A sweeping historical and political account of how our present-day policy debates around citizenship and equality came to be The landmark Supreme Court decision in June 2015 legalizing the right to same-sex marriage marked a major victory in gay and lesbian rights in the United States. Once subject to a patchwork of laws granting legal status to same-sex couples in some states and not others, gay and lesbian Americans now enjoy full legal status for their marriages wherever they travel or reside in the country. For many, the Supreme Court’s ruling means that gay and lesbian citizens are one step closer to full equality with the rest of America. In Fragmented Citizens, Stephen M. Engel contends that the present moment in gay and lesbian rights in America is indeed one of considerable advancement and change—but that there is still much to be done in shaping American institutions to recognize gays and lesbians as full citizens. With impressive scope and fascinating examples, Engel traces the relationship between gay and lesbian individuals and the government from the late nineteenth century through the present. Engel shows that gays and lesbians are more accurately described as fragmented citizens. Despite the marriage ruling, Engel argues that LGBT Americans still do not have full legal protections against workplace, housing, family, and other kinds of discrimination. There remains a continuing struggle of the state to control the sexuality of gay and lesbian citizens—they continue to be fragmented citizens. Engel argues that understanding the development of the idea of gay and lesbian individuals as ‘less-than-whole’ citizens can help us make sense of the government’s continued resistance to full equality despite massive changes in public opinion. Furthermore, he argues that it was the state’s ability to identify and control gay and lesbian citizens that allowed it to develop strong administrative capacities to manage all of its citizens in matters of immigration, labor relations, and even national security. The struggle for gay and lesbian rights, then, affected not only the lives of those seeking equality but also the very nature of American governance itself. Fragmented Citizens is a sweeping historical and political account of how our present-day policy debates around citizenship and equality came to be.

This study aims to specify the mechanisms by which sociolegal control affects group solidarity in two localities of urban marginality in Israel-Palestine: the Mahatta, a segregated Palestinian district in Lod, an Israeli "mixed" city, and the Jalazon refugee camp in the West Bank, only 20 miles from Lod. This research contrasts two distinct social morphologies: internal cohesion in the Jalazon camp and atomization in the Mahatta district. It also highlights the opposition between feelings of trust and pride in the camp and feelings of distrust and shame in the district. Both localities have internal lines of division. In the camp, there are divisions on the basis of place of origin, clan membership and political affiliation. In the urban district, there are divisions on the basis of ethnicity and oldtimer/newcomer status. Yet, Jalazon camp dwellers actively work to deactivate potentially paralyzing fractures, to develop and preserve internal solidarity, prevent or quench camp infighting, and purse collective actions while symbolically investing in the camp as a source of dignity and pride. By contrast, in the Mahatta district, residents experience social fragmentation, mutual distrust, and routine violence and blame one another for their failed attempts at collective organizing. I explain these different profiles of group solidarity, moral worldviews, violence, and politics as products of their distinct regimes of sociolegal control. By "sociolegal control," I mean the control exercised by the institutions of the ruling power and enshrined in its legal norms and dominant discourses. I argue that the Jalazon camp dwellers navigate a regime of sociolegal control that has (unintended) collectivizing effects while the Mahatta residents negotiate their existence against a regime of sociolegal control that has (mostly intended) divisive effects. There is a triadic structure of authority at work in the refugee camp, which includes the Israeli army, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) and the Palestinian Authority (PA); camp dwellers are pushed by all three to valorize their group solidarity as a fundamental resource to both nourish from within and defend collectively against external threats. In contrast to the processes in play between Jalazon refugees and the authorities that influence their solidarity in the camp, the Israeli state's security apparatus is the only institutional actor at work in the Mahatta district, and I argue that it serves to create social fragmentation and mutual suspicion among the urban residents, thus pushing them towards strategies of individual exit. This study has a threefold relevance for theorizing mechanisms of group solidarity among marginalized populations in their connection to the role of the state as a "group maker." First, I propose that a given state can distribute different techniques of control towards different segments of a population cast or kept outside of the sphere of official or full membership. This focus on the state's distribution of forms of sociolegal control towards subcategories within an "unwanted" population helps us understand the formation of internal cleavages among people that otherwise recognize nationhood as a principle of membership. Second, by focusing on place-specific forms of sociolegal control, this study problematizes two distinctions: that between democratic and illiberal forms of state and that between the post-industrial Global North and the Global South. Using localities of urban marginality--refugee camps, squatter settlements, and urban districts of relegation--as a terrain for the theorization of group formation draws attention to how modern states, including democratic ones, might use illiberal practices and discourses driven by ethnoracial or ethnonational motivations towards segments of their citizenry. A third related theoretical point emerging from this study is that legal categorization, especially the opposition between the categories of refugees and citizens, does not have a fixed content in terms of its effects on group solidarity and political identities.

With almost 100 municipalities, the largest of which is also its own county, the structure of local government in St. Louis is indeed unique and is one of the most frequently discussed and debates topics in the region. Critics claim its duplicated services are a wasteful use of resources while supporter praise the convenience afforded by numerous small city governments. Written by local political science scholar, E. Terrence Jones, Fragmented By Design is the first book to fully chronicle the development of this structure and its implications for the St. Louis region.

Drawing extensively on international and European law, international and national case law, as well as academic writings, this study offers a comprehensive and critical analysis on the issue of non-state actors in refugee law.

Extending Citizenship, Reconfiguring States presents a thematically unified analysis of changing citizenship practices over two centuries-from the eve of the French Revolution to contemporary China.

A defence of the meaning and function of borders and their necessity in the face of authoritarian attitudes to multiculturalism

In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

Brenda Almond throws down a timely challenge to liberal consensus about personal relationships. She maintains that the traditional family is fragmenting in Western societies, and that this fragmentation is a cause of serious social problems. She urges that we reconsider our attitudes to sex and reproduction in order to strengthen our most important social institution, the family, which is the key to ensuring healthy relationships between parents and children and a secure upbringing for the citizens of the future. Anyone who is concerned about how the framework of society is changing, anyone who has to face difficult personal decisions about parenthood or family relationships, will find this book compelling. It may disturb deep convictions, or offer an unwelcome message; but it is compassionate as well as controversial.

How do the communication practices of governments, NGOs and social movements enhance opportunities for citizen-led change? In this incisive book, Thomas Tufte makes a call for a fundamental rethinking of what it takes to enable citizens’ voices, participation and power in processes of social change. Drawing on examples ranging from the Indignados movement in Spain to media activists in Brazil, from rural community workers in Malawi to UNICEF’s global outreach programmes, he presents cutting-edge debates about the role of media and communication in enhancing social change. He offers both new and contested ideas of approaching social change from below, and highlights the need for institutions – governments and civil society organizations alike – to be in sync with their constituencies. Communication and Social Change provides essential insights to students and scholars of media and communications, as well as anyone concerned with the practices and processes that lead to citizenship, democracy and social justice.

With the rise and rise of social media, today’s communication practices are significantly different from those of even the recent past. A key change has been a shift to very small units, exemplified by Twitter and its strict 280-character limit on individual posts. Consequently, highly fragmented communication has become the norm in many contexts. Fragmented Narrative sets out to explore the production and reception of fragmentary stories, analysing the Twitter-based narrative practices of Donald Trump, the Spanish political movement Podemos, and Egyptian activists writing in the context of the 2013 military intervention in Egypt. Sadler draws on narrative theory and hermeneutics to argue that narrative remains a vital means for understanding, allowing fragmentary content to be grasped together as part of significant wholes. Using Heideggerian ontology, he proposes that our capacity to do this is grounded in the centrality of narrative to human existence itself. The book strives to provide a new way of thinking about the interpretation of fragmentary information, applicable both to social media and beyond. Contributing to the emerging literature in existential media studies, this timely volume will interest students, scholars and researchers of narrative, new media and language and communication studies.