their operations did not harm them stand without challenge. What makes a community move so suddenly from actively challenging to apparently accepting experts' authority? Refining Expertise argues that the answer lies in the way that refinery scientists and engineers defined themselves as experts. Rather than claiming to be infallible, they began to portray themselves as responsible—committed to operating safely and to contributing to the well-being of the community. The volume shows that by grounding their claims to responsibility in influential ideas from the larger culture about what makes good citizens, nice communities, and moral companies, refinery scientists made it much harder for residents to challenge their expertise and thus re-established their authority over scientific questions related to the refinery's health and environmental effects. Gwen Ottinger here shows how industrial facilities' current approaches to dealing with concerned communities—approaches which leave much room for negotiation while shielding industry's environmental and health claims from critique—effectively undermine not only individual grassroots campaigns but also environmental justice activism and far-reaching efforts to democratize science. This work drives home the need for both activists and politically engaged scholars to reconfigure their own activities in response, in order to advance community health and robust scientific knowledge about it.

Refining Expertise

Refining Expertise PDF Author: Gwen Ottinger
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762611
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the 2015 Rachel Carson Prize presented by the Society for Social Studies of Science Residents of a small Louisiana town were sure that the oil refinery next door was making them sick. As part of a campaign demanding relocation away from the refinery, they collected scientific data to prove it. Their campaign ended with a settlement agreement that addressed many of their grievances—but not concerns about their health. Yet, instead of continuing to collect data, residents began to let refinery scientists' assertions that their operations did not harm them stand without challenge. What makes a community move so suddenly from actively challenging to apparently accepting experts' authority? Refining Expertise argues that the answer lies in the way that refinery scientists and engineers defined themselves as experts. Rather than claiming to be infallible, they began to portray themselves as responsible—committed to operating safely and to contributing to the well-being of the community. The volume shows that by grounding their claims to responsibility in influential ideas from the larger culture about what makes good citizens, nice communities, and moral companies, refinery scientists made it much harder for residents to challenge their expertise and thus re-established their authority over scientific questions related to the refinery's health and environmental effects. Gwen Ottinger here shows how industrial facilities' current approaches to dealing with concerned communities—approaches which leave much room for negotiation while shielding industry's environmental and health claims from critique—effectively undermine not only individual grassroots campaigns but also environmental justice activism and far-reaching efforts to democratize science. This work drives home the need for both activists and politically engaged scholars to reconfigure their own activities in response, in order to advance community health and robust scientific knowledge about it.

Above the Law

Above the Law PDF Author: Matthew Whitaker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684510651
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Matthew Whitaker came to Washington to serve as chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and following Sessions’s resignation, he was appointed Acting Attorney General of the United States. A former football player at the University of Iowa who had been confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. Attorney, Whitaker was devoted to the ideals of public service and the rule of law. But what he found when he led the Department of Justice on behalf of President Trump were bureaucratic elites with an agenda all their own. The Department of Justice had been steered off course by a Deep State made up of Washington insiders who saw themselves as above the law. Recklessly inverting, bending, and breaking the law to achieve their own political goals, they relentlessly undermined the Constitution by flaunting the rightful authority of a President they despised. Whitaker was an outsider with a desire to see justice done and democracy work. In his straightforward new book, Above the Law, he provides a stunning account of what he found in the swamp that is Washington. Whitaker reveals: • How former FBI Director James Comey and top figures in the Justice Department openly worked against President Trump • How the Deep State relies on the complicity of the mainstream media to achieve its ends • How the Deep State—drawing on elite universities and corporate law firms—perpetuates itself, keeping a small clique of people in power to ensure that nothing ever changes • How Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian collusion quickly concluded there was no evidence of wrong- doing by the President or his campaign but nevertheless produced a massive report that was intended as an act of political subversion If you had any doubts that the Deep State actually exists, that it perpetuates a government of insiders, and that it inexorably pursues a political agenda of its own, then you will find Whitaker’s first-person account eye-opening and utterly convincing.

Doing Justice

Doing Justice PDF Author: Preet Bharara
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525521135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
*A New York Times Bestseller* An important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our survival as a society—from the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, and host of the Doing Justice podcast. Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, he argues, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws both in our justice system and in human nature. Bharara uses the many illustrative anecdotes and case histories from his storied, formidable career—the successes as well as the failures—to shed light on the realities of the legal system and the consequences of taking action. Inspiring and inspiringly written, Doing Justice gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can help us achieve truth and justice in our daily lives. Sometimes poignant and sometimes controversial, Bharara's expose is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system as well as in our society.

United States Code

United States Code PDF Author: United States
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1722

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Book Description


A Predictable Tragedy

A Predictable Tragedy PDF Author: Daniel Compagnon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
When the southern African country of Rhodesia was reborn as Zimbabwe in 1980, democracy advocates celebrated the defeat of a white supremacist regime and the end of colonial rule. Zimbabwean crowds cheered their new prime minister, freedom fighter Robert Mugabe, with little idea of the misery he would bring them. Under his leadership for the next 30 years, Zimbabwe slid from self-sufficiency into poverty and astronomical inflation. The government once praised for its magnanimity and ethnic tolerance was denounced by leaders like South African Nobel Prize-winner Desmond Tutu. Millions of refugees fled the country. How did the heroic Mugabe become a hated autocrat, and why were so many outside of Zimbabwe blind to his bloody misdeeds for so long? In A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe Daniel Compagnon reveals that while the conditions and perceptions of Zimbabwe had changed, its leader had not. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was a cold tactician with no regard for human rights. Through eyewitness accounts and unflinching analysis, Compagnon describes how Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) built a one-party state under an ideological cloak of antiimperialism. To maintain absolute authority, Mugabe undermined one-time ally Joshua Nkomo, terrorized dissenters, stoked the fires of tribalism, covered up the massacre of thousands in Matabeleland, and siphoned off public money to his minions—all well before the late 1990s, when his attempts at radical land redistribution finally drew negative international attention. A Predictable Tragedy vividly captures the neopatrimonial and authoritarian nature of Mugabe's rule that shattered Zimbabwe's early promises of democracy and offers lessons critical to understanding Africa's predicament and its prospects for the future.

Shadow Vigilantes

Shadow Vigilantes PDF Author: Paul H. Robinson
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633884317
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"This book examines many examples of how the community has responded when the justice system is perceived to fail."--Book jacket.

Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice

Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice PDF Author: Nevin Reda
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228002966
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Since the 1980s, Muslim women reformers have made great strides in critiquing and reinterpreting the Islamic tradition. Yet these achievements have not produced a significant shift in the lived experience of Islam, particularly with respect to equality and justice in Muslim families. A new approach is needed: one that examines the underlying instruments of tradition and explores avenues for effecting change. In Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice leading intellectuals and emerging researchers grapple with the problem of entrenched positions within Islam that affect women, investigating the processes by which interpretations become authoritative, the theoretical foundations upon which they stand, and the ways they have been used to inscribe and enforce gender limitations. Together, they argue that the Islamic interpretive tradition displays all the trappings of canonical texts, canonical figures, and canon law – despite the fact that Islam does not ordain religious authorities who could sanction processes of canonization. Through this lens, the essays in this collection offer insights into key issues in Islamic feminist scholarship, ranging from interreligious love, child marriage, polygamy, and divorce to stoning, segregation, seclusion, and gender hierarchies. Rooting their analysis in the primary texts and historical literature of Islam, contributors to Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice contest oppressive interpretative canons, subvert classical methodologies, and provide new directions in the ongoing project of revitalizing Islamic exegesis and its ethical and legal implications.

The Big Truth

The Big Truth PDF Author: Major Garrett
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635767865
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A Revelatory Account Of The 2020 Election—The Most Secure, Verifiable, And Transparent In American History—And The Heroes Brave Enough To Get It Right The Big Truth illuminates a crowning achievement in America’s quest for a robust democracy in the face of slander by sore losers and opportunists. Filled with interviews of the guardians of democracy—election workers, January 6th Committee members Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and more—it is an overpowering counterattack against the Big Lie. CBS Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett and National Election Expert David Becker, the Executive Director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, reveal why Big Lie “fraud” allegations evaporate under scrutiny. They report what actually happened in 2020 while calling out each Trumpian misdirection designed to con and beguile Americans into chasing phantom allegations of election crimes. The 2020 election was not what Trumpist deniers claim. Our political parties knew the rules and procedures. We had record turnout and few election snarls. The result: an accurate count, a seven-million-vote margin of victory, 306 electoral votes for Joe Biden, and Republican gains in congressional and state races. But then-President Trump stoked paranoia—never looking for evidence, contesting results even before anyone cast a ballot, and seeking to bend our system until it almost broke with a violent Capitol riot. The Big Lie—the true corruption of American democracy—has shaken our confidence in stable self-government. On the heels of voter-fraud claims, the Capitol siege, and damaging voting laws, the next midterm and presidential election will test our democracy more severely than at any time since the Civil War. How we react may well determine if we are led into another war against ourselves. The Big Truth debunks the 2020 election conspiracy myth once and for all, while celebrating those who held up our democracy under arguably the most intense scrutiny in American electoral history.

Justice and Righteousness

Justice and Righteousness PDF Author: Henning Graf Reventlow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567046354
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This volume publishes the symposium papers of a joint conference held in Bochum, Germay in 1990 between the University of Tel Aviv, Israel, and the University of the Ruhr, Bochum. The aim of the conference was to show that the close cooperation of Jewish and Christian biblical scholars can help both sides to a deeper understanding of their common biblical heritage. This collection focuses in particular on the theme of 'Justice and Righteousness'. This volume is also a Festschrift for Benjamin Uffenheimer, who was instrumental in forming the symposium.

Civility and Subversion

Civility and Subversion PDF Author: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521627238
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This 1998 book provides a sophisticated alternative to existing accounts of the role of the intellectual in modern democracy. Arguing that society suffers from a systemic deliberation deficit, Jeffrey Goldfarb explores the potential of the intellectual as democratic agent, at once civilizing political contestation and subverting complacent consensus. The sentimental Leftist view of the intellectual as guardian of democracy and the demonising Rightist view of the intellectual as obstructor of progress, are both shown to be flawed. Instead, intellectuals are portrayed as special kinds of 'strangers' who pay careful attention to their critical faculties, equipping them uniquely to address the most pressing issues of today. Professor Goldfarb deploys classical and contemporary social theory to analyse a diverse set of intellectuals in action, from Socrates in fifth-century Athens to Malcolm X and Toni Morrison in twentieth-century America, and, drawing on personal acquaintance, the political dissidents in Communist and post-Communist Central Europe.