Polarized

Polarized
Author: James E. Campbell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691180865

An eye-opening look at how and why America has become so politically polarized Many continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened. Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society. Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one.

Making Sense of American Liberalism

Making Sense of American Liberalism
Author: Jonathan Bell
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0252093984

This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left. Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform. Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

Making Sense of the Americas

Making Sense of the Americas
Author: Jan Hansen
Publisher: Campus Verlag
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2015-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 3593504804

"From anti-Reagan riots in West Berlin to pictures of revolutionary Nicaragua, it is often impossible to grasp social protest movements of the 1980s without referring to how they imagined "the Americas". This edited volume is aimed at historicizing the representations of the United States and of Latin America among Western European protesters around that decade. By researching dominant interpretation patterns, practices and symbols within these movements, this book offers a fresh and compelling look at protest in the second half of the 20th century."--Page 4 of cover.

Notes on a Shared Landscape

Notes on a Shared Landscape
Author: David Bayles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2005
Genre: Art
ISBN:

A rich collage of stories and photographs exploring our imperfect love affair with the American West.

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires
Author: Kevin Kenny
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 368
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195116311

A group of 20 Irish immigrants, suspected of comprising a secret terrorist organization called the "Molly Maguires", were executed in Pennsylvania in the 1870s for the murder of 16 men. This work offers a new interpretation of their dramatic story, tracing the origins of the Molly Maguires to Ireland and explaining the growth of a particular structure of meaning.

On Making Sense

On Making Sense
Author: Ernesto Javier Martínez
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2012-10-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0804784019

On Making Sense juxtaposes texts produced by black, Latino, and Asian queer writers and artists to understand how knowledge is acquired and produced in contexts of racial and gender oppression. From James Baldwin's 1960s novel Another Country to Margaret Cho's turn-of-the-century stand-up comedy, these works all exhibit a preoccupation with intelligibility, or the labor of making sense of oneself and of making sense to others. In their efforts to "make sense," these writers and artists argue against merely being accepted by society on society's terms, but articulate a desire to confront epistemic injustice—an injustice that affects people in their capacity as knowers and as communities worthy of being known. The book speaks directly to critical developments in feminist and queer studies, including the growing ambivalence to antirealist theories of identity and knowledge. In so doing, it draws on decolonial and realist theory to offer a new framework to understand queer writers and artists of color as dynamic social theorists.

Conservatism in America

Conservatism in America
Author: P. Gottfried
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2007-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230607047

This book argues that the American conservative movement, as it now exists, does not have deep roots. It began in the 1950s as the invention of journalists and men of letters reacting to the early Cold War and trying to construct a rallying point for likeminded opponents of international Communism. The resulting movement has exaggerated the permanence of its values; while its militant anti-Communism, instilled in its followers, and periodic suppression of dissent have weakened its capacity for internal debate. Their movement came to power at least partly by burying an older anti-welfare state Right, one that in fact had enjoyed a social following that was concentrated in a small-town America. The newcomers played down the merits of those they had replaced; and in the 1980's the neoconservatives, who took over the postwar conservative movement from an earlier generation, belittled their predecessors in a similar way. Among the movement's major accomplishments has been to recreate its own past. The success of this revised history lies in the fact that even the movement's critics are now inclined to accept it.

Parallax Visions

Parallax Visions
Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822329244

Collection of essays by Cumings on the complex problems of political economy and ideology, power and culture in East and Northeast Asia, providing an understanding of the United States's role in these regions and the consequences for subsequent policy mak

Making Sense of Public Opinion

Making Sense of Public Opinion
Author: Claudia Strauss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107019923

This book proposes that Americans form views on immigration and social welfare programs from conventional ways of speaking rather than from ideologies.

Perspectives on Modern America

Perspectives on Modern America
Author: Harvard Sitkoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195128659

A group of contributors have each written a broad interpretive essay on a key aspect of American life and how it changed over the 20th century. The essays address a range of political, social and economic issues, including the liberalism and conservatism, and immigration and ethnicity.