The Political Machine

The Political Machine PDF Author: Adam T. Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

The Political Machine

The Political Machine PDF Author: Adam T. Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Life in the Political Machine

Life in the Political Machine PDF Author: Jonathan T. Hiskey
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197500404
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
"Against the backdrop of a world characterized by highly uneven democracies, in which subnational dominant-party enclaves persist within nationally democratic regimes, Life in the Political Machine explores the ways in which these enclaves shape the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens who reside in them. Through analysis of a decade's worth of survey data across the fifty-five provinces and states of Argentina and Mexico, this study finds a distinct subnational political culture among individuals nested in dominant-party enclaves, characterized by heightened exposure to corruption and vote buying, low levels of support for democratic principles, and patterns of political behavior that reflect the governing characteristics of the political machines citizens must confront on a daily basis. In contrast, among those individuals living in subnational political systems that have successfully shut down the machine, the work finds a political culture more akin to that found in established democracies. As such, this book provides extensive support for the need to more fully incorporate subnational political dynamics into accounts of the drivers behind citizens' political attitudes and behaviors, in an era in which democracies across the world appear increasingly at risk"--

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics PDF Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
“Golway’s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.”—Wall Street Journal History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammany’s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reforms—such as child labor laws, workers’ compensation, and minimum wages— and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammany’s profound contribution. Culminating in FDR’s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall “changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals” (New York Observer).

The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description


The Political Machine

The Political Machine PDF Author: Thomas P. Clifford
Publisher: New York : Vantage Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


Shadow Shoguns

Shadow Shoguns PDF Author: Jacob M. Schlesinger
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804734578
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This is a vivid account of the corrupt and improbable political machine that ran Japanese politics for twenty years, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, the period during which Japan became the world's second-largest economy. Reviews "Washington lobbyists, Moscow mafiosi, and Beijing party bosses stand back! . . . Here is one of the longest running big-time political sleaze serials of the past quarter-century. . . . This was a book waiting to be written, and not only has Schlesinger done it, but he has also produced a fine job of political reporting." --New York Times Book Review "In a rollicking style, Schlesinger . . . demolishes the popular misconception that politicians are boring. His is a tale of monstrous personalities. . . . This is the most entertaining short history of Japanese politics this reviewer has encountered." --The Economist "A story which is told vividly in this well researched and reliable account. . . . A superb analysis of Japan's politics and economic affairs." --Washington Post Book World "Shadow Shoguns is a lively and anecdote-rich account of the eerie parallels between Tokyo's now-battered political machine and New York's Tammany Hall. . . . Schlesinger masterfully demonstrates why Prime Minister Tanaka personified the collusive ties between Japanese politicians and Big Business." --Business Week "A fascinating and penetrating tale about the Tanaka machine that dominated Japan's politics for several decades and whose demise in the early 1990s has created a political vacuum that accounts for many of Japan's current problems." --Foreign Affairs

Ruling Suburbia

Ruling Suburbia PDF Author: John Morrison McLarnon
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138146
Category : Delaware County (Pa.)
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Ruling Suburbia chronicles the history of the Republican machine that has dominated the political life of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, since 1875, and of the career of John J. McClure, who controlled the machine from 1907 until 1965.

Political Machines

Political Machines PDF Author: Andrew Barry
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780485006346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Technology assumes a remarkable importance in contemporary political life. Today, politicians and intellectuals extol the virtues of networking, interactivity and feedback, and stress the importance of new media and biotechnologies for economic development and political innovation. Measures of intellectual productivity and property play an increasingly critical part in assessments of the competitiveness of firms, universities and nation-states. At the same time, contemporary radical politics has come to raise questions about the political preoccupation with technical progress, while also developing a certain degree of technical sophistication itself.In a series of in-depth analyses of topics ranging from environmental protest to intellectual property law, and from interactive science centres to the European Union, this book interrogates the politics of the technological society. Critical of the form and intensity of the contemporary preoccupation with new technology, Political Machines opens up a space for thinking the relation between technical innovation and political inventiveness.>

The Twittering Machine

The Twittering Machine PDF Author: Richard Seymour
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788739310
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

The Shame of the Cities

The Shame of the Cities PDF Author: Lincoln Steffens
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486147665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Taking a hard look at the unprincipled lives of political bosses, police corruption, graft payments, and other political abuses of the time, the book set the style for future investigative reporting.