The Moral Imagination or Postcolonial Disorders

The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace

Author: John Paul Lederach

John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. As founding Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and Institute of Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, he has provided consultation and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. This new book represents his thinking and learning over the past several years. He explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding by reflecting on his own experiences in the field. Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act - an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination."

Table of Contents:

1	On stating the problem and thesis	3
2	On touching the moral imagination : four stories	7
3	On this moment : turning points	21
4	On simplicity and complexity : finding the essence of peacebuilding	31
5	On peace accords : image of a line in time	41
6	On the gift of pessimism : insights from the geographies of violence	51
7	On aesthetics : the art of social change	65
8	On space : life in the Web	75
9	On mass and movement : the theory of the critical yeast	87
10	On Web watching : finding the soul of place	101
11	On serendipity : the gift of accidental sagacity	113
12	On time : the past that lies before us	131
13	On Pied Pipers : imagination and creativity	151
14	On vocation : the mystery of risk	163
15	On conclusions : the imperative of the moral imagination	171
	Epilogue : a conversation	179

New interesting textbook: Explorer Extraordinaire or Fancy Nancy

Postcolonial Disorders

Author: Mary Jo DelVecchio Good

The essays in this volume reflect on the nature of subjectivity in the diverse places where anthropologists work at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Contributors explore everyday modes of social and psychological experience, the constitution of the subject, and forms of subjection that shape the lives of Basque youth, Indonesian artists, members of nongovernmental HIV/AIDS programs in China and the Republic of Congo, psychiatrists and the mentally ill in Morocco and Ireland, and persons who have suffered trauma or been displaced by violence in the Middle East and in South and Southeast Asia.
Painting on book jacket by Entang Wiharso

George Washingtons War on Native America or The Politics Presidents Make

George Washington's War on Native America

Author: Barbara Alice Mann

The Revolutionary War is ordinarily presented as a conflict exclusively between colonists and the British, fought along the northern Atlantic seacoast. This important work recounts the tragic events on the forgotten Western front of the American Revolution--a war fought against and ultimately won by Native America. The Natives, primarily the Iroquois League and the Ohio Union, are erroneously presented in history texts as "allies" (or lackeys) of the British, but Native America was working from its own internally generated agenda: to prevent settlers from invading the Old Northwest. Native America won the war in the West, holding the land west and north of the Allegheny-Ohio River systems. While the British may have awarded these lands to the colonists in the Treaty of Paris, the Native Americans did not concur. Throughout the war, the unwavering goal of the Revolutionary Army, under George Washington, and their associated settler militias was to break the power of the Iroquois League, which had successfully held off invasion for the preceding two centuries, and the newly formed Ohio Union. To destroy the Natives in the way of land seizure, Washington authorized a series of rampages intended to destroy the League and the Union by starvation. Food, livestock, homes, and trees were destroyed, first in the New York breadbaskets, then in the Ohio granaries--spreading famine across Native lands. Uncounted thousands of Natives perished from New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio. This book tells how, in the wake of the massive assaults, the Natives held back the American onslaught.

Interesting textbook: Think Big or The Teenage Investor

The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton

Author: Stephen Skowronek

Stephen Skowronek's wholly innovative study demonstrates that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. In an afterword to this new edition, the author examines "third way" leadership as it has been practiced by Bill Clinton and others. These leaders are neither great repudiators nor orthodox innovators. They challenge received political categories, mix seemingly antithetical doctrines, and often take their opponents' issues as their own. As the 1996 election confirmed, third way leadership has great electoral appeal. The question is whether Clinton in his second term will escape the convulsive end so often associated with the type.

Culture and Materialism or Total Lobbying

Culture and Materialism

Author: Raymond Williams

A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century.

Books about: Someday Well All Be Free or Arms and Influence

Total Lobbying: What Lobbyists Want (and How They Try to Get It)

Author: Anthony J Nownes

This book offers a scholarly yet accessible overview of the role of lobbying in American politics. It draws upon extant research as well as original data gathered from interviews with numerous lobbyists across the United States. It describes how lobbyists do their work within all branches of government, at the national, state, and local levels. It thus offers a substantially broader view of lobbying than is available in much of the research literature. Although tailored for students taking courses on interest group politics, Total Lobbying offers an indispensable survey of the field for scholars and others concerned with this important facet of American politics.