Bonds Of Pluralism

During the Civil War, Walt Whitman described his admiration for the Union soldiers' loyalty to the ideal of democracy. His argument, that this faith bonded Americans to their nation, has received little critical attention, yet today it raises increasingly relevant questions about American patriotism in the face of growing nationalist sentiment worldwide. Here a group of scholars explores the manner in which Americans have discussed and practiced their patriotism over the past two hundred years. Their essays investigate, for example, the extent to which the promise of democracy has explained citizen loyalty, what other factors--such as devotion to home and family--have influenced patriotism, and how patriotism has often served as a tool to maintain the power of a dominant group and to obscure internal social ills. This volume examines the use of patriotic language and symbols in building unity in the early republic, rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, and sustaining loyalty in an increasingly diverse society. Continuing through the World Wars to the Clinton presidency, the essay topics range from multiculturalism to reactions toward masculine power. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Cynthia M. Koch, Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary, Andrew Neather, Stuart McConnell, Gaines M. Foster, Kimberly Jensen, David Glassberg and J. Michael Moore, Lawrence R. Samuel, Robert B. Westbrook, Wendy Kozol, George Lipsitz, Barbara Truesdell, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, and William B. Cohen.

An Introduction to Structural Analysis: The Network Approach to Social Research discusses the fundamental concept of structural analysis. The book is comprised of five chapters that tackle the key concepts, central intellectual themes, and principal methodological techniques of structural analysis. Chapter 1 reviews structural analysis, while Chapter 2 discusses the structure of interpersonal communication. Chapter 3 deals with economic structure and elite integration. The book also covers structural models of large-scale processes. The future of structural analysis is also discussed. The text will be useful to scientists, such as sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists who wish to utilize structural analysis in a research study.

In the three years since Donald Trump first announced his plans to run for president, the United States seems to become more dramatically polarized and divided with each passing month. There are seemingly irresolvable differences in the beliefs, values, and identities of citizens across the country that too often play out in our legal system in clashes on a range of topics such as the tensions between law enforcement and minority communities. How can we possibly argue for civic aspirations like tolerance, humility, and patience in our current moment? In Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu analyzes the current state of the country, orients the contemporary United States within its broader history, and explores the ways that Americans can—and must—strive to live together peaceably despite our deeply engrained differences. Pluralism is one of the founding creeds of the United States—yet America’s society and legal system continues to face deep, unsolved structural problems in dealing with differing cultural anxieties and differing viewpoints. Inazu not only argues that it is possible to cohabitate peacefully in this country, but also lays out realistic guidelines for our society and legal system to achieve the new American dream through civic practices that value toleration over protest, humility over defensiveness, and persuasion over coercion. With a new preface that addresses the election of Donald Trump, the decline in civic discourse after the election, the Nazi march in Charlottesville, and more, this new edition of Confident Pluralism is an essential clarion call during one of the most troubled times in US history. Inazu argues for institutions that can work to bring people together as well as political institutions that will defend the unprotected. Confident Pluralism offers a refreshing argument for how the legal system can protect peoples’ personal beliefs and differences and provides a path forward to a healthier future of tolerance, humility, and patience.

Two of today's leading experts on the Christian political tradition plumb significant moments in premodern Christian political thought, using them in original and adventurous ways to clarify, criticize, and redirect contemporary political perspectives and discussions. Drawing on the Bible and the Western history of ideas, Oliver and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan explore key Christian voices on "the political" -- political action, political institutions, and political society. Covered here are Bonaventure, Thomas, Ockham, Wycliff, Erasmus, Luther, Grotius, Barth, Ramsey, and key modern papal encyclicals. The authors' discussion takes them across a wide range of political concerns, from economics and personal freedom to liberal democracy and the nature of statehood. Ultimately, these insightful essays point to political judgment as the strength of the past theological tradition and its eclipse as the weakness of present political thought.

We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational and nonstate communities. Navigating these spheres of complex overlapping legal authority is confusing and we cannot expect territorial borders to solve all these problems. At the same time, those hoping to create one universal set of legal rules are also likely to be disappointed by the sheer variety of human communities and interests. Instead, we need an alternative jurisprudence, one that seeks to create or preserve spaces for productive interaction among multiple, overlapping legal systems by developing procedural mechanisms, institutions and practices that aim to manage, without eliminating, the legal pluralism we see around us. Global Legal Pluralism provides a broad synthesis across a variety of legal doctrines and academic disciplines and offers a novel conceptualization of law and globalization.

In Pluralist Politics, Relational Worlds, Didier Zúñiga examines the possibility for dialogue and mutual understanding in human and more-than-human worlds. The book responds to the need to find more democratic ways of listening to, giving voice to, and caring for the variety of beings that inhabit the earth. Drawing on ecology and sustainability in democratic theory, Zúñiga demonstrates the transformative potential of a relational ethics that is not only concerned with human animals, but also with the multiplicity of beings on earth, and the relationships in which they are enmeshed. The book offers ways of cultivating and fostering the kinds of relations that are needed to maintain human and more-than-human diversity in order for life to persist. It also calls attention to the quality of the relationships that are needed for life to flourish, advancing our understanding of the diversity of pluralism. Pluralist Politics, Relational Worlds ultimately presses us to question our own condition of human animality so that we may reconsider the relations we entertain with one another and with more-than-human forms of life on earth.