Two principal issues interact and overlap in this penetrating analysis: the relationship between Hobbes' natural philosophy and his civil philosophy, and the relationship between Hobbes' thought and the Aristotelian world view that constituted the philosophical orthodoxy he rejected. On the first point Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that Hobbes' political ideas were in fact significantly influenced by his cosmological perceptions, although they were not, and could not have been, completely derived from that source. On the second, the author demonstrates that Hobbes undertook a highly systematic transformation of Aristotelian cosmology: he borrowed the form of the Aristotelian cosmology, but radically refashioned its substance to accommodate the discoveries of contemporaries such as Galileo.

Bringing critical attention to a particular set of science fiction and fantasy films--Larry and Andy Wachowski's The Matrix, George Lucas' Star Wars saga, and Joss Whedon's Avengers--this book utilizes a wide-ranging set of critical tools to illuminate their political ideologies, while also examining any resistant and complicating turns or byways the films may provide. What they all have in common ideologically is that they--or at least the genres they belong to--tend to be regarded as belonging to politically conservative frames of sociocultural reference. With the Star Wars saga, however, this idea is shown to be superficial and weak.

During the past ten years, legal and political changes in the United States have dramatically altered the legalization process for millions of undocumented immigrants and their families. Faced with fewer legalization options, immigrants without legal status and their supporters have organized around the concept of the family as a political subject—a political subject with its rights violated by immigration laws. Drawing upon the idea of the “impossible activism” of undocumented immigrants, Amalia Pallares argues that those without legal status defy this “impossible” context by relying on the politicization of the family to challenge justice within contemporary immigration law. The culmination of a seven-year-long ethnography of undocumented immigrants and their families in Chicago, as well as national immigrant politics,Family Activism examines the three ways in which the family has become politically significant: as a political subject, as a frame for immigrant rights activism, and as a symbol of racial subordination and resistance. By analyzing grassroots campaigns, churches and interfaith coalitions, immigrant rights movements, and immigration legislation, Pallares challenges the traditional familial idea, ultimately reframing the family as a site of political struggle and as a basis for mobilization in immigrant communities.

The essays of this collection explore how ideas about 'blood' in science and literature have supported, at various points in history and in various places in the circum-Atlantic world, fantasies of human embodiment and human difference that serve to naturalize existing hierarchies.

The development of the Cultivation System from the years 1840 to 1860 is the focus of this work by the Dutch scholar Cornelis Fasseur. The author presents a general overview of Dutch po y and decision-making, and considers how these policies influenced the evolution of the Cultivation System and how the system itself altered Dutch views of governance in Java.

Ozawa Ichirō was the axis on which Japanese politics turned for more than two decades. He helped to reshape the electoral system, political funding rules, the evolution of the party system, the nature of executive government, the roles and powers of bureaucrats, and the conduct of parliamentary and policymaking processes. Admired and reviled in almost equal measure, Ozawa has been the most debated and yet least understood politician in Japan, with little agreement to be found amongst the many who have debated his patent political assets and palpable political flaws. This book examines the political goals, behaviour, methods and practices of Ozawa Ichirō, and in doing so, provides fascinating insights into the inner workings of Japanese politics. It explores Ozawa’s paradoxical and conflicting contributions in terms of two contrasting models of ‘old’ and ‘new’ politics. Indeed, therein lies the problem of understanding the ‘real’ Ozawa: he remained a practitioner of old politics despite his rhetorical agenda of change to bring about new politics. In seeking to unravel the Ozawa enigma, Aurelia George Mulgan reveals his primary motivations, to establish whether he sought power primarily to enact reforms, or, whether his reform goals simply disguised power-seeking objectives. This volume seeks to illuminate Ozawa’s true character as a politician, and untangle the complex elements of old and new politics that he represents. Through an in-depth study of Ozawa and his political activities, this book shows how the Japanese political system works at the micro level of individual politicians, political relationships and systems. As such it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, Asian politics and political systems.

A Companion to British Literature, Victorian and Twentieth-Century Literature, 1837 - 2000

Few challenges to the modern dream of democratic citizenship appear greater than the presence of severe ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions in society. With their diverse religions and ethnic communities, the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia have grappled with this problem since achieving independence after World War II. Each country has on occasion been torn by violence over the proper terms for accommodating pluralism. Until the Asian economic crisis of 1997, however, these nations also enjoyed one of the most sustained economic expansions the non-Western world has ever seen. This timely volume brings together fifteen leading specialists of the region to consider the impact of two generations of nation-building and market-making on pluralism and citizenship in these deeply divided Asian societies. Examining the new face of pluralism from the perspective of markets, politics, gender, and religion, the studies show that each country has developed a strikingly different response to the challenges of citizenship and diversity. The contributors, most of whom come Southeast Asia, pay particular attention to the tension between state and societal approaches to citizenship. They suggest that the achievement of an effectively participatory public sphere in these countries will depend not only on the presence of an independent "civil society," but on a synergy of state and society that nurtures a public culture capable of mediating ethnic, religious, and gender divides. The Politics of Multiculturalism will be of special interest to students of Southeast Asian history and society, anthropologists grappling with questions of citizenship and culture, political scientists studying democracy across cultures, and all readers concerned with the prospects for civility and tolerance in a multicultural world.