Demanding The Impossible

  demanding the impossible: Demanding the Impossible Peter Marshall, 2012-07-10 A fascinating and comprehensive history, 'Demanding the Impossible' is a challenging and thought-provoking exploration of anarchist ideas and actions from ancient times to the present day.
  demanding the impossible: A Users Guide to Demanding the Impossible Laboratory of Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, 2011-10 This guide is not a road map or instruction manual. It�s a match struck in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies of those who took Bertolt Brecht�s words to heart: �Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.� It was written in a whirlwind of three days in December 2010, between the first and second days of action by UK students against the government cuts, and intended to reflect on the possibility of new creative forms of action in the current movements.
  demanding the impossible: Demand the Impossible! Bill Ayers, 2016-09-19 The insurgent activist and educator shares a vital rally cry for today’s movement-makers in “a manifesto that should be read by everyone” (Angela Y. Davis). In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent—or seemed more remote. Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible. In critiquing the world around us, Bill Ayers uncovers cracks in that system. He raising the horizons for radical change and envisions new strategies for building the movement we need to make a better world for everyone.
  demanding the impossible: Demand the Impossible Tom Moylan, 1986
  demanding the impossible: Be Realistic Mike Davis, 2012-08-15 With wit and a remarkable grasp of the political marginalization of the 99%, Mike Davis crafts a striking defense of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This pamphlet brilliantly undertakes the most pressing question facing the struggle– what is to be done next? Mike Davis is the author of more than twenty books.
  demanding the impossible: The Impossible Community John P. Clark, 2013-06-06 The Impossible Community confronts a critical moment when social and ecological catastrophe loom, the Left seems unable to articulate a response, and the Right is monopolizing public debates. This book offers a reformulation of anarchist social and political theory to develop a communitarian anarchist solution. It argues that a free and just social order requires a radical transformation of the modes of domination exercised through social ideology and institutional structures. Communitarian anarchism unites a universalist concern for social and ecological justice while recognizing the integrity and individuality of the person. In fact, anarchist principles of mutual aid and voluntary cooperation can already be seen in various contexts, from the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina to social movements in India. This work offers both a theoretical framework and concrete case studies to show how contemporary anarchist practice continues a long tradition of successfully synthetizing personal and communal liberation. This significant contribution will appeal not only to students in anarchism and political theory, but also to activists and anyone interested in making the world a better place.
  demanding the impossible: Dispossession Judith Butler, Athena Athanasiou, 2013-04-12 Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism. Can dispossession simultaneously characterize political responses and opposition to the disenfranchisement associated with unjust dispossession of land, economic and political power, and basic conditions for living? In the context of neoliberal expropriation of labor and livelihood, dispossession opens up a performative condition of being both affected by injustice and prompted to act. From the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to the anti-neoliberal gatherings at Puerta del Sol, Syntagma and Zucchotti Park, an alternative political and affective economy of bodies in public is being formed. Bodies on the street are precarious - exposed to police force, they are also standing for, and opposing, their dispossession. These bodies insist upon their collective standing, organize themselves without and against hierarchy, and refuse to become disposable: they demand regard. This book interrogates the agonistic and open-ended corporeality and conviviality of the crowd as it assembles in cities to protest political and economic dispossession through a performative dispossession of the sovereign subject and its propriety.
  demanding the impossible: Gridlock Thomas Hale, David Held, Kevin Young, 2013-07-11 The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.
  demanding the impossible: Realm of Lesser Evil Jean-Claude Michea, 2009-07-27 Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique of the ‘tyranny of the Good’ naturally had its costs. It created a view of modern politics as a purely negative art – that of defining the least bad society possible. It is in this sense that liberalism has to be understood, and understands itself, as the ‘politics of lesser evil’. And yet while liberalism set out to be a realism without illusions, today liberalism presents itself as something else. With its celebration of the market among other things, contemporary liberalism has taken over some of the features of its oldest enemy. By unravelling the logic that lies at the heart of the liberal project, Michea is able to shed fresh light on one of the key ideas that have shaped the civilization of the West.
  demanding the impossible: Can War be Eliminated? Christopher Coker, 2014-01-14 Throughout history, war seems to have had an iron grip on humanity. In this short book, internationally renowned philosopher of war, Christopher Coker, challenges the view that war is an idea that we can cash in for an even better one - peace. War, he argues, is central to the human condition; it is part of the evolutionary inheritance which has allowed us to survive and thrive. New technologies and new geopolitical battles may transform the face and purpose of war in the 21st century, but our capacity for war remains undiminished. The inconvenient truth is that we will not see the end of war until it exhausts its own evolutionary possibilities.
  demanding the impossible: Anarchy in Action Colin Ward, 2018-01-15 The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism. Anarchist ideas are so much at variance with ordinary political assumptions and the solutions anarchists offer so remote, that all too often people find it hard to take anarchism seriously. This classic text is an attempt to bridge the gap between the present reality and anarchist aspirations, “between what is and what, according to the anarchists, might be.” Through a wide-ranging analysis—drawing on examples from education, urban planning, welfare, housing, the environment, the workplace, and the family, to name but a few—Colin Ward demonstrates that the roots of anarchist practice are not so alien or quixotic as they might at first seem but lie precisely in the ways that people have always tended to organize themselves when left alone to do so. The result is both an accessible introduction for those new to anarchism and pause for thought for those who are too quick to dismiss it. For more than thirty years, in over thirty books, Colin Ward patiently explained anarchist solutions to everything from vandalism to climate change—and celebrated unofficial uses of the landscape as commons, from holiday camps to squatter communities. Ward was an anarchist journalist and editor for almost sixty years, most famously editing the journal Anarchy. He was also a columnist for New Statesman, New Society, Freedom, and Town and Country Planning.
  demanding the impossible: Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow David Goodway, 2011-12-12 From William Morris to Oscar Wilde to George Orwell, left-libertarian thought has long been an important but neglected part of British cultural and political history. In Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow, David Goodway seeks to recover and revitalize that indigenous anarchist tradition. This book succeeds as simultaneously a cultural history of left-libertarian thought in Britain and a demonstration of the applicability of that history to current politics. Goodway argues that a recovered anarchist tradition could—and should—be a touchstone for contemporary political radicals. Moving seamlessly from Aldous Huxley and Colin Ward to the war in Iraq, this challenging volume will energize leftist movements throughout the world.
  demanding the impossible: Mortal Subjects Christina Howells, 2011-12-27 This wide ranging and challenging book explores the relationship between subjectivity and mortality as it is understood by a number of twentieth-century French philosophers including Sartre, Lacan, Levinas and Derrida. Making intricate and sometimes unexpected connections, Christina Howells draws together the work of prominent thinkers from the fields of phenomenology and existentialism, religious thought, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, focussing in particular on the relations between body and soul, love and death, desire and passion. From Aristotle through to contemporary analytic philosophy and neuroscience the relationship between mind and body (psyche and soma, consciousness and brain) has been persistently recalcitrant to analysis, and emotion (or passion) is the locus where the explanatory gap is most keenly identified. This problematic forms the broad backdrop to the work’s primary focus on contemporary French philosophy and its attempts to understand the intimate relationship between subjectivity and mortality, in the light not only of the ‘death’ of the classical subject but also of the very real frailty of the subject as it lives on, finite, desiring, embodied, open to alterity and always incomplete. Ultimately Howells identifies this vulnerability and finitude as the paradoxical strength of the mortal subject and as what permits its transcendence. Subtle, beautifully written, and cogently argued, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars interested in contemporary theories of subjectivity, as well as for readers intrigued by the perennial connections between love and death.
  demanding the impossible: What Is Anarchism? Donald Rooum, 2016-11-15 Anarchists believe that the point of society is to widen the choices of individuals. Anarchism is opposed to states, armies, slavery, the wages system, the landlord system, prisons, capitalism, bureaucracy, meritocracy, theocracy, revolutionary governments, patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, and every other kind of coercive institution. In other words, anarchism opposes government in all its forms. Enlarged and updated for a modern audience, What Is Anarchism? has the making of a standard reference book. As an introduction to the development of anarchist thought, it will be useful not only to propagandists and proselytizers of anarchism but also to teachers and students of political theory, philosophy, sociology, history, and to all who want to uncover the basic core of anarchism. This useful compendium, compiled and edited by the late Vernon Richards of Freedom Press, with additional selections by Donald Rooum, includes extracts from the work of Errico Malatesta, Peter Kropotkin, Max Stirner, Emma Goldman, Charlotte Wilson, Michael Bakunin, Rudolf Rocker, Alexander Berkman, Colin Ward, Albert Meltzer, and many others. Author and Wildcat cartoonist Donald Rooum gives context to the selections with introductions looking at “What Anarchists Believe,” “How Anarchists Differ,” and “What Anarchists Do” and provides helpful and humorous illustrations throughout the book.
  demanding the impossible: Anarchism Daniel Guerin, 1970 The author examines both the theory of anarchism and its practice and influence through the Bolshevik Revolution era, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian factory councils, and its role in workers' self-management in Yugoslavia and Algeria.
  demanding the impossible: About Anarchism Nicolas Walter, 2019-07-01 Today the word “anarchism” inspires both fear and fascination. But few people understand what anarchists believe, what anarchists want, and what anarchists do. This incisive book puts forward the case for anarchism as a pragmatic philosophy. Originally written in 1969 and updated for the twenty-first century, About Anarchism is an uncluttered, precise, and urgently necessary expression of practical anarchism. Crafted in deliberately simple prose and without constant reference to other writers or past events, it can be understood without difficulty and without any prior knowledge of political ideology. As one of the finest short introductions to the basic concepts, theories, and applications of anarchism, About Anarchism has been translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Russian. This new edition includes an updated introduction from Natasha Walter and an expanded biographical sketch of the author, Nicolas Walter, who was a respected writer, journalist, and an active protester against the powers of both the church and the state.
  demanding the impossible: No Gods, No Masters Daniel Gu�rin, 2005 Guerin's classic anthology of anarchism translated and reprinted, available for the first time in a single volume.
  demanding the impossible: Moral Failure Lisa Tessman, 2015 Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that I must collides with the realization that I can't. Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that ought implies can. In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, Tessman considers what to make of such experience, and in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. Tessman points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness and to feminist care ethics.
  demanding the impossible: Health Justice Sridhar Venkatapuram, 2013-04-17 Social factors have a powerful influence on human health and longevity. Yet the social dimensions of health are often obscured in public discussions due to the overwhelming focus in health policy on medical care, individual-level risk factor research, and changing individual behaviours. Likewise, in philosophical approaches to health and social justice, the debates have largely focused on rationing problems in health care and on personal responsibility. However, a range of events over the past two decades such as the study of modern famines, the global experience of HIV/AIDS, the international women’s health movement, and the flourishing of social epidemiological research have drawn attention to the robust relationship between health and broad social arrangements. In Health Justice, Sridhar Venkatapuram takes up the problem of identifying what claims individuals have in regard to their health in modern societies and the globalized world. Recognizing the social bases of health and longevity, Venkatapuram extends the ‘Capabilities Approach’ of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum into the domain of health and health sciences. In so doing, he formulates an inter-disciplinary argument that draws on the natural and social sciences as well as debates around social justice to argue for every human being’s moral entitlement to a capability to be healthy. An ambitious integration of the health sciences and the Capabilities Approach, Health Justice aims to provide a concrete ethical grounding for the human right to health, while advancing the field of health policy and placing health at the centre of social justice theory. With a foreword by Sir Michael Marmot, chair of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.
  demanding the impossible: In Search of Politics Zygmunt Bauman, 2013-07-03 We live in a world which no longer questions itself, which lives from one day to another managing successive crises and struggling to brace itself for new ones, without knowing where it is going and without trying to plan the itinerary. And everything important in our lives - livelihood, human bonds, partnerships, neighbourhood, goals worth pursuing and dangers to avoid - feels transient, precarious, vulnerable, insecure, uncertain, risky. Is there a connection between the shape of the world we inhabit and the way we live our lives? Exploring that connection, and finding out just how close it is, is the main concern of this book. What is at stake in this inquiry is the possibility of re-building the'private/public space, where private troubles and public issues meet and where citizens engage in dialogue in order to govern themselves. Individual liberty can only be a product of collective work, it can only be collectively secured and guaranteed. And yet today we are moving towards a privatization of the means to secure individual liberty. If seen as a therapy for the present ills, this is bound to produce effects of a most sinister kind. The act of translating private troubles into public issues is in danger of falling into disuse and being forgotten. The argument of this book is that making the translation possible again is an urgent and vital imperative for the renewal of politics today. This new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and creative thinkers of our time - will be of particular interest to students of sociology, politics and social and political theory.
  demanding the impossible: The Government of No One Ruth Kinna, 2019-08-01 'The standard book on anarchism for the twenty-first century. Written with brio, quiet insight and clarity' Carl Levy A magisterial study of the history and theory of one of the most controversial political movements Anarchism routinely gets a bad press. It's usually seen as meaning chaos and disorder -- or even nothing at all. And yet, from Occupy Wall Street to Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky to David Graeber, this philosophical and political movement is as relevant as ever. Contrary to popular perception, different strands of anarchism -- from individualism to collectivism -- do follow certain structures and a shared sense of purpose: a belief in freedom and working towards collective good without the interference of the state. In this masterful, sympathetic account, political theorist Ruth Kinna traces the tumultuous history of anarchism, starting with thinkers and activists such as Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman and through key events like the Paris Commune and the Haymarket affair. Skilfully introducing us to the nuanced theories of anarchist groups from Russia to Japan to the United States, The Government of No One reveals what makes a supposedly chaotic movement particularly adaptable and effective over centuries -- and what we can learn from it.
  demanding the impossible: Black Alain Badiou, 2016-10-18 Who hasn't had the frightening experience of stumbling around in the pitch dark? Alain Badiou experienced that primitive terror when he, with his young friends, made up a game called The Stroke of Midnight. The furtive discovery of the dark continent of sex in banned magazines, the beauty of black ink on paper, but also the mysteries of space and the grief of mourning: these are some of the things we encounter as the philosopher takes us on a trip through the private theater of his mind, at the whim of his memories. Music, painting, politics, sex, and metaphysics: all contribute to making black more luminous than it has ever been.
  demanding the impossible: Impossible Odds Jessica Buchanan, Erik Landemalm, Anthony Flacco, 2014-08-19 A harrowing and heart-wrenching memoir of humanitarian aid worker Buchanan's kidnapping by Somali land pirates, her three months in captivity, her rescue by the Navy SEALs, and her husband's extraordinary efforts to help bring her home.
  demanding the impossible: Party and Society Cedric de Leon, 2014-01-07 Political parties are central to democratic life, yet there is no standard definition to describe them or the role they occupy. Voter-centered theoretical approaches suggest that parties are the mere recipients of voter interests and loyalties. Party-centered approaches, by contrast, envision parties that polarize, democratize, or dominate society. In addition to offering isolated and competing notions of democratic politics, such approaches are also silent on the role of the state and are unable to account for organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the African National Congress, which exhibit characteristics of parties, states, and social movements simultaneously. In this timely book, Cedric de Leon examines the ways in which social scientists and other observers have imagined the relationship between parties and society. He introduces and critiques the full range of approaches, using enlivening comparative examples from across the globe. Cutting through a vast body of research, de Leon offers a succinct and lively analysis that outlines the key thinking in the field, placing it in historical and contemporary context. The resulting book will appeal to students of sociology, political science, social psychology, and related fields.
  demanding the impossible: Latino Immigrants in the United States Ronald L. Mize, Grace Peña Delgado, 2012-02-06 This timely and important book introduces readers to the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States - Latinos - and their diverse conditions of departure and reception. A central theme of the book is the tension between the fact that Latino categories are most often assigned from above, and how those defined as Latino seek to make sense of and enliven a shared notion of identity from below. Providing a sophisticated introduction to emerging theoretical trends and social formations specific to Latino immigrants, chapters are structured around the topics of Latinidad or the idea of a pan-ethnic Latino identity, pathways to citizenship, cultural citizenship, labor, gender, transnationalism, and globalization. Specific areas of focus include the 2006 marches of the immigrant rights movement and the rise in neoliberal nativism (including both state-sponsored restrictions such as Arizona’s SB1070 and the hate crimes associated with Minutemen vigilantism). The book is a valuable contribution to immigration courses in sociology, history, ethnic studies, American Studies, and Latino Studies. It is one of the first, and certainly the most accessible, to fully take into account the plurality of experiences, identities, and national origins constituting the Latino category.
  demanding the impossible: The Radicality of Love Srećko Horvat, 2016-01-11 What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the 20th century and, without any fear of the possible responses, ask the main protagonists - from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof - seemingly naïve questions about love? Although all important political and social changes of the 20th century included heated debates on the role of love, it seems that in the 21st century of new technologies of the self (Grindr, Tinder, online dating, etc.) we are faced with a hyperinflation of sex, not love. By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 (from communes to terrorism) and its commodification in late capitalism, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat gives a possible answer to the question of why it is that the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin or Che were scared of the radicality of love. What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love and why is it anything but conservative? This short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world - from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo - in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent.
  demanding the impossible: The Third Way Anthony Giddens, 2013-05-29 The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.
  demanding the impossible: Global Political Theory David Held, Pietro Maffettone, 2017-06-27 Philosophers have never shied away from interrogating the nature of our obligations beyond borders. From Hobbes to the international lawyers Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and of course Kant, modern philosophy has always attempted to define the nature and shape of a just international order, and the types of mutual obligations members of different political communities might share. In today's hyper-connected world, these issues are more important than ever and have been an impetus to a political theory with global scope and aspirations. Global Political Theory offers a comprehensive and cutting-edge introduction to the moral aspects of global politics today. It addresses foundational aspects of global political theory such as the nature of human rights, the types of distributive obligations that we have toward distant others, the relationship between just war theory and global distributive justice, and the legitimacy of international law and global governance institutions. In addition, it features analyses of key applied moral debates in global politics, including the ethical aspects of climate change, the moral issues raised by the mobility of financial capital, the justness of different international trade regimes, and the implications of natural resource ownership for human welfare and democratic political rule. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this accessible and lively book will be essential reading for students and teachers of political theory, philosophy and international relations.
  demanding the impossible: Dictatorship Carl Schmitt, 2015-01-28 Now available in English for the first time, Dictatorship is Carl Schmitt’s most scholarly book and arguably a paradigm for his entire work. Written shortly after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, Schmitt analyses the problem of the state of emergency and the power of the Reichspräsident in declaring it. Dictatorship, Schmitt argues, is a necessary legal institution in constitutional law and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of a so-called dictator. Dictatorship is an essential book for understanding the work of Carl Schmitt and a major contribution to the modern theory of a democratic, constitutional state. And despite being written in the early part of the twentieth century, it speaks with remarkable prescience to our contemporary political concerns.
  demanding the impossible: Damned Fools In Utopia Nicolas Walter, 2011-04-15 Nicolas Walter was the son of the neurologist, W. Grey Walter, and both his grandfathers had known Peter Kropotkin and Edward Carpenter. However, it was the twin jolts of Suez and the Hungarian Revolution while still a student, followed by participation in the resulting New Left and nuclear disarmament movement, that led him to anarchism himself. His personal history is recounted in two autobiographical pieces in this collection as well as the editor’s introduction. During the 1960s he was a militant in the British nuclear disarmament movement—especially its direct-action wing, the Committee of 100—he was one of the Spies for Peace (who revealed the State’s preparations for the governance of Britain after a nuclear war), he was close to the innovative Solidarity Group and was a participant in the homelessness agitation. Concurrently with his impressive activism he was analyzing acutely and lucidly the history, practice and theory of these intertwined movements; and it is such writings—including Non-violent Resistance and The Spies for Peace and After—that form the core of this book. But there are also memorable pieces on various libertarians, including the writers George Orwell, Herbert Read and Alan Sillitoe, the publisher C.W. Daniel and the maverick Guy A. Aldred. The Right to be Wrong is a notable polemic against laws limiting the freedom of expression. Other than anarchism, the passion of Walter’s intellectual life was the dual cause of atheism and rationalism; and the selection concludes appropriately with a fine essay on Anarchism and Religion and his moving reflections, Facing Death. Nicolas Walter scorned the pomp and frequent ignorance of the powerful and detested the obfuscatory prose and intellectual limitations of academia. He himself wrote straightforwardly and always accessibly, almost exclusively for the anarchist and freethought movements. The items collected in this volume display him at his considerable best.
  demanding the impossible: Return to Cold War Robert Legvold, 2016-04-22 The 2014 crisis in Ukraine sent a tottering U.S.-Russian relationship over a cliff - a dangerous descent into deep mistrust, severed ties, and potential confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War period. In this incisive new analysis, leading expert on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, Robert Legvold, explores in detail this qualitatively new phase in a relationship that has alternated between hope and disappointment for much of the past two decades. Tracing the long and tortured path leading to this critical juncture, he contends that the recent deterioration of Russia-U.S. relations deserves to be understood as a return to cold war with great and lasting consequences. In drawing out the commonalities between the original cold war and the current confrontation, Return to Cold War brings a fresh perspective to what is happening between the two countries, its broader significance beyond the immediate issues of the day, and how political leaders in both countries might adjust their approaches in order, as the author urges, to make this new cold war as short and shallow as possible.
  demanding the impossible: Anarchism and Education Judith Suissa, 2006-09-27 Although there have been a few historical accounts of the anarchist school movement, there has been no systematic work on the philosophical underpinnings of anarchist educational ideas - until now. Anarchism and Education offers a philosophical account of the neglected tradition of anarchist thought on education. Although few anarchist thinkers wrote systematically on education, this analysis is based largely on a reconstruction of the educational thought of anarchist thinkers gleaned from their various ethical, philosophical and popular writings. Primarily drawing on the work of the nineteenth century anarchist theorists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon, the book also covers twentieth century anarchist thinkers such as Noam Chomsky, Paul Goodman, Daniel Guerin and Colin Ward. This original work will interest philosophers of education and educationalist thinkers as well as those with a general interest in anarchism.
  demanding the impossible: Failure Is Impossible Lynn Sherr, 2010-09-29 “Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see women get the vote, but her tireless dedication shines through on every page.”—The Washington Post Book World Failure Is Impossible brings together—for the first time—a wide-ranging, spirited collection of Susan B. Anthony’s speeches, letters, and quotes, linked by contemporary reports and Lynn Sherr’s insightful biographical commentary. By allowing the legendary suffragist to speak for herself, Sherr brushes the dust off of the Susan B. Anthony icon, introducing a new generation to the brave, brilliant, funny, and, most of all, prescient woman she really was. “Lynn Sherr has done us all a great service by bringing to spectacular light the too long neglected story of one of our greatest patriots—a genuine hero who helped change for the better the lives of a majority of American citizens.”—Ken Burns
  demanding the impossible: What is Sexual History? Jeffrey Weeks, 2016-06-10 Until the 1970s the history of sexuality was a marginalized practice. Today it is a flourishing field, increasingly integrated into the mainstream and producing innovative insights into the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by sexual values, norms, identities and desires. In this book, Jeffrey Weeks, one of the leading international scholars in the subject, sets out clearly and concisely how sexual history has developed, and its implications for our understanding of the ways we live today. The emergence of a new wave of feminism and lesbian and gay activism in the 1970s transformed the subject, heavily influenced by new trends in social and cultural history, radical sociological insights and the impact of Michel Foucault’s work. The result was an increasing emphasis on the historical shaping of sexuality, and on the existence of many different sexual meanings and cultures on a global scale. With chapters on, amongst others, lesbian, gay and queer history, feminist sexual history, the mainstreaming of sexual history, and the globalization of sexual history, What is Sexual History? is an indispensable guide to these developments.
  demanding the impossible: Suffering Iain Wilkinson, 2004-12-10 In Suffering Iain Wilkinson provides a compelling sociological exploration of human suffering, and its political and moral repercussions. Sociology is always concerned with the causes and consequences of human suffering in one form or another, yet there is no sociology of suffering per se. This book is written with the understanding that if sociology fails to attend to what suffering does to people then it is left with a severely diminished account of human experience. Wilkinson maintains that a sociological response to suffering must confront the most unsettling questions of meaning and morality. He argues that the apparent 'senselessness' of suffering has the power to transform dramatically the ways we relate to society and ourselves. The book explores some of the ways in which our sensitivity towards this 'problem of suffering' is related to a new 'politics of compassion' in modern societies. Powerful and timely, the book will have strong appeal to upper-level undergraduate students of sociology, anthropology, health, politics, and cultural studies, in addition to general readers concerned to understand one of the most pressing issues of our time.
  demanding the impossible: Demanding the Impossible? David Morland, 1997 This text examines the relationship between anarchism's notion of human nature and its vision of a future stateless society by way of three 19th-century social anarchists: Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. It demonstrates that social anarchism operates a conception of human nature that assumes the existence of both egoism and sociability, and therefore provides a realistic assessment of human nature. The book concludes by exploring the possibilities for a reconceptualization of the anarchist conception of human nature that would help overcome the problems identified by the author and point the way for future development of anarchist thought.
  demanding the impossible: Re-Thinking Science Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, Michael T. Gibbons, 2001-03-30 Re-Thinking Science presents an account of the dynamic relationship between society and science. Despite the mounting evidence of a much closer, interactive relationship between society and science, current debate still seems to turn on the need to maintain a 'line' to demarcate them. The view persists that there is a one-way communication flow from science to society - with scant attention given to the ways in which society communicates with science. The authors argue that changes in society now make such communications both more likely and more numerous, and that this is transforming science not only in its research practices and the institutions that support it but also deep in its epistemological core. To explain these changes, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons have developed an open, dynamic framework for re-thinking science. The authors conclude that the line which formerly demarcated society from science is regularly transgressed and that the resulting closer interaction of science and society signals the emergence of a new kind of science: contextualized or context-sensitive science. The co-evolution between society and science requires a more or less complete re-thinking of the basis on which a new social contract between science and society might be constructed. In their discussion the authors present some of the elements that would comprise this new social contract.
  demanding the impossible: Demanding the Impossible? Peter H. Marshall, 1993
  demanding the impossible: The Third Way and its Critics Anthony Giddens, 2000-05-18 The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has become a focus of discussion across the world. Political leaders, in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America claim to be following its principles. Yet the notion has also attracted much criticism. Some say it is an empty concept without any real content. Critics from the more traditional left argue that it is a betrayal of left-wing ideals. Anthony Giddens's The Third Way (Polity Press, 1998) is regarded by many as the key text of third way politics. Translated into twenty-five languages, it has shaped the development of the third way. In this new book Giddens responds to the critics, and further develops the ideas set out in his earlier volume. Far from being unable to deal with inequalities of wealth and power, he shows, third way politics offers the only feasible approach to these issues. The work is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the most important political debate going on today. Anthony Giddens is the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of over thirty books. His previous works, especially Beyond Left and Right (Polity Press, 1994) have influenced debates about the future of social democracy in many countries across the world. Frequently referred to in the UK as Tony Blair's guru, Giddens has made a strong impact on the evolution of New Labour.
DEMANDING Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of DEMANDING is requiring much time, effort, or attention : exacting. How to use …

DEMANDING | English meaning - Cambridge Diction…
She's hoping to find a job which is more demanding intellectually. Police work is physically demanding and …

DEMANDING Synonyms: 227 Similar and Opposite Words
Synonyms for DEMANDING: challenging, difficult, burdensome, exacting, tough, onerous, arduous, hard; Antonyms of DEMANDING: …

DEMANDING Definition & Meaning - Dictionary.com
Demanding definition: requiring or claiming more than is generally felt by others to be due.. See examples of DEMANDING used in a sentence.

DEMANDING | definition in the Cambridge English Dictio…
She's hoping to find a job which is more demanding intellectually. Police work is physically demanding and …

DEMANDING Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of DEMANDING is requiring much time, effort, or attention : exacting. How to use demanding in a sentence.

DEMANDING | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
She's hoping to find a job which is more demanding intellectually. Police work is physically demanding and stressful. My present job doesn't stretch me, so I'm looking for something …

DEMANDING Synonyms: 227 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-Webster
Synonyms for DEMANDING: challenging, difficult, burdensome, exacting, tough, onerous, arduous, hard; Antonyms of DEMANDING: undemanding, light, easy, nondemanding, simple, …

DEMANDING Definition & Meaning - Dictionary.com
Demanding definition: requiring or claiming more than is generally felt by others to be due.. See examples of DEMANDING used in a sentence.

DEMANDING | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
She's hoping to find a job which is more demanding intellectually. Police work is physically demanding and stressful. My present job doesn't stretch me, so I'm looking for something …

Demanding - definition of demanding by The Free Dictionary
demanding - requiring more than usually expected or thought due; especially great patience and effort and skill; "found the job very demanding"; "a baby can be so demanding"

demanding adjective - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and …
Definition of demanding adjective in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

Demanding - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
Something that's demanding calls for more work or skill than the typical task. Babysitting might seem like an easy job, but depending on the kids it can actually be incredibly demanding.

DEMANDING definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
People who are demanding are not easily satisfied or pleased. Ricky was a very demanding child. Her boss was very demanding but appreciative of Christina's talents.

demanding adjective - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and …
demanding difficult to do or deal with and needing a lot of effort, skill, or patience: It is a technically demanding piece of music to play. taxing difficult to do and needing a lot of mental …