The Dictator's Dilemma

The Dictator's Dilemma PDF Author: Bruce Dickson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190228571
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Many observers predicted the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, and again following the serial collapse of communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Their prediction, however, never proved true. Despite minor setbacks, China has experienced explosive economic growth and relative political stability ever since 1989. In The Dictator's Dilemma, eminent China scholar Bruce Dickson provides a comprehensive explanation for regime's continued survival and prosperity. Dickson contends that the popular media narrative of the party's impending implosion ignores some basic facts. The regime's policies may generate resentment and protest, but the CCP still enjoys a surprisingly high level of popular support. Nor is the party is not cut off from the people it governs. It consults with a wide range of specialists, stakeholders, and members of the general public in a selective yet extensive manner. Further, it tolerates and even encourages a growing and diverse civil society, even while restricting access to it. Today, the majority of Chinese people see the regime as increasingly democratic even though it does not allow political competition and its leaders are not accountable to the electorate. In short, while the Chinese people may prefer change, they prefer that it occurs within the existing political framework. In reaching this conclusion, Dickson draws upon original public opinion surveys, interviews, and published materials to explain why there is so much popular support for the regime. This basic stability is a familiar story to China specialists, but not to those whose knowledge of contemporary China is limited to the popular media. The Dictator's Dilemma, an engaging synthesis of how the CCP rules and its future prospects, will enlighten both audiences, and will be essential for anyone interested in understanding China's increasing importance in world politics.

The Dictator's Dilemma

The Dictator's Dilemma PDF Author: Bruce Dickson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190228571
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many observers predicted the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, and again following the serial collapse of communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Their prediction, however, never proved true. Despite minor setbacks, China has experienced explosive economic growth and relative political stability ever since 1989. In The Dictator's Dilemma, eminent China scholar Bruce Dickson provides a comprehensive explanation for regime's continued survival and prosperity. Dickson contends that the popular media narrative of the party's impending implosion ignores some basic facts. The regime's policies may generate resentment and protest, but the CCP still enjoys a surprisingly high level of popular support. Nor is the party is not cut off from the people it governs. It consults with a wide range of specialists, stakeholders, and members of the general public in a selective yet extensive manner. Further, it tolerates and even encourages a growing and diverse civil society, even while restricting access to it. Today, the majority of Chinese people see the regime as increasingly democratic even though it does not allow political competition and its leaders are not accountable to the electorate. In short, while the Chinese people may prefer change, they prefer that it occurs within the existing political framework. In reaching this conclusion, Dickson draws upon original public opinion surveys, interviews, and published materials to explain why there is so much popular support for the regime. This basic stability is a familiar story to China specialists, but not to those whose knowledge of contemporary China is limited to the popular media. The Dictator's Dilemma, an engaging synthesis of how the CCP rules and its future prospects, will enlighten both audiences, and will be essential for anyone interested in understanding China's increasing importance in world politics.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma PDF Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143038583
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

Dynamics of Culture

Dynamics of Culture PDF Author: J. Zvi Namenwirth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315512165
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1987, is a landmark contribution to macrosociology that extends the tradition of Sorokin, Durkheim, Marx, Weber and other founders of the discipline in new and exciting directions. Using their innovative content analysis methodology to examine American and British political documents, the authors show that the long-term dynamics of culture are subject to their own laws and are independent of the actions of 'great men' and other individual actors. This comprehensive volume brings together over two decades of the authors' research on culture indicators. Key findings include the identification of two long-term cultural cycles in the United States and Great Britain: one is related to party realignments, the other to long-term economic fluctuations. In addition, the authors demonstrate how culture provides the themes that political parties use to interpret economic conditions in their appeal for votes. Other results show that organizational cultures move in opposite directions from those in the culture of the larger society. The book also includes detailed discussions of both the methodology used to analyse text content and related metatheoretical issues in the study of cultural dynamics.

Routledge Library Editions: Cultural Studies

Routledge Library Editions: Cultural Studies PDF Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315459965
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1881

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Book Description
This seven volume set reissues a collection of out-of-print titles covering a range of responses to modern culture. They include in-depth analyses of US and Australian popular culture, works on the media and television, macrosociology, and the media and ‘otherness’. Taken together, they provide stimulating and thought-provoking debate on a wide range of topics central to many of today’s cultural controversies.

The Comedy of Survival

The Comedy of Survival PDF Author: Joseph W. Meeker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
With imagination and flair, the author also introduces the idea of a play ethic, as opposed to a work ethic, and demonstrates the importance of play as a necessary and desirable component of the comic spirit. The Comedy of Survival is a book for literary critics, environmentalists, human ecologists, philosophers, and anthropologists. General readers, too, will find much to ponder in the author's clear explication of how all of us might become better stewards of this, our home planet Earth.

Hegemony or Survival

Hegemony or Survival PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429900210
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
From the world's foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow The United States is in the process of staking out not just the globe but the last unarmed spot in our neighborhood-the heavens-as a militarized sphere of influence. Our earth and its skies are, for the Bush administration, the final frontiers of imperial control. In Hegemony or Survival , Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky dissects America's quest for global supremacy, tracking the U.S. government's aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve "full spectrum dominance" at any cost. He lays out vividly how the various strands of policy-the militarization of space, the ballistic-missile defense program, unilateralism, the dismantling of international agreements, and the response to the Iraqi crisis-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our survival. In our era, he argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland. Lucid, rigorous, and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival promises to be Chomsky's most urgent and sweeping work in years, certain to spark widespread debate.

Capitallessism

Capitallessism PDF Author: Anthony Horvath, PhD
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1503554503
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
About the Book: a blueprint for national E-conomy. 5 STAR rating by Pacific Book Review. MICHAEL MOORE tells us his new movie will change America. OUR BOOK WILL TELL YOU HOW MY BOOK TRAILER CAPITALLESSISM proposes : a strong free-enterprise-based democratic national E-conomy model when no capital is available, either because of a crisis or by speculations. ..scientific solutions for a capital-less public cooperative banking system. .economic engineering to create a commodity-based virtual-capital, .a national public bank, .a nationalized artificial capital creation process called fractional-reserve-banking rights, licensed back to banks (in return for sharing the created public-E-capital with the government), and various processes to activate its E-capital circulation, This is not Socialism, nor Communism. It is COMMUNITY-ISM based on human and spiritual values where inequalities will still exist resulting from individual efforts, but everybody has a fair financial starting chance for free enterprise. Some of our controversial ideas are not politically right. Austerity is outdated. The nature of national debts may be reexamined. It is inspired by Roosevelts second bill of rights and Edisons visions of a commodity-based currency. Our MACRO-MODEL is inspired by our efficient blood circulatory system, which provides oxygen to trillions of cells. We copy this for an efficient E-capital circulation model to assure survival and to sustain everyones productivity. www.capitallessism.com Excerpts Pacific Book Review www.pacificbookreview.com: .CAPITALlessISM, interestingly compares our economic system to a biological circulatory system. . the prototype for economic engineesring. . is a mindset of a macro-model for redesigning our inefficient national economy. . that remedies a lack of capitalThe human factor and spiritual God element are fundamental. . a decrease of inequalities among people and an emphasis on democracy, .Benefit ..includes the cancellation of most national debts Excerpts the U.S. review of Books http://www.theusreview.com/: innovative and thought-provoking book, .. a new economic model, one that can function where no capital is available and that embraces the concept of "community-ism.". his synthesis of various models is unique..

A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival

A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival PDF Author: Michael Sudduth
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137440945
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Sudduth provides a critical exploration of classical empirical arguments for survival arguments that purport to show that data collected from ostensibly paranormal phenomena constitute good evidence for the survival of the self after death. Utilizing the conceptual tools of formal epistemology, he argues that classical arguments are unsuccessful.

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research PDF Author: Society for Psychical Research (London, England)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parapsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description


The Dilemmas of Wonderland

The Dilemmas of Wonderland PDF Author: Yakov Ben-Haim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192555391
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Innovations create both opportunities and dilemmas. They provide new and supposedly better opportunities, but — because of their newness — they are often more uncertain and potentially worse than existing options. Recent inventions and discoveries include new drugs, new energy sources, new foods, new manufacturing technologies, new toys and new pedagogical methods, new weapon systems, new home appliances and many other discoveries and inventions. Is it better to use or not to use a new and promising but unfamiliar and hence uncertain innovation? That dilemma faces just about everybody. The paradigm of the innovation dilemma characterizes many situations, even when a new technology is not actually involved. The dilemma arises from new attitudes, like individual responsibility for the global environment, or new social conceptions, like global allegiance and self-identity transcending nation-states. These dilemmas have far-reaching implications for individuals, organizations, and society at large as they make decisions in the age of innovation. The uncritical belief in outcome-optimization — "more is better, so most is best" — pervades decision-making in all domains, but is often irresponsible when facing the uncertainties of innovation. There is a great need for practical conceptual tools for understanding and managing the dilemmas of innovation. This book offers a new direction for a wide audience. It discusses examples from many fields, including e-reading, bipolar disorder and pregnancy, disruptive technology in industry, stock markets, agricultural productivity and world hunger, military hardware, military intelligence, biological conservation, on-line learning, and more.