1st Edition

Contemporary Patterns of Politics, Praxis, and Culture

By Georgia A. Persons Copyright 2005
    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    233 Pages
    by Routledge

    The National Political Science Review is the official publication of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. This new volume, Contemporary Patterns of Politics, Praxis, and Culture reflects major research focuses across religion, race, gender, culture, and of course, politics. Themes that engage a community of scholars also engage them in praxis as individual citizens and practitioners in a democratic society, and collectively as member-participants in a changing culture. Two themes, religion and culture are relatively new areas of intellectual curiosity for political scientists. Articles in this volume extend the beachheads already established by African-American political scientists in studies that guage the significance and influence of religion in both individual and group behavior. They chart religion's inevitable move onto the center stage of U.S. public affairs. The study of culture has essentially languished for almost a generation within political science, especially with regard to the study of American politics and society. During this time the emphasis has also shifted significantly from an almost exclusive focus on civic culture to an expanding focus on the broad expanse of popular culture in the contemporary period. Culture is the crucible within which politics, race, religion, and gender both foment and ferment, and artistic products of the culture are manifestations and mirrors of how we envision and construct a changing reality. Issues of race, religion, gender and culture are all dimensions of individual and group identity. The dynamics of changing individual and group identities change the underlying cultural canvas against which identity is displayed and politics is acted out. The concept of praxis is relatively new to the lexicon of political science. However, engagement in the practice of politics is not a new idea for African-American social scientists. Indeed, particularly for this group, and clearly for many others, scholarship influences praxis, and praxis influences scholarship. This volume will be of particular interest to ethnic studies specialists, African-American studies scholars, political scientists, historians, and sociologists.

    Religion and Racial Solidarity; Who Belongs? Understanding How Socioeconomic Stratification Shapes the Characteristics of Black Political Church Members; How Firm a Foundation? Church Organizational Structure and the Political Mobilization of Congregants; An Historical Election in Context: The 2001 Atlanta Mayoral Election; The Continuing Significance of Race: African American and Hispanic Mayors, 1968-2003; Increasing Diversity or More of the Same? Term Limits and the Representation of Women, Minorities, and Minority Women in State Legislatures; The Demonstration Disposition Program in Boston, Massachusetts: Lessons for Resident Empowerment and Neighborhood Revitalization; On the Limits of Litigation: A Case Study of Ayers v Barbour; The United States Supreme Court’s Human Rights Violation in the University of Michigan Case; Race and The Green Mile; Stranger in Mine Own House: Double-Consciousness and American Citizenship; Explaining the Clinton Question: Scandal and Impeachment Politics in the 1998-2000 U.S. House Elections; The NAACP and the Confirmation of Supreme Court Justices, 1930-1991; Reflections Black Political Ideology and Leadership: A Critical Disconnect?; Book Reviews; Carol M. Swain. The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), xxix + 526 pp.; ISBN 0-521-80886-3 (cloth).; R. Drew Smith (ed.). New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post Civil Rights America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), ix-328 pp.; ISBN 0-8223-3131-4 (cloth).; Glenn C. Loury. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002), 240 pp.; ISBN 0-674-00625-9 (cloth).; Taeku Lee. Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), viii + 293 pp.; ISBN 0-226-47025-3 (paper).; Lewis Baldwin (ed.), Rufus Burrow, Jr., Barbara Holmes, and Susan H. Winfield (contributors). The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.: Boundaries of Law, Politics and Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), xx-316 pp.; ISBN 0-268-03355-2 (paper).; Yvette Marie Alex-Assensoh and Lawrence Hanks. Black and Multiracial Politics in America (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 352 pp.; ISBN 0-8147-0663-0 (paper).; Michael Eric Dyson. Holler If You Hear Me (New York: Basic Civitas Press, 2001), 292 pp.; ISBN 0-465-01755-X (cloth).; Valerie C. Johnson. Black Power in the Suburbs: The Myth or Reality of African American Suburban Political Incorporation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), x + 227 pp.; ISBN 0-7914-5528-9 (paper).; Leonard Moore. Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 264 pp.; ISBN 0-252-02760-4 (cloth).; Invitation to the Scholarly Community

    Biography

    Georgia A. Persons