Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski, Zittrain (eds.): Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · asia, blogging, botnet, censorship, china, cyberwar, facebook, freedom of expression, internet, journalism, politics, surveillance
A daily battle for rights and freedoms in cyberspace is being waged in Asia. At the epicenter of this contest is China–home to the world’s largest Internet population and what is perhaps the world’s most advanced Internet censorship and surveillance regime in cyberspace. Resistance to China’s Internet controls comes from both grassroots activists and corporate giants such as Google. Meanwhile, similar struggles play out across the rest of the region, from India and Singapore to Thailand and Burma, although each national dynamic is unique. Access Contested, the third volume from the OpenNet Initiative (a collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the SecDev Group in Ottawa), examines the interplay of national security, social and ethnic identity, and resistance in Asian cyberspace, offering in-depth accounts of national struggles against Internet controls as well as updated country reports by ONI researchers.
The contributors examine such topics as Internet censorship in Thailand, the Malaysian blogosphere, surveillance and censorship around gender and sexuality in Malaysia, Internet governance in China, corporate social responsibility and freedom of expression in South Korea and India, cyber attacks on independent Burmese media, and distributed-denial-of-service attacks and other digital control measures across Asia.
Edited by Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Jonathan Zittrain
Publisher MIT Press, 2011
Information Revolution and Global Politics series
ISBN 0262516802, 9780262516808
414 pages
Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · corruption, money, occupy movement, politics, usa
In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government—driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.
With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic—and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left—Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted—but redeemable—representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.
While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear—he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.
Publisher Twelve, New York/Boston, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, October 2011
ISBN 0446576425, 9780446576420
384 pages
CallAConvention.org, a movement to organize the call for a convention.
Convention.idea.informer.com website allows anyone to propose and vote on constitutional amendments.
video archive of the Conference on the Constitutional Convention (September 2011)
RootStrikers activist network
interview with the author (video, DemocracyNow!, January 2012), passage about a Constitutional Convention
commentary (Alesh Houdek, TheAtlantic.com, November 2011)
review (Thomas B. Edsall, The New York Times, December 2011)
author
author’s book presentation (video)
publisher
wikipedia
google books
Aradhana Sharma, Akhil Gupta (eds.): The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · anthropology, bureaucracy, democracy, economy, feminism, governmentality, ideology, immigration, labour, neoliberalism, politics, power, production, society, state
This innovative reader brings together classic theoretical texts and cutting-edge ethnographic analyses of specific state institutions, practices, and processes and outlines an anthropological framework for rethinking future study of “the state”.
– Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, and representations that constitute the “state”.
– Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to the subject.
– Helps readers to make anthropological sense of the state as a cultural artifact, in the context of a neoliberalizing, transnational world.
Publisher Blackwell Publishing, 2006
ISBN 1405114681, 9781405114684
424 pages