...This chapter examines the significance of politics in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life. Persecution drives Rousseau to St. Peter's Island and also off it, and circumscribes the episode he chooses in order to treat supreme felicity in Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire...

... of experience—that is, the rest of what has proven useful in navigating the physical and social worlds. These pragmatist theories of knowledge and truth had profound implications for ethics and politics. Indeed, they cannot be understood apart from the ethical and political challenges posed by the upheavals...

...This concluding chapter argues that the history of American thought and politics during the era of William James and Woodrow Wilson does not show what today's Americans will believe and do, and it certainly does not show what their beliefs and doings will accomplish. Only the future can vindicate...

...—as seen on innumerable web pages—is “cool.” Cool is the techno-informatic vanishing point of contemporary aesthetics, psychology, morality, politics, spirituality, and everything. The book offers a historical sketch of knowledge work and a theoretical frame for investigating its culture of cool...

...This chapter describes and analyzes the means used by the secret police to control the formation of dissident groups and their activities in socialist East Germany. It interprets these efforts of the Stasi as a particular form of politics undertaken with the intention to prevent, hinder, or undo...

... their extraordinary lives. This book shows that pragmatism can help address some of the more challenging dimensions of contemporary African American politics, but it maintains that pragmatism first ought to undergo a reconstruction of sorts: it must be made to sing the blues. It argues that, contrary to standard...

...This chapter focuses on the nationalist politics of the black power era, but not with the intent of bashing the shortcomings of black nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s. It does not hold the view, for example, that the black power era represents a moment of decline in the black freedom struggle...

...This chapter, which sums up the key findings of this study about the “Faustian bargain” made by German geneticists with Nazi officials, suggests that the main factor in this deal is the way human genetics and politics served as “resources” for each other. The chapter also describes how human...

... viewed her as being a paradox at the heart of anarchism. Goldman may have quitted possessiveness in the name of socialism but she continued self-fulfillment in the name of anarchism. While the playwright's outlook on life was thoroughly pessimistic, O'Neill's political sympathies flowed directly...

... on Aristotle and his related writings on political science (Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics ), where he recommends an Aristotelian political science. Strauss describes Aristotle as the originator of political science, as compared to Socrates, the founder of political philosophy...

... and politics in anthropological and fictional accounts of Zulu chiefs and diviners. Finally, exploring relations among religion, fiction, and scholarship, this chapter explores how representations of Zulu religion contributed to the re-enchantments of fiction and knowledge about religion in imperial...

...This chapter examines the two orchestras during the interwar period of politicization. Here, stark differences can be seen in the ties between each philharmonic and its republic. The concert activities of the Berlin Philharmonic increasingly aligned with Germany’s foreign and domestic political...

...This chapter discusses the politics and aesthetics of deliberation. It states that the aesthetics of deliberation evolved in tandem with its politics. Henry Clay contributed to the evolution of Congress by building up the post of House Speaker, an accomplishment that acted as a piece of his...

...This chapter begins the adventure of classifying regimes and their changes by laying out first some tools for the description and analysis of contentious politics—government, governmental agents, political actors, regime, political resources, capital, commitment, contention, public politics...

...This chapter presents a discussion on the repertoires of contention. We can capture some of the recurrent, historically embedded character of contentious politics by means of two related theatrical metaphors: performances and repertoires. Repertoires vary from nonexistent to weak to strong to rigid...

...This chapter investigates how social movements work. Social movements differ from other forms of contentious politics in their combination of sustained campaigns of claim-making, an exceptional array of claim-making performances, and concerted displays of supporters' worthiness, unity, numbers...

... discourse and politics; and (3) the transformations of urban social policy in the neoliberal era. The figures of President George H. W. Bush and his thousand Points of Light initiative along with HUD Secretary Jack Kemp are used to illustrate. It is argued that midnight basketball provided a unique...

...Chapter 4 puts the early history of midnight basketball in a broader and more explicit political context. Specifically, it argues that these sport-based programs functioned in the media and were used by political leaders to promote a new, neoliberal approach to crime prevention and urban public...

...Chapter 5 explains the breakdown of the popularity and bipartisan consensus that had originally surrounded midnight basketball in the context of the 1994 crime bill debates. It details the political and cultural roots of this collapse as well as its broader political and public policy consequences...

... and evolution of these programs set in the context of the social policy transformations of the era. As the chapters unfold, the book also analyzes the racial ideologies, cultures of sport, and policy debates that midnight basketball reveals and that endowed it with larger symbolic significance and political...