The Materiality of Res Publica

The Materiality of Res Publica PDF Author: Dominique Colas
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443810789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
For the last 100 years, political science has traditionally concentrated on the publica part of the expression res publica, conceiving this notion as a form of government opposed to, say, monarchy. However, the Ancients and citizens of Renaissance republics were just as attentive to the res part of the expression. The goal of this richly illustrated volume—containing 94 images—is to draw attention to this res, things and affairs that bring people together. The book first focuses on the central role played by the Rialto Bridge in Venice and by the main bridge in Novgorod the Great in the lives of the respective republics. It includes studies of res in other res publicae: an analysis of the republican icon of a woman crowned with ramparts found in three European cities; and a detailed study of iconography figuring Hobbes’ theory of res publica.

Res Publica

Res Publica PDF Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
Gathers together extracts from Cicero's works in which he discusses the Roman state (res publica). Grouped into eight thematic chapters, this title enables the student to examine the evidence and draw his or her own conclusions from the material presented.

Republicanism in Russia

Republicanism in Russia PDF Author: Oleg Kharkhordin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497672X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
Marxism was the loser in the Cold War, but Oleg Kharkhordin is not surprised that liberal democracy failed to take root after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. He suggests that Russians find a path to freedom by looking to the classical tradition of republican self-government and civic engagement already familiar from their history and literature.

Political Theory and Community Building in Post-Soviet Russia

Political Theory and Community Building in Post-Soviet Russia PDF Author: Oleg Kharkhordin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136855114
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
This book revisits many aspects of current social science theories, such as actor-network theory and the French school of science and technology studies, to test how the theories apply in a specific situation, in this case after 1991 in the city of Cherepovets in Russia, home of Russia’s second biggest steel producer, Severstal. Using political philosophy to analyse the down-to-earth details of the real techno-scientific problems facing the world, the book examines the role of things - and urban infrastructure in particular - in political change. It considers how the city’s infrastructure, including housing, ICT networks, the provision of public utilities of all kinds, has been transformed in recent years; examines the roles of different actors including the municipal authorities, and explores citizens’ differing and sometimes contradictory images of their city. It includes a great deal of new thinking on how communities are built, how common action is initiated to provide public goods, and how the goods themselves - physical things – are a crucial driver of community action and community building, arguably more so than more abstract social and human forces.

Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics

Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics PDF Author: N. Marres
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137029668
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
This book develops a fresh perspective on everyday forms of engagement, one that foregrounds the role of objects, technologies and settings in democracy. Examining a range of devices, from smart meters to eco-homes, the book sets out new concepts and methods for analyzing the relations between participation, innovation and the environment.

Libertas and Res Publica in the Roman Republic

Libertas and Res Publica in the Roman Republic PDF Author: Catalina Balmaceda
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004441697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
Libertas and Res Publica examines two key concepts of Western political thinking: freedom and republic. Contributors address important new questions on the principles of, and essential connection between res publica and libertas in Roman thought and Republican history.

Post-Soviet Power

Post-Soviet Power PDF Author: Susanne A. Wengle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107072484
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Examines the transformation of the Russian electricity system during post-Soviet marketization, arguing for a view of economic and political development as mutually constitutive.

A Public Empire

A Public Empire PDF Author: Ekaterina Pravilova
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian intellectuals for their indifference to the issues of ownership. A Public Empire refutes this widely shared conventional wisdom and analyzes the emergence of Russian property regimes from the time of Catherine the Great through World War I and the revolutions of 1917. Most importantly, A Public Empire shows the emergence of the new practices of owning "public things" in imperial Russia and the attempts of Russian intellectuals to reconcile the security of property with the ideals of the common good. The book analyzes how the belief that certain objects—rivers, forests, minerals, historical monuments, icons, and Russian literary classics—should accede to some kind of public status developed in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professional experts and liberal politicians advocated for a property reform that aimed at exempting public things from private ownership, while the tsars and the imperial government employed the rhetoric of protecting the sanctity of private property and resisted attempts at its limitation. Exploring the Russian ways of thinking about property, A Public Empire looks at problems of state reform and the formation of civil society, which, as the book argues, should be rethought as a process of constructing "the public" through the reform of property rights.

Political Categories

Political Categories PDF Author: Michael Marder
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547986
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
Western philosophy has been dominated by the concept or the idea—the belief that there is one sovereign notion or singular principle that can make reality explicable and bring all that exists under its sway. In modern politics, this role is played by ideology. Left, right, or center, political schools of thought share a metaphysics of simplification. We internalize a dominant, largely unnoticeable framework, oblivious to complex, plural, and occasionally conflicting or mutually contradictory explanations for what is the case. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Marder proposes a new methodology for political science and philosophy, one which he terms “categorial thinking.” In contrast to the concept, no category alone can exhaust the meaning of anything: categories are so many folds, complications, respectful of multiplicity. Ranging from classical Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies to phenomenology and contemporary politics, Marder's book offers readers a theoretical toolbox for the interpretation of political phenomena, processes, institutions, and ideas. His categorial apparatus encompasses political temporality and spatiality; the revolutionary and conservative modalities of political actuality, possibility, and necessity; quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of political reality; the meaning of political relations; and various senses of political being. Under this lens, the political appears not as a singular concept but as a family of categories, allowing room for new, plural, and often antagonistic ideas about the state, the people, sovereignty, and power.

The Future of the State

The Future of the State PDF Author: Artemy Magun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786614847
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
The state has been a dominant political form, and the preferred model of political unity , for at least the last two centuries. However, many today speak of its crisis, which stems from two main factors: the state’s changing role in the globalizing international system and the state’s complex relation to democracy, a key normative concept of contemporary politics. Authoritarian leaders use the state to successfully reaffirm sovereignty, despite international integration; democratic movements abound but often serve only to reinforce the regimes they contest. Is there an alternative? Do we need to reconceive the phenomenon of state, with a view to the future? These are the questions that an international group of scholars explores and answers in this groundbreaking book, drawing on the history of political thought, continental philosophy, and contemporary political examples. They engage the dialectical tradition broadly understood, including phenomenological transcendentalism, the political philosophy of French public law, and German twentieth-century political philosophy beyond Weber. The result brings the state into a critical political philosophy, providing a realistic model of what a good democratic state could and should be like.