John Keane

Debasish Roy Chowdhury

India's Passage to Despotism

To Kill a Democracy

Haluk Şahin

Basın ve yayın tekellerinin, gelişen medya ve iletişim teknolojisinin sıradan insanların haber alma özgürlüğüne ve genelinde demokrasiye zararlı olup olmadığını tartışan bir kitap

Medya ve demokrasi

In a time of grave uncertainty about the future of our planet, the radical potential of democracy is more important than ever. From its beginnings in Syria-Mesopotamia - and not Athens - to its role in fomenting revolutionary fervour in France and America, democracy has subverted fixed ways of deciding who should enjoy power and privilege, and why. For democracy encourages people to do something radical- to come together as equals, to determine their own lives and futures. In this vigorous, illuminating history, acclaimed political thinker John Keane traces its byzantine history, from the age of assembly democracy in Athens, to European-inspired electoral democracy and the birth of representative government, to our age of monitory democracy. He gives new reasons why democracy is a precious global ideal, and shows that as the world has come to be shaped by democracy, it has grown more worldly - American-style liberal democracy is giving way to regional varieties with a local character in places such as Taiwan, India, Senegal and South Africa. In an age of cascading crises, we need the radical potential of democracy more than ever. Does it have a future, or will the demagogues and despots win? We are about to find out.

The Shortest History of Democracy

A disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world. One day they’ll be like us. That was once the West’s complacent and self-regarding assumption about countries emerging from poverty, imperial rule, or communism. But many have hardened into something very different from liberal democracy: what the eminent political thinker John Keane describes as a new form of despotism. And one day, he warns, we may be more like them. Drawing on extensive travels, interviews, and a lifetime of thinking about democracy and its enemies, Keane shows how governments from Russia and China through Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe have mastered a formidable combination of political tools that threaten the established ideals and practices of power-sharing democracy. They mobilize the rhetoric of democracy and win public support for workable forms of government based on patronage, dark money, steady economic growth, sophisticated media controls, strangled judiciaries, dragnet surveillance, and selective violence against their opponents. Casting doubt on such fashionable terms as dictatorship, autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism, Keane makes a case for retrieving and refurbishing the old term “despotism” to make sense of how these regimes function and endure. He shows how they cooperate regionally and globally and draw strength from each other’s resources while breeding global anxieties and threatening the values and institutions of democracy. Like Montesquieu in the eighteenth century, Keane stresses the willing complicity of comfortable citizens in all these trends. And, like Montesquieu, he worries that the practices of despotism are closer to home than we care to admit.

The New Despotism

Vaclav Havel

Designed as an introduction to emergency management, this book includes pieces on: social, political, and fiscal aspects of risk management; land-use planning and building code enforcement regulations; insurance issues; emergency management systems; and managing natural and manmade disasters.

Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe

The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe

The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: how did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy.

The Life and Death of Democracy

"More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world." So begins John Keane's magnificent and award-winning (the Fraunces Tavern Book Award) biography of one of democracy's greatest champions. Among friends and enemies alike, Paine earned a reputation as a notorious pamphleteer, one of the greatest political figures of his day, and the author of three best-selling books, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason. Setting his compelling narrative against a vivid social backdrop of prerevolutionary America and the French Revolution, John Keane melds together the public and the shadowy private sides of Paine's life in a remarkable piece of scholarship. This is the definitive biography of a man whose life and work profoundly shaped the modern age. "Provide[s] an engaging perspective on England, America, and France in the tumultuous years of the late eighteenth century." -- Pauline Maier, The New York Times Book Review "It is hard to imagine this magnificent biography ever being superceded.... It is a stylish, splendidly erudite work." -- Terry Eagleton, The Guardian

A Political Life

Tom Paine

Genocidal wars, concentration camps, firebombed cities, spreading plagues of private blood-letting: the twentieth century has seen more than its fair share of violence, planned and unplanned, with prospects of still more to come. And yet, argues John Keane, among the paradoxes of this long century of violence is the paucity of imaginative reflection on the conceptual meaning, cause and effects, and ethical-political implications of violence itself. Comparable to Hannah Arendt's classic On Violence, Keane's book challenges this indifference. It throws fresh light on the notion that we are drifting towards a "new middle ages" marked by uncivil wars sanctioned by decentralized powers—warlords, gangsters, sects—which the modern state was supposed to eliminate. John Keane shows how the term "violence" is riddled with ambiguities, and he confronts the argument, stretching back from St Augustine to Freud, that violence is rooted in "human nature." Rejecting simple-minded pacifism, he goes on to formulate a theory of "uncivil society" and to examine the practical possibilities for greater civility. Above all, he insists that political philosophy and democratic politics must urgently address the issue of violence, not only because of the terrible crimes committed during the century now drawing to a close, but also because we are witnessing the significant growth of a new "politics of civility" aimed at publicizing and reducing a range of specific forms of violence, from rape and child abuse to ethnic conflict and uncivil war.

Reflections on Violence

"More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world." So begins John Keane's magnificent and award-winning (the Fraunces Tavern Book Award) biography of one of democracy's greatest champions. Among friends and enemies alike, Paine earned a reputation as a notorious pamphleteer, one of the greatest political figures of his day, and the author of three bestselling books, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason. Setting his compelling narrative against a vivid social backdrop of prerevolutionary America and the French Revolution, John Keane melds together the public and the shadowy private sides of Paine's life in a remarkable piece of scholarship. This is the definitive biography of a man whose life and work profoundly shaped the modern age. "Provide[s] an engaging perspective on England, America, and France in the tumultuous years of the late eighteenth century." — Pauline Maier, The New York Times Book Review "It is hard to imagine this magnificent biography ever being superceded.... It is a stylish, splendidly erudite work." — Terry Eagleton, The Guardian

Predictions of the coming collapse of Chinese politics are today commonplace, however this thought-provoking book explores a radically different alternative. China, it argues, is a one-party-dominated political system whose surprising levels of public sup

Rethinking Democracy in China

When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter

"I'd recommend this book to anyone, whether beginner or expert." --From the Foreword by Peter Buck of R.E.M. "Because everything is explained so concisely, you spend less time wading through pages and more time recording music." --Sound on Sound magazine "An excellent book for any engineer or home recordist just getting into Pro Tools." --Tape Op magazine

The Musician's Guide to Pro Tools

Renowned political theorist John Keane traces the origins of democracy, from assembly democracy in Syria-Mesopotamia and Athens to European-inspired electoral democracy and the birth of representative government to our current age of media-driven democracy, highlighting democracy’s strengths and vulnerabilities for concerned citizens everywhere.

4,000 Years of Self-Government—A Retelling for Our Times

Simon Tormey

Ramón A. Feenstra

Andreu Casero-Ripollés

Spain has become a remarkable democratic laboratory in which millions of citizens are experimenting with new forms of political expression. This book examines the dynamics of this political laboratory, showing that the upheavals it is experiencing are likely in the near future to affect democracies elsewhere in the world. Examining the new means of participation that were established in fields where digital communication tools enabled the launch of novel dynamics of political action, the reader will gain access to a comprehensive analysis of the reshaping and mutation process that has affected fields such as activism, political parties and political participation. Using a case study of the Spain between 2011 and 2015, the book focuses on the changes that have taken place in politics and communication in Spain, paying particular attention to the 15M movement and its disruptive, innovative strength in all matters related to politics and communication. The chapters cover political repertoires and the hybridization of horizontal and vertical political logics; the appearance of new political parties; the establishment of monitoring mechanisms as an essential means of political expression and participation; and the subversion of rationality across media as a product of the communication strategies implemented by online political activism. Showing that Spain is not just at the forefront of democratic innovation, but that it is a political laboratory in which trials are taking place that tell us much about the future of democracy everywhere, this book will be of great use to scholars of political theory, democracy and philosophy.

The Spanish Political Laboratory

Refiguring Democracy

It is only a decade ago that the eighteenth-century distinction between civil society and the state seemed old-fashioned, an object of cynicism, even of outright hostility. In this important new book, John Keane shows how, in a wholly unexpected reversal of fortunes, this antiquated distinction has since become voguish among politicians, academics, journalists, business leaders, relief agencies and citizens' organizations. John Keane examines the various sources and phases of the dramatic world-wide popularization of the term. He traces its reappearance in a wide range of contexts - from China to Tunisia, from South Africa to the emerging European Union - and clarifies the conflicting grammars and vocabularies of the language of civil society. Considerable care is taken to highlight the different possible meanings of the distinction between civil society and the state. Keane also takes the reader into previously uncharted intellectual territory by demonstrating that the civil society perspective contains unharnessed potentials: that it is possible to develop bold new images of civil society that alter the ways in which we think about matters such as power, property, violence, politics, publicity and democracy. Written with style and imagination, this important book by John Keane will be of great interest to students and scholars in politics, media studies, sociology, social and political theory, and to a broader public audience interested in the central debates and political developments of our time.

Old Images, New Visions

Civil Society

Rizos Sakellariou

John Gurd

Len Freeman

Euro-Par – the European Conference on Parallel Computing – is an international conference series dedicated to the promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel computing. The major themes can be divided into the broad categories of hardware, software, algorithms, and applications for parallel computing. The objective of Euro-Par is to provide a forum within which to promote the dev- opment of parallel computing both as an industrial technique and an academic discipline, extending the frontiers of both the state of the art and the state of the practice. This is particularlyimportant at a time when parallel computing is undergoing strong and sustained development and experiencing real ind- trial take up. The main audience for and participants in Euro-Par are seen as researchers in academic departments, government laboratories, and industrial organisations. Euro-Par aims to become the primarychoice of such professionals for the presentation of new results in their speci?c areas. Euro-Par is also int- ested in applications that demonstrate the e?ectiveness of the main Euro-Par themes. Euro-Par has its own Internet domain with a permanent web site where the historyof the conference series is described: http://www. euro-par. org. The Euro-Par conference series is sponsored bythe Association of Computer Machineryand the International Federation of Information Processing. Euro-Par 2001 Euro-Par 2001 was organised bythe Universityof Manchester and UMIST.

7th International Euro-Par Conference Manchester, UK August 28-31, 2001 Proceedings

Euro-Par 2001 Parallel Processing

Hujun Yin

Richard Freeman

Nigel Allinson

Simon Hubbard

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, IDEAL 2002, held in Manchester, UK in August 2002. The 89 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 150 submissions. The book offers topical sections on data mining, knowledge engineering, text and document processing, internet applications, agent technology, autonomous mining, financial engineering, bioinformatics, learning systems, and pattern recognition.

Third International Conference, Manchester, UK, August 12-14 Proceedings

Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning - IDEAL 2002

This authorized biography of Havel, based on unrestricted access to him, his circle, and even his enemies, is not only the first definitive account of one of the modern world's great moral and political leaders but also a vivid panorama of the tumultuous events of his times. Havel's life, like that of his African counterpart Nelson Mandela, has been shaped and determined by the large political shifts of the twentieth century. Readers will taste the moments of joy, irony, farce, and misfortune through which he has lived, and realize that he has taught the world more about the powerful and the powerless, power-grabbing and power-sharing, than virtually anyone else on the world stage.

A Political Tragedy In Six Acts

India is heralded as the world's largest democracy. Yet, there is now growing alarm about its democratic health. To Kill a Democracy gets to the heart of the matter. Combining poignant life stories with sharp scholarly insight, it rejects the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. The book details the much deeper historical roots of the present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Democracy, the authors also argue, is much more than elections and the separation of powers. It is a whole way of life lived in dignity, and that is why they pay special attention to the decaying social foundations of Indian democracy. In compelling fashion, the book describes daily struggles for survival and explains how lived social injustices and unfreedoms rob Indian elections of their meaning, while at the same time feeding the decadence and iron-fisted rule of its governing institutions. Much more than a book about India, To Kill A Democracy argues that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. It shows that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don't just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.

To Kill A Democracy

M. A. H. Dempster

Juho Kanniainen

Erik Vynckier

High-Performance Computing (HPC) delivers higher computational performance to solve problems in science, engineering and finance. There are various HPC resources available for different needs, ranging from cloud computing– that can be used without much expertise and expense – to more tailored hardware, such as Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) or D-Wave’s quantum computer systems. High-Performance Computing in Finance is the first book that provides a state-of-the-art introduction to HPC for finance, capturing both academically and practically relevant problems.

Problems, Methods, and Solutions

High-Performance Computing in Finance

With a unique narrative combining moving life stories and scholarly insight, this book offers a radical re-appraisal of Indian politics. The book demonstrates why Indian democracy is of global importance and why its pathologies are a cause for alarm: as much for India as for the future of democracy the world over.

John Keane

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