Cultural Politics Now

Cultural Politics and Spiritual Making of Anthropologists

Ethnographic studies of religion, stuck somewhere between ethnocentrism and literalism (especially in the case of Islam), have brought little distinctive anthropological analysis to bear successfully on the practical realities and political ideologies of religions. On the other hand, the popular assertion that certain ethnic groups, having had conflicts over centuries, will continue to fight wi...

The Politics of Medicare and Health Reform, Then and Now

It is not difficult to characterize Medicare as an element of public policy. The program launched and legitimated a major role for the Federal Government in funding health care for part of the population-a role that had been highly controversial before. It has spared millions of vulnerable citizens economic anxiety, avoidable pain, and premature death. It has encouraged major innovations in hea...

FIELD STATEMENT POLITICS DEPARTMENT: APPROACHES TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS: A CULTURAL POLITICS CRITIQUE INTRODUCTION APPROACHES Developmentalism Crisis in Modernization Dependency New Institutionalism Rational Choice Cultural Politics Cultural political analysis of the formal political realm Democracy POLITICAL CULTURE

Analyzing East/West Power Politics in Comparative Cultural Studies

In his article, "Analyzing East/West Power Politics in Comparative Cultural Studies," William H. Thornton acknowledges culture as a central force on the geopolitical map and undertakes at once to preserve the strategic potency of political realism and to move beyond the "billiard ball" externality of both neoand traditional realisms. Although Huntington and Fukuyama are taken seriously on the q...

Cultural Politics of Globalization and Community in East Central Europe

If—as Aimé Césaire pointed out at the time of the birth of the EU’s predecessor—”Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible,” what were 36 leading Hungarian writers, social scientists and human rights activists doing in March 2001 when, in denouncing the widely noted presence of racism in Hungary, they thanked France for the its profound, longue-durée goodness as an essential European feature?...