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Politics and Society in South Africa (SAGE Politics Texts series)
Daryl Glaser
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The Politics of the New South Africa
ASIN: 0761950176 |
Book Description
Providing a wide-ranging and critical introduction to contemporary South Africa, this book uses an interdisciplinary lens to introduce the student to the main debates, historical context, and issues that have characterized the study of South Africa over the last three decades. Key topics include: the role of colonialism, capitalism and modernity in the formation of the racial order; changes in the South African state; questions of class, race and ehtnicity; black resistance; and the transition to democracy. A number of underlying debates are critically evaluated. For exmple, the contribution of materialist and class-analytic approaches, the application of post-structuralism and theories of modernity, and the prospects for democratic liberalism and socialism in post-apartheid South Africa.
Book Description
Completely revised and updated, this new edition of Terror in the Mind of God incorporates the events of September 11, 2001 into Mark Juergensmeyer's landmark study of religious terrorism. Juergensmeyer explores the 1993 World Trade Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway nerve gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United States. His personal interviews with 1993 World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others, take us into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violence in the name of religion.
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Since September 11, 2001, we all need tools to help us understand what motivates religious terrorism. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Mark Juergensmeyer asks one of the most important and perplexing questions of our age: Why do religious people commit violent acts in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and terrorizing entire populations? This, the first comparative study of religious terrorism, explores incidents such as the World Trade Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway nerve gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United States. Updated with a new preface addressing the events of September 11, the book incorporates personal interviews with World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others, Juergensmeyer takes us into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violent acts. In the process, he helps us understand why these acts are often associated with religious causes and why they occur with such frequency at this moment in history. Terror in the Mind of God places these acts of violence in the context of global political and social changes, and posits them as attempts to empower the cultures of violence that support them. Juergensmeyer analyzes the economic, ideological, and gender-related dimensions of cultures that embrace a central sacred concept--cosmic war--and that employ religion to demonize their enemies. Juergensmeyer's narrative is engaging, incisive, and sweeping in scope. He convincingly shows that while, in many cases, religion supplies not only the ideology but also the motivation and organizational structure for the perpetrators of violent acts, it also carries with it the possibilities for peace. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000
Customer Reviews:
Religion and violence are not linked always.......2006-12-21
The thesis of this book is that religion and violence are always linked and that all religions are the same in having a violent strain and that all religions have violence in them naturally because religion is violent.
This is blatently and historically untrue. In attempting, like so many works, to not single out Islam as violent this book wants the reader to beleive that Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and all religions are equally violent and a study of each reveals a strain of hate. Timothy Mcveigh is the Christian, the Sikh Kalistan fighters are the Sikhs, The Tamils are the Hindus, Osama is the Muslims, The strange terror cell in Japan is the Buddhist. This is easy. Rather tahn doing a comprehensive study this book found one murderer from each religion that led a sect and said "see this religion has a strain of violence". However Timothy Mcveigh was one man as were the Buddhist extremists in Japan. The Tamils are not religious, there ware is based on ethnicity. Where are the Jewish terrorists, well there must be Baruch Goldstien and recall those Jewish Zealots 2000 years ago.
This is sheer lunacy. Different religions did indeed engage is certain levels of violence throughout history. THat is true. THere are also different forms of religions and religions change. Religions that were once violent or state controlled like Christianity and Buddhism, have become peaceful. Religions like Sikhism are naturally warrior based religions, but not neccesarily violent. Hinduism has never manifested itself violently, and Judaism hasnt been violent since the time of the revolt and that was a national revolt. This is just a gigantic scam. Islam has violent passages in the Koran. But this doesnt mean Bin Laden is timothy Mcveigh.
It is also not true that religion is 'more' violent than secular societies. Hitler and Stalin killed more people in 5 years than any religion has ever done. If anything religion may work as a hand holding violence back but helping unify it when it takes place.
Seth J. Frantzman
Survey of Religious terrorism.......2006-02-28
Excellent book covering all the major religions and their terrorists. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a scholarly survey or someone looking to make more sense of the world.
Many of the cases explored are chilling in their cold bloodedness, but the author makes all of them eminently understandable.
Juergensmeyer has done his research!.......2005-10-12
This book is being used in a Terrorism seminar class that I am taking and for good reason. Juergensmeyer does not rely wholly on second hand information but has actually visited and spoken with those accused and some even convicted of terror and gives a perspective that only a first hand knowledge would provide. This is an excellent insight into the minds of true idealists with a bent on death and destruction.
Religion and Violence in a postmodern context.......2005-06-10
As a comparative cultural study of religious terrorism, Mark Juergensmeyer attempts to explain how and why religion and violence are linked. Juergensmeyer analyzes recent incidents of global religious terrorism in order to illumine overarching patterns that heighten the risk of religious violence. Splitting his book into two parts, Juergensmeyer, first, highlights examples of religious terrorism within the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions. The author interviews religious leaders and activists within cultures of violence present in each of these traditions. In the second part of the book, Juergensmeyer identifies those characteristics that enhance the likelihood of religion becoming violent.
Juergensmeyer believes the first common denominator in religious extremism is the act of violence itself: terrorism is a theatrical display of violence. According to the author, these acts are performance events, inasmuch that they make symbolic, not strategic, statements. They are performative acts, insofar as they attempt to create change. The location and the time of the violent act, also, have symbolic purpose. Terrorism needs an audience, somebody to terrify, in order to be effective, and with the technological advancements of the twentieth century, the audience of this theatre is virtually global.
If religious terrorism is violent theatre, the image of a cosmic war provides the script. Violent activists view their terrorist acts as part of a larger spiritual confrontation, a battle between good and evil, between God and God's enemies. With the notion of warfare, compromise is not possible and violence, naturally, is morally justified. Religious symbols also undergird religious terrorism: all religions have symbols to overcome the images of death, disorder, and disarray. Religion asserts the primacy of meaning and order in the face of chaos, in this case, a world gone awry. Juergensmeyer identifies when these symbols can become deadly and when confrontation is likely to be characterized as a cosmic war.
The processes of satanization and empowerment are a result of viewing the world as engulfed in a cosmic war. Juergensmeyer believes that terrorists believe that they are victims, and this justifies their violent actions. If they die in their cause they are martyrs - again, religious symbolism overcoming disorder - sacrificed for their community and religion. With every war, enemies must be created, and as such the process of demonizing the enemy is important. Terrorists must deny the personhood of the enemy and create stereotypes so that the enemy can be seen as individuals. Juergensmeyer explains the process of satanization, the creation of a cosmic foe, and the process of empowerment, to create the hope that history can be changed, are integral parts of the mentalities caused by the image of cosmic warfare.
Religious violence provides a sense of empowerment to religious activists and their communities. According to the author, all terrorists fear social marginalization. In general terrorism is a male occupation, and women have minor ancillary roles, if at all. This gender specificity implies that sexuality is a factor in militant movements: sexual control needs to be established in a world gone awry, seen in active subjugation of women and homosexuality. Juergensmeyer finds commonality in terrorist groups: they are "anti-institutional, religio-nationalist, racist, sexist, male-bonding, bomb-throwing young guys," (210). Their marginality is experienced through sexual despair, which leads to violent acts of empowerment. Religious terrorists recognize they are in a struggle that cannot be won, but by dismantling the state's monopoly on power, the group demonstrates their power on behalf of the powerless.
In his concluding chapter, Juergensmeyer believes that terrorists would do anything if they believed it sanctioned by God. Because of the increasing secularism and liberalism prevalent in the world, religious terrorists seek to vault their religious views, perceived as both marginalized and traditional, into the mainstream. Secular governments are by nature enemies of these terrorist organizations, and violence is an attempt to reclaim this public sphere. Juergensmeyer, extrapolating from current trends, concludes with five ways in which religious terrorism can be resolved: terrorist organizations can be literally destroyed; terrorists can be frightened into submission by the threat of violent reprisals or imprisonment; the goals of the terrorists can be accommodated; the religious aspects are separated from politics; or religion and politics can be reconciled. Juergensmeyer believes the last solution to be the most successful.
Comprehending the nearly incomprehensible.......2004-09-15
Attempts a cohesive sociological analysis of the putative causal relationship of religious piety and extreme violence, on the premise that it is crucially important that we know if the two are related.
If they are not related, we have a largely incomprehensible phenomenon with the rise of terrorism among religous groups and the use of religious justification for violence. If they are related, it becomes more difficult to explain the use of non-religious rationales for violence and terror.
I think Juergensmeyer does a first class job of research here and a really excellent job of pulling together his findings and making sense of the way violence arises at the extremes of a wide variety of religions. Most importantly, he identifies the conditions under which piety "becomes" violence in some sense, based on the broad idea that we use religion to make sense of the world, and under extreme conditions, symbols of war and expressions of violence do indeed make sense of our experience.
I would like to see work building further on this general framework, I think it would be extremely productive in understanding patterns of violence and developing workable solutions.
The one weakness of this analysis for me was its implicit equation of religion with the search for meaning. We tend to think of religion in that role, but I believe it is important not to confuse the way we often use religion with its many varied expressions and uses. Juergensmeyer's analysis DOES apply to any cultural process that operates to make sense of our experience, including atheist quasi-religions and potentially even meaningful non-theist institutions and practices.
That is, I agree up to a point with the critics here who complained that this book's analysis of piety and violence seems to ignore the systematic use of violence by institutions we don't generally consider religious. However, I don't think it takes much to extend the author's analysis to these other institutions. Some of the conditions under which MJ theorizes that we view a war as having cosmic significance and thus relating piety and violence:
1. The struggle is perceived as a defense of basic identity and dignity.
2. Defeat is unthinkable.
3. The struggle is blocked in practical terms and no real world solution appears to be viable.
With these conditions in place, in theory, seeing a struggle as a cosmic war becomes a very real solution psychologically for making sense of the desperate conditions and finding hope in them. The process of making an enemy into some version of Satan begins often with:
1. very *real* problems that become interpreted in terms of the whole world going awry.
2. Ordinary options for resolving the real problems simply aren't available to us.
3. We then begin the process of symbollizing the enemy as forces of evil, so that being part of a divine solution becomes part of our hope.
4. Coming back from the brink of desperation becomes possible by symbolic acts of power showing that the unwinnable war can be winnable in its cosmic form.
I'm extracting the conclusions from a very detailed and thoughtful analysis.
I think this analysis makes a very important contribution to our understanding of violence and terrorism but this book is also of great value for its framework for understanding the relationship of culture and individual action, and what it implies about how our institutions, practices, and discourse shape our thinking and behavior. This is sociology doing what sociology is best used for, understanding how human social behavior relates to individual thoughts and actions.
Book Description
The essays in this book trace the development of Joel Migdal's "state-in-society" approach. The essays situate the approach within the classic literature in political science, sociology, and related disciplines but present a new model for understanding state-society relations. It allies parts of the state and groups in society against other such coalitions, determines how societies and states create and maintain distinct ways of structuring day-to-day life, the nature of the rules that govern people's behavior, whom they benefit and whom they disadvantage, which sorts of elements unite people and which divide them, and what shared meaning people hold about their relations with others and their place in the world.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent review of state and society subject.......2006-09-29
Hegal once said "Philosophy is the history of philosophy". I have the same feeling after reading Migdal's State in Society.
In this book, Migdal masterfully presents his "state in society" theory by examining the history of State-Society study. If his theory can be reduced by some as simply the final stage of a thesis-antithesis-synthesis process (e.g. "culturalist"-"statist"-"state-in-society"), the way he establishes his theory is nevertheless exceptionally informative and eloquent. Migdal does not tell you everything about every author in this grand debate. Yet after reading his book, you will be left with a distinct impression of each author's role and position in the debate.
A must read for students of State-Society studies.
Book Description
No two cities are more symbolic of the modern American metropolis than New York and Los Angeles. But while New York boasts a recently revitalized urban center, Los Angeles is the classic example of sprawl and decentralization, with multiple clusters of economic and social activity dispersed throughout its surrounding area.
This volume presents advanced studies that consider this fundamental difference between New York and Los Angeles while comparing and contrasting politics and culture in each region. An esteemed group of contributors from a wide variety of disciplines considers issues that include immigration, the effects of race and class on residence, the efficacy of public schools, the value of welfare reform, the meaning of mayoral politics, the function of charter reform, and the respective roles of the cinema and art scenes in each city.
Capturing much of what is new and vibrant in urban studies today, New York and Los Angeles will prove to be must reading for scholars in that field, as well as in sociology, political science, and government.
Contributors:
Andrew Beveridge, Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Geoffrey DeVerteuil, Susan S. Fainstein, Robert Gedeon, Saverio Giovacchini, David L. Gladstone, David Halle, Jack Katz, Karen M. Kaufmann, Rebecca Kim, Mark Levitan, Kevin Rafter, Georges Sabagh, David O. Sears, Heidi Sommer, Raphael J. Sonenshein, András Szántó, Lois Takahashi, Susan Weber, Jennifer Wolch, Julia Wrigley, Min Zhou
Customer Reviews:
Doug Terry.......2005-05-15
Winston Churchill famously said that America and England constitute "two peoples divided by a common language". In the case of New York and Los Angeles, it is two great cities divided by three thousand miles and, in reality, hundreds of years of history. New York is the potted plant brought over from Europe, with many fresh seeds thrown into the mix. Los Angeles is the end of the road, the place where American dreams are realized and smashed, sometimes in the same instant. LA is the place where American rootlessness runs out of room, where our experiment of rampant capitalism and democratic ideals slams headon into the future. New York is the new birthed from the past, a European city in different clothes. LA is the new from the new, a place unlike any before it. New York looks eastward, LA looks westward and inward. This book by David Halle is a wonderful artistic tour of these two great cities that shows us how different, and how linked, they are both in fact and dream. While some readers might have difficulty with the academic proclivities of the professor inside the writer, all will be rewarded by slogging through the sometimes dense prose. Halle "lives" in New York and commutes to teaching at UCLA, a wonderful, if strained, life style that truly enables his study and gives it a grity authentcity. (Just think of the frequent flyer miles!) I recommend this book highly to any literate resident of either city and all of those inbetween who want to understand more of our two greatest cities. They say what happens in Vegas stays there. Good. What happens in New York and Los Angeles travels around the world, both a symbol for America and emblematic of fragments of a common future for all.
Pass this one by.......2004-03-22
Well, this certainly was a waste of time and money. With dull prose, unoriginal ideas, and a complete lack of revelatory finds, this book seems created to take up space on a shelf without actually adding to anything (except perhaps the author's resume). Don't even both with it.
Book Description
How do political systems in Africa work? How are the prospects for reform and renewal in African societies affected by the emerging elites? And is "modernization" in Africa different? The authors conclude that relations of power between rulers and the ruled continue to inform the role of the state and the expectations of the newly emphasized civil society, a process they call "re-traditionalizing."
Customer Reviews:
An Illogical Chain of reasoning.......2002-09-06
When I read this book, I was amused by it. To say that the disorder in Africa benefits someone--e.g., via corruption--has been around for some time and is nothing new. To say that this disorder somehow makes the societies "work" is new but illogical. For something to "work" for the continent as a whole it must have positive net benefit. Right now, the disorder in Africa is such that the benefit to those who gain is far less than the loss to those who lose. This is a well-known research result. Africa doesn't work; the disorder results in a net loss to Africa. Why Africans do not do enough to change the institutional and organizational order is an interesting reasearch topic. How one can help Africans do something about this predicament is also an interesting research topic. But to say that the disorder works is illogical.
Difficult questions that need to be asked.......2001-06-07
The authors of "Africa Works" pose a series of challenges to the existing Western orthodoxy about African politics and government. What if Africa is headed neither toward anarchy nor Western-style modernity, but toward its own unique brand of the future? What if politics is envisioned in a fundamentally different manner in Africa than in the West? What if African political elites were not being manipulated by international institutions, but were in fact doing the manipulating themselves?
In asking these questions, Chabal and Daloz force the reader to reexamine his or her view of Africa and its place in history. They require that Africans no longer be looked at as perpetual victims in the patterns of world events, but as agents in their own destinies. They suggest that African elites have actually engineered the present state of disorder on the continent and do everything in their power to preserve it, and they explain why it is in these elites' interest to do so.
I find their arguments intriguing to say the least, and a refreshing change from the stale, politically correct views that always cast Africa as a helpless pawn of outside powers. "Africa Works" resonates very strongly with my own experience living and working in Africa.
Having said that, though, I am not entirely convinced that the authors are 100 percent on target. They tend to paint developments across the continent with very broad strokes, and offer little in the way of evidence that isn't anecdotal. Furthermore, perhaps their break from the orthodoxy on African politics isn't as significant as they make it out to be. Jean-Francois Bayart, one author whom they repeatedly go out of their way to beat up on, has written articles sounding similar themes.
"Africa Works" is nonetheless an important book and I hope that it touches off a new debate on the character of governance in Africa. The old ideas have clearly done nobody any good.
This IS how Africa works!.......2000-04-23
After working in Africa off and on for twenty years in development, relief and human rights, I would recommend that every expat who is planning to work there read this book. I would make it compulsory reading for all WB, Dfid, USAID, UN, etc employees... even Peace Corps, WUSC, VSO, etc people! The alternative is personal frustration arising from becoming aware of the structures identified here, without understanding their origin and functionality. Instead of seeing perverse events as idiosyncratic, you will begin to understand that they are part of a larger whole, rooted in the political economy and history of the continent. Excellent book!
realistic and somewhat disillusioning.......2000-01-26
i have lived and worked in africa for a long time and am emotionally attached to east africa, but this does not cloud my perception of the deep troubles that this continent is in and expect what is realistic instead of what is desirable.
this analysis is done in a unbiased tone, although any proud african will disagree on this. but then proud africans are very touchy when it comes to explaining the miserable reality of most african countries.
the authors put forward that development the western style cannot work in africa, as the basis of a civil society like we know it is simply not there. most frustrating is the fact that there seems to be no proof of an african way to create sustained and stable wealth. if you expect the worst and are happy if it turns out to be just a little better you might have the right attitude to work there.
If you're going to work in Africa, you need to read this........1999-06-22
I was born in and grew up in central Africa and have recently returned to work there - Malawi. Africa is the most extraordinary place - very easy to fall in love with. But, there are some huge buts... In Africa, you will learn the true meaning of the word 'frustration'. It is a place of astounding unrealised potential. Why?
This book is the first cogent explanation of why Africa is like it is, and will form the basis of my own analysis - the one you have to do to remain sane. It is right on the button with explanations for the corruption and disorder that is Africa. And yet it is not a critical book; nor is it patronising and it does not suggest that the answer to African problems is to be more like the West. It simply gives you clues as to why it is like it is.
This book has given me the ammunition I need to convince myself that there is a great deal of sense in what is happening in central Africa. It sounds silly to suggest that a sociological/development studies book could give an otherwise normal person a real insight into his situation, but it does! I really take my hat off to these guys!
Book Description
By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the â€~frontlines’ of civil war.
Book Description
"When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population." So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as many as one million Tutsis in Rwanda. Underlying his statement is the realization that, though ordered by a minority of state functionaries, the slaughter was performed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including even judges, human rights activists, and doctors, nurses, priests, friends, and spouses of the victims. Indeed, it is its very popularity that makes the Rwandan genocide so unthinkable. This book makes it thinkable.
Rejecting easy explanations of the genocide as a mysterious evil force that was bizarrely unleashed, one of Africa's best-known intellectuals situates the tragedy in its proper context. He coaxes to the surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors. He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda. In so doing, Mahmood Mamdani usefully broadens understandings of citizenship and political identity in postcolonial Africa.
There have been few attempts to explain the Rwandan horror, and none has succeeded so well as this one. Mamdani's analysis provides a solid foundation for future studies of the massacre. Even more important, his answers point a way out of crisis: a direction for reforming political identity in central Africa and preventing future tragedies.
Customer Reviews:
interesting overview of complex situation.......2007-02-25
Mandani's book is not for everyone; it is written in a highly academic form and reads slowly. However, if you can get through it, there are fascinating revelations of the chronology and effect of the early colonialism upon the inhabitants of Rwanda that allow you to understand, once again, the lessons of history....that NOTHING happens in a vacuum....and we Westerners, we "great civilizers" have much to learn and much evolving to do.
I haven't finished it yet and I do wish it were an easier read...I would give it to people I know who really NEED to read it but who never will. It's just too hard.
Essential reading for anyone wanting to learn the truth about what happened in Rwanda and why!.......2006-07-01
This isn't about justifying the atrocious acts of Hutus against Tutsi in Rwanda, but about trying to understand WHY. There were reasons for the madness that went beyond ethnic differences. Read this book before passing judgement.
Heavy Sledding.......2006-01-02
Respected scholar Mahmood Mamdani offers his take on the causes of the Rwandan attempted genocide of the Tutsis and how Rwanda ought to handle the aftermath. A longtime denizen of the ivory tower, Mamdani is not writing for general audiences here: his prose is denser than a nineteenth century Supreme Court opinion and often makes finer distinctions.
There is a certain amount of this that is inevitable -- Mamdani is writing, at least partially, in response to people who have given facile explanations for the genocide (e.g. "the Hutus hated the Tutsis"), and his entirely justified reply is that it's not that simple. Mamdani makes a fascinating and very persuasive case for the exact historical causes of this particular genocide that differentiates it from other genocides of history -- colonialistic influence combining with pan-African political forces that pit nationalistic concerns against ethnic and political ones.
That said, and with full awareness that I don't have the talent to do what I'm asking Mamdani to do, I'd like to say that his argument would have gone over a lot better if he'd been better at phrasing it. His academic language was very difficult to penetrate, even by a well-intentioned postgraduate-educated guy like me. I got to thinking towards the end that he was getting a bonus every time he added "-ize" to a noun to make it a verb.
Mamdani's message that a lot of complicated problems combined to create the genocide -- from which it follows that people peddling simple, easy answers haven't been paying enough attention or are pandering to their audiences -- is important. I hope it is given deep consideration by the grad students who are best equipped with time and incentive to understand his prose, and I hope one of them figures out what I cannot: how to phrase his message in such a way that a lay audience will be willing to hear it.
When Victims become killers.......2005-08-09
A great book that is doing justice to the people that were rudely touched by the genocide. History plays a great part in influencing and explaining particular events that happen in the present but many people forget and view the event as inexplicable. Those who forget to ask the 'why' question are always liable to repeat the blunders of history since they never learn from its ugly mistakes. Prof. Mamdani is trying to undo this mistake. Many, especially in the west from their self righteous pedestal, look at the Rwandan genocide and judge. Mamdani goes behind the scenes of history to dig out the 'why' of this ugliest of human ventures. Drawing heavily on Franz Fanon, he casts a wide net covering the whole Great Lakes Region and Colonialism through the cold war, to tell us that the victims of injustice can only be free if they kill the oppressor. To become human they must deny life to the oppressor. The irony is, to overcome the monster of injustice, you must surpass its monstrosity, leading to the cycle of violence. Americans who read this book will come to understand better the whyness of 9/11; the Europeans will understand Hitler and Africans will grasp the whyness of so many coup d'etats, and finally an insight that is long overdue will dawn on us all and we will see the light. We will understand that without justice in the world those who work for peace labor but in vain. A must read book for serious peacemakers.
Reform the state and citizenship.......2005-01-14
Mahmood Mamdani is Professor of Government and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. His reputation as an expert in African history, politics and international relations has made him an important voice in contemporary debates about the changing role of Africa in a global context. Mamdani proposes that Burundi and Rwanda need to reform the state and citizenship within their own borders so that power recognizes equal citizenship rights for all based on a single criterion: residence. Without a reform in power, one that recognizes both the importance of a majority in politics and the need for fearful minorities to participate in the exercise of power, Mamdani maintains there can be no sustained reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi.
Reviewed by David S. Fick, Author of Africa: Continent of Economic Opportunities, STE Publishers, Johannesburg SA, May 2005, www.ste.co.za
Average customer rating:
- Brillant at times, but not detailed enough
- Not your usual war reporter
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Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)
Carolin Emcke
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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ASIN: 0691129037 |
Book Description
"Nobody I ever met on my assignments . . . asked me for direct, practical help. . . . But over and over again people have asked me: 'Will you write this down?' "--Echoes of Violence
Echoes of Violence is an award-winning collection of personal letters to friends from a foreign correspondent who is trying to understand what she witnessed during the iconic human disasters of our time--in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and New York City on September 11th, among many other places. Originally addressing only a small group of friends, Carolin Emcke started the first letter after returning from Kosovo, where she saw the aftermath of ethnic cleansing in 1999. She began writing to overcome her speechlessness about the horrors of war and her own sense of failure as a reporter. Eventually, writing a letter became a ritual Emcke performed following her return from each nightmare she experienced. First published in 2004 to great acclaim, Echoes of Violence in 2005 was named German political book of the year and was a finalist for the international Lettre-Ulysses award for the art of reportage.
Combining narrative with philosophic reflection, Emcke describes wars and human rights abuses around the world--the suffering of civilians caught between warring factions in Colombia, the heartbreaking plight of homeless orphans in Romania, and the near-slavery of garment workers in Nicaragua. Freed in the letters from journalistic conventions that would obscure her presence as a witness, Emcke probes the abyss of violence and explores the scars it leaves on landscapes external and internal.
Customer Reviews:
Brillant at times, but not detailed enough.......2007-08-03
From time to time Echoes of Violence is a very interesting book, and when it's at its best the reader will have an extremely difficult time trying not to keep on reading forever and ever.
But alas, this only happens on a few occasions. And that's too bad, because there is no reason whatsoever to think that Carolin Emcke comes even close to being a bad writer. A German journalist with a thorough experience in doing war journalism, Emcke has spent much of her professional career in different war zones all around the world, and she writes in a style that's actually both emotional and clear-sighted at the same time. Not only that, she also offers such detailed background analyses that it never becomes necessary for the reader to have any deeper knowledge about the area she's in or the events leading up the particular conflict (though it's obviously not a disadvantage if the reader indeed does have this knowledge).
Most important of all, though, is the simple fact that she never loses touch with the human aspects of her story.
And that's not much of a surprise, really. After all, it's this humaneness that permeates the entire book and prompted her to start putting the stories into words, since the book is based on letters she began writing to some of her closest friends after visiting Kosovo in 1999 and becoming a witness to the horrendous suffering caused by all the sickening ethnic cleansing. In order to come to terms with what she's seen she decided to put it all into words, and Echoes of Violence is the end result.
However, just because it happens to be quite a touching testimony detailing the stupidity of mankind doesn't mean it's a brilliant book. Simple because it contains too few highly detailed descriptions of war, misery, suffering and revolting battle scenes. Perhaps this criticism sounds creepy, but the thing is, without such gory descriptions it's impossible to get some sort of understanding of all the awful scenarios that Emcke finds herself in. Some of the chapters are in fact quite boring.
Still, this doesn't mean it's not worth taking a closer look at. After all, when it's good it's REALLY good.
Not your usual war reporter.......2007-03-26
Although Carolin Emcke's compelling new book is subtitled "Letters from a War Reporter," she fits none of the stereotypes that the rubric of war reporter suggests. Nowhere in her writing does the reader find the cynical, hard-bitten media professional who -- writing on short deadlines for a largely uninformed audience -- has little interest in exploring complexity or challenging the conventional wisdom.
Emcke's letters, written first for her friends and later compiled for publication, give the back story that is left out of most international news reporting. Reading them, one sees a thoughtful but utterly human person at work -- not an omniscient narrator, but someone with emotions, opinions, subjectivity, and humor. Emcke describes herself as a witness, and some of the most compelling passages in the book reveal her grappling with the difficulty of being a faithful witness to situations that are in some sense indescribable.
Emcke has an eye for the telling detail. Describing a hotel in Prishtina, Kosovo, for example, she notes on a visit in 2000 that "the porn magazine in the desk drawer offers 'phone sex with mature women' in a country with no functioning telephone lines." (A few years later human rights observers documented the role of NATO troops and UN police in encouraging the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution in Kosovo.)
Unlike reporters who cover local or national beats -- who can assume that their readership shares a history and culture with the people described, or is at least familiar with that history and culture -- journalists covering foreign crises have to do more than report the facts: they have to translate between worlds. Emcke's moving book shows that this role of translator requires sensitivity, empathy, and understanding, qualities she has in abundance.
Book Description
In this collection of essays, Theda Skocpol, author of the award-winning States and Social Revolutions (CUP, 1979), updates her arguments about social revolutions. How are we to understand recent revolutionary upheavals in countries across the globe? Why have social revolutions happened in some countries, but not in others that seem similar? Skocpol shows how she and other scholars have used ideas about states and societies to identify the particular types of regimes that are susceptible to the growth of revolutionary movements and vulnerable to transfers of state power to revolutionary challengers.
Book Description
Karen McCarthy Brown's classic book shatters stereotypes of Vodou by offering an intimate portrait of African-based religion in everyday life. She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.
Customer Reviews:
A brilliant and compelling account of "walkers between the worlds".......2007-07-30
Walking between the worlds
Karen McCarthy Brown has penned a masterpiece! Mama Lola, known to family and friends as Alourdes, is a Mambo, an initiated priestess of Voudou who earns a modest living by serving her immigrant countrymen in America as a traditional healer and by conducting Haitian Voudou rites in her Brooklyn home. In 1978, Brown, then a professor of religion at New Jersey's Drew University first encountered Mama Lola while doing an ethnographic survey of the local Haitian population. Intrigued by the priestess and her misunderstood and maligned tradition, Brown became at first a friend, then a member of Mama Lola's extended family and finally an enthusiastic participant in many of the rites that comprise the corpus of Voudoun devotional life.
Mama Lola, her daughter Maggie, their children and their ancestors, and the 'Lwa' (spirits) who frequently 'possess' them are an engaging, wonderfully diverse crowd: deeply spiritual, profoundly thoughtful and often humorous characters marvelously skilled in surviving conditions of extreme deprivation and oppression and in adapting to the conditions of life (or, afterlife) in the strange world of urban America.
By the time I had completed this delightful book, I felt myself deeply involved in Mama Lola's life and that of her extended family. Brown's writing is textured and a pleasure to read. The author goes far out on a limb, leaving her observer role and social scientist expertise and becomes an initiate into the religion, wedding the 'etic' of academia to the 'emic' of an ecstatic, profoundly sensual, Earth-centered religiosity.
The arrangement of the text adds to its readability, with odd chapters offering stories about Mama Lola's family and heritage and even chapters devoted to the pantheon of lwa (spirits) of the Voudou tradition. A glossary of Voudou terms has been added, which is indispensible to readers new to the subject.
Students and scholars of Haiti, the African Diaspora and African religious traditions will enjoy and benefit from this work immensely. I recommend it as well to the general public for a most worthwhile reading adventure.
Praise for Mama Lola.......2006-09-13
What a journey! This is one of those rare books that not only tells a great story, but actualy envelops the reader and takes them on an incredible spiritual journey. The author writes in a style which is both familiar and confortable. When she describes places, rituals, or people, the reader feels like they are there, seeing these things with the author. As for Mama Lola herself, what a woman! Mama Lola, Alourdes, is presented as a kind, strong, knowledgeble, and powerful priestess. When the author writes Mama Lola's words, you can feel as if you are actually hearing her speak to you. The words along with several photographs give this book more than the reader could ever imagine. I will cherish this book as long as I live.
Vodou as psychodrama.......2005-06-18
One of the best books ever. This book strikes a perfect balance between a dry, scholarly approach and a colorful, sensationalist approach. It is written by a scholar who was initiated into and participated in vodou rituals, thus avoiding the kind of spiritual blindness that often afflicts scholars studying alien religions.
What is really fascinating about the practice of vodou as depicted in this book is how it functions as a kind of psychodrama for maintaining personal and social balance and mental health. Fascinating.
Human.......2005-02-23
This is an engrossing and moving read that compares with such books as "Woman Who Glows In The Dark" and "Macumba." It is about a very wonderful, gifted woman who is a Mambo, a Haitian Vudou healer and spiritualist. The story is about her life, her ancestors, her spirits and her relationships. The book is rich with insights.
You can't help but love this family!.......2004-10-05
Not really a book on Hatian Vodou. Mama Lola is more a family history and a description of what serving the spirits means to them.
Dr. Brown makes this amazing woman and her family come alive on the page.
Alourdes is all at once a devout woman, devoted mother, petulent and powerful woman. Her family is at once inspiring and beverage out your nose funny.
By the end of this edition, I found myself not only falling in love with Alourdes family, but with the spirits they so loyally serve.
A terrfic book if you want to understand what Vodou means to it's followers, what life is like for immigrant women and the pride and strength that comes from growing up in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
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