The Crisis from Within: Historians, Theory, and the Humanities

The Crisis from Within: Historians, Theory, and the Humanities
Author: Nigel Raab
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004292721

In The Crisis from Within, Nigel Raab explores weaknesses that emerge when using interdisciplinary theories in historical analysis. With chapters that focus on knowledge, language, memory, imagining and inventing, and civil society, the analysis reveals how theoretical applications can be the source of interpretive confusion. By drawing from a global range of historical works, Nigel Raab demonstrates how this problem concerns all historical sub-fields. From science in the seventeenth century to communism in the twentieth century, theories often overdetermine analysis in a way the historian never intended. After the enthusiastic reception of theory for over a generation, The Crisis from Within argues that the time has come to pause and think seriously about how we wish to proceed with theory.

Toward a Discourse of Consent

Toward a Discourse of Consent
Author: Gabriel Villaronga
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2004-08-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

Focuses on the interaction between American authorities, the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), and its multiple supporters that informed colonial politics in Puerto Rico.

Positioning and Stance in Political Discourse: The Individual, the Party, and the Party Line

Positioning and Stance in Political Discourse: The Individual, the Party, and the Party Line
Author: Lawrence N. Berlin
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 162273954X

Within the political sphere, a political actor is often judged by what he or she says, with their verbal performance often perceived as representative of the individual. Hearers accept that, as individuals, they possess a lifetime of experiences and actions which inform, but may also undermine, their aspirations in gaining political capital. Additionally, as representatives of a political party and its ideology, these actors do not exist in isolation; they are members and, at times, potential candidates of a particular party with its own agenda which may, in turn, cause them to modify their personal speech to align with espoused policies of the party. The various contributions contained in this volume examine the discourse of political actors through the lenses of positionality and stance. Throughout its chapters, clearly defined theoretical perspectives and specified social practices are employed, enabling the authors to elucidate how political actors can situate themselves, their party, and their opponents toward their ostensive public. This book successfully demonstrates how espoused perspectives relate to, or reflect on, the nature of the individual political actor and their truth, the party they represent and its ideology, and the pandering to popular public opinion to gain support and co-operation. This book will hold particular appeal for postgraduate students, researchers, and scholars of discourse studies, pragmatics, political science, as well as other areas in humanities and the social sciences.

Talking About Torture

Talking About Torture
Author: Jared Del Rosso
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-06-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231539495

When the photographs depicting torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were released in 2004, U.S. politicians attributed the incident to a few bad apples in the American military, exonerated high-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration, promoted Guantánamo as a model prison, and dismissed the illegality of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation." By the end of the Bush administration, members of both major congressional parties had come to denounce enhanced interrogation as torture and argue for the closing of Guantánamo. What initiated this shift? In Talking About Torture, Jared Del Rosso reviews transcripts from congressional hearings and scholarship on denial, torture, and state violence to document this wholesale change in rhetoric and attitude toward the use of torture by the CIA and the U.S. military during the War on Terror. He plots the evolution of the "torture issue" in U.S. politics and its manipulation by politicians to serve various ends. Most important, Talking About Torture integrates into the debate about torture the testimony of those who suffered under American interrogation practices and demonstrates how the conversation continues to influence current counterterrorism policies, such as the reliance on drones.

The Age of Consent

The Age of Consent
Author: George Monbiot
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2010-05-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0007379544

A manifesto for a new world order.

Representing Rape

Representing Rape
Author: Susan Ehrlich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2003-08-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134627653

Representing Rape is the first feminist analysis of the language of sexual assault trials from the perspective of linguists. Susan Ehrlich argues that language is central to all legal settings - specifically sexual harassment and acquaintance rape hearings where linguistic descriptions of the events are often the only type of evidence available. Language does not simply reflect but helps to construct the character of the people and events under investigation. The book is based around a case study of the trial of a male student accused of two instances of sexual assault in two different settings: a university tribunal and a criminal trial. This case is situated within international studies on rape trials and is relevant to the legal systems of the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. She shows how culturally-dominant notions about rape percolate through the talk of sexual assault cases in a variety of settings and ultimately shape their outcome. Ehrlich hopes that to understand rape trials in this way is to recognize their capacity for change. By highlighting the underlying preconceptions and prejudices in the language of courtrooms today, this important book paves the way towards a fairer judicial system for the future.

Human Rights Discourse in a Global Network

Human Rights Discourse in a Global Network
Author: Lena Khor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317119800

In her innovative study of human rights discourse, Lena Khor takes up the prevailing concern by scholars who charge that the globalization of human rights discourse is becoming yet another form of cultural, legal, and political imperialism imposed from above by an international human rights regime based in the Global North. To counter these charges, she argues for a paradigmatic shift away from human rights as a hegemonic, immutable, and ill-defined entity toward one that recognizes human rights as a social construct comprised of language and of language use. She proposes a new theoretical framework based on a global discourse network of human rights, supporting her model with case studies that examine the words and actions of witnesses to genocide (Paul Rusesabagina) and humanitarian organizations (Doctors Without Borders). She also analyzes the language of texts such as Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost. Khor's idea of a globally networked structure of human rights discourse enables actors (textual and human) who tap into or are linked into this rapidly globalizing system of networks to increase their power as speaking subjects and, in so doing, to influence the range of acceptable meanings and practices of human rights in the cultural sphere. Khor’s book is a unique and important contribution to the study of human rights in the humanities that revitalizes viable notions of agency and liberatory network power in fields that have been dominated by negative visions of human capacity and moral action.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis
Author: Susan Strauss
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136328076

This introductory textbook presents a variety of approaches and perspectives that can be employed to analyze any sample of discourse. The perspectives come from multiple disciplines, including linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, all of which shed light on meaning and the interactional construction of meaning through language use. Students without prior experience in discourse analysis will appreciate and understand the micro-macro relationship of language use in everyday contexts, in professional and academic settings, in languages other than English, and in a wide variety of media outlets. Each chapter is supported by examples of spoken and written discourse from various types of data sources, including conversations, commercials, university lectures, textbooks, print ads, and blogs, and concludes with hands-on opportunities for readers to actually do discourse analysis on their own. Students can also utilize the book’s comprehensive companion website, with flash cards for key terms, quizzes, and additional data samples, for in-class activities and self-study. With its accessible multi-disciplinary approach and comprehensive data samples from a variety of sources, Discourse Analysis is the ideal core text for the discourse analysis course in applied linguistics, English, education, and communication programs.

We Believe You

We Believe You
Author: Annie E. Clark
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2016-04-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1627795332

"From young activists at the forefront of the movement to end sexual assault on college campuses, a collection of survivor stories that will connect with students and inform and inspire us all Across the U.S. student activists are exposing a pervasive cover-up of sexual assault on college campuses. Every day more survivors come forward. But other survivors choose not to. We Believe You elevates the stories the headlines about this issue have been missing--more than 30 experiences of trauma, healing and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities and loves. More than 1 in 5 women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted at college, a shocking status quo that might have stayed largely hidden and unaddressed but for the two authors of We Believe You. In 2013, Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, then 23 and 20, building on the work of earlier activists, outed themselves as assault survivors and filed a federal complaint against the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) for mishandling such crimes; within a month, the U.S. government began to investigate UNC. Within a year, dozens of colleges were under federal investigation. But Clark and Pino rightly see themselves as two among many. Students from every kind of college and university--large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so--are sounding alarms and staking claims to justice by filing complaints, by pressing charges, and by simply living beyond the effects of assault and the betrayals of their schools. A sampling of their voices speak out in this book"--

Choice and Consent

Choice and Consent
Author: Rosemary Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-12-04
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135331197

This current and timely volume presents new thinking and new directions in feminist legal scholarship. Rethinking key concepts in legal feminism, Cowan and Hunter provide a unique examination of key socio-legal concepts in law, jurisprudence and legal and political theory. Written by an international cast of contributors, offering different cultural perspectives as well as doctrinal and theoretical knowledge, this collection of essays presents a dialogue between different feminist positions and approaches to a common theme. It addresses a range of questions, including: Can 'consent' be rethought and infused with different meanings in a post-liberal feminist politics? Can the concepts of 'choice' and 'consent' have consistent meanings and functions between different areas of law, or whether they prove to be highly contingent when viewed across the broad field of law. Exploring the deeply gendered concepts of ‘choice’ and ‘consent’ and examining the philosophical and jurisprudential issues surrounding them as well as how ‘choice’ and ‘consent’ operate in particular areas of law, including criminal law, medical law, constitutional law, employment law, family law and civil procedure, this volume is a key resource for postgraduate law students studying jurisprudence.