Search results

"Unconditional Equality" examines Mahatma Gandhi's critique of liberal ideas of freedom and equality and his own practice of a freedom and equality organized around religion. It reconceives satyagraha (passive resistance) as a politics that strives for the absolute equality of all beings. Liberal traditions usually affirm an abstract equality centered on some form of autonomy, the Kantian term for the everyday sovereignty that rational beings exercise by granting themselves universal law. But for Gandhi, such equality is an "equality of sword" -- profoundly violent not only because it excludes those presumed to lack reason (such as animals or the colonized) but also because those included lose the power to love (which requires the surrender of autonomy or, more broadly, sovereignty). Gandhi professes instead a politics organized around dharma, or religion. For him, there can be "no politics without religion." This religion involves self-surrender, a freely offered surrender of autonomy and everyday sovereignty. For Gandhi, the "religion that stays in all religions" is satyagraha—the agraha (insistence) on or of satya (being or truth). Ajay Skaria argues that, conceptually, satyagraha insists on equality without exception of all humans, animals, and things. This cannot be understood in terms of sovereignty: it must be an equality of the minor. This equality is simultaneously a resistance: satyagrahis (practitioners) must resist all that obscures absolute equality and do so passively, without sovereignty and in the spirit of absolute equality. --

"Democracy is the rule of the people. But what exactly does it mean for a people to rule? Which practices and behaviors are legitimate, and which are democratically suspect? We generally think of democracy as government by consent; a government of, by, and for the people. This has been true from Locke through Lincoln to the present day. Yet in understandably stressing the importance--indeed, the monumental achievement--of popular consent, we commonly downplay or even denigrate the role of dissent in democratic governments. But in Government by Dissent, Robert W.T. Martin explores the idea that the people most important in a flourishing democracy are those who challenge the status quo. The American political radicals of the 1790s understood, articulated, and defended the crucial necessity of dissent to democracy. By returning to their struggles, successes, and setbacks, and analyzing their imaginative arguments, Martin recovers a more robust approach to popular politics, one centered on the ever-present need to challenge the status quo and the powerful institutions that both support it and profit from it. Dissent has rarely been the mainstream of democratic politics. But the figures explored here--forgotten farmers as well as revered framers--understood that dissent is always the essential undercurrent of democracy and is often the critical crosscurrent. Only by returning to their political insights can we hope to reinvigorate our own popular politics."--Publisher's description

Oceanic encounters: a prelude /Margaret Jolly and Serge Tcherkezoff --Linguistic encounter and responses in the South Pacific /Darrell Tryon --The sediment of voyages: re-membering Quiros, Bougainville and Cook in Vanuatu /Margaret Jolly --A reconsideration of the role of Polynesian women in early encounters with Europeans: supplement to Marshall Sahlins' voyage around the islands of history /Serge Tcherkezoff --Uncertain times: sailors, beachcombers and castaways as "missionaries" and cultural mediators in Tonga (Polynesia) /Francoise Douaire-Marsaudon --In the event: indigenous countersigns and the ethnohistory of voyaging /Bronwen Douglas --Watkin Tench's fieldwork: the journal of an "ethnographer" in Port Jackson, 1788-1791 /Isabelle Merle --The art of encounter: verisimilitude in the imaginary exploration of interior New Guinea, 1725-1876 /Chris Ballard --Black powder, white magic: European armaments and sorcery in early Mekeo and Roro encounters /Mark S. Mosko --A measure of violence: forty years of "first contact" among the Ankave-Anga (Papua New Guinea) /Pascale Bonnemere and Pierre Lemonnier.

Meanings of development -- Modernization, Keynesianism and neoliberalism -- Structuralism, neo-Marxism and socialism -- Politics and development -- Grassroots development -- Social and cultural dimensions of development -- Environment and development -- Conclusions.

Introduction -- Ideas -- Bodies -- Performances -- Intersections -- Inequality: men and masculinities -- Inequality: women and femininities -- Institutions -- Change -- Sexualities -- Families -- Work -- Politics -- Conclusion -- Glossary -- Notes -- Credits -- Index -- About the authors

The paradox of democracy and the sociology of law -- National democracy and global law -- Before the law? -- Politics becomes the law -- The reconstruction of democratic agency -- Conclusion

This work examines the connection between territorial politics and ideological conflict in the global economic sphere, particularly in Latin America, based on in-depth field research in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Women's origin stories -- "Bad boys" and direct resistance -- Life on the edge of the global economy -- From cold wars to drug wars -- Sexual violence and autonomous politics

The subtle thought of care -- Knowledge politics -- Assembling neglected "things" -- Thinking with care -- Touching visions -- Speculative ethics in antiecological times -- Alterbiopolitics -- Soil times: the pace of ecological care

Sacred Scripture 31. - Literature 63. - Music and Performance 91. - Politics, Conflict and War 129. - History and Identity 183. - Portraiture and the Body 267. - Nature and the Land 313

Introduction : Third world America and the crisis of American democracy -- The progressive religion and politics of Benjamin Elijah Mays -- America's least wanted -- The brain drain -- Reconstructing America

Beginnings -- Careers, networks, and mentors -- Gendered discourses of finance -- Women's politics and state-market feminism -- Life after Wall Street -- Market feminism, feminizing markets, and the financial crisis

Why we need a theory of federalism -- What is federalism? -- Why federalism? The tragic aspect of politics -- Federalism in political science -- Federalism in America -- The judicial doctrine of federalism

Introduction : beyond supersessionism -- Theopolitical virtues. Love -- Faith -- Hope. Theopolitical strategies. Tradition -- Liturgy -- Sanctity -- Revelation -- Prophecy -- Conclusion : politics of the middle -- Appendix : political theology as a rigorous science