Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain
Title | Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain PDF eBook |
Author | Laura Desfor Edles |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 224 |
Release | 1998-04-16 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780521628853 |
This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the Spanish transition to democracy after Franco. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to the 'strategy of consensus' deployed by the Spanish elite and uses systematic textual interpretation (with a particular focus on Spanish newspapers) to show how a new symbolic framework emerged in post-Franco Spain which enabled the resolution of specific events critical to the success of the transition. In addition to uncovering underlying processes of symbolization, she shows that politico-historical transitions can themselves be understood as ritual processes, involving as they do phases and symbols of separation, liminality and re-aggregation.
Symbol and Conquest
Title | Symbol and Conquest PDF eBook |
Author | Ronald L. Grimes |
Publisher | Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press |
Pages | 292 |
Release | 1992 |
Genre | Conquistadora |
ISBN |
Reprint of the work originally published by Cornell University Press in 1976. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Crafting Democracy
Title | Crafting Democracy PDF eBook |
Author | Nicolai Petro |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 272 |
Release | 2018-07-05 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1501729438 |
The Novgorod region of Russia is a sparsely populated area about the size of Ireland better known for its medieval archaeology and folklore than for anything else. Although Novgorod began the post-Soviet period with no unusual endowment of natural or human resources, it has attracted a large amount of foreign investment. Its dramatic economic success and political innovation have impressed observers. Local governments deliver benefits and services reliably, and the regional government responds quickly to citizens' needs and demands. Something noteworthy is happening in Novgorod that does not square with familiar headlines about contemporary Russia: oligarchs and oil, ethnic tensions and corruption.Nicolai N. Petro attempts to explain the Novgorod phenomenon by seeking answers at the regional level. Novgorod is, he finds, a model of effective democratic consolidation. Petro suggests that the region owes its unexpected recent success to its political elites, who have identified key cultural symbols and used those symbols to promote democratic development. Drawing on comparisons with other regions and countries, Petro finds that these cultural tactics often yield better results than do Western-style institutions and educational training programs. "Current efforts to promote democracy focus too much on structural changes and not enough on the conditions needed to sustain them," Petro writes. "For the rule of law, free markets, and free and fair elections to gain broad public support, they must first make sense within the local cultural tradition." The unexpected success of regional democratic development in a country not known for its democratic traditions suggests that local governments can transform the burden of the past into an ally of change, a finding with implications for democratic development initiatives in other areas of the world.
Spain, 1833-2002
Title | Spain, 1833-2002 PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Vincent |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 306 |
Release | 2007-12-06 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0198731590 |
A lively and concise introduction to the politics and national life of Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries, covering both cultural and political history and exploring the complicated questions of citizenship and national identity that characterized Spain's political life even into the 1970s.
Muslim Struggle for Civil Rights in Spain
Title | Muslim Struggle for Civil Rights in Spain PDF eBook |
Author | Aitana Guia |
Publisher | Liverpool University Press |
Pages | 333 |
Release | 2013-04-01 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1782841512 |
In this history of Spain since 1975, with the collapse of dictatorship and transition to democracy, Aitana Guia demonstrates that a key factor left out of studies on the period -- namely immigration and specifically Muslim immigration -- has helped reinvigorate and strengthen the democratic process. Despite broad diversity and conflicting agendas, Muslim immigrants --often linking up with native converts to Islam -- have mobilized as an effective force. They have challenged the long tradition of Maurophobia exemplified in such mainstream festivities as the Festivals of Moors and Christians; they have taken to task residents and officials who have stood in the way of efforts to construct mosques; and they have defied the members of their own community who have refused to accommodate the rights of women. Beginning in Melilla, in Spanish-held North Africa, and expanding across Spain, the effect of this civil rights movement has been to fill gaps in legislation on immigration and religious pluralism and to set in motion a revision of prevailing interpretations of Spanish history and identity, ultimately forcing Spanish society to open up a space for all immigrants.
Democracy in Southern Europe
Title | Democracy in Southern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Isabelle Calleja Ragonesi |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Pages | 284 |
Release | 2019-02-28 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1786725592 |
How have Malta and Cyprus - both EU members – transitioned from colonial island states to independent democracies? With the assistance of primary documentation this book traces the difficult path of these two states to becoming independent liberal democracies by using the pathway of democratization through decolonization. Using socio-economic and political data, analysed through the microscope of political science and international relations theories, Isabelle Calleja Ragonesi charts the progress of the two islands in the context of a number of four distinct phases. Firstly decolonization, independence and achieving the status of procedural democracies; secondly post-colonial independence consolidating democracy and regime breakdown; thirdly sovereign nation-state status and second attempts at consolidating democracy and finally attempting to reach substantive democracy status and EU membership. The study of these two states is contextualized within the context of democratization in Southern Europe and the cases of Malta and Cyprus provide new insights on the region for scholars of political science and international institutions.
The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology
Title | The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology PDF eBook |
Author | Jeffrey C. Alexander |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 839 |
Release | 2012-01-26 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0195377761 |
Since sociologists returned to the study of culture in the past several decades, a pursuit all but anathema for a generation, cultural sociology has emerged as a vibrant field. Edited by three leading cultural sociologists, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology presents the full theoretical and methodological vitality of this critically significant new area.The Handbook gathers together works by authors confronting the crucial choices all cultural sociologists face today: about analytic priorities, methods, topics, epistemologies, ideologies, and even modes of writing. It is a vital collection of preeminent thinkers studying the ways in which culture, society, politics, and economy interact in the world.Organized by empirical areas of study rather than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the Handbook addresses power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Allowing the reader to observe tensions as well as convergences, the collection displays the value of cultural sociology not as a niche discipline but as a way to view and understand the many facets of contemporary society. The first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology offers comprehensive and immediate access to the real developments and disagreements taking place in the field, and deftly exemplifies how cultural sociology provides a new way of seeing and modeling social facts.