Visar resultat för..."mystification"

The democratic legitimacy of the European Union has become an increasingly urgent issue. In searching for a way out, academics, EU institutions, and political forces advocate the involvement of civil society. The Commission''s new governance approach and the Lisbon Treaty introduced elements of participatory democracy and elevated civil society to a key actor in democratizing the EU. Does this hold upon closer scrutiny? This is the main question of the book. Itinvestigates how the promise of civil society participation is put into practice and, based on an elaborate theoretical framework, evaluates whether the political practice deserves the quality attribute ''participatory democracy''. The book presents the results of a large research project composed of severalhighly original empirical studies. The research team used various methodological approaches and generated a rich data set. The wealth of empirical insight is evaluated against clear criteria deduced from normative democratic theory. As key elements of the analyses - democracy, participation, and civil society - are contested concepts, the authors placed particular emphasize on clarifying their understanding of these concepts and on considering competing interpretations. By relying on aconsistent theoretical approach the authors present an unusually balanced evaluation. They come to convincing, though rather skeptical conclusions. Civil society participation in EU governance is not the democratic remedy its advocates had hoped for. This may not be a welcome but nevertheless it is animportant finding both for European decision-makers, for civil society organizations and for scholars.

The democratic legitimacy of the European Union has become an increasingly urgent issue. In searching for a way out, academics, EU institutions, and political forces advocate the involvement of civil society. The Commission's new governance approach and the Lisbon Treaty introduced elements of participatory democracy and elevated civil society to a key actor in democratizing the EU. Does this hold upon closer scrutiny? This is the main question of the book. It investigates how the promise of civil society participation is put into practice and, based on an elaborate theoretical framework, evaluates whether the political practice deserves the quality attribute 'participatory democracy'. The book presents the results of a large research project composed of several highly original empirical studies. The research team used various methodological approaches and generated a rich data set. The wealth of empirical insight is evaluated against clear criteria deduced from normative democratic theory. As key elements of the analyses - democracy, participation, and civil society - are contested concepts, the authors placed particular emphasize on clarifying their understanding of these concepts and on considering competing interpretations. By relying on a consistent theoretical approach the authors present an unusually balanced evaluation. They come to convincing, though rather skeptical conclusions. Civil society participation in EU governance is not the democratic remedy its advocates had hoped for. This may not be a welcome but nevertheless it is an important finding both for European decision-makers, for civil society organizations and for scholars.

In God, Mystery, and Mystification, Denys Turner presents eight essays covering the major issues of philosophical and practical theology that he has focused on over the fifty years of his academic career. While a somewhat heterogeneous collection, the chapters are loosely linked by a focus on the mystery of God and on distinguishing that mystery from merely idolatrous mystifications.The book covers three main fields: theological epistemology, medieval and early modern mystical theologies, and the relation of Christian belief to natural science and politics. Turner develops the implications of a moderate realist account of theological knowledge as distinct from a fashionable, postmodernist epistemology. This modern realist epistemology is embodied in connections between theoretical, speculative theologies and the practice of the Christian faith in a number of different ways, but mainly as bearing upon the practical, lived connections between faith and reason, between reason and the mystical, between faith and science, and among faith, prayer, and politics. Scholars and advanced students of theology, religious studies, the history of ideas, and medieval thought will be interested in this book.

Power, Crime, and Mystification is one of the classics of radical criminology -a compelling account of how power and powerlessness operate within the criminal justice system. Questioning the orthodox view that it is powerlessness that leads to serious criminal behaviour, Steven Box focuses on the serious crimes committed by those in positions of power and privilege, particularly in government agencies and multinational corporations. He also points out that some relatively powerless groups, such as women, hardly commit any serious crimes at all. He suggests that crime can be the extreme form of otherwise socially sanctioned behaviour and, in taking this approach, provides coherent answers to the questions How does a society define crime? and 'What is the difference between justice and social control?. A major implication of Steven Box's stimulating analysis is that definitions of serious crime, the criminal justice process, and government penal policies are all in need of review. So far these have been more concerned with regulating, controlling, and demoralizing relatively powerless groups than with tackling real crime.

Philosophy and Mystification reflects on the nature, methods and resources of philosophic enquiry are carefully grounded in the central problems that have dogged Western philosophy in the modern era: logical necessity, machine intelligence, the relation of science and religion, determinism, scepticism and the questions of foundations and origins.

Philosophy and Mystification reflects on the nature, methods and resources of philosophic enquiry are carefully grounded in the central problems that have dogged Western philosophy in the modern era: logical necessity, machine intelligence, the relation of science and religion, determinism, scepticism and the questions of foundations and origins.

This work is the first to analyze Marguerite Yourcenar's fictional manuscripts collected by the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Beatrice Ness organizes her study into five main groups of manuscripts spanning from 1924 to 1987, the year of Yourcenar's death. Ness's genetic approach problematizes questions of truthfulness and falsity: Yourcenar directs the reader's interpretation of her work by selecting and arranging diary notes, correspondence, and manuscripts of novels. As a result, the critic must undertake a careful reading of Yourcenar's 'avant-textes' to answer the questions: what does the manuscript reveal and why are these specific documents accessible to the public? Ness shows that Yourcenar tries to assure a posthumous reading that validates the originality of some aspects of her writing process, such as the aesthetic appeal of the drawings in her manuscripts, her mobility while she writes, and graphic transformations of penmanship revealing metempsychosis. Yourcenar's clever practice calls for an inventive reader to transcribe a filtered reality.

Power, Crime, and Mystification is one of the classics of radical criminology -a compelling account of how power and powerlessness operate within the criminal justice system. Questioning the orthodox view that it is powerlessness that leads to serious criminal behaviour, Steven Box focuses on the serious crimes committed by those in positions of power and privilege, particularly in government agencies and multinational corporations. He also points out that some relatively powerless groups, such as women, hardly commit any serious crimes at all. He suggests that crime can be the extreme form of otherwise socially sanctioned behaviour and, in taking this approach, provides coherent answers to the questions How does a society define crime? and ''What is the difference between justice and social control?. A major implication of Steven Box''s stimulating analysis is that definitions of serious crime, the criminal justice process, and government penal policies are all in need of review. So far these have been more concerned with regulating, controlling, and demoralizing relatively powerless groups than with tackling real crime.

Power, Crime, and Mystification is one of the classics of radical criminology -a compelling account of how power and powerlessness operate within the criminal justice system. Questioning the orthodox view that it is powerlessness that leads to serious criminal behaviour, Steven Box focuses on the serious crimes committed by those in positions of power and privilege, particularly in government agencies and multinational corporations. He also points out that some relatively powerless groups, such as women, hardly commit any serious crimes at all. He suggests that crime can be the extreme form of otherwise socially sanctioned behaviour and, in taking this approach, provides coherent answers to the questions How does a society define crime? and ''What is the difference between justice and social control?. A major implication of Steven Box''s stimulating analysis is that definitions of serious crime, the criminal justice process, and government penal policies are all in need of review. So far these have been more concerned with regulating, controlling, and demoralizing relatively powerless groups than with tackling real crime.

Power, Crime, and Mystification is one of the classics of radical criminology -a compelling account of how power and powerlessness operate within the criminal justice system. Questioning the orthodox view that it is powerlessness that leads to serious criminal behaviour, Steven Box focuses on the serious crimes committed by those in positions of power and privilege, particularly in government agencies and multinational corporations. He also points out that some relatively powerless groups, such as women, hardly commit any serious crimes at all. He suggests that crime can be the extreme form of otherwise socially sanctioned behaviour and, in taking this approach, provides coherent answers to the questions How does a society define crime? and 'What is the difference between justice and social control?. A major implication of Steven Box's stimulating analysis is that definitions of serious crime, the criminal justice process, and government penal policies are all in need of review. So far these have been more concerned with regulating, controlling, and demoralizing relatively powerless groups than with tackling real crime.