Suchergebnisse

IT IS IMPORTANT TO REALIZE THAT THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS CAN ONLY PRACTICALLY BE DETERMINED BY REFERENCE TO THE PREFERENCES OF CITIZENS. IF JURISDICTION OVER SPECIFIC GOODS IS REMOVED FURTHER FROM THE CITIZENS, INFORMATION AND COSTS AND UNCERTAINTY WILL INCREASE, AND CITIZENS WILL FOREGO PARTICIPATION AND IN LOCAL AFFAIRS.

In popular, legal, and academic discourses, the term "human rights" is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite: human rights abuses. Syllabi, textbooks, and articles focus largely on victimization and trauma, with scarcely a mention of a positive dimension. Joy, especially, is often discounted and disregarded. William Paul Simmons asserts that there is a time and place--and necessity--in human rights work for being joyful. Joyful Human Rights leads us to challenge human rights' foundations afresh. Focusing on joy shifts the way we view victims, perpetrators, activists, and martyrs; and mitigates our propensity to express paternalistic or heroic attitudes toward human rights victims. Victims experience joy--indeed, it is often what sustains them and, in many cases, what best facilitates their recovery from trauma. Instead of reducing individuals merely to victim status or the tragedies they have experienced, human rights workers can help harmed individuals reclaim their full humanity, which includes positive emotions such as joy. A joy-centered approach provides new insights into foundational human rights issues such as motivations of perpetrators, trauma and survivorship, the work of social movements and activists, philosophical and historical origins of human rights, and the politicization of human rights. Many concepts rarely discussed in the field play important roles here, including social erotics, clowning, dancing, expressive arts therapy, posttraumatic growth, and the Buddhist terms metta (loving kindness) and mudita (sympathetic joy). Joyful Human Rights provides a new framework--one based upon a more comprehensive understanding of human experiences--for theorizing and practicing a more affirmative and robust notion of human rights

Major American corporate and political forces are currently battling for control of a new digital communications network that marks the convergence of what were until recently separate industries of publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications, and computers. So far the debate over the National Information Infrastructure has been dominated by questions of who gains and who loses economically. This article attempts to redirect attention to the issue of political communication—how technical developments in mass and interpersonal communications may influence how citizens learn about the political world around them, how political support is mobilized for issues and candidates, and how citizens signal preferences to their representatives.