Suchergebnisse

In this volume of timely essays, Max O. Stephenson Jr. offers unique insight into the state of politics and policymaking in the United States. Covering the period 2010-2018, his essays chronicle a growing crisis in American governance with many of the nations professed values and principles increasingly under attackincluding the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the ability of a share of its citizens otherwise eligible to vote to exercise their right to do so. But Stephenson does more than sound a warning cry. He urges all Americans to reclaim self-governance and democracy by embracing the central values and core purposes underpinning the United States. Max O. Stephenson Jr. is Professor of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech where he also directs the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (VTIPG).

This article examines the dynamics of population agency and empowerment in each of three fields of aid provisionhumanitarian relief, international development and peacebuildingduring recent decades. It first describes how the concept of active agency and participation has been commonly defined in these fields. Thereafter the analysis explores the obstacles and challenges analysts have identified, to date, in aid organization efforts to realize efficacy among targeted populations. Third, this study sketches the principal-agent accountabilities regime operating in major donor nations and international organizations in the three domains surveyed. The argument suggests that funders need to revisit their accountability assumptions and measures and broaden those to acknowledge the socio-cultural, political and economic conditions and governance capabilities of the nations and the populations targeted, since these ultimately mediate both citizen engagement and efficacy and intervention outcomes. The article concludes with a brief exploration of its implications for aid practice in the three fields treated.

This brief essay uses several works of fiction and nonfiction to illustrate the profound character of evil that obtains when individuals lose their capacity to empathize with the circumstances and situation of others. W.H. Auden explored the contours of human evil throughout much of his career and argued that it inhered, even at its most vicious, in all of humankind. The persistent challenge for nations particularly and civilization more generally is to acknowledge that fact and to ensure that this omnipresent and often apparently unspectacular force is not unleashed. The paper provides several examples aimed at illustrating that observers should consider current trends in American policy and politics carefully as they signal a sharp decline in empathy for major groups within the polity, an inauspicious sign for United States democratic politics. ; Published version

Communities around the world struggle with weakening social bonds and political, racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural divides. This article argues the arts can be a means of raising public consciousness regarding such concerns by catalyzing conscious, thoughtful dialogue among individuals and groups possessing diverse values and beliefs. Change can only occur when people become aware of and actively reflect on the ontological and epistemic-scale norms and values that so often underpin their divisions, and the arts can help them do precisely that. We examine the dynamics of participatory performing arts and mural-making in diverse contexts to contend that the dialogic character of community art-making can be valuable for practitioners and scholars in a variety of efforts in international community development. We conclude by sharing lessons that we believe will aid artists and practitioners in devising more inclusive and participatory approaches to their international community change or development projects. ; Published version

The essays in this volume treat dimensions of broader trends at all scales of analysis, examining the elemental issue of democratic agency and obstacles to its exercise, the difficulties inherent for self-governance in inter-governmental cooperation and in racial, ethnic and religious diversity and the antagonisms resulting from rapid widespread economic, social and technological shifts. These articles also investigate the dynamics of political change and movements in a time when the prevailing social imaginary makes such action, always difficult, especially tough to achieve. While we have divided the essays into seven sections, as they address a variety of topical concerns at discrete levels of analysis, all may be said to treat in one form or another the consequences for Western liberalism of its embrace of neoliberalisms elevation of capitalism to a governing role and its view of freedom as atomistic individualism. Adherents have embraced this perspective without acknowledging the daily reality that human beings live in families and societies and that freedom will never be sustained by the pursuit of material goods alone. ; In 2013, the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (VTIPG) launched an edited online essay series, RE: Reflections and Explorations, for Virginia Tech graduate students to share articles and commentaries about their evolving research, interests and experiences on topics relevant to the VTIPG mission. e RE: Reflections and Explorations book series features essays from the online platform selected and edited by VTIPG Director Max Stephenson Jr. and affiliated research faculty member Lyusyena Kirakosyan. Volume I of the series was published in 2015.

We have organized the essays that follow in this volume into nine themes or broad topical foci based on the subjects our RE: Reflections and Explorations authors selected for their efforts during 2013-2014. A brief overview of our contributors organizing issues follows. Part 1 contains six essays that address the role(s) of the academy in society. Part 2 offers six essays that address questions central to the relationships among art, culture and politics. Part 3s five essays treat issues linked to community building. Part 4 includes five essays that explore the challenges of public leadership at multiple scales and in a variety of contexts. Part 5s eight essays examine a variety of concerns central to the characteristics and fundamentals of democratic citizenship and ethics. Part 6 consists of six essays that explore different dimensions of international politics. Part 7 of the volume comprises seven essays that directly or indirectly illuminate alternate facets of local and international development dynamics. Part 8 includes six essays that together analyze several manifestations or implications of neoliberalism, the current dominant public imaginary or frame in American and indeed, Western, politics. Part 9s seven essays each afford readers alternate lenses into the dynamics and vicissitudes of change processes, as conceptualized at alternate analytical levels. The 56 essays together address a variety of concerns central to democratic politics and self-governance. The topics are as varied as our contributors substantive interests and perspectives, and that diversity yields a complex array of analytical insights. We hope you enjoy reading this richly textured collection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.

This review article analyzes three major recent books (written by Robert Wuthnow, Arlie R. Hochschild, and James and Deborah Fallows, respectively) concerning ongoing political, economic and social change in United States rural communities to probe differing frames and claims among them. We contend these works together point to vital social and political forces that must receive increased attention if the communities they treat are to address the challenges confronting them successfully. Thereafter, we briefly and illustratively underscore the significance of these authors arguments using our own ongoing work in two small communities confronting catastrophic economic decline and social fissuring in Central Appalachia. Overall, we argue that an analytical approach that combines elements of Wuthnows sensitivity to demographic and scalar polarization and divides, coupled with Hochschilds emphasis on opportunities to instill and call on empathetic imagination in development efforts, could assist these rural communities residents to understand more fully the dynamics at play within them and to craft strategies aimed at addressing those challenges. In particular, we contend that the Fallowses call for pragmatic interventions and partnership building must be accompanied by long-term efforts to overcome the fear engendered by the view that rural community life constitutes a consumerist zero-sum game, and the accompanying widespread belief in those jurisdictions that scapegoating and explicit or implicit racialized hierarchies represent reasonable responses to such anxieties. ; Published version