Is the consciousness of Americans in the midst of dramatic transformation? Or do people think and feel much the same as they have always thought and felt? Do most people enjoy their work, or hate it? Is the American family being replaced by new institutional forms, or is it much the same as it was in the 1950's? Have material values been replaced by a "postmaterial consciousness" in a postindustrial society? Are Americans becoming more conservative, less conservative, or staying about the same? "State of the Masses" asks the important questions. Originally published in 1986, this prescient study evaluate the views of social critics, neo-conservatives, neo-Marxists, post-industrialists, and the theorists of the little man, who puport to describe the nature, social conditions, outlooks, and motivations of the American populace. The claims of one group are often diametrically opposed to those of another. The authors make the case for which claims can be considered true and which false. Hamilton and Wright analyze the contradictory claims and compares their implications with the best social science research and data available at that time. They also explore the implications for theories in light of the conflicting portrait the evidence provides. The authors conclude with a new perspective for understanding continuities and changes in the United States. This is a prescient view of American society during turmoil, and a model for how social science research can be used predictively. "The manuscript is wonderfully devastating."--G. William Domhoff, "University of California, Santa Cruz" "I think this is a masterful and timely piece of work a the book's message is so powerful, so wide sweeping that it cannot be ignored."--William Form, "The Ohio State University" "Richard F. Hamilton" is emeritus professor of sociology and political science at The Ohio State University. He has written eleven books and seventy articles, mostly dealing with elite and mass politics and their interconnections, including "President McKinley, War and Empire" (two volume work) published by Transaction. "James D. Wright" is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Central Florida. He has published seventeen books including "Armed and Considered Dangerous" and "Under the Gun" as well as many journal articles. His current research interests include violence, urban poverty and inequality, health and the homeless population, and the "divorce reform" movement.

Is the consciousness of Americans in the midst of dramatic transformation? Or do people think and feel much the same as they have always thought and felt? Do most people enjoy their work, or hate it? Is the American family being replaced by new institutional forms, or is it much the same as it was in the 1950's? Have material values been replaced by a "postmaterial consciousness" in a postindustrial society? Are Americans becoming more conservative, less conservative, or staying about the same? State of the Masses asks the important questions. Originally published in 1986, this prescient study evaluate the views of social critics, neo-conservatives, neo-Marxists, post-industrialists, and the theorists of the little man, who puport to describe the nature, social conditions, outlooks, and motivations of the American populace. The claims of one group are often diametrically opposed to those of another. The authors make the case for which claims can be considered true and which false. Hamilton and Wright analyze the contradictory claims and compares their implications with the best social science research and data available at that time. They also explore the implications for theories in light of the conflicting portrait the evidence provides. The authors conclude with a new perspective for understanding continuities and changes in the United States. This is a prescient view of American society during turmoil, and a model for how social science research can be used predictively.

Is the consciousness of Americans in the midst of dramatic transformation? Or do people think and feel much the same as they have always thought and felt? Do most people enjoy their work, or hate it? Is the American family being replaced by new institutional forms, or is it much the same as it was in the 1950's? Have material values been replaced by a "postmaterial consciousness" in a postindustrial society? Are Americans becoming more conservative, less conservative, or staying about the same? State of the Masses asks the important questions.Originally published in 1986, this prescient study evaluate the views of social critics, neo-conservatives, neo-Marxists, post-industrialists, and the theorists of the little man, who puport to describe the nature, social conditions, outlooks, and motivations of the American populace. The claims of one group are often diametrically opposed to those of another. The authors make the case for which claims can be considered true and which false. Hamilton and Wright analyze the contradictory claims and compares their implications with the best social science research and data available at that time. They also explore the implications for theories in light of the conflicting portrait the evidence provides. The authors conclude with a new perspective for understanding continuities and changes in the United States. This is a prescient view of American society during turmoil, and a model for how social science research can be used predictively.

Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture. In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens. To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffmann places them in an international comparative context. He explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world. The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.

The forms of liberal government that emerged after World War II are in the midst of a profound crisis. In I Am the People, Partha Chatterjee reconsiders the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people.” To uncover the roots of populism, Chatterjee traces the twentieth-century trajectory of the welfare state and neoliberal reforms. Mobilizing ideals of popular sovereignty and the emotional appeal of nationalism, anticolonial movements ushered in a world of nation-states while liberal democracies in Europe guaranteed social rights to their citizens. But as neoliberal techniques shrank the scope of government, politics gave way to technical administration by experts. Once the state could no longer claim an emotional bond with the people, the ruling bloc lost the consent of the governed. To fill the void, a proliferation of populist leaders have mobilized disaffected groups into a battle that they define as the authentic people against entrenched oligarchy. Once politics enters a spiral of competitive populism, Chatterjee cautions, there is no easy return to pristine liberalism. Only a counter-hegemonic social force that challenges global capital and facilitates the equal participation of all peoples in democratic governance can achieve significant transformation. Drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Ernesto Laclau and with a particular focus on the history of populism in India, I Am the People is a sweeping, theoretically rich account of the origins of today’s tempests.

In this follow-up volume to the critically acclaimed The Constitutional State, N. W. Barber explores how the principles of constitutionalism structure and influence successful states. Constitutionalism is not exclusively a mechanism to limit state powers. An attractive and satisfying account of constitutionalism, and, by derivation, of the state, can only be reached if the principles of constitutionalism are seen as interlocking parts of a broader doctrine. This holistic study of the relationship between the constitutional state and its central principles - sovereignty; the separation of powers; the rule of law; subsidiarity; democracy; and civil society - casts light on long-standing debates over the meaning and implications of constitutionalism. The book provides a concise introduction to constitutionalism and a detailed account of the nature and implications of each of the principles in question. It concludes with an examination of the importance of constitutional principles to the work of judges, legislators, and others involved in the operation and creation of the constitution. The book is essential reading for those seeking a definitive account of constitutionalism and its benefits.