The Beginning of Politics

The Beginning of Politics PDF Author: Moshe Halbertal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191689
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important continuity of sovereign power.--

The Beginning of Politics

The Beginning of Politics PDF Author: Moshe Halbertal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191689
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important continuity of sovereign power.--

The Beginning of Politics

The Beginning of Politics PDF Author: Kirsi Pauliina Kallio
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317616014
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book

Book Description
The conventional wisdom according to which children’s lives should be safe from adult concerns tends to situate them categorically outside the political. Thus understood, children become political agents when they reach maturity and eligibility to formal participation. Alternatively, political skills and competences may be seen to develop gradually through political socialization. Both views are challenged in recent scholarship on youthful politics beyond the formal, adult-centered political world. This book considers politics as it appears and unfolds in children and young people’s everyday lives. The collection problematizes several key concepts in the research field and introduces a relational reading of youthful political agency based on social, spatial and political theorization. The chapters engage with youthful realities in Sri Lanka, Palestine, Sweden, New Zealand, the US and the UK, revealing a variety of ways in which children and youth are important political actors in their own right. The book also includes an extensive literary review on the study of children and young people’s politics in the past decade. This book was originally published as a special issue of Space and Polity.

Christianity and Politics

Christianity and Politics PDF Author: C. C. Pecknold
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621892204
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book

Book Description
It is not simply for rhetorical flourish that politicians so regularly invoke God's blessings on the country. It is because the relatively new form of power we call the nation-state arose out of a Western political imagination steeped in Christianity. In this brief guide to the history of Christianity and politics, Pecknold shows how early Christianity reshaped the Western political imagination with its new theological claims about eschatological time, participation, and communion with God and neighbor. The ancient view of the Church as the "mystical body of Christ" is singled out in particular as the author traces shifts in its use and meaning throughout the early, medieval, and modern periods-shifts in how we understand the nature of the person, community and the moral conscience that would give birth to a new relationship between Christianity and politics. While we have many accounts of this narrative from either political or ecclesiastical history, we have few that avoid the artificial separation of the two. This book fills that gap and presents a readable, concise, and thought-provoking introduction to what is at stake in the contentious relationship between Christianity and politics.

Black against Empire

Black against Empire PDF Author: Joshua Bloom
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520966457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

Get Book

Book Description
This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities. In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world. Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement and its disastrous unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power.

On Politics

On Politics PDF Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404656
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 1147

Get Book

Book Description
Looks at the history of politics from Hobbes to the twenty-first century.

Politics in Time

Politics in Time PDF Author: Paul Pierson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841089
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.

Social Security

Social Security PDF Author: Daniel Béland
Publisher: Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
Compact, timely, well-researched, and balanced, this institutional history of Social Security's seventy years shows how the past still influences ongoing reform debates, helping the reader both to understand and evaluate the current partisan arguments on both sides.

The Beginnings of National Politics

The Beginnings of National Politics PDF Author: Jack N. Rakove
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421430983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501

Get Book

Book Description
Originally published in 1982. Despite a necessary preoccupation with the Revolutionary struggle, America's Continental Congress succeeded in establishing itself as a governing body with national—and international—authority. How the Congress acquired and maintained this power and how the delegates sought to resolve the complex theoretical problems that arose in forming a federal government are the issues confronted in Jack N. Rakove's searching reappraisal of Revolution-era politics. Avoiding the tendency to interpret the decisions of the Congress in terms of competing factions or conflicting ideologies, Rakove opts for a more pragmatic view. He reconstructs the political climate of the Revolutionary period, mapping out both the immediate problems confronting the Congress and the available alternatives as perceived by the delegates. He recreates a landscape littered with unfamiliar issues, intractable problems, unattractive choices, and partial solutions, all of which influenced congressional decisions on matters as prosaic as military logistics or as abstract as the definition of federalism.

A Quick History of Politics

A Quick History of Politics PDF Author: Clive Gifford
Publisher: Quick Histories
ISBN: 071126032X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book

Book Description
A Quick History of Politics takes us from pharaohs to fair votes, packed with facts and jokes about the many faces of politics through time.

Playing Politics with History

Playing Politics with History PDF Author: Andrew Beattie
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
The ensuing debates and disagreements over the recent past, examined by the author, open up a window into the wider development of German memory, identity, and politics after the end of the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.