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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reification And The Critical Theory Of Contemporary Society, Chris O'Kane
Reification And The Critical Theory Of Contemporary Society, Chris O'Kane
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article concerns how a critical theory of reification should be conceptualized to grasp the 2007 crisis, state-imposed austerity, and the rise of right-wing authoritarian populism. It argues that Jürgen Habermas’s, Axel Honneth’s, and Georg Lukacs’s interpretations of reification cannot provide a theoretical framework for a critical social theory of these developments due to their inadequate theories of domination, crises, character formation, and historical development. It then outlines a critical theory of reification that draws on Max Horkheimer’s notion of reified authority and contemporary Marxian critical theory’s interpretation of the critique of political economy to conceive of domination, crises, and …
Policy Memo: Political Violence And Terrorism On The Mexico-Us Border, Terence Garrett
Policy Memo: Political Violence And Terrorism On The Mexico-Us Border, Terence Garrett
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
The shooting and mass murder in El Paso that occurred recently is an example of a toxic mix of a number of elements typical of the USA political violence culture – a few of which will be analyzed in this memo. Two elements are permanent features and the third is subject to temporal and spatial limitations. These elements are: (1) extraordinary accessibility by almost anyone to military-grade weapons used in mass shootings; (2) white nationalist ideology and the propensity towards dehumanizing the “other” – or using Giorgio Agamben’s term, homo sacer,1 - those who may be sacrificed without rights, including …
An Analysis Of U.S. Custom And Border Protection’S Tripartite Mexico Border Security Policy, Terence Garrett
An Analysis Of U.S. Custom And Border Protection’S Tripartite Mexico Border Security Policy, Terence Garrett
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
The Custom and Border Protection (CBP) border security policy was explicitly presented by former Acting Commissioner of CBP, David Aguilar, in testimony before the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) on April 4, 2017 in testimony on the subject of “Fencing Along the Southwest Border.” Important for discussion here are the key components of the DHS/CBP/Border Patrol’s strategy, or sets of policies, laying forth elements of the border walls (including barriers, fences), personnel, and technology in order to hinder, or intercept, undocumented migrants (homo sacer) from entering the United States illegally—all socially constructed. Aguilar …
Where There’S A Wall There’S A Way: The End (?) Of Democratic Discourse Regarding Immigration And Border Security Policy, Terence Garrett
Where There’S A Wall There’S A Way: The End (?) Of Democratic Discourse Regarding Immigration And Border Security Policy, Terence Garrett
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
Border walls have become part and parcel to corporate strategies to garner profits in the new era of post-911 insecurity. Combined with pre-911 agribusiness, service industry and other corporateindustrial expansion including encouraging the “ongoing” recruiting of undocumented cheap labor, the twin corporate policy directives are achieving profits at the expense of the people migrating from Latin America. Building on previous work, the authors analyze the problems created by corporations, complicit government agencies and elected officials in terms of maintaining a status quo that effectively exploits communities from both sides of the US/Mexico border. Policy alternatives are developed, offered and examined …
Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism, Bruce Gilley
Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism, Bruce Gilley
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article discusses how the democratic form of government has gone from an oddity to the most common form of government in the world. The written works on democracy in the past twenty years have dealt primarily with the writers' growing sense of insecurity, the belief that history runs in cycles, and the belief that democracy will run its course and the world will find itself returned to an authoritarian existence. Samuel P. Huntington expressed his pessimism with democracy in his book "The Third Wave." Huntington believes that only countries with a substantial Western influence will be able to sustain …
The Suits That Counted: The Judicialization Of Presidential Elections, Charles Anthony Smith, Christopher Shortell
The Suits That Counted: The Judicialization Of Presidential Elections, Charles Anthony Smith, Christopher Shortell
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
The litigation resolving the 2000 election received extensive attention, but there was also an increase in pre-election litigation in 2000, suggesting an increased reliance on courts even prior to Bush v. Gore. Did this trend of judicialization of presidential elections in the United States accelerate in 2004? To answer this question, we collect data on pre-election litigation from 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. Our findings show that the rate of prospective litigation increased dramatically in the 2004 election, even accounting for state and federal electoral reform from 2001-2004. Beyond the increase in raw numbers, we find that the litigation was …