The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics

2012-09-10 Political Science

Author : Donald L. Rosdil
Release : 2012-09-10
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 833/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics by : Donald L. Rosdil

Download or read book The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics written by Donald L. Rosdil. This book was released on 2012-09-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some U.S. cities like Seattle and Boston impose social exactions and sustainability targets on private investment while others like Las Vegas and Houston offer property tax and fee remissions to business, tolerate environmentally hazardous activities such as oil drilling, and express skepticism even about recycling mandates? The behavior of the former cities appears especially puzzling in view of globalization processes that seemingly offer many more options to mobile capital and expose cities’ vulnerability to private investment decisions. Cultural Contradictions examines the paradoxical finding that some U.S. cities can impose burdensome regulations and extract social and environmental contributions from the private sector despite an apparently weak bargaining position. It usescultural change and the growth of non-traditional subcultures to explain why cities adopt these progressive policies. Responding to the urban policy literature’s tendency to prioritize economic considerations over other kinds of causal factors, the book demonstrates the joint impact of culture and economics in encouraging policy outcomes which emphasize social justice, human rights, and environmental sustainability in large U.S. cities. The book makes several specific contributions to urban literature. First, it argues that cities in which nontraditional cultural beliefs and practices thrive and which are strongly linked to dynamic economic sectors such as information services, professional, scientific and technical services, financial services, and education and health care services are especially likely to adopt progressive policies. It establishes this claim using both statistical analysis of large-N city samples and a closer investigation of four case studies. Second, it reveals how progressive policies are a plausible response to psychological concerns associated with unconventional ways of life and the nature of postindustrial society. Finally, the book indicates how these new ways of life and postindustrial economic sectors grow in mutually reinforcing ways in order to make these policies acceptable to local economic elites and therefore favorable to the city’s future development.

The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics

2012 Political Science

Author : Donald Lawrence Rosdil
Release : 2012
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 02X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics by : Donald Lawrence Rosdil

Download or read book The Cultural Contradictions of Progressive Politics written by Donald Lawrence Rosdil. This book was released on 2012. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work utilizes cultural change and the growth of non-traditional subcultures in explaining how cities seek to shape their futures. It serves as a useful corrective to much of the urban policy literature which relies on economic factors to account for policy outcomes. However, rather than pose a false dichotomy between these two kinds of causal factors, it shows how they work together to produce progressive outcomes.

The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy

2016-07-26 Political Science

Author : John Brenkman
Release : 2016-07-26
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 203/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy by : John Brenkman

Download or read book The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy written by John Brenkman. This book was released on 2016-07-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 9/11, American foreign policy has been guided by grand ideas like tyranny, democracy, and freedom. And yet the course of events has played havoc with the cherished assumptions of hawks and doves alike. The geo-civil war afflicting the Muslim world from Lebanon through Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan confronts the West with the need to articulate anew what its political ideas and ideals actually are. In The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy, John Brenkman dissects the rhetoric that has corrupted today's political discourse and abused the idea of freedom and democracy in foreign affairs. Looking back to the original assumptions and contradictions that animate democratic thought, he attempts to resuscitate the language of liberty and give political debate a fresh basis amid the present global turmoil. The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy picks apart the intellectual design and messianic ambitions of the neoconservative American foreign policy articulated by figures such as Robert Kagan and Paul Berman; it casts the same critical eye on a wide range of liberal and leftist thinkers, including Noam Chomsky and Jürgen Habermas, and probes the severe crisis that afflicts progressive political thought. Brenkman draws on the contrary visions of Hobbes, Kant, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin in order to disclose the new contours of conflict in the age of geo-civil war, and to illuminate the challenges and risks of contemporary democracy.

The Seventies

2001-08-07 History

Author : Bruce J. Schulman
Release : 2001-08-07
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 481/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Seventies by : Bruce J. Schulman

Download or read book The Seventies written by Bruce J. Schulman. This book was released on 2001-08-07. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us think of the 1970s as an "in-between" decade, the uninspiring years that happened to fall between the excitement of the 1960s and the Reagan Revolution. A kitschy period summed up as the "Me Decade," it was the time of Watergate and the end of Vietnam, of malaise and gas lines, but of nothing revolutionary, nothing with long-lasting significance. In the first full history of the period, Bruce Schulman, a rising young cultural and political historian, sweeps away misconception after misconception about the 1970s. In a fast-paced, wide-ranging, and brilliant reexamination of the decade's politics, culture, and social and religious upheaval, he argues that the Seventies were one of the most important of the postwar twentieth-century decades. The Seventies witnessed a profound shift in the balance of power in American politics, economics, and culture, all driven by the vast growth of the Sunbelt. Country music, a southern silent majority, a boom in "enthusiastic" religion, and southern California New Age movements were just a few of the products of the new demographics. Others were even more profound: among them, public life as we knew it died a swift death. The Seventies offers a masterly reconstruction of high and low culture, of public events and private lives, of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Evel Knievel, est, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan. From The Godfather and Network to the Ramones and Jimmy Buffett; from Billie jean King and Bobby Riggs to Phyllis Schlafly and NOW; from Proposition 13 to the Energy Crisis; here are all the names, faces, and movements that once filled our airwaves, and now live again. The Seventies is powerfully argued, compulsively readable, and deeply provocative.

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