Browsing by Subject "Politics"
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Item After totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and the realization and defeat of the Western tradition(2015-03) Winham, Ilya P.This dissertation explores Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Isaiah Berlin's (1909-1997) understanding of the Western tradition of political philosophy in the light of totalitarianism in their works of the late 1940s and 1950s. The total collapse of traditional political relations and regimes in the 1930s and 1940s put the entire discipline and tradition of political philosophy in question. As Arendt and Berlin reflected on the Western tradition of political philosophy, both decided that the tradition was not just defeated by Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, it was also in a sense realized in those regimes. In exploring their ambivalent attitude toward the tradition, this dissertation aims to illuminate how Arendt and Berlin contributed to the postwar imperative to think afresh about the Western tradition of political philosophy not only to expose its originating flaws, but also to reconstruct political philosophy on decidedly anti-totalitarian premises. This dissertation engages Arendt and Berlin with respect to the topics of totalitarianism, the tradition of political philosophy, the significance of Machiavelli for post-totalitarian political theory, human plurality as a mode of engaging politics, and modern world alienation or agoraphobia and the midcentury zeitgeist of social adjustment. When read together--which political theorists as a rule almost never do--these topics emerge as important to the development of Arendt and Berlin's respective bodies of anti-totalitarian and "pluralist" political thought. What is ultimately at stake for them in seeking to understand the complicated relationship between totalitarianism and the Western tradition of political philosophy is how to proceed in political theory in a fully post-totalitarian way. In addition to bringing Arendt and Berlin together and investigating some important thematic similarities between them, my dissertation advances our knowledge of both thinkers by revealing how deeply the concepts and issues of politics, pluralism, totalitarianism, and the Western tradition of political philosophy are intertwined in their writings. Beyond Arendt and Berlin studies, this dissertation contributes to our knowledge of the endeavor to renovate or create political theory after totalitarianism and during the Cold War.Item Do They Care Anymore?: Examining Effects of Exogenous Shocks on Political Interest and News Avoidance(2023) Armstrong, SerenaThe COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 election, police brutality, and Black Lives Matter protests led to a heightened, and divisive, political environment in the US. Collectively these events served as an exogenous shock, a prolonged and widespread crisis that made it difficult to reconstitute life, to Americans. This study examines impacts and perceived effects that exogenous shocks can have on political interest and news engagement levels of young adults. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, this research provides insight that the level of importance that young adults attribute to holding a high political interest is high, even when not engaged themselves due to perceived negativity and aggression associated with politics and news. Many of those who previously held high levels of interest and engagement before the exogenous shock hit a ceiling and then the floor in terms of their interest due to becoming overwhelmed, while many who had not been previously involving themselves had a wake-up call and more steady rise in terms of their interest and engagement with news and politics. These findings can inform the current state of politics in the eyes of young adults, how to approach news and politics with young adults, and the possibilities of mitigating related effects.Item Essays on the Politics of Innovation(2023) Park, MichaelThe innovation literature has noted that political factors are an important class of determinants for firms’ new technologies (Teece, 1986; Tushman and Rosenkopf, 1992; Ahuja et al., 2013). Accordingly, recent studies have documented the impact of different policies on innovation outcomes (e.g., Arora et al., 2021; Marx et al., 2009; Balsmeier et al., 2017). The works from this stream of literature have mostly studied changes in the regulatory environment which are understood to be exogenous and discontinuous. However, the literature’s focus on this specific type of policy change may be overlooking other political dynamics also important for new technologies. In particular, prior literature suggests that some regulations have a tendency to evolve at a more continuous pace (Hargadon and Douglas, 2001; Weber et al., 2008; Sine and Lee, 2009; Navis and Glynn, 2010), and that firms’ political landscapes can develop endogenously at times (Hillman and Hitt, 1999; Dorobantu et al., 2017; Funk and Hirschman, 2017). Therefore, in this dissertation, I explore how changes in the regulatory environment that are more incremental but commonly-observed can impact the innovation output of firms, and how firms’ attempts to directly shape regulations influence new technologies.Item I'm Not Yelling(2024-04-06) Polikoff, WhalenItem An interpreting animal: hermeneutics and politics in the human sciences.(2010-09) Gimbel, Edward WilliamBeginning with a historical study of the human sciences' position between the natural sciences and the humanities, this dissertation examines the consequences of the fixation on questions of method that has characterized this positioning. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I illustrate how it is that methodological concerns can serve to obscure other, more fundamental concerns. Gadamer uses Aristotle's ethics to make this point about method, and I take the further step of bringing this intersection of Aristotelian ethics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to bear productively on the human sciences. The result of this work is an approach to the human sciences characterized less by attention to methods and more by appreciation of ends. I argue that in the development of what I call "political teleology" the human sciences exploit their particular strengths, and find their political import.Item Intersections of Art and Politics: Clemenceau, Monet and Republican Patriotism from Commune to Nymphéas(Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2015-10-01) Munholland, John KimIn the aftermath of France’s defeat in the war of 1870-71 and the Commune uprising of 1871, the French sought a new political identity and sense of unity, which brought a new political regime, the Third Republic. At the same time, a younger generation of French artists began experimenting with new forms and techniques that came to be known as Impressionism. The Third Republic was born at the same time that a new generation of artists were emerging. While there was always a distance between the artistic and political worlds, two representative figures, the politician Georges Clemenceau and a leading Impressionist, Claude Monet, found themselves joined in a common cause, despite Monet’s dislike of political conflicts, in defending the newly formed republic from its opponents during three crises in France at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This paper examines this curious alliance of two friends and patriots during times of crisis during the formative years of the French Third Republic.Item L’enfant-peuple: Rimbaud,Vallès, literary, politics, and the legacy of the commune(2011-06) St. Clair, Robert A.This thesis proposes a model of reading Arthur Rimbaud's early poems in verse and Jules Vallès's novels at the intersections of cultural historiography and contemporary continental political theory and philosophy, from Michel Foucault to Jacques Rancière, in order to argue that they represent and deploy a revolutionary literary politics capable of giving voice to a subject theorized as the "infans".Item Maternal appeals in politics: their effectiveness and consequences.(2011-07) Deason, GraceThere is a history in politics of "maternal appeals" in which female activists and candidates appeal to popular ideas of motherhood to garner support for their political agendas. Political actors' choice to emphasize motherhood is at odds with social-psychological theories that indicate that women will be seen as poor candidates for leadership positions to the extent that they appear stereotypically feminine (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, 1983; Heilman & Okimoto, 2008). Nonetheless, political candidates of both genders claim to draw inspiration from their experiences as parents, and feminist political theories argue that appeals to nurturance and the family have the unique ability to usher in a new kind of politics built on fundamental values of compassion, generosity, and interpersonal connectedness (Elder & Greene, 2009; Hayden, 2003; Lakoff, 1996, 2002; Ruddick, 1989, 1997). This project provided an empirical test of the claim that motherhood can be harnessed to advance a political agenda. A novel theory of the dynamics of maternal appeals in political campaigns was tested in a content analysis of of political advertisements from the 2004 U. S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections and two laboratory experiments. Results indicated that candidates attempt to channel the power of motherhood for political gain, and in the contemporary political environment, male candidates have more leeway to make maternal appeals than do female candidates. Although they compromised political candidates' chances of electoral success, maternal appeals also changed the basis on which leaders were evaluated such that feminine characteristics were weighted more heavily in vote choice. Moreover, maternal appeals had effects beyond voters' impressions of candidates: They increased support for liberal policies among some individuals, suggesting that they can contribute to a liberal political agenda. However, maternal appeals also perpetuated stereotypes of mothers in an organizational context, with implications for the ethics of using maternal appeals as a political persuasion tool. Taken together, the findings of these studies support the claim that maternal appeals have a unique power, but in the current socio-cultural context in which motherhood is devalued and separate from the public sphere, the effects of its power are limited.Item The moral field of computing.(2011-12) Smajda, JonThis dissertation examines the culture of open source software development and debates around ``openness'' in computing through the lens of sociology. Drawing on contemporary theory and research in cultural, economic, and political sociology, I develop a framework---the moral field of computing---for making sense of the role that group boundaries and moral beliefs play in the day-to-day work of software development. I first show how this field emerged over time during the mid- to late-20th century, and then I show its structure animates the contentious debates and decisions within computing today by analyzing data collected as a participant-observer in several open source communities. For researchers studying computing, this dissertation places the unique culture of software development into a larger context of modern liberalism and sociological research and theory on the relationship between work, democracy, and the market. For sociologists, this dissertation represents a theoretical attempt to understand the relationship between group boundaries, community identities, and moral worldviews through examining an empirical case that has been understudied and undertheorized within the context of cultural sociology and sociological theory.Item My Experiences Living in a Politically Divided Country(Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2023-11-15) DeLong, MarilynGrowing up in a relatively small but sustainable university town has affected my ideology and influenced my thinking about politics. As I track my hometown, it has benefitted greatly from having in its midst a public research university that is actively engaged with the community. I can cite many examples of common goals that can be reached by fostering a good working relationship between that university and the surrounding community.Item The Negative Theology of Nund Rishi (1378-1440): Poetry and Politics in Medieval Kashmir(2016-08) Bazaz, Abir BashirNund Rishi, the founder of a regional Sufi Order called the Rishi Order in early fifteenth century Kashmir, is revered and remembered by most Kashmiris as Alamdār-i Kashmir (the flag-bearer of Kashmir) and also as Shaikh al-‘Ālam (the teacher of the worlds). Along with the fourteenth century Shaivite saint-poet, Lal Ded, he is one of the two most significant figures in the history of religion and literature in Kashmir. My dissertation is a detailed study of the mystical poetry of Nund Rishi. It explores the shruks (a form of Kashmiri mystical poetry exemplified by Nund Rishi) not only in its historical and political vicissitudes but also in relation to religious controversies and polemics in medieval Kashmir. Its most distinctive contribution in the process is that it locates Nund Rishi in relation to the traditions of negative theology that were prevalent in Islam and other religions in the region around the time (By ‘negative theology,’ I mean a discourse on the transcendent which relies on negations rather than affirmations). I examine the thinking of death, nothing, apocalyptic and Islam in Nund Rishi’s mystical poetry as a form of negative theology. These also organized his searing critique of the dominant political order in medieval Kashmir. The negative theology of Nund Rishi not only challenged political power in medieval Kashmir but also opened up the political to the demands of the subaltern. I argue that the negative theology of Nund Rishi, and its trajectory in Kashmiri poetry, must not only be read within the terms of religious studies— as one articulation among others of the ‘negative path’ across regions in the medieval Indo-Persian worlds. It should also be read as a singular and powerful literary discourse on the themes of death, nothing, apocalyptic and Islam; as a literary discourse which approaches the question of the political from the standpoint of an absent God.Item The New Experts: Politics (and Anti-Politics) of Expertise in the Making of Hegemony(2020-11) Sajjanhar, AnuradhaThis dissertation examines the evolution of a shifting network of experts and elites, interrogating what is considered to be expertise in the context of governance. Through a study of Indian think tanks, political consulting firms, and policy research organisations, I argue that two forms of political legitimacy govern contemporary India: 1) populist politics, which appeals to the masses/majority by defining nationalism through rigid boundaries of caste, class, and religion; and 2) technocratic policy, which produces a consensus of pragmatism and neutralises charges of hyper-nationalism. I emphasise the relational dynamic between the two: they function through different, often contradictory, logics and content yet are able to work towards the same goals in key moments of mutual reinforcement. At its core, this dissertation is motivated by a desire to make sense of how political and policy elites have gradually normalised Hindu supremacy. Through a study of powerful actors and institutions, I examine the: a) mechanics of the process (for example, think tanks, consulting firms, IT cells, government advisory groups, political parties) and b) the emergent multiple discourses they form. Each chapter shows how these mechanisms work through different but interactively linked effects to produce the political field. My research is based on semi-structured interviews with over fifty politicians, policy makers, government officials, consultants, and other socially anointed intellectuals, several years of participant observation (between 2016-2020) in three prominent New Delhi think tanks, and discourse and documentary analysis.Item "A new woman in old fashioned times": party women and the rhetorical foundations of political womanhood(2012-12) Paup, Emily Ann BergWomen have been involved in party politics in the U.S. in a variety of ways since the American Revolutionary War. They began as participants from within the home and grew to have leadership roles within partisan organizations themselves. This evolution in role was possible because of the rhetorical efforts of party women during the Gilded Age. Through case studies of Populist Party leader Mary Elizabeth Lease, Prohibition Party founder Frances Elizabeth Willard, key Republican Party player Judith Ellen Foster, and presidential candidate Belva Bennett Lockwood, the narrative of female political activism is expanded and nuanced. All four women acted with political agency inconsistent with their contemporary dominant socio-political system. By deepening the archive of female historical discourse and through analysis of rhetorical patterns of party women in the late nineteenth century, scholars gain insight into the political culture, the power of rhetorical agency, and the rhetorical power of women. This history creates a model of rhetorical discourse for political women of the future, putting historical rhetorical practice in conversation with contemporary rhetorical strategies.Item No Church in the Wild: The Politics of American Nonreligion(2019-07) Stewart, EvanThe number of Americans with no religious identification has grown to nearly a quarter of the population in 2018. What are the political implications of this cultural change? Current research views religious disaffiliation as an example of either backlash to the religious right (expecting the unaffiliated to be engaged partisans) or drift from institutions (expecting them to be disengaged from politics). I address this debate with three studies that examine political engagement, opinion formation, and organized advocacy among the nonreligious. Across all three studies, theories from cultural sociology suggest that simple categorical measures of nonreligious identity hide substantive differences in how people engage nonreligion in their personal lives (through low religious practice, non-belief, and nonreligious identification) and in public life (through opposition to religious authority in the public sphere). For engagement, new analysis with existing survey data with validated voter turnout shows that classic measures of low church attendance associate with higher odds of turnout among unaffiliated respondents. For opinion, analysis of original survey data shows that measures of public nonreligion are more closely associated with progressive political views than measures of personal nonreligion. For advocacy, analysis of tax and lobbying records of forty nonreligious organizations shows how a focus on personal nonreligious identities creates a closed network of groups with a more narrow agenda than organizations lobbying for the separation of church and state. By focusing on the substantive differences between cultural repertoires of personal and public nonreligion, I highlight how public religious considerations are an important explanatory factor in political life. Slippage between these repertoires can explain why the nonreligious appear to have large political potential, but limited political impact.Item Patterns of Civic Engagement and Political Participation among Young Women(Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 2009-12-13) Holland, KellyIn this paper, I review existing political participation and civic engagement research as it pertains to women, young people, and ultimately, young women. At all levels of civic engagement, trends in participation by gender, though not necessarily dichotomous, provide insight for engagement opportunities. For example, men and women follow differing routes to political office – men more likely as an extension of their career in law or business whereas women are more likely to seek elected office after a motivating experience volunteering for an organization (Burns et al. 1997). At a younger age, women in college are more likely than their male counterparts to be interested in a career working for a not-for-profit community organization or foundation and they are less likely to be interested in a career working for government (Hart Research Associates 2008). These patterns of participation may be subtle but are nevertheless important for identifying opportunities for the recruitment of young women to political participation, including voting, contributing to and participating in campaigns, and running for elected office. By engaging young women, we can close gender gaps in participation and representation. Finally, I examine recent survey data and patterns among young people to identify whether the best opportunity to engage young women is at the high school level. I find that, contrary to my initial hypothesis, participation actually decreases after high school. Thus efforts to engage young women civically and politically need to be strongest during the transition from high school to young adulthood in order to maintain the priority given to voluntarism and increase participation.Item The politics of ethical witnessing: the participatory networks of 9/11 Media Culture(2010-09) Wessels, EmanuelleThis dissertation examines the politics of ethical witnessing in three genres of convergent media that overtly or allegorically address the events of September 11th. These include a conspiracy theory documentary, the Hollywood monster movie Cloverfield, and the documentary film Control Room. Using a combination of psychoanalytic film and political theory, ethical philosophy, and scholarship on mediated networks and media convergence; I argue, through these case studies, that the ways in which films today interact with participatory media such as websites and video playlists carry particular implications for the ethical and political aspects of how spectators are positioned to watch, interact with, and "talk back" to the media they consume.Item Postdémocratie, Afropolitanisme et Afrofuturisme: littérature et cinéma comme moyens d’engagement politique en Afrique noire francophone(2018-11) Mamah, Abou-BakarCe travail analyse, à travers la littérature et le cinéma francophones, les changements sociopolitiques intervenus en Afrique subsaharienne depuis les années 1990. J'explore comment les écrivains et les cinéastes jugent l’échec sociopolitique et quels remèdes pragmatiques ils envisagent. Ces événements ont longtemps retenu l'attention des critiques qui ont évalué les retombées de l'indépendance en termes de désillusion, de néo-colonialisme et de gestion du pouvoir par les nouveaux dirigeants africains. Plus de cinquante ans après les indépendances de la plupart des pays africains francophones, il est nécessaire d’examiner comment la situation sociopolitique en Afrique francophone subsaharienne à partir des années 1990 a été décrite et critiquée dans la littérature et le film, et à quelles fins. Alors que cette décennie a vu l’apparition de réformes démocratiques prouvant que les nations africaines étaient désireuses de lancer un nouveau mouvement historique, l’élan en faveur de l’ouverture a été étouffé dans une nouvelle phase que j’appelle la « Postdémocratie ». Je soutiens que cela constitue un nouveau discours politique distinctif dont cette thèse diagnostique à travers les romans et les documentaires. Ma recherche se fonde sur la théorie postcoloniale d’Achille Mbembe, telle qu’élaborée dans son livre On The Postcolony (2001), à travers laquelle il analyse la constitution du pouvoir et la gouvernementalité en Afrique. En tant que l'un des grands théoriciens des études africaines postcoloniales, Mbembe s’intéresse aux relations complexes entre les structures du pouvoir et la sphère publique, de l'indépendance à la Postdémocratie. Je soutiens que cette relation est l’un des thèmes dominants dans la littérature et le cinéma africains de l’après-1990: les écrivains et les cinéastes politiquement engagés essayent de reconfigurer les agitations entre conciliation et dénonciation des abus du pouvoir à l’ère de la Postdémocratie, dans le but d’anticiper l’avènement de la justice sociale. À travers les notions d'Afropolitanisme, une nouvelle identité cosmopolite africaine, et d'Afrofuturisme, un nouveau rêve idéaliste africain, mon travail représente une nouvelle interface productive entre la littérature, le cinéma et les sciences politiques.Item Pouvoir, violence et resistance en postcolonie : une lecture de en attendant le vote des betes Sauvages E’Ahmadou Kourouma(2008-12) Ngong, BenjaminThis dissertation examines violence as portrayed in African literature, with particular attention to Ahmadou Kourouma’s En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, to show that African fiction seems to absorb tragic facts cathartically and subsequently operates as acts of resistance against the after-effects of colonialism and abuses of power by dictatorial African regimes since independence. I argue that violence in Francophone post-colonial societies arises from two sources. Europe is the first source, as a consequence of its policies of imperialism, ethnocentrism, and racism against people who did not correspond to the required criteria of the “superior race.” This idea of a "perfect race" has survived to the present, but in a less radical form. The second source is from within Africa, and stems from the aftermath of the era of colonization. In studying the links between these two sources, I demonstrate that the responsibility for today’s political violence and abuses in postcolonial societies must be shared by both France and the corrupt regimes it imposed on its former colonies. On the one hand, survivors of independence recall how France eliminated any popular nationalist leaders, installing corrupt, bureaucratic regimes; on the other hand, those bureaucratic regimes’ continued pillaging replicates colonial exploitation of the past. Two forms of civilian resistance and cultural subversion particular to literature enable Francophone authors to maneuver across and through the official discourses that attempt to speak for the people, ultimately challenging the bases of single-ruler tyrannies that masquerade as democracies. I build on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and his theory of “habitus” to illustrate how social agents develop strategies adapted to the needs of the social worlds that they inhabit. These strategies are unconscious, and act at times with violence on the level of a bodily logic. I borrow Cameroon political theorist Achille Mbembe’s theory of “banality of power” and his notion of “Postcolony” to endorse his stance that “Francophone Africa has a specifically given historical trajectory - that of societies recently emerging from the experience of colonization and violence that the colonial and postcolonial relationship involves,” that launched Africa into the “never-ending process of brutalization.Item Religious Activism and the Cultural Complexities of Progressive Politics(2018-06) Delehanty, JohnThis dissertation uses the case of ELIJAH, a large and diverse faith-based community organization, to advance social scientific understandings of the role of culture and emotions in social movements and progressive religious activism in twenty-first century U.S. political culture. Drawing on participant-observation and in-depth interviews, I document the ongoing construction of organizational culture and commitments to activism through a discursive practice that I call vulnerability talk. In the absence of a clear collective identity or a shared set of material interests, people in ELIJAH turn to emotions as the basis for fostering solidarity across racial and ethnic difference. This organizing paradigm shapes ELIJAH’s identity formation, narratives of action, and political strategy, and it counters dominant assumptions in the previous sociological literature on social movements, civic culture, and religion. I argue that ELIJAH’s ongoing construction of the cultural components of mobilization—collective identity, symbolic boundaries, narratives, and community bonds—produces not only activism in pursuit of social reform, but also new understandings of citizenship and religious responsibility. The importance of emotion work for managing the cultural complexities of multiracial organizing suggests that the most important question about progressive religious activism is not whether a new “Religious Left” will emerge to counter the Religious Right, but whether and how the culture being forged in progressive religious spaces can support ongoing action in the long term.Item We're Good People: Moral conviction as social identity(2018-07) Ekstrom, PierceMoral convictions—attitudes that people report are connected to their beliefs about right and wrong—are known to have unique effects on behavior, from activism to intolerance. Less is known, though, about why moral conviction has these effects. I propose that the unique predictive force of moral conviction is partly attributable to the fact that attitudes that people construe as “moral” are social identities closely tied to the self-concept. First, consistent with the idea that moral convictions are tied to the self-concept, I find in two studies that intensity of moral conviction predicts (1) self-reported identity centrality and (2) reaction time to attitude-related stimuli in a me/not me task, even when controlling for reported attitude importance. Further, moral conviction also predicted participants’ scores on a dominant common factor that underlay both outcomes, suggesting that the association between moral conviction and the self-concept is not a mere artifact of method-related factors. Second, and consistent with the idea that moral convictions are social identities, I find evidence that participants used their moral convictions to perceive, categorize, and remember information about other individuals’ positions on political issues, and that they did so more strongly when their convictions were more identity-central. Finally, I find that the association between moral conviction and intolerance is partly accounted for by moral convictions’ centrality to individuals’ identities, suggesting that the conflict that results from moral disagreement may resemble that which accompanies other identities (e.g., race, gender) and therefore might be mitigated with existing prejudice-reduction strategies.