Represented Communities

Represented Communities
Author: John D. Kelly
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2001-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226429903

In 1983 Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities revolutionized the anthropology of nationalism. Anderson argued that "print capitalism" fostered nations as imagined communities in a modular form that became the culture of modernity. Now, in Represented Communities, John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan offer an extensive and devastating critique of Anderson's depictions of colonial history, his comparative method, and his political anthropology. The authors build a forceful argument around events in Fiji from World War II to the 2000 coups, showing how focus on "imagined communities" underestimates colonial history and obscures the struggle over legal rights and political representation in postcolonial nation-states. They show that the "self-determining" nation-state actually emerged with the postwar construction of the United Nations, fundamentally changing the politics of representation. Sophisticated and impassioned, this book will further anthropology's contribution to the understanding of contemporary nationalisms.

Represented Communities

Represented Communities
Author: John D. Kelly
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2001-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226429885

In 1983 Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities revolutionized the anthropology of nationalism. Anderson argued that "print capitalism" fostered nations as imagined communities in a modular form that became the culture of modernity. Now, in Represented Communities, John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan offer an extensive and devastating critique of Anderson's depictions of colonial history, his comparative method, and his political anthropology. The authors build a forceful argument around events in Fiji from World War II to the 2000 coups, showing how focus on "imagined communities" underestimates colonial history and obscures the struggle over legal rights and political representation in postcolonial nation-states. They show that the "self-determining" nation-state actually emerged with the postwar construction of the United Nations, fundamentally changing the politics of representation. Sophisticated and impassioned, this book will further anthropology's contribution to the understanding of contemporary nationalisms.

The Papist Represented

The Papist Represented
Author: Geremy Carnes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2017-08-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611496535

The Papist Represented situates eighteenth-century literature within the history and culture of the English Catholic community and its interactions with the nation’s Protestant majority. It demonstrates Catholic influence on some of the period’s most popular and experimental literary works, challenging the assumption that eighteenth-century literature was a fundamentally Protestant enterprise.

Representation and Community in Western Democracies

Representation and Community in Western Democracies
Author: N. Rao
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2000-03-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230288065

This book of critical essays explores new thinking and new evidence on the role of locally-elected representatives in Western democracies. The book is topical in the light of the intense political and popular interest in the problems of making local government representative and responsive. The contributors, drawn from the UK, US, France, Denmark and Norway, deal with two principal themes: political recruitment and representativeness; and the processes of political representation, and highlight the dilemmas of open and accessible local government.

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690)

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690)
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004363912

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690), a scholarly collection on representation in medieval and early modern Europe, opens up the field of institutional and parliamentary history to new paradigms of representation across a wide geography and chronology – as testified by the volume’s studies on assemblies ranging from Burgundy and Brabant to Ireland and Italy. The focus is on three areas: institutional developments of representative institutions in Western Europe; the composition of these institutions concerning interest groups and individual participants; and the ideological environment of representatives in time and space. By analysing the balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches to the functioning of institutions of representation; by studying the actors behind the representative institutions linking prosopographical research with changes in political dialogue; and by exploring the ideological world of representation, this volume makes a key contribution to the historiography of pre-modern government and political culture. Contributors are María Asenjo-González, Wim Blockmans, Mario Damen, Coleman A. Dennehy, Jan Dumolyn, Marco Gentile, David Grummitt, Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Alastair J. Mann, Tim Neu, Ida Nijenhuis, Michael Penman, Graeme Small, Robert Stein and Marie Van Eeckenrode. See inside the book.

Self-representation of Medieval Religious Communities

Self-representation of Medieval Religious Communities
Author: Anne Müller
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2009
Genre: Christian art and symbolism
ISBN: 382581758X

This book explores the medieval monastery as symbolic space (locus symbolicus) and looks at forms of self-representation in medieval monastic life. Papers focus on both the transitory nature of organised religious life, which is based on symbols, and the separate identities religious communities developed by using their own specific forms of ritual and symbolisation. Case studies treat the British Isles and the broader European context. Among the key issues explored here are rituals in internal organisation, the symbolic use of space, architecture and art, symbolism in social interactions, and symbolic constructions of the past.

The Population Ecology of Interest Representation

The Population Ecology of Interest Representation
Author: Virginia Gray
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1996
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780472087181

This examination of lobbying communities explores how interest group populations are constructed and how they influence politics and public policy. By examining how populations of interest groups are comprised, this work fills an important gap between existing theories of the origins of individual interest groups and studies of interest group influence. The population ecology model of interest communities developed here builds on insights first developed in population biology and later employed by organizational ecologists. The model's central premise is that it is the environmental forces confronting interest organizations that most directly shape the contours of interest populations. After examining the demography of interest organizations in the fifty American states, the population ecology model is used to account for variations in the density and diversity of their interest communities, the nature of competition among similar interest organizations to establish viable niches, and the impact of alternative configurations of interest communities on the legislative process and the policies it produces. These empirical findings suggest that the environment of interest communities is highly constraining, limiting their size, composition, and potential impact on politics. Virginia Gray is Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota. David Lowery is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Leadership, Authority and Representation in British Muslim Communities

Leadership, Authority and Representation in British Muslim Communities
Author: Sophie Gilliat-Ray
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3039437410

The contributions explore Muslim religious leadership in multiple forms and settings. While traditional authority is usually correlated with theology and piety, as in the case of classically trained ulema, the public advocacy of Muslim community concerns is often headed by those with professionalized skillsets and civic experience. In an increasingly digital world, both women and men exercise leadership in novel ways, and sites of authority are refracted from traditional loci, such as mosques and seminaries, to new and unexpected places. This collection provides systematic focus on a topic that has hitherto been given rather diffuse consideration. It complements historical work on community leadership as well as more contemporary discussion on the training and role of Islamic religious authorities. It will be of interest to scholars in Religious Studies, Sociology, Political Science, History, and Islamic Studies.

Cultural Representation in Native America

Cultural Representation in Native America
Author: Andrew Jolivétte
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780759109858

Today as in the past there are many cultural and commercial representations of American Indians that, thoughtlessly or otherwise, negatively shape the images of indigenous people. Joliv tte and his co-authors challenge and contest these images, demonstrating how Native representation and identity are at the heart of Native politics and Native activism. In portrayals of a Native Barbie Doll or a racist mascot, disrespect of Native women, misconceptions of mixed race identities, or the commodification of all things "Indian", the authors reveal how the very existence of Native people continues to be challenged, with harmful repercussions in social and legal policy, not just in popular culture. The authors re-articulate Native history, religion, identity, and oral and literary traditions in ways that allow the true identity and persona of the Native person to be recognized and respected. It is a project that is fundamental to ethnic revitalization and the recognition of indigenous rights in North America. This book is a provocative and essential introduction for students and Native and non-Native people who wish to understand the images and realities of American Indian lifeways in American society.

The Blue Guitar

The Blue Guitar
Author: Nancy L. Schwartz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1988
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780226742373

Americans conceive of the process of political representation as operating like a "transmission belt." Elections convey citizens' preferences unchanged into the legislative assembly and thereby allow them to participate, through their representatives, in the political affairs of the nation. This conception stands firmly in the tradition of liberal thought, as does much theory about political representation. In that tradition, government is defined primarily in terms of power, and elections are little more than the means by which that power is transferred from the people to their representatives. In The Blue Guitar (the title alludes to a poem by Wallace Stevens), Nancy L. Schwartz offers a radically new understanding of representation. As she sees it, representatives should be—and, in the past, have been—more than mere delegates or trustees of individual desires and interests and the process of representation more than the appropriation of power and control. Ideally, representation should transform both representative and citizen. Representatives should be caretakers of the community, not the watchdogs of special interest groups or individuals. Citizens in turn should feel increased personal responsibility for the whole that membership in the community entails. Moreover, representatives should serve as founders of their constituencies, constituting communities whose members value citizenship as an end in itself. In her analysis, Schwartz canvasses the political experience of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance city-states to discover the communitarian meaning of citizenship, and she draws on classical political theory from Plato to Rousseau and Hegel, on the political sociology of Marx and Weber, and on such contemporary theorists as Arendt and Pitkin. Schwartz also enters the controversy over whether local, state, and national legislators should be selected by district or at-large elections. After examining a set of key Supreme Court cases on voting rights and district elections, she proposes that representatives come from single-member geographic districts.