Product Description: In the wake of many decades of increasing centralization, localism has been making a decided comeback in recent years. This book explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the everyday practice of citizenship...read more

Product Description: John Yochelson was seventeen when he first heard President Kennedy’s call, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Responding to the call to public service, he had a front-row seat from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, when the power game in Washington was played across party lines...read more

When four brothers and sisters discover a Psammead, or sand-fairy, in the gravel pit near the country house where they are staying, they have no way of knowing all the adventures its wish-granting will bring them

Product Description: This book provides a brief but wide-ranging history of torture in Europe and America as well as an analysis of its return in the aftermath of the 'war on terror'. During the state of exception declared in the wake of 9/11 2001, the Bush administration judicially sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the ban of torture in US and Public International Law...read more

Product Description: Orit Rozin’s inspired scholarship focuses on the construction and negotiation of citizenship in Israel during the state’s first decade. Positioning itself both within and against much of the critical sociological literature on the period, this work reveals the dire historical circumstances, the ideological and bureaucratic pressures, that limited the freedoms of Israeli citizens...read more

From entertainment to citizenship reveals how the young use shows like X-factor to comment on how power ought to be used, and how they respond to those pop stars - like Bono and Bob Geldof - who claim to represent them. It explores how young people connect the pleasures of popular culture to the world at large. For them, popular culture is not simply a matter of escapism and entertainment, but of engagement too. The place of popular culture in politics, and its contribution to democratic life, has too often been misrepresented or misunderstood. This book provides the evidence and analysis that will help correct this misperception. It documents the voices of young people as they talk about popular culture (what they love as well as what they dislike), and as they reveal their thoughts about the world they inhabit. It will be of interest to those who study media and culture, and those who study politics.

Product Description: The focus of this book is to analyse from a number of perspectives the politics of change in Ireland north and south since 1969. The emergence of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the final push to gain entry to the EEC, changing social mores and severe economic difficulties all begin to appear on the horizon at this stage...read more

Product Description: Urban activism can manifest in many guises, from community gardening to mass naked bike rides. But how might we theorize the evidence of the collisions between social forces that take place in our streets and public commons? Cities are formed through these collective collisions in time...read more

Product Description: Etiquette books insist that we never discuss politics during a meal. In Table Talk , Janet A. Flammang offers a polite rebuttal, presenting vivid firsthand accounts of people's lives at the table to show how mealtimes can teach us the conversational give-and-take foundational to democracy...read more