After Mandela

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Paul W. Drake and Eric Hershberg

"State and Society in Conflict analyzes one of the most volatile regions in Latin America, the Andean states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. For the last twenty-five years, crises in these five Andean countries have endangered Latin America's democracies and strained their relations with the United States. As these nations struggle to cope with demands from Washington on security policies (emphasizing drugs and terrorism), neoliberal economics, and democratic politics, their resulting domestic travails can be seen in poor economic growth, unequal wealth distribution, mounting social unrest, and escalating political instability." "The contributors to this volume examine the histories, politics, and cultures of the Andean nations, and argue that, due to their shared history and modern circumstances, these countries are suffering a shared crisis of deteriorating relations between state and society that is best understood in regional, not purely national, terms. The results, in some cases, have been semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes that lurch from crisis to crisis, often controlled through force, though clinging to a notion of democracy. The solution to these problems - whether through democratic, authoritarian, peaceful, or violent means - will have profound implications for the region and its future relations with the world."--Jacket.

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Sarah Maddison

Drawing on extensive interviews with activists and politicians, Black Politics explains the dynamics of Aboriginal politics. It reveals the challenges and tensions that have shaped community, regional and national relations over the past 25 years.Why do Aboriginal communities struggle so hard to be heard in mainstream politics? How do remote and urban communities respond to frequent dramatic shifts in federal and state Aboriginal policies?Since the early 1990s Aboriginal Australia has experienced profound political changes with very real and lasting implications, from the Mabo land rights case in 1992, to the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005, to more recent attempts to reduce the autonomy of remote communities. Sarah Maddison identifies the tensions that lie at the heart of all Aboriginal politics, arguing that until Australian governments come to grips with this complexity they will continue to make bad policy with disastrous consequences for Aboriginal people.Based on original interviews with influential Aboriginal leaders including Mick Dodson, Tom Calma, Alison Anderson, Jackie Huggins, Warren Mundine and Larissa Behrendt, Black Politics seeks to understand why Aboriginal communities find it so difficult to be heard, get support, and organise internally. It also offers some suggestions for the future, based on the collective wisdom of political players at all levels of Aboriginal politics.'Sarah Maddison has brought together a formidable range of Indigenous voices and sources and placed their narratives within an analysis to show the depth and complexity of Indigenous cultural and political expression.' - From the foreword by Pat Dodson

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Johan Östling

"As a nominally neutral power during the Second World War, Sweden in the early postwar era has received comparatively little attention from historians. Nonetheless, as this definitive study shows, the war--and particularly the specter of Nazism--changed Swedish society profoundly. Prior to 1939, many Swedes shared an unmistakable affinity for German culture, and even after the outbreak of hostilities there remained prominent apologists for the Third Reich. After the Allied victory, however, Swedish intellectuals reframed Nazism as a discredited, distinctively German phenomenon rooted in militarism and Romanticism. Accordingly, Swedes' self-conception underwent a dramatic reformulation. From this interplay of suppressed traditions and bright dreams for the future, postwar Sweden emerged"--From publisher's website.

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Clarence B. Jones and Joel Engel

Clarence B. Jones, lawyer and adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., reflects upon what King might have said about issues in twenty-first-century America such as Islamic terrorism, anti-Semitism, reparations for slavery, affirmative action, and illegal immigration.