The Great Depression In Latin America,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Great Depression In Latin America, N. Clark Capshaw
International Dialogue
This book is an edited collection of essays on the effect of the Great Depression on various Latin American countries. Though not all Latin American countries are addressed, there is sufficient coverage to enable some generalizations, comparisons, and contrasts for the region, and to infer some general lessons about the enduring effect of the depression on the region. The countries addressed include Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba.
Welcome To The Desert Of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Welcome To The Desert Of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia, Joseph L. Derdzinski
International Dialogue
True to its title, or at least its secondary title, Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia minces few words in its radical assessment of the past twenty years’ impact on the societies, politics and economies of the post-Yugoslav Balkans. With an eye toward the pitfalls of a forced political and economic liberalization, the contributors’ unalloyed assessments that liberalization’s disruptions and malaise have made life all the worse reinforces an important perspective and critique into the West’s unshakable belief in the twinned powers of democracy and the market.
Repeating Žižek,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Repeating Žižek, J. Jesse Ramírez
International Dialogue
It has become a genre protocol for reviews of Slavoj Žižek’s books to comment critically—and, too often, dismissively—on his tremendous output. His newest books, of which there seem to be several each year, not only echo previous ones, but also reproduce whole passages verbatim. Terry Eagleton has called Žižek “one of the great self-plagiarisers of our time, constantly thieving stuff from his own publications” (Eagleton 2014). While I have contributed to this genre protocol in a past review, I have come to regard Žižek’s furious publishing pace as, in part, a strategy to make a living as a radical intellectual …
Whistleblowers, Leaks, And The Media: The First Amendment And National Security,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Whistleblowers, Leaks, And The Media: The First Amendment And National Security, Heidi Kitrosser
International Dialogue
In 2000, President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill that would have criminalized all unauthorized leaks of classified information.1 In his veto message, Clinton agreed that “unauthorized disclosures can be extraordinarily harmful to United States national security interests and that far too many disclosures occur.” But the bill failed, in his view, to balance national security interests with “the rights of citizens to receive the information necessary for democracy to work.” The bill threatened to chill even “appropriate public discussion [or] press briefings” by Government officials. Similarly, it could have “restrain[ed] the ability of former government officials to teach, write, or …
Trouble In Paradise: Political Economy And Cultural Criticism: Trouble In Paradise: From The End Of History To The End Of Capitalism,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Trouble In Paradise: Political Economy And Cultural Criticism: Trouble In Paradise: From The End Of History To The End Of Capitalism, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris
International Dialogue
Slavoj Žižek’s title Trouble in Paradise is also the name of a 1932 movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a movie which Žižek begins discussing as his first topic in his introduction. But the title obviously also reflects the notion that there is a difference between the superficial appearances of social life (often publically attractively depicted, with supporting justifications, sustaining collective illusions) and a time of deep societal troubles. Žižek says about his own title: “The ‘paradise’ in the title of this book refers to the End of History (as elaborated by Francis Fukuyama: liberal democratic capitalism as the finally found …
The Soul Of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine And Military Culture In The Us And Uk,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Soul Of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine And Military Culture In The Us And Uk, Aaron Edwards
International Dialogue
The Soul of Armies by Austin Long is a much-needed counter-balancing analysis to the steady flow of hagiographies that have appeared over the past decade on the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the United States and United Kingdom around the world. Long challenges many of the prevailing assumptions underpinning the increasingly malleable doctrine of counter-insurgency.
Civics Beyond Critics: Character Education In A Liberal Democracy,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Civics Beyond Critics: Character Education In A Liberal Democracy, Eric R. Boot
International Dialogue
It is quite common to make the argument that a stable liberal democracy requires high levels of compliance with the law. Scholars disagree, however, how such reliable and widespread compliance can be achieved. Roughly, liberals have traditionally emphasized the importance of arriving at compliance by way of autonomous and critical reasoning, whereas others (communitarians and republicans chiefly) argue that autonomous motives are notoriously weak and can, therefore, not by themselves bring about a high enough rate of compliance. The exclusionary importance accorded to autonomy by (many) liberals bars the state from cultivating the habits, sentiments and civic virtue upon which …
Music And International History In The Twentieth Century,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Music And International History In The Twentieth Century, Frédéric Ramel
International Dialogue
For several decades, musicologists have dealt with the role of music in international relations using their own tools. They have focused on musical change in the context of modernity, especially how traditional music and folk music interact with music from other localities. Paradoxically, musicologists have contributed more to the field of international relations than historians or political scientists. Fortunately, those in history and political science have initiated an acoustic turn which aims to fill the gap. Jessica Gienow-Hecht is one historian who has promoted this movement thanks to her well-known monography dedicated to cultural American-German relations in early twentieth century …
Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots Of Global Justice,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots Of Global Justice, David Reidy
International Dialogue
In this book, Carol Gould tries to envision a future for democracy that is both faithful to what she takes to be its philosophical and normative ground and well-matched to the political challenges of advancing global justice. These challenges arise because the social and institutional world is increasingly complex, with the relevance of state boundaries diminishing significantly in recent decades when it comes to identifying and evaluating agents, acts and effects on the global stage. I begin by reconstructing and summarizing what I take to be her central line of argument.
Voices Of The Undocumented,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Voices Of The Undocumented, Ramón Guerra
International Dialogue
In the foreword to Val Rosenfeld’s Voices of the Undocumented, she illustrates the background for the collection of oral histories from immigrants. The immigrants in the collection are primarily from Latin American countries and have arrived in the San Francisco, California area without any documents to provide either residency or other legal status. The precarious nature of their existence in the United States underscores the very essence of this compilation and provides a running theme that connects the narratives of these individuals as told and recorded through oral history. While Rosenfeld refers to a preliminary personal draw to learning about …
Divergent Paths: The Academy And The Judiciary,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Divergent Paths: The Academy And The Judiciary, Paul E. Mcgreal
International Dialogue
In Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary, Judge Richard Posner proposes a partnership between the federal judiciary and law schools.1 He provides a sweeping critique of the federal judiciary and suggests ways in which law schools can address these failings. His critiques fall under the headings of structural deformations (e.g., method of appointment, lifetime tenure), process deficiencies, (e.g., legal formalism in judicial opinion writing, lack of curiosity), and management deficiencies (e.g., poor staff management, lack of collegiality). The corresponding solutions include law schools providing continuing education for federal judges and changing their curricula to include new knowledge and skills. …
Politics Of Religious Freedom,
2016
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Politics Of Religious Freedom, Amanda Ryan
International Dialogue
When tackling the topic of “religious freedom” what are policy-makers and academics trying to define? Is religious freedom a universally defined set of liberal human rights from a secular state, or is religious freedom also seen in religious states? The Politics of Religious Freedom goes into the depths of complexity that is “religious freedom.” The book explores what religious freedom is in a variety of settings: South Asia, North Africa, Middle East, Europe, the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil.
Review: Interspecies Ethics By Cynthia Willett,
2016
The University of Western Ontario
Review: Interspecies Ethics By Cynthia Willett, Thomas E. Randall
Between the Species
This paper provides a review of Cynthia Willett's book Interspecies Ethics. Willett aims to outline the beginnings of biosocial eros ethics – an ethical outline that sketches the potentiality of a cross-species cosmopolitan ideal of compassion (agape), derived through acknowledging and emphasizing the existence of spontaneous, playful interaction between social animals. Though this book is recommended for offering an innovative framework from which to explore the possibility of non-anthropocentric cross-species ethic, readers should be wary of expecting to find a fully-fledged moral program detailing how this would work.
In What Sense Are You A Person?,
2016
University of the Balearic Islands
In What Sense Are You A Person?, Pamela Barone, Antoni Gomila
Animal Sentience
According to Rowlands, personhood in nonhuman animals calls for a unified mental life and pre-reflective self-awareness provides this. The concept of “person” is fuzzy. Any attempt to define it with necessary and sufficient conditions faces the problem of borderline cases satisfying only some of the conditions to varying degrees. We ask about the implications of a metaphysical sense of personhood for its moral and legal sense. Finally, we address Rowlands’s reliance on pre-reflective self-awareness and present our own criteria for personhood.
Consciousness And The Unity Of Mind,
2016
University of Miami
Consciousness And The Unity Of Mind, Mark Rowlands
Animal Sentience
Several types of objection have been raised against the arguments I presented in my target article, “Are animals persons?” Among the objections are the following: (1) the claim that animals are persons is of little significance, (2) my use of the Lockean conception of the person is questionable, (3) whether a creature qualifies as a person is a matter of social construction rather than objective fact, (4) reflective consciousness is more important than I realize, (5) my reliance on implicit self-awareness in the account of personhood is ill-advised, (6) my account entails that too many creatures qualify as persons, and …
The Impossibility Of A Civil Society,
2016
Franklin University
The Impossibility Of A Civil Society, Isidoro Talavera
Learning Showcase 2016: A Celebration of Discovery, Transformation and Success
We will never be able to achieve a liberal civil society because limitations of a civil society cannot be seen to be just a matter that it sometimes operates in an arena where contradictory forces are at play-where imperfect people organize around democratic and liberal values, and also around values that can be defined as uncivil to protect their group-based interests. The five conditions prohibit a liberal civil society because when applied each of which seems, when independently considered, to be plausible, but when taken together in fact conflict and are logically incompatible. Accordingly, one may argue that civil society …
Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies,
2016
Brown University
Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill
Animal Sentience
In arguing that insect brains are capable of sentience, Klein & Barron rely heavily on Bjorn Merker’s claim that activity in the human mid-brain is sufficient for conscious experience. I criticize Merker’s claim by pointing out that the behaviors supported by midbrain activity are much more primitive than the ones that appear to depend on consciousness. I raise a similar objection to Klein & Barron’s contention that insect behaviors are similar to behaviors that manifest consciousness in human beings. The similarity is weak. I also respond to the related view that integrative activity in mid-brain structures is sufficient to explain …
Poetic Witness In A Networked Age,
2016
Gettysburg College
Poetic Witness In A Networked Age, Jerome D. Clarke
Student Publications
When online videos mobilize protestors to occupy public spaces, and those protestors incorporate hashtags in their chants and markered placards, deliberative democratic theory must no longer dismiss technology and peoples historically excluded from the arena of politics. Specifically, political models must account for the role of repetition in paving the way for unheard and unseen messages and people to appear in the political arena. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the Performative and Hannah Arendt’s Space of Appearance, this paper assesses that critical and generative role of iteration. Repeating unheeded acts performs the capacity for those acts to be entered …
Developing Capabilities: A Feminist Discourse Ethics Approach,
2016
Marquette University
Developing Capabilities: A Feminist Discourse Ethics Approach, Chad Kleist
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation attempts to preserve the central tenets of a global moral theory called “the capabilities approach” as defended by Martha Nussbaum, but to do so in a way that better realizes its own goals of identifying gender injustices and gaining cross-cultural support by providing an alternative defense of it. Capabilities assess an individual’s well-being based on what she is able to do (actions) and who she is able to be (states of existence). Nussbaum grounds her theory in the intuitive idea that each and every person is worthy of equal respect and dignity. The problem with grounding a theory …
The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason, Timothy Scott Johnson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation examines the use of the French Revolution as an explanatory device for discussing the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). Anticolonial intellectuals in France invoked the French Revolution to explain their reasons for supporting colonial reform as well as their solidarity with Algerian nationalist aims. Through an examination of intellectuals’ public interventions alongside French and Algerian historical narratives, I examine the ways in which historical alignment signaled political and cultural distance between France and Algeria. Making an independent Algeria analogous to eighteenth-century revolutionary France lent political and conceptual legitimacy to Algerian claims to an independent national identity while also reinforcing the …
