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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2023

        The illusion of the Burgundian state

        by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Christopher Fletcher

        On 25 January 1474, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, appeared before his subjects in Dijon. Robed in silk, gold and precious jewels and wearing a headpiece that gave the illusion of a crown, he made a speech in which he cryptically expressed his desire to become a king. Three years later, Charles was killed at the battle of Nancy, an event that plunged the Great Principality of Burgundy into chaos. This book, innovative and essential, not only explores Burgundian history and historiography but offers a complete synthesis about the nature of politics in this region, considered both from the north and the south. Focusing on political ideologies, a number of important issues are raised relating to the medieval state, the signification of the nation under the 'Ancien Regime', the role of warfare in the creation of political power and the impact of political loyalties in the exercise of government. In doing so, the book challenges a number of existing ideas about the Burgundian state.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2011

        Constitutions and political theory

        Second edition

        by Jan-Erik Lane

        Since constitutional arrangements are what make politics work, they are a central concern of political theory. This book, now completely updated, was the first comprehensive exploration of the political theory of constitutions. Jan-Erik Lane begins by examining the origins and history of constitutionalism and answers key questions such as: what is a constitution? Why are there constitutions? From where does constitutionalism originate? How is the constitutional state related to democracy and justice? Constitutions play a major role in domestic and international politics in the early 21st century and an updated version of this classic textbook will introduce students to a number of different areas - theoretical, empirical and moral - which will aid their understanding of this important topic. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Migrant races

        Empire,Identity and K.S. Ranjitsinhji

        by Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie, Satadru Sen

        This book is a study of mobility, image and identity in colonial India and imperial Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a model for studies of migrant figures like K.S. Ranjitsinhji who emerged during the imperial period. Ranjitsinhji is an important figure in the history of modern India and the British empire because he was recognized as a great athlete and described as such. The book focuses on four aspects of Ranjitsinhji's life as a colonial subject: race, money, loyalty and gender. It touches upon Ranjitsinhji's career as a cricketer in the race section. The issue of money gave Indian critics of Ranjitsinhji's regime the language they needed to condemn his personal and administrative priorities, and to portray him as self-indulgent. Ranjitsinhji lived his life as a player of multiple gender roles: sometimes serially, and on occasion simultaneously. His status as a "prince" - while not entirely fake - was fragile enough to be unreliable, and he worked hard to reinforce it even as he constructed his Englishness. Any Indian attempt to transcend race, culture, climate and political place by imitating an English institution and its product must be an unnatural act of insurgency. The disdain for colonial politics that was manifest in the "small rebellions" at the end of the world war converged with the colonized/Indian identity that was evident at the League of Nations. Between the war and his death, it is clear, Ranjitsinhji moved to maximize his autonomy in Nawanagar.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2004

        The political marketing revolution

        Transforming the government of the UK

        by Jennifer Lees-Marshment

        This book shows how British politics is being transformed from a leadership-run system to one dictated by public needs and demands. No longer confined to party politics, organisations including the monarchy, the BBC, universities, local councils, charities and the Scottish Parliament are adopting the tools of market intelligence to understand their market needs and demands. The political marketing revolution raises many questions, such as whether the student or patient really does know best and can decide their own education and health care. The book calls for a debate about the movement of the British political system towards a market-orientation and a re-negotiation of the relationship between leaders and the market. Whilst recognising the need for political leaders to listen, this debate places some responsibilities on the political consumer, looking to create a new relationship that might work more effectively for both sides.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Servants of the empire

        The Irish in Punjab 1881–1921

        by Patrick O'Leary, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Punjab, 'the pride of British India', attracted the cream of the Indian Civil Service, many of the most influential of whom were Irish. Some of these men, along with Irish viceroys, were inspired by their Irish backgrounds to ensure security of tenure for the Punjabi peasant, besides developing vast irrigation schemes which resulted in the province becoming India's most affluent. But similar inspiration contributed to the severity of measures taken against Indian nationalist dissent, culminating in the Amritsar massacre which so catastrophically transformed politics on the sub-continent. Setting the experiences of Irish public servants in Punjab in the context of the Irish diaspora and of linked agrarian problems in Ireland and India, this book descrides the beneficial effects the Irish had on the prosperity of India's most volatile province. Alongside the baleful contribution of some towards a growing Indian antipathy towards British rule. Links are established between policies pursued by Irishmen of the Victorian era and current happenings on the Pakistan-Afghan border and in Punjab.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        2020

        What Will Give Us Strength

        by Tetiana Teren (compiler)

        What gives us strength? To us as individuals, to our families, to the country, to the world? Each of us has his own source of inspiration. But what to do if it does not always work? Then we are looking for the strength in others, for their advice and support, for their way of keeping strong in challenging times. In 2019-2020, Ukrainians needed additional sources of strength, because war, uncertainty, political populism, and pandemic created additional stress. During those years twenty-five leading Ukrainian intellectuals reflected on their sources of their resilience in the publication "What will give us strength?". Collected under one cover, twenty five essays discuss a difficult period of challenges in the life of each author individually as well as Ukraine in general. The answers offered by the authors will become a valuable guide for the reader, a model of motivation, an advice to hold on to.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2024

        Sexual politics in revolutionary England

        by Sam Fullerton

        Sexual politics in revolutionary England recounts a dramatic transformation in English sexual polemic that unfolded during the kingdom's mid-seventeenth-century civil wars. In early Stuart England, explicit sexual language was largely confined to manuscript and oral forms by the combined regulatory pressures of ecclesiastical press licensing and powerful cultural notions of civility and decorum. During the early 1640s, however, graphic sex-talk exploded into polemical print for the first time in English history. Over the next two decades, sexual politics evolved into a vital component of public discourse, as contemporaries utilized sexual satire to reframe the English Revolution as a battle between licentious Stuart tyrants and their lecherous puritan enemies. By the time that Charles II regained the throne in 1660, this book argues, sex was already a routine element of English political culture.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2009

        Men in political theory

        by Terrell Carver

        Men in political theory builds on feminist re-readings of the traditional canon of male writers in Political Philosophy by turning the 'gender lens' on to the representation of men in widely studies texts. It explains the distinction between 'man' as an apparently de-gendered 'individual' or 'citizen', and 'man' as an overtly gendered being in human society. Both these representations of 'man' are crucial to a clearer understanding of the operation of gender. Newly available in paperback, the book is the first to use the 'men's studies' and 'masculinities' literatures in re-thinking the political problems that students and specialists in the social sciences and humanities must encounter: consent, obligation, patriarchy, gender, sexuality, life-cycle, and discriminatory disadvantage related to sex, age, class, race/ethnicity and disability. It does this by re-examining the historical materials from which present-day concepts of citizenship, individuality, identity, subjectivity, normativity and legitimacy arise. The ten chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx and Engels show the operation of the 'gender lens' in different ways, depending on how the philosopher deploys concepts of men and masculinity to pose and solve classic problems. They can all be read independently and are as suitable for those just making the acquaintance of these classic writers as for those with specialist knowledge and interests. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2010

        Towards a regional political class?

        Professional politicians and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland

        by Klaus Stolz

        Focussing on professional politicians Klaus Stolz investigates the interrelationship between political career patterns and political institutions in two of the most widely discussed cases of regionalism: Catalonia and Scotland. The study deals with two different yet closely related sets of questions: Firstly, how do professional politicians pursue their careers in the regional context. And secondly, how do they shape and reshape the political institutions in which they pursue these careers. The monograph is based on extensive empirical research including a comprehensive data set on the careers of Catalan and Scottish parliamentarians, systematic surveys of regional representatives as well as in-depth interviews of a wide range of politicians and experts in both regions. Exploring the effects of political professionalisation on regional democracy, Stolz goes way beyond traditional studies of regionalism and decentralization, while his focus on the regional career arena introduces a much needed territorial dimension to the study of political careers. Rich original data, innovative theoretical concepts and a strictly comparative approach are the basis for a study that considerably deepens and enhances our understanding of the tremendous political changes both Catalonia and Scotland are undergoing. Thus, the book is of interest to the still growing number of scholars concerned with devolution in the UK, the Spanish autonomous communities as well as to those interested in regional politics and regionalisation in general. Furthermore, its theoretical focus makes it highly relevant for scholars working on political careers, political professionalisation and democratic theory. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2023

        The penny politics of Victorian popular fiction

        by Rob Breton

        Penny politics offers a new way to read early Victorian popular fiction such as Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London. It locates forms of radical discourse in the popular literature that emerged simultaneously with Brittan's longest and most significant people's movement. It listens for echoes of Chartist fiction in popular fiction. The book rethinks the relationship between the popular and political, understanding that radical politics had popular appeal and that the lines separating a genuine radicalism from commercial success are complicated and never absolute. With archival work into Newgate calendars and Chartist periodicals, as well as media history and culture, it brings together histories of the popular and political so as to rewrite the radical canon.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Country houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930

        by Stephanie Barczewski

        Country houses and the British empire, 1700-1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        Politics, performance and popular culture

        Theatre and society in nineteenth-century Britain

        by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey, Jeffrey Richards

        This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is political. The book is organised into three parts in dialogue regarding specific approaches to popular performance and politics. Part I offers a series of conceptual studies using popular culture as an analytical category for social and political history. Part II explores the ways that performance represents and constructs contemporary ideologies of race, nation and empire. Part III investigates the performance techniques of specific politicians - including Robert Peel, Keir Hardie and Henry Hyndman - and analyses the performative elements of collective movements.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2011

        Sovereign states or political communities?

        Civil society and contemporary politics

        by Darrow Schecter

        Explores the ideas, meaning and history of civil society, its role in the 1989 revolutions, its role in new social movements and its relationship with the state and the economy.. Distinguishes between security and freedom and illustrates how the latter is a political issue.. Draws on the writings of a wide range of political thinkers including: Kant Hegel Feuerbach Marx Weber Schmitt Adorno Arendt. Offers sophisticated and illuminating analysis and seeks to redefine politics in new ways.. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Political science & theory
        July 2015

        The political theory of the Irish Constitution

        Republicanism and the basic law

        by Eoin Daly, Tom Hickey

        The political theory of the Irish Constitution considers Irish constitutional law and the Irish constitutional tradition from the perspective of Republican theory. It analyses the central devices and doctrines of the Irish Constitution - popular sovereignty, constitutional rights and judicial review - in light of Republican concepts of citizenship and civic virtue. The Constitution, it will argue, can be understood as a framework for promoting popular participation in government as much as a mechanism for protecting individual liberties. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Irish politics, political theory and constitutional law, and to all those interested in political reform and public philosophy in Ireland.

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        Political ideologies
        July 2013

        Understanding political ideas and movements

        by Kevin Harrison, Tony Boyd

        Written specifically to cover the A2 component of the GCE Government and Politics A-level. Provides a comprehensive introduction to the various political ideas and movements that have shaped the modern world. Underpinned by the work of major thinkers such as Marx, Locke, Weber, Hobbes and Foucault, the book examines at political concepts including the state and sovereignty, the nation and democracy, representation and legitimacy, freedom, equality and rights, obligation and citizenship. Addresses traditional theoretical subjects such as socialism, marxism and nationalism as well as contemporary contemporary movements such as environmentalism, ecologism and feminism. Written in a clear, accessible style, including a number of student-friendly features, such as chapter summaries, key points to consider, definitions and pointers to further sources of information.

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