This textbook is part of a series covering several aspects of social science, social and political life. Chapters include Role of the Government in Health, How the State Government Works, Growing up as Boys and Girls, Women Change the World, Understanding Media, Understanding Advertising, Markets Around Us, A Shirt in the Market, and Struggles for Equality.
A symposium on a book by Bevir & Rhodes (2003) Interpreting British Governance. Following an introduction by Alan Finlayson, Mark Bevir & Ron A. W. Rhodes summarize their work & list the five main advantages of their interpretive approach to British governance, eg, identification of important gaps in the Westminster model & decentraliztion of institutions from their role in fixing individual behavior. In "Interpretation, Truth and Investigation: Comments on Bevir and Rhodes," Keith Dowding argues that Bevir & Rhodes are ambiguous on the central question of truth & that their partial explanations for British governance through the interpretivist perspective may be misleading. In "Taking Ideas Seriously' in Explanatory Political Analysis," Colin Hay rejects the ideas that explanation & positivism & understanding & interpretation are synonymous. Bevir & Rhodes's conceptualization of explanation & understanding are problematic, so a form of post-positivist political analysis adapted from social constructivism is preferred. In "Meaning and Politics: Assessing Bevir and Rhodes," Finlayson examines Bevir & Rhodes's concepts of power, dilemma, & narrative & develops an alternative interpretive approach to British governance. In "Interpretation as Method, Explanation, & Critique: A Reply," Bevir & Rhodes defend their interpretive approach on philosophical grounds, but view the approach as insufficiently objective. They expand on issues of method, explanation, & critique in response to Dowding, Hay, & Finlayson. They believe their narrative on governance using the four traditions -- Tory, liberal, Whig, & socialist -- & the dilemmas faced are robust. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 72 References. M. Pflum
This essay seeks to reframe the question of continuity (or discontinuity) between Orientalism and Islamophobia as, underlying the question, is an enduring conception of history as agentive, as a "making," a "construction," or a "production" ("Men make their own history …"). Turning our attention instead toward destructive power—distinct from repressive and coercive and from productive and enabling modes of power (Foucault, Said)—a distinct history, or anti-history, emerges, which necessitates a different lexicon. Political or subject formations might still be at stake, but another logic or illogic, a different politics may become visible where the main concern is not the making of world (Arendt), but its undoing; not the production of collectives or of individual subjects, but their destruction. Torture, as Jean Améry described it, is one such destruction of world. It may thus become possible to ask whether, between Orientalism and Islamophobia, the Muslims or Muselmänner of the Nazi camps were a "product," whether they were "made" into subjects. The essay builds on earlier reflections where elements of a lexicon and analytics of destruction were considered (Heidegger, Derrida), along with preliminary answers to the question: what is destruction? Or here: is there a history of destruction?
