The Good Fight

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Michael Newman

"The Maastricht Treaty reactivated a long-term debate about the future of the European Union. Does it still make sense to talk of the 'sovereign state', or is power now moving upwards in the direction of a political union and downwards to a regional level? What are the implications of such trends for democracy? Controversy over what is happening and what should happen has engulfed the whole European Union. Yet the arguments are often conducted polemically, and both information and concepts are distorted."--BOOK JACKET. "This book counters misrepresentation by both 'Eurosceptics' and 'Euro-enthusiasts' by examining the issues involved in the sovereignty debates. Written in an accessible style, it examines key questions in democracy, drawing on both traditional concepts of political thought and empirical evidence to elucidate the current situation. It offers critical insights into the EU, and some of the arguments frequently used in its defence. But it rejects the nationalist opposition, and presents a case for a democratic EU which would be worthy of support."--BOOK JACKET. "Specialists, students and all those interested in the future of the European Union will find this a challenging critique of conventional analysis, which provides sufficient information for readers to form their own conclusions."--BOOK JACKET.

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Emilio del Valle Escalante

"This book focuses on the emergence and political-cultural implications of Guatemala's Maya movement. It explores how, since the 1970s, indigenous peoples have been challenging established, hegemonic narratives of modernity, history, nation, and cultural identity as these relate to the indigenous world. For the most part, these narratives have been fabricated by non-indigenous writers who have had the power not only to produce and spread knowledge but also to speak for and about the Maya world. Contemporary Maya narratives promote nationalisms based on the reaffirmation of Maya ethnicity and languages that constitute what it means to be Maya in present-day society, as well as political-cultural projects oriented toward the future."--BOOK JACKET.

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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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Charles Hornsby

"Since independence in 1963, Kenya has survived nearly five decades as a functioning nation-state, with regular elections, its borders intact and without experiencing war or military rule. However, Kenya's independence has always been circumscribed by its failure to transcend its colonial past; its governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens; and its politics have been fraught with controversy - illustrated most recently by the post-election protests and violence in 2007. The decisions of the early years of independence, and the acts of its leaders in the decades since - from Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga to Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki - have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, tribalism - including the simmering Kikuyu-Luo rivalries - money, power, national autonomy and the distribution of resources. The political elite's endless struggle for access to state resources has damaged Kenya's economy and the political exploitation of ethnicity still threatens the country's stability. In this definitive new history, Charles Hornsby demonstrates how independent Kenya's politics have been dominated by a struggle to deliver security, impartiality, efficiency and growth, but how the legacies of the past have continued to undermine their achievement, making the long-term future of Kenya far from certain."--