VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Nelson, Scott G."

Browsing by Author "Nelson, Scott G."

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The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and Indigenous Governance: A Comparison of Governance of Santa Clara Pueblo and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Nations — 1991 – 2000
LaRoque, Kent A. (Virginia Tech, 2004-06-23)
Native American communities are continually impacted by Federal Indian policy. Over one-half of all Native American nations function politically under the provisions of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). There are claims that many of these Native American communities experience intra-tribal conflict due to the lack of congruence between the tribal governments formed under the IRA and cultural traditions of governance. This claim was investigated via a comparative trend analysis of the Santa Clara Pueblo, operating politically under the IRA provisions, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, operating under a constitutional form of governance outside of IRA provisions. After an historical analysis, an evaluation of tribal constitutions, and an examination of news media coverage for the period of 1991 – 2000, the project concluded that the legacies of the IRA are not the primary causal agent of intra-tribal conflict.
The Abstract Ecology of Modern Life: Re-imagining Environments as Public Spheres
Greear, Jake P. (Virginia Tech, 2005-05-04)
Many discourses within environmental political theory center on reconfiguring political structures to empower geographically situated populations to become public stewards of their local environments. However, in the developed world the hope for ecological self-government is doubly challenged by the atrophy of the civic spirit and the general apathy of most citizens in the face of environmental destruction. In a search for an explanation of these cultural circumstances this essay gathers the sociological critiques of the techno-scientific epistemology and the public management of risk offered by Ulrich Beck with some social studies of the production and use of space. These critiques reveal aspects of everyday life that comprise a distinctly disengaged mode of person-world interaction. This mode of subjective worldly interaction frustrates any decentralist environmental politics because it distills in consciousness a depressed conception of personal agency, and constructs local environments as realms of imperceptible significances and hopelessly complex "scientific" processes, which must be ascertained by external knowledge and judgment producers. Communal, political stewardship of local environments requires trusting humanly scaled faculties of perception and engaging in the work of producing local knowledge and judgments. It therefore entails refocusing attentive faculties on the local landscapes that bind publics together and re-appropriating these environments as realms of participatory civic agency. This politicization of the immediate environment may be the best hope for instilling ecologically sustainable values and for reintegrating, and therefore reviving, currently dysfunctional public spheres.
The Absurd and Film: From the Existential Moment to Metaphysical Revolt
Artrip, Ryan Edward (Virginia Tech, 2010-04-30)
In recent cinematic history, films have often expressed through the experiences of characters an 'existential moment' in which fundamental assumptions about life are questioned and potentially rendered meaningless. The purpose of this project is to follow two accounts of this expressed moment in the 1999 films American Beauty and Fight Club, understanding them as such through particular readings of the philosophical articulations of Albert Camus. I analyze the social climates of liberalism and consumerism that might account for these expressions of discontent and anxiety at the same time I evaluate the validity of existential thought in the contemporary social world. Ultimately, I question what kinds of political qualms absurdity might render, using film experience as a venue to understand and evaluate these questions.
American Nationalism in the Early Twenty-first Century: A Discursive Analysis of the Politics of Immigration and National Security
Clark, Deanna Jacqueline Perry (Virginia Tech, 2018-02-16)
This thesis uses Benedict Anderson's theoretical contributions on the topic of national identity and Michel Foucault's contributions toward discourse analysis to perform a discursive analysis of Donald Trump's campaign speeches in which he exploits pre-existing anti-immigration sentiments among certain voters to gain political power. The research question addressed herein is: How has Donald Trump invoked the issue of national security to single out groups of immigrants as threats to U.S. national security, and what conditions exists so that he is able to do so in a way that enlists the support of a sizeable portion of the American public? First, this thesis works to put into context what drove post-World War II immigration in the U.S. to provide insight into what conditions lead to certain groups being encouraged or discouraged from immigrating. Second, I contrast Anderson's concept of nationalism with that of Samuel Huntington, whose idea of nationalism more closely aligns with Trump's nativist sense of national identity. Third, having put the history of U.S. immigration and the concept of national identity into context, I perform a discursive analysis of three of Trump's campaign speeches and tweets that focus on immigration and make problematic his racist, far-right ideology and its purpose toward the de-politicization and de-historicization of immigration as a national security and economic issue. I conclude by reminding the reader that allowing anti-immigrant discourse to become normalized without the burden of proof can lead to curbed freedoms under an authoritarian regime, a direction toward which Trump appears ready and willing to lead the American electorate.
Asymmetric Strategies and Asymmetric Threats: A Structural-realist Critique of Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2014
Harris, Kathryn Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2016-01-28)
As a component of the overall policy to defeat global terrorism and prevent attacks against the U.S., the Bush and Obama administrations have turned to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones. From 2004 to 2014, Pakistan has seen the largest volume of U.S. drone strikes targeting radical groups such as al Qaeda and the Taliban, a trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. On the surface, using drones to eliminate terrorists while avoiding an official armed conflict aligns with the theory of neo- or structural realism developed by Kenneth Waltz. And yet although 9/11 served as the impetus for the U.S. to refocus attention on ameliorating the threat of terrorism and to initiate far-reaching measures to protect homeland security, there remains intense debate over whether or not the U.S. is actually more secure than it was prior to 9/11. While structural realism is still relevant to the current international system, the effects of drone strikes in Pakistan may set the U.S. on a path toward increasingly destabilizing situations that could lead to heightened insecurity and ultimately a change in power in the international system. The existing literature suggests that drone strikes in Pakistan are (1) leading to revenge-driven counter attacks, (2) intensifying radical anti-Americanism and creating more potential terrorists, (3) damaging the U.S. relationship with nuclear-armed Pakistan, (4) destabilizing the regions where drone attacks are launched, and (5) undermining American 'soft power.' The culmination of these five trends has the potential to disrupt the current balance of power in a way that is not in America's national interest. The unique security dilemma presented by the asymmetrical threat of terrorism and the asymmetrical response of drone strikes necessitates the continued evolution of neorealism as an IR theory.
Becoming Otherwise: Sovereign Authorship in a World of Multiplicity
Taylor, Benjamin Bradley (Virginia Tech, 2018-06-08)
This thesis explores the theory and practice of sovereignty. I begin with a conceptual analysis of sovereignty, examining its theological roots in contrast with its later influence in contestations over political authority. Theological debates surrounding God’s sovereignty dealt not with the question of legitimacy, which would become important for political sovereignty, but instead with the limits of his ability. Read as an ontological capacity, sovereignty is coterminous with an existent’s activity in the world. As lived, this capacity is regularly limited by the ways in which space is produced via its representations, its symbols, and its practices. All collective appropriations of space have a nomos that characterizes their practice. Foucault’s account of “biopolitics” provides an account of how contemporary materiality is distributed, an account that can be supplemented by sociological typologies of how city space is typically produced. The collective biopolitical distribution of space expands the range of practices that representationally legibilize activity in the world, thereby expanding the conceptual limits of existents and what it means for them to act up to the borders of their capacity, i.e., to practice sovereignty. The desire for total authorial capacity expresses itself in relations of domination and subordination that never erase the fundamental precarity of subjects, even as these expressions seek to disguise it. I conclude with a close reading of narratives recounting the lives of residents in Chicago’s Englewood, reading their activity as practices of sovereignty which manifest variously as they master and produce space.
Bodies and Borders: Gendered Nationalism in Contemporary Poland
Palermo, Rachel Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-10)
The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation.
Bordering the Mediterranean: Liminality and Regioncraft at the Center of the World
Georgakis Abbott, Stefanie Florence (Virginia Tech, 2014-03-11)
In this dissertation, I theorize that the Mediterranean, broadly conceived of as a geo-cultural-political entity and experience, is a locality for the investigation into the processes through which representations of continents and civilizations come into focus. A fundamental argument in this dissertation is that borders (like the Mediterranean) do not represent the limits to territorially fixed entities, but are rather continually ongoing projects that come to be negotiated and reified through political practices that are focused, in this instance, on asserting where the outside of Europe begins. The arguments of this dissertation are twofold. First, the Mediterranean is theorized as a fluid and porous space. Secondly, and more importantly, the Mediterranean is a key site for an investigation into the (re)production of politically and culturally saturated discourses of belonging and otherness. Thus, this project takes into focus three distinct, yet inextricably interrelated, processes of the borderization of the Mediterranean. These processes work to maintain the space as a global axis of sorts, upon which academic and popular discussions and representations of the East versus the West or the North versus the South emerge. It is an underlying argument of this study that links the examples of the Barcelona Process, discussions of a migration crisis, and Turkey's accession to the EU as processes of borderization of the European Union. While they are often analyzed as separate phenomena, all are indicative of these spatial and temporal borders represented by the Mediterranean, seen together they have the capability of highlighting the interconnectedness of the varying threads of Mediterraneanism. To understand how categories like European, Asian, or African come to have such salient political suggestiveness and meaning, one must bring into question how the borders that divide these imagined spaces are complex sites of the convergence of practices and discourses acquire their fortitude and who gets to tell the stories that outline their parameters.
Can a Civil Society Organization Quietly Affect Political Identity in a War-Torn Nation? The Story of Escuela Nueva in Colombia
Bianchin, John (Virginia Tech, 2011-06-29)
The Escuela Nueva is a unique non-governmental organization which has collaborated with the Colombian Ministry of Education, the Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, and corporate partners to improve access to and quality of education. The Escuela Nueva Foundation enacts policies based on the political belief that all children should have the basic right to an education. The most visible way that the Escuela Nueva promotes this belief is through the implementation of multi-grade classrooms, where more advanced students aid those who are younger or further behind in their studies. The Escuela Nueva classroom model was implemented in 1977 as a response to the shortcomings in teacher training and replicability that were the downfall of earlier attempts to implement multi-grade models in rural Colombia. The gradual growth and continual improvements to their model has afforded the Escuela Nueva Foundation a level of immunity from state intervention that few other non-state actors enjoy. Although the Colombian state government has historically been opposed to those non-state actors with overtly political goals, the cost-effective and competitive services provided by the Escuela Nueva programs, like their multi-grade schools and Learning Circles, acted as a strong incentive for allowing this organization's work to continue. Organizations like the Escuela Nueva, particularly those that partner with public and private actors to achieve service-oriented goals, play an important role in Colombia, creating new social forums where individuals can share their political identities and beliefs in a way that affects real change in the communities where they live.
A Case Study of Identity Politics in America: President George W. Bush and Nationalist Victimization Strategies towards Iraq
Gandy, Maegen Lorraine (Virginia Tech, 2003-08-22)
This thesis engages literature in the field of nationalism in order to explore the discursive construction of a Self-Other relationship in American foreign policy as it has been projected by President George W. Bush between September 11, 2001 and March 19, 2003. Political theorists advance numerous definitions of both the nation and nationalism that offer insight into the Self-Other dichotomy. Despite substantive differences, there is consensus among them that the 'national Self' must be accompanied by the presence and identification of Others who fall beyond political, cultural, and territorial boundaries. Without their presence, there would exist either one nation or none at all.
Challenging Neoliberal Conditionality: Tracing IMF Lending Policies from 2007-2012
Christiansen, William Thomas (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-24)
The conditionality agreements of the International Monetary Fund have received a significant amount of criticism from the 1980s and 1990s and into the 2000s. Critics have found little reassurance from the IMF\'s attempts to reform conditionality after 2000. The 1980s marked a time where conditionality on IMF loans required structural adjustment and the imposition of austere fiscal measures. The streamlining initiative in 2000 possessed only slight quantitative modification to lending conditionality. However, recent changes in the Fund\'s lending policy occuring between 2007 and 2012 may finally display the institution\'s ability to listen, learn, and adapt policy toward a conditionality regime utilizing policy outside of the neoliberal framework. This thesis examines these new policies and their implications for neoliberalism where the term represents an approach to economic growth that demands privatization, deregulation, and weakening the role of the public sector. It provides a history of conditionality reforms and positions the most recent reforms in lending policy in the evolving neoliberal context.
China and the South China Sea: The Emergence of the Huaqing Doctrine
Durani, Luis A. (Virginia Tech, 2015-12-23)
China and the South China Sea region will play an important role in global and US strategic policy for the foreseeable future. Because China is an upcoming global economic power, the US and other nations must become cognizant of China's motivations in the South China Sea in order to avoid conflict, which seems inevitable. The purpose of this thesis is to examine China's conflicts/tensions in the South China Sea, specifically the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands, Taiwan, ASEAN, and US Navy. Discussions on the evolution of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) will also provide additional insight to China's actions in the region. Understanding China's history, role, and claims in the region begins to paint a picture that the PLAN are operating under a principle very similar to the Monroe Doctrine, which allowed the US unfettered access to the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Lastly, the thesis will demonstrate that the Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine as well the country's desire to establish dominance in the South China Sea, which she sees as her "lost territory", is derived from the fear of an encirclement strategy implemented by the US and a nascent US-backed collective security regime, ASEAN.
The Citizen-Soldier in the American Imagination: Traces of the Myths of World War II in the "Army Strong" Recruitment Campaign
Bocanegra, Maria Leigh (Virginia Tech, 2010-05-03)
The myth of the citizen-soldier resonates strongly in the American imagination and helps (re)construct America the nation. The construction of this myth in the historical context of World War II is especially prominent in contemporary American culture. The myth of the World War II citizen-soldier functions as an individualized discursive formation with specific rules of formation. I contextualize the construction of this individualized discursive formation within the historical era of World War II, and show how it excludes in direct contradiction to the ideals of civic nationalism that shaped the concept of national citizenship of that era. The United States military, which changed to an All Volunteer Force in 1973, functions as a neoliberal state apparatus in modern America. However, the United States Military still largely relies on the rules of formation and the ideals of civic nationalism in order to recruit volunteers for its forces. Traces of the myths of World War II, particularly the myth of the citizen-soldier, can still be found in the United States Army's recruitment material in its current "Army Strong" campaign despite the contradictory ideals of civic nationalism and neoliberalism. I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of three recruitment television commercials from the "Army Strong" campaign aired in 2009. I explain how the United States Army uses both the ideals of civic nationalism and the characteristics of neoliberalism in order to encourage potential recruits to join its ranks.
Citizenship after Trump: Democracy vs. Authoritarianism in a Post-Pandemic Era
Klein, Bradley S.; Nelson, Scott G. (Routledge, 2022-04-01)
What is the fate of democracy at this moment in American history? In Citizenship after Trump, political theorists Bradley S. Klein and Scott G. Nelson explore the meaning of community in the context of intense political polarization, the surge of far-right nationalism and deepening divisions during the coronavirus pandemic. The book urges all Americans to consider the claims of citizenship amidst the forces consolidating today around narrow conceptions of race, nation, ethnicity and religion – each of which imperil the institutions of democracy and strike at the heart of the nation’s political culture. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic greatly testing American democracy, the authors examine the political, economic and cultural challenges that are posed after the Trump administration’s exceedingly inept leadership response. They also explore the promise and limits of democracy relative to long-standing traditions of American political thought. Citizenship after Trump thus offers valuable and timely resources for self-critical analysis and will stimulate focused discussions about as-of-yet unexplored regions of America’s political history. With chapters on the media, political economy, fascism and social democracy, the aim of this book is to question what Americans have gotten so wrong, politically, and what kind of vision can lead the country out of a truly dangerous impasse in the years ahead.
Civic Culture: Scotland's Struggle for its Political Interests
McCann, Aislinn Bronwyn (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-05)
Politics today is facing a troubling trend towards the empowerment of nationalist movements. With strong historical traditions and a powerful Scottish National Party, Scotland would appear to be a prime candidate for such movements. However, this thesis argues that Scotland represents a nation with a unique civic culture. This thesis seeks to determine which elements of Scottish political and cultural history have led to its modern day civic culture, in the form of a civic nationalism, or patriotism. It asks: why is Scottish nationalism unique, and why does it matter? To answer, I have broken down the thesis into three main chapters that consider the theories of nationalism that are significant to the study of Scottish nationalism, the foundations of Scottish nationalism, and how Scottish nationalism manifests itself in civic contexts. The results reflect that Scottish civic culture deeply permeates the nation's politics. Even when given the opportunity for independence, Scotland chose to remain a part of the United Kingdom in order to maintain its interests with the European Union. And, while political cultures are subject to rapid change, the current state of Scottish culture reflects a civic manifestation.
Collectively Voting One's Culture
Blevins, Laura Lynn Lee (Virginia Tech, 2018-02-09)
This thesis considers theoretically the institutional nature of culture and its strength as a determinant of political behavior in Southwest Virginia. Beginning with a description of the geography of Southwest Virginia and the demographics of the region's inhabitants, the thesis proceeds to outline the cultural nuances of the region that make it ripe for misunderstanding by the outside world when attempting to explain the cognitive dissonance between voting behavior and regional needs. Then the thesis explores how the culture of the region serves as its own institution that protects itself from outside forces. This phenomenon is explained through an outline of the man-made institutions which have been forged to ensure long-term political power that itself protects the institution of regional culture. Further evidence is presented through voting and demographic data that solidifies the role of culture in determining political behavior.
The Communal Machinery of Evil: Reflections on Hannah Arendt
Nelson, Scott G. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
The fifty-year anniversary of the trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann saw the release of the Margarethe von Trotta film Hannah Arendt. This article considers the film’s achievements in the context of Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, and especially her “lesson” that political evil consists not only in some demonic instinct or motive, but in a monstrous lack of imagination, a condition of radical philosophical thoughtlessness. The film is principally a character study of a political philosopher with strong convictions and an abiding concern for what Arendt saw as the unfortunate truth about Eichmann. Largely occluded are the enduring political themes with which Arendt’s many books in political theory dealt – themes including power, conformity, and community. Yet, the film anticipates important moral and political questions of lasting relevance. There remains much to be learned about thoughtlessness in nations where power is broadly shared by the people. Concerns over evil’s precise nature aside, the question of conformity in democracies remains important to consider as nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian sentiments arise anew in Russia, the Middle East, as well as the United States.
Conditionalizing Conduct: Political Economy and the Limits to Governance in European Union Enlargement
Shelton, Joel Trent (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-23)
This dissertation argues that European Union membership conditionality operates as a modality of political-economic governance directed at securing the conditions of possibility for a harmoniously functioning political economy of Europe. I argue that conditionality can best be understood not as a series of requirements for EU membership, a set of incentives for rule adoption, or a vehicle for the transmission of European norms to candidate states, but as an ensemble of discursive and material practices – fragile, dispersed circuits of governmental activity directed at a particular strategic ambition. I argue that existing accounts of EU membership conditionality are informed by predominantly rationalist understandings of political economy which work to conceal various cultural, social, and subjective sources of disharmony in political-economic life. Thinking about the political economy of conditionality through rationalist lenses privileges the study of bargaining and negotiation and institutional reform and overlooks the ways that conditionality targets the transformation of problematic socio-cultural and subjective elements of political economy – among them particular habits of culture, patterns of sociality, and subjective qualities and capacities of the person deemed essential to securing order and abundance. Re-reading canonical works in classical and critical traditions of political economy by James Steuart, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx makes clear that political economy as a field of knowledge and practice has long been concerned with understanding the political, legislative-legal, institutional, socio-cultural, and subjective conditions of possibility for securing order and abundance and has long reflected on the potential and limits of governance to secure these conditions in a world of shifting circumstance. I argue that a political economy of EU membership conditionality concerned with disharmony should investigate the ways that particular socio-cultural and subjective features of political-economic life are problematized in the discourse of conditionality and subsequently targeted for transformation through the work of instruments and agents of conditionality operating in a variety of institutional contexts. On this basis, I analyze conditionality as practice – tracing the emergence of instruments of conditionality currently at work in the Republic of Macedonia through official documents produced by the EU and the Republic of Macedonia from 2001-2011. I then examine the ambitions and limits of the Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013 (OP-HRD) – a program tasked with translating the aims of conditionality on paper into concrete activities for implementation in the fields of employment, education and training, and social inclusion. I outline some limits to the program derived from personal interviews with officials of the EU and the Republic of Macedonia who work to implement the OP-HRD "on the ground." In reflecting on these limitations, I return to the political economy of disharmony, concluding that constraints on the operation of conditionality in practice are not merely the product of technical and political impediments but are also derived from inherent limits to the old dream of political-economic harmony to which the ambitions of conditionality are ultimately directed.
The Construction of a United Great China: A Comparative Study of the CCTV Spring Festival Galas, 1984-86 and 2004-06
Xu, Xiaoyan (Virginia Tech, 2007-06-07)
The Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, is the most important festival in China. On every Lunar New Year's Eve since 1983, the state-run China Central TV (CCTV), the only national TV station in China, has held a celebrating gala. This thesis attempts to examine the CCTV Spring Festival Galas as a case study of China's statist nationalism. The research questions of this thesis are: what techniques and technologies have the CCTV Spring Festival Galas used to construct a Chinese national space? How have the CCTV Spring Festival Galas describe the Chinese national space? And what changes have taken place in these techniques and technologies as well as in the descriptions? To answer these questions, this thesis conducts a comparative research, comparing both the commonalities and differences between the galas of 1984-86 and those of 2004-06. Employing an interpretative textual analysis approach, it analyzes the videos of these six years' galas and explores the political meanings of words and programs in the galas. This thesis finds that in order to imagine a united Chinese national space, the galas mainly represent China in terms of classes, ethnic groups and places. With the presence of minorities and people from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, the galas focus on the boundary of the Chinese nation to construct the unity of China. Furthermore, in order to construct the greatness of this united Chinese national space, the galas use heroes and sites to symbolize China. The presence of traditional elements helps create a temporal dimension of the Chinese national space. As a result of, and in response to, the socio-economic changes in the last two decades, the techniques and technologies used by the galas have changed. Besides the great changes in stage settings and technologies, the major changes in the techniques include: in the 2004-06 galas, hosts play a much more important role in interpreting the political meanings of the programs and presenting the state's nationalist narrative to the audience, the Chinese Communist Party occupies a more central place in the galas, and home increasingly means individual family instead of the country of China. Correspondingly, the way the galas treat singers, actors, and hosts from Hong Kong and Taiwan has also changed.
Crisis Thought
Morris, Edwin Kent (Virginia Tech, 2016-10-04)
Crisis thought is an idea that gives a name to and accounts for some of the problematics of the sign crisis in political, social, cultural, and economic discourse. Specifically, crisis thought is a discursive formation, a concept used loosely here to refer to an assemblage of signs such as anxiety or fear that evoke or invoke similar, but inaccurate connotations as crisis in political and everyday usage. The general question this study grapples with is why political, social, cultural, and economic crises are often recognized and, yet, are seemingly unrecognized, unaddressed, or accepted as a basic part of political and ordinary life. This study focuses on the mobilization of crisis thought by the 24/7 news media and throughout politics in the United States. Working outside of economic and Marxist traditions of crisis studies, this study focuses on the effects of crisis thought by way of a critical, interpretive, and interdisciplinary approach. There are two goals of this project. The first is to offer some of the linkages between crisis thought, security, and liberalism. The second goal is to examine through various examples and vignettes how, where, and why crisis thought manifests itself in US politics and in ordinary life. Some topics addressed in this study include: news media, infrastructure, police militarization, mass shootings, US electoral politics, and the alleged US politics of crisis. In the final analysis, this study suggests that 24/7 news media and political mobilizations of crisis thought paradoxically help secure the ontological security of subjectivities as linked to securing security and the logos of liberalism. This study illuminates a peculiar aspect about liberal capitalist democracies: the (re)production of a myriad of crises and, thus, crisis thought, in order to perpetuate itself.

Browsing by Author "Nelson, Scott G."

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