Tag: political

Free Download Eden Sum-hung Li, "Systemic Functional Political Discourse Analysis: A Text-based Study "
English | ISBN: 1138359718 | 2019 | 268 pages | EPUB | 23 MB
Systemic Functional Political Discourse Analysis: A Text-based Study is the first book which takes a comprehensive systemic functional perspective on political discourse to provide a complete, integrated, exhaustive, systemic and functional description and analysis. Based on the political discourses of the Umbrella Movement – the largest public protest in the history of Hong Kong, which occupies a unique political situation in the world: a post-colonial society like many other Asian societies and yet unlike the others, it is a Special Administrative Region of China. Though it enjoys a high degree of autonomy under the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, it is still confined to being part of the ‘One Country’. The book demonstrates how a systemic functional approach can provide a comprehensive, thorough, and insightful analysis of the political discourse from four co-related and complementary approaches: contextual, discourse semantic, lexicogrammatical and historical. Apart from a thorough discussion of various systemic functional conceptions, it provides examples of various analyses from a SF perspective, including contextual parameters, registerial analysis, semantic discourse analysis, appraisal analysis, and discusses important issues in political discourse, including negotiation of self-identity, association of language, power and institutional role, and expression of ‘evidentiality’ and ‘subjectivity’. It is written not only for those who are interested in Hong Kong politics in general and political discourse in Hong Kong in particular, but also for those who work on political discourse analysis, and those who apply SFL to various other discourses such as mass media discourse, medical discourse, teaching discourse, etc. Last but not least, this book is also intended to provide a theoretical framework in discourse analysis from the systemic functional perspective for those who work in Cantonese and in other languages.

Free Download Atef Shahat Said, "Revolution Squared: Tahrir, Political Possibilities, and Counterrevolution in Egypt"
English | ISBN: 1478025506 | 2023 | 360 pages | PDF | 4 MB
In Revolution Squared Atef Shahat Said examines the 2011 Egyptian Revolution to trace the expansive range of liberatory possibilities and containment at the heart of every revolution. Drawing on historical analysis and his own participation in the revolution, Said outlines the importance of Tahrir Square and other physical spaces as well as the role of social media and digital spaces. He develops the notion of lived contingency-the ways revolutionary actors practice and experience the revolution in terms of the actions they do or do not take-to show how Egyptians made sense of what was possible during the revolution. Said charts the lived contingencies of Egyptian revolutionaries from the decade prior to the revolution’s outbreak to its peak and the so-called transition to democracy to the 2013 military coup into the present. Contrary to retrospective accounts and counterrevolutionary thought, Said argues that the Egyptian Revolution was not doomed to defeat. Rather, he demonstrates that Egyptians did not fully grasp their immense clout and that limited reformist demands reduced the revolution’s potential for transformation.

Free Download Anna Gotlib, "Responses to a Pandemic: Philosophical and Political Reflections"
English | ISBN: 1538154048 | 2022 | 250 pages | EPUB, PDF | 467 KB + 2 MB
What does it mean to be in the middle of a pandemic-for us, for our country, or for the world? How do our current inequalities and injustices become amplified by the demands of the pandemic and what, if anything, can be done? Who is most impacted-and why does it seem that so many of the same people are, once again, deemed expendable and "less-than"? How do we explain COVID-19 and its attendant traumas to our children, and what do we teach them about hope, justice, grief, and the role of imagination in survival? And once the worst has passed, how do we start again, and what should we care about as we contemplate individual and collective repair?

Free Download Grant D. Moss, "Political Poetry in the Wake of the Second Spanish Republic: Rafael Alberti, Pablo Neruda, and Nicolás Guillén"
English | ISBN: 1498547702 | 2017 | 170 pages | EPUB | 372 KB
From notions of art for art’s sake to committed poetry, it may seem that poets cannot achieve reconciliation between the politics and poetry. However, among committed Communist poets of the 20th century of the Spanish-speaking world, three poets stand out as examples of a search to bring together their political and their poetic commitments: Rafael Alberti, Nicolás Guillén, and Pablo Neruda. Political Poetry in the Wake of the Second Spanish Republic analyzes the simultaneous development of politics and poetics in these three Spanish-language poets as it was nurtured by the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). Beginning in these years, Alberti, Guillén, and Neruda strove to tackle the challenge of committing to their own independent poetic projects and to their politics at the same time. Later, these three poets maintained their Communist Party affiliation until their deaths and produced collection after collection of quality poetry. Despite the differences in their overall poetic trajectories and projects, the ability to maneuver between politics and poetry without sacrificing either one is common among them. Because of their unique experiences during the time of the Second Spanish Republic in Spain, each author explicitly denounced the injustices that the opposing Franquist forces had committed against the Republic. After the fall of the Republic in 1939, Alberti, Guillén, and Neruda continued to intertwine their politics with their poems only in a less obvious manner. Therefore, each could solidify his position within the poetic canon while at the same time each could maintain his position as a committed (or at least card-carrying) Communist.

Free Download Frits Bienfait, "Political Left and Right since Antigone"
English | ISBN: 1527534480 | 2019 | 140 pages | PDF | 1437 KB
Why do we use the terms left and right to characterize political matters? Left and right in themselves have no political significance. Apparently there is something inside us that connects these bodily terms to politics. This book is the first to discover that something. Political use of the terms left and right originated in the French Estates General on the 7th of May 1789, two days after its grandiose opening session, in a simple ad hoc measure for a short event that afternoon. However, this measure embodied the unforeseen emergence of the political left/right dichotomy. Its continual developments are discussed here, with examples not only from politics, but also from everyday life, anthropology, genetic engineering, a novel by Turgenev, ingenious experiments with volunteers, and much more. But above all, the dichotomy is enshrined in unconscious urges deep within usas illustrated 2,400 years ago by Sophocles in his tragedy Antigone.

Free Download James D. Ward, "Policing and Race in America: Economic, Political, and Social Dynamics"
English | ISBN: 1498550916 | 2017 | 304 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
This edited collection explores policing in America in regards to minority groups. The essays discuss how the relationship between police and minority groups affects politics, the economy, and minority groups’ daily lives and success. The contributors explore the Black Lives Matter movement, the Detroit, Los Angeles, and Atlanta Police Departments, immigration, incarceration, community policing, police violence, and detail causes, theories, and solutions to this important phenomenon.

Free Download Larry May, "Medieval Legal and Political Thought"
English | ISBN: 1527575829 | 2022 | 545 pages | PDF | 4 MB
Medieval legal and political thought encompasses the period from approximately 500 CE to 1500 CE. The term "Medieval" refers to the legal and political thought from the time of the late Roman Empire to that of the Renaissance. The legal and political thought of the Middle Ages is overwhelmingly characterized by the increasing role that religion played in influencing politics and law. By the high Middle Ages, we find the great theorists, Averroes, Maimonides, and Aquinas linking law to their respective religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. This book argues that the so-called Dark Ages had very significant ideas about the law, especially how violence is to be contained, which make this early Medieval period anything but "Dark." It suggests that the Christianization and Islamization of legal and political thought created almost as many problems as solutions to the increasingly diverse times that arose in the middle of the Middle Ages. The book also shows that the late Middle Ages already held many of the most important legal and political ideas of the Renaissance-showing that there was no clear break from the Medieval to the Modern periods of legal and political thought. Of central importance is the way that the development of the idea of conscience made the natural law theories of the Medieval times a robust set of ideas that is still felt quite strongly today.

Free Download J. P. Linstroth, "Marching against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland"
English | ISBN: 0739125214 | 2015 | 318 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
Marching against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland begins with the question: why is it so problematic for the majority of people in the Basque town of Hondarribia to accept the broader participation of women in their annual military march known as the Alarde? To explain this dispute, this study examines local history as well as the history of this unique parade, but most importantly considers how gender practices were and are organized. The controversy to extend female involvement in the Alarde resulted in two positions between betikoak traditionalists, (Betiko Alardearen Aldekoak, "Always the Town’s Alarde"), and local "feminists" (emakumealdekoak or Emakumeak Juana Mugarrietakoa, the Women of Mugarrietakoa, WJM), the former group wishing to preserve the ritual and the latter wanting to change it. These are not simply dichotomous stances but represent multiple levels of local identity through differing concepts of gender, history, and social experience. It will be shown throughout the Alarde’s long history (1639-present) that it represents several periods of militarism from the town’s defense in 1638 against French forces, Napoleonic resistance (1808-1813) to the Carlist Wars (1833-1840 and 1872-1876). The Alarde began as a religious procession and gradually incorporated more and more secular elements. In essence, by the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the Alarde became one of many "Basque celebrations" (Euskal jaiak), tying it to Basque nationalism.

Free Download Andy Smith, "Made in France: Societal structures and political work "
English | ISBN: 1526154234 | 2021 | 240 pages | PDF | 3 MB
How has French society been made, by whom and why? And how in turn has it influenced the French? This book sets out the institutionalized rules and norms that continue to structure France, together with the ‘political work’ that has recently changed or reproduced these power relations.

Free Download Joshua J. Bowman, "Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of Thoreau "
English | ISBN: 1498559026 | 2018 | 200 pages | EPUB | 3 MB
Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of Thoreau seeks to correct oversimplified readings of Henry David Thoreau’s political thought by elucidating a key tension within his imagination. With the celebration of Thoreau’s two-hundredth birthday now past, this study outlines, and builds on, his own understanding of imagination and considers its implications for environmental politics.