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How small-scale drones, satellites, kites, and balloons are used by social movements for the greater good. Drones are famous for doing bad things: weaponized, they implement remote-control war; used for surveillance, they threaten civil liberties and violate privacy. In The Good Drone, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines a different range of uses: the deployment of drones for the greater good. Choi-Fitzpatrick analyzes the way small-scale drones--as well as satellites, kites, and balloons--are used for a great many things, including documenting human rights abuses, estimating demonstration crowd size, supporting anti-poaching advocacy, and advancing climate change research. In fact, he finds, small drones are used disproportionately for good; nonviolent prosocial uses predominate.
Drawing on fifteen years of work in the antislavery movement, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines the systematic oppression of men, women, and children in rural India and asks: How do contemporary slaveholders rationalize the subjugation of other human beings, and how do they respond when their power is threatened? More than a billion dollars have been spent on antislavery efforts, yet the practice persists. Why? Unpacking what slaveholders think about emancipation is critical for scholars and policy makers who want to understand the broader context, especially as seen by the powerful. Insight into those moments when the powerful either double down or back off provides a sobering counterbalance...
"This book argues that the field of peace and conflict needs a stronger and more practical sense of its ethical obligations. By focusing on the ethical dilemmas in peace work it aims to reckon with recent questions among those involved in mediating conflict, from international peacekeepers to social justice activists. For example, it argues against posing false binaries between domestic and international issues and against viewing violence and conflict as the same. It holds up strategic nonviolence to critical scrutiny and shows that "do no harm" approaches may in fact do harm. The chapters cover the role of violence in conflict; conflict and violence prevention and resolution; humanitarianism; human rights advocacy; transitional justice; political reconciliation; and peace education and pedagogy, among other topics"--
"This book looks at recent efforts to combat contemporary slavery worldwide and explores how the history and iconography of slavery has been invoked to support a series of government interventions, activist projects, legal instruments, and rhetorical performances"--
Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice examines the interplay between images and human rights, addressing how, when, and to what ends visuals are becoming a more central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The collection argues that accounting for how images work on their own terms is an ever more important epistemological project for fostering the imaginative scope of human rights and its purchase on reality. Interdisciplinary in nature, this timely volume brings together voices of scholars and practitioners from around the world, making a valuable contribution to the study of media and human rights while tackling the growing role of visuals across cultural, social, political and legal structures.
The field of conflict resolution has evolved dramatically during the relatively short duration of the discipline’s existence. Each generation of scholars has struggled with the major puzzles of their era, providing theories and solutions that meet the needs of the time, only to be pushed forward by new insights and, at times, totally upended by a changing world. This introductory course text explores the genealogy of the field of conflict resolution by examining three different epochs of the field, each one tied to the historical context and events of the day. In each of these epochs, scholars and practitioners worked to understand and address the conflicts that the world was facing, at that time. This book provides a framework that students will carry with them far into their careers, enriching their contributions and strengthening their voices. Rather than a didactic approach to the field, students will develop their critical analytical skills through an inductive inquiry. Students will broaden their vocabulary, grapple with argumentation, and develop critical reading skills.
Over the last decade, public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. Yet as human rights scholars Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick argue, most current work tends to be more descriptive and focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation. In From Human Trafficking to Human Rights, Brysk, Choi-Fitzpatrick, and a cast of experts demonstrate that it is time to recognize human trafficking as more a matter of human rights and social justice, rooted in larger structural issues relating to the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations. Such reframing involves overcoming several of the mos...
Stephen Eric Bronner is a prolific author, activist, and one of America’s leading political thinkers. His new book presents bigotry as a systematic, all-encompassing mindset that has a special affinity for right-wing movements. In what will surely prove a seminal study, Bronner explores its appeal, the self-image it justifies, the interests it serves, and its complex connection with modernity. He reveals how prejudice shapes the conspiratorial and paranoid worldview of the true believer, the elitist, and the chauvinist. In the process, it becomes apparent how the bigot hides behind mainstream conservative labels in order to support policies designed to disadvantage the targets of his contempt. Examining bigotry in its various dimensions—anthropological, historical, psychological, sociological, and political—Professor Bronner illustrates how the bigot’s intense hatred of “the other” is a direct reaction to social progress, liberal values, secularism, and an increasingly complex and diverse world. A sobering look at the bigot in the twenty-first century, this volume is essential for making sense of the dangers facing democracy now and in the future.
What in the world is a social scientist doing collaborating with an engineer, and an engineer with a sociologist, and together on a book about drones and sociotechnical thinking in the classroom? This book emerges from a frustration that disciplinary silos create few opportunities for students to engage with others beyond their chosen major. In this volume, Hoople and Choi-Fitzpatrick introduce a sociotechnical approach to truly interdisciplinary education around the exciting topic of drones. The text, geared primarily at university faculty, provides a hands-on approach for engaging students in challenging conversations at the intersection of technology and society. Choi-Fitzpatrick and Hoople provide a turnkey solution complete with detailed lesson plans, course assignments, and drone-based case studies. They present a modular framework, describing how faculty might adopt their approach for any number of technologies and class configurations.
A century and a half after the abolition of slavery in the United States, survivors of contemporary forms of enslavement from around the world have revived a powerful tool of the abolitionist movement: first-person narratives of slavery and freedom. Just as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and others used autobiographical testimonies in the fight to eradicate slavery, today’s new slave narrators play a crucial role in shaping an antislavery agenda. Their writings unveil the systemic underpinnings of global slavery while critiquing the precarity of their hard-fought freedom. At the same time, the demands of antislavery organizations, religious groups, and book publishers circumscribe the...