Latin American and Caribbean communities and civil societies are undergoing a rapid process of transformation. Instead of pervasive social atomization, political apathy, and hollowed-out democracies, which have become the norm in some parts of the world, this region is witnessing an emerging collaboration between community, civil society, and government that is revitalizing democracy. This book argues that a key explanation lies in the powerful and positive relationship between community and civil society that exists in the region. The ideas of community and civil society tend to be studied separately, as analytically distinct concepts however, this volume seeks to explore their potential to work together. A unique contribution of the work is the space for dialogue it creates between the social sciences and the humanities. Many of the studies included in the volume are based on primary fieldwork and place-based case studies. Others relate literature, music and film to important theoretical works, providing a new direction in interdisciplinary studies, and highlighting the role that the arts play in community revival and broader processes of social change. A truly multi-disciplinary book bridging established notions of civil society and community through an authentically interdisciplinary approach to the topic.

A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities

Understanding world politics today means acknowledging that the state is no longer the only actor in international relations. The interstate system is increasingly challenged by new transnational forces and institutions: multinational companies, cross-border coalitions of social interest groups, globally oriented media, and a growing number of international agencies. These forces increasingly influence interstate decisions and set the agenda of world politics. Though these phenomena have been discussed in the recent literature of international relations, little attention has been given to their impact on political life within and between communities. This book aims to explore the changing meaning of political community in a world of regional and global social and economic relations. The authors of the essays in this volume, who reflect a variety of academic disciplines, reconsider some of the key terms of political association, such as legitimacy, sovereignty, identity, and citizenship. Their common approach is to generate an innovative account of what democracy means today and how it can be reconceptualized to include subnational as well as transnational levels of political organization. Inspired by Immanuel Kant’s cosmopolitan principles, the authors conclude that favorable conditions exist for a further development of democracy--locally, nationally, regionally, and globally.

Advanced media technologies have transformed immigrants' relations with their departure and arrival societies. This title explores how Muslim-Arab religious scholars have developed over the years a theory that tasks Muslims living in the West with specific duties within the framework of their anticipated global Muslim nation.

Starting with only four hosts in 1969, the Internet consisted of more than 56 million hosts by the end of 1999. In 1993, the World Wide Web was only 130 sites strong; six years later it boasted more than seven million sites. Despite this explosive growth of the Internet and computer technology, little is known about the social implications of computer mediated communications. In this work, the author uses social science theory to evaluate the social transformations taking place today. She asks whether human beings use the Internet to change basic social institutions, and if so, whether these changes are a matter of degree only or represent an overthrow of previous modes of organizing. The work examines the rise of the Internet as the logical extension of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization consistent with the basic tenets of modernity, and offers a new conceptual framework through which to understand the Internet.

Blending history and architecture with literary analysis, this ground-breaking study explores the convent's place in the early modern imagination. The author brackets her account between two pivotal events: the Council of Trent imposing strict enclosure on cloistered nuns, and the French Revolution expelling them from their cloisters two centuries later. In the intervening time, women within convent walls were both captives and refugees from an outside world dominated by patriarchal power and discourses. Yet despite locks and bars, the cloister remained "porous" to privileged visitors. Others could catch a glimpse of veiled nuns through the elaborate grills separating cloistered space from the church, provoking imaginative accounts of convent life. Not surprisingly, the figure of the confined religious woman represents an intensified object of desire in male-authored narrative. The convent also spurred "feminutopian" discourses composed by women: convents become safe houses for those fleeing bad marriages or trying to construct an ideal, pastoral life, as a counter model to the male-dominated court or household. Recent criticism has identified certain privileged spaces that early modern women made their own: the ruelle, the salon, the hearth of fairy tale-telling. Woshinsky's book definitively adds the convent to this list.

Benedict Anderson’s 1983 masterpiece Imagined Communities is a ground-breaking analysis of the origins and meanings of “nations” and “nationalism”. A book that helped reshape the field of nationalism studies, Imagined Communities also shows the critical thinking skills of interpretation and analysis working at their highest levels. One crucial aspect of Anderson’s work involves the apparently simple act of defining precisely what we mean when we say ‘nation’ or ‘nationalism’ – an interpretative step that is vital to the analysis he proceeds to carry out. For Anderson, it is clear that nations are not ‘natural;’ as historians and anthropologists are well aware, nations as we understand them are a relatively modern phenomenon, dating back only as far as around 1500. But if this is the case, how can we agree what a ‘nation’ is? Anderson’s proposed definition is that they are “imagined communities” – comprising groups of people who regard themselves as belonging to the same community, even if they have never met, and have nothing in common otherwise. The analysis that follows from this insight is all about examining and breaking down the historical processes that helped foster these communities – above all the birth of printing, and the development of capitalism. Brilliantly incisive, Anderson’s analysis shows how good interpretative skills can form the foundations for compelling and original insight.

How Hollywood biopics both showcase and modify various notions of what it means to be an American. Biopics—films that chronicle the lives of famous and notorious figures from our national history—have long been one of Hollywood’s most popular and important genres, offering viewers various understandings of American national identity. Invented Lives, Imagined Communities provides the first full-length examination of US biopics, focusing on key releases in American cinema while treating recent developments in three fields: cinema studies, particularly the history of Hollywood; national identity studies dealing with the American experience; and scholarship devoted to modernity and postmodernity. Films discussed include Houdini, Patton, The Great White Hope, Bound for Glory, Ed Wood, Basquiat, Pollock, Sylvia, Kinsey, Fur, Milk, J. Edgar, and Lincoln, and the book pays special attention to the crucial generic plot along which biopics traverse and showcase American lives, even as they modify the various notions of the national character. “A provocative, critically astute study, this collection examines the biopic as a reflexive, refractive modernist film genre. Admirably researched essays provide close, compelling readings of chosen films, while exploring the multilayered matrices of historical fact, biographical and autobiographical literature, popular media representations, and cultural histories—shaping not only the lives and narratives of the performers, artists, and political/historical figures represented but also the practices of the filmmakers as they worked within or on the margins of the Hollywood industry.” — Cynthia Lucia, Rider University “The volume’s greatest strengths include its range, its variety of ideas on the significance of the biopic, and its research—definitive in several cases—into the relation between historical figures and their cinematic counterparts.” — James Morrison, author of Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors

This book explores the idea, psychology and political geography of Northeast India as forged by two interrelated but autonomous meta-narratives. First, the politics of conflict inherent in, and therefore predetermined by physical geography, and second, the larger geopolitics that was unfolding during the colonial period. Unravelling the history behind the turmoil engulfing Northeast India, the study contends that certain geographies — most pertinently fertile river valleys and surrounding mountains which feed the rivers — are integral to nature and any effort to disrupt this cohesion will result in conflict. It comprehensively traces the geopolitics of the region since colonial era — in particular the Great Game; the politics that went into the making of the McMahon Line, the Radcliffe Line and the Pemberton Line; the region’s relations with its international neighbours (China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal); as well as the issue of many formerly non-state-bearing populations awakening to the reality of the modern state. Lucid and analytical, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Northeast India, modern Indian history, international relations, defence and strategic studies, and political science.