Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
Author: Barrington Moore Jr
Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
New Foreword by Edward Friedman and James C. Scott
"A landmark in comparative history and a challenge to scholars of all lands who are trying to learn how we arrived at where we are now."
-The New York Times Book Review
Read also Herbal Remedies from the Wild or The Artists Complete Health and Safety Guide
Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria
Author: Lisa Wedeen
In Syria, the image of President Hafiz al-Asad is everywhere. In newspapers, on television, and during orchestrated spectacles Asad is praised as the "father," the "gallant knight," even the country's "premier pharmacist." Yet most Syrians, including those who create the official rhetoric, do not believe its claims. Why would a regime spend scarce resources on a cult whose content is patently spurious?
Wedeen concludes that Asad's cult acts as a disciplinary device, generating a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens act as if they revered their leader. By inundating daily life with tired symbolism, the regime exercises a subtle, yet effective form of power. The cult works to enforce obedience, induce complicity, isolate Syrians from one another, and set guidelines for public speech and behavior. Wedeen's ethnographic research demonstrates how Syrians recognize the disciplinary aspects of the cult and seek to undermine them. Provocative and original, Ambiguities of Domination is a significant contribution to comparative politics, political theory, and cultural studies.
What People Are Saying
Anne Norton
In this eagerly awainted book, Wedeen conveys with great force and intimacy the strategies, dilemmas, and paradoxes of authoritarianism in a very particular, very distinctive cultural context.
— Anne Norton is the author of Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture
Table of Contents:
| Acknowledgments | ||
| A Note on Transliteration | ||
| 1 | Believing in Spectacles | 1 |
| 2 | Killing Politics: Official Rhetoric and Permissible Speech | 32 |
| 3 | Acting "As If": The Story of M | 67 |
| 4 | Signs of Transgression | 87 |
| 5 | Complicating Compliance | 143 |
| Notes | 161 | |
| Bibliography | 211 | |
| Index | 231 |
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