Small Money Donating as Democratic Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jennifer Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Money In Politics

Since 2008, the number of people in the United States making small monetary donations to political causes, both within and beyond electoral politics, has skyrocketed. While critics of “big money” in politics laud these donations because they are small, proponents of small-scale democratic political action eye them suspiciously because they are monetary. Neither group interrogates whether the monetariness of these donations might be a source of their democratic potential. Building on Wendy Brown’s conceptual distinction between monetization and economization, I argue that small-money political donations are potentially democratic not only because they are small, but also because they are monetary. More specifically, the mobility, divisibility, commensurability, and fungibility of money help make small-money political donations potentially democratic, by making them potentially accessible, non-intrusive, and collective. Money is the coin of the economic realm, but it can also be a currency of democratic politics.

Aestheticism, Civil Society, and the Origins of Totalitarianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mangrum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Vladimir Nabokov ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Lionel Trilling ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
New Critics ◽  
Second World

This chapter argues that ongoing concerns about the rise of totalitarianism led writers and intellectuals in the United States to oppose social-democratic institutions after the Second World War. Familiar accounts about opposition to these institutions center on conservative politics. In contrast, this chapter argues that liberal thinkers invoked forms of aestheticism to combat what they perceived as the possible rise of totalitarianism in the United States. In order to document this under-explored trend in American political culture, this chapter establishes connections across writing by Lionel Trilling, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Hayek, the New Critics, and the American reception of Friedrich Nietzsche. These figures in postwar cultural life invoked aestheticism in the arenas of literature, philosophy, political action, and economics as a prophylactic to the perceived intrusions of an activist-managerial state.

Maximus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The One

This concluding chapter charts the continuing significance of the early postwar moment in Olson’s later work, particularly The Maximus Poems. The philosophical and political concerns of the American avant-garde between 1946 and 1951 play out across The Maximus Poems just as they inform later American art practices. The search of the early postwar American independent left for a source of political action rooted in the embodied individual is seen, on the one hand, to have been personified in the figure of Maximus. At the same time, Maximus’s radical ‘practice of the self’ charts a sophisticated alternative to the Enlightenment humanist subject widely critiqued in the United States in the immediate postwar period.

Campaigns and Elections in a Changing Media Landscape

2019 ◽  
pp. 403-426
Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Campaigns And Elections ◽  
The Media

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.

A King Cyrus President

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Barrett-Fox
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Moral Majority ◽  
Open Coding

Religious right leaders and voters in the United States supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election for the same reason that all blocs vote as they do: They believed that the candidate offered them the best opportunity to protect and extend their power and create their preferred government. The puzzle of their support, then, is less why they chose Trump and more how they navigated the process of inserting Trump into their story of themselves as a “moral” majority. This self-understanding promotes and exploits feelings of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate to encourage political action. Because Trump’s speeches affirm these feelings, religious right voters were open to writing a plot twist in their story, casting Trump as a King Cyrus figure, as their champion if not a coreligionist. This article analyzes appeals to and expressions of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate from more than 60 sermons, speeches, and books by religious right authors, Donald Trump, and Trump surrogates. Using open coding, it identifies themes in how these emotions are recognized, affirmed, and invoked by speakers, focusing on Trump’s Cyrus effect.

scholarly journals Air versus water chilling of chicken: a pilot study of quality, shelf-life, microbial ecology, and economics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aeriel D Belk ◽  
Toni Duarte ◽  
Casey Quinn ◽  
David A. Coil ◽  
Keith E. Belk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Shelf Life ◽  
Microbial Ecology ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Immersion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poultry Meat ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Meat Industry

Abstract Background. The United States’ large-scale poultry meat industry is energy and water intensive, and opportunities may exist to improve sustainability during the broiler chilling process. After harvest, the internal temperature of the chicken is rapidly cooled to inhibit bacterial growth that would otherwise compromise the safety of the product. This step is accomplished most commonly by water immersion chilling in the United States, while air chilling methods dominate other global markets. A comprehensive understanding of the differences between these chilling methods is lacking. Therefore, we assessed the meat quality, shelf-life, microbial ecology, and technoeconomic impacts of chilling methods on chicken broilers in a university meat laboratory setting. Results. We discovered that air-chilling (AC) methods resulted in superior chicken odor and shelf-life, especially prior to 14 days of dark storage. Moreover, we demonstrated that AC resulted in a more diverse microbiome that we hypothesize may delay the dominance of the spoilage organism Pseudomonas. Finally, a technoeconomic analysis highlighted potential economic advantages to AC when compared to water-chilling (WC) in facility locations where water costs are a more significant factor than energy costs. Conclusions. In this pilot study, AC chilling methods resulted in a superior product compared to WC methods and may have economic advantages in regions of the U.S. where water is expensive. As a next step, a similar experiment should be done in an industrial setting to confirm these results generated in a small-scale university lab facility.

The Limits and Ambiguities of the Albanian “National Question” in Post-communism

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odeta Barbullushi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
National Question ◽  
Post Communism ◽  
Political Leverage

This article interrogates the mobilization of the Albanian national question in Albania in 2012. The two interrelated questions of the article are why the nationalist card is not used consistently and why it failed to trigger a policy debate, or lead to policy changes. The main argument of the article is that, more than a policy alternative, “national unification” is a discursive practice performing two functions: Externally, it signals sovereignty and subjectivity to the international community in Albania, primarily the European Union (EU) and the United States, and as such it is used for political leverage, particularly at critical moments. Internally, it aims at constructing national cohesion, while drawing identity lines between the main political parties. This is particularly the case in moments of political instability, juncture or pressure, as before elections. However, its limited ability to inform policy and mobilize political action results not only from the demobilizing power of international actors, for example, the EU and the United States, but also the dominant position that a specific discourse of “good Albanian nationalism” holds in the political debate in post-communist Albania.

Becoming the Other: The Mimesis of Metaphor in Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom

PMLA ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Dorsey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Binary Logic ◽  
Limited Role

In his Narrative (1845), Frederick Douglass constructs a self based on conversion rhetoric and binary logic. In the greatly expanded My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), he complicates this textual self by both imitating and criticizing tropes conventionally used in the slavery debate, such as metaphors related to animals, Christianity, and manhood. Emphasizing the constructed nature of mimesis and metaphor, Douglass demonstrates his ability to escape the bondage of reductionist language even as he claims the power associated with linguistic mastery. This revision of self emerges from his experience of northern racism, manifested in his limited role in William Lloyd Garrison's organization. Douglass's renunciation of Garrisonian dogma and his entry into political action—including his striking textual reinterpretation of the United States Constitution—coincide with the stylistically “modernist” self of the second autobiography.

scholarly journals Feeding and lighting practices on small-scale extensive pastured poultry commercial farms in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 785-788
Author(s):  
Maurice Pitesky ◽  
Alison Thorngren ◽  
Deb Niemeier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Commercial Farms

Religion and Progressive Activism—Introducing and Mapping the Field

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Nicholas Fuist ◽  
Ruth Braunstein ◽  
Rhys H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Religious Activism ◽  
Progressive Religion

This chapter introduces readers to the often-overlooked field of progressive religious activism in the United States, and maps its contours. First, it traces the history and continued relevance of progressive religious activism in American political life. Second, it argues that progressive religion should not be conceptualized as a category of social actors, but rather as a field of action defined by participants’ commitment to progressive action, progressive values, progressive identities, and/or progressive theology, as well as through participants’ efforts to distinguish themselves from the activities of religious conservatives and/or secular progressives. Finally, it assesses the varied ways that attention to progressive religion challenges common political binaries (like Right/Left and progress/tradition), and prompts a reconsideration of long accepted theories of religion and social movements as well as the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life.

The Politics of Contentment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Industrial Countries ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Modern Politics

This chapter focuses on the politics of contentment. In the past, the contented and the self-approving were a small minority in any national entity, with the majority of the citizenry being relegated outside. In the United States, the favored are now numerous, greatly influential of voice and a majority of those who vote. This, and not the division of voters as between political parties, is what defines modern American political behavior and shapes modern politics. The chapter first considers the commitment of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to the policies of contentment before discussing the effects of money and media on the politics of contentment. It also examines American electoral politics, social exclusion, and international relations in the context of the politics of contentment. Finally, it tackles the question of whether, and to what extent, the politics of contentment in the United States extends to other industrial countries.

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