...This chapter extols the virtues of bargaining, tension, and conflict as means to experiment and compromise—without leading to false consensus or conformity. Whereas much of social theory sees conflict and instability as debilitating, Hirschman spotlights their necessary strengths...

..., and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. This book argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. It looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom...

... quo—the nooks and crannies of local communal aggregation in urban space. To allude to these episodes too directly makes one suspicious, as it disturbs the comfortable arrangement of low-intensity tension in designated urban areas, which can be manipulated whenever the need arises. It also confirms...

... structures much of archaic poetry and becomes a defining feature of the male poet's inspiration. Here, the term aoidos occurs less frequently in Hesiod than in Homer—yet, just as in Homer, it occurs at moments of marked gender tension. As the fable of the nightingale in the Works...

... the Treaty of Nice. The Lisbon reforms are likely to help political leaders overcome their internal conflicts more efficiently and agree on more effective policies. Yet the world does not wait on Europe getting its act together. Europe has to cope with the social tensions emerging from demographic change...

... in particular, citing the latter's history of racial tension and deindustrialization. It then presents a complex portrait of African American ethnoracial groupness, with a focus on self-identification and group boundaries, before analyzing how African Americans responded when asked a series of questions about...