Alexis de Tocqueville: The Critical Years, 1848-1851. Edward Gargan

1957 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-139
Keyword(s):  
Alexis De Tocqueville

Exceptional America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Law School ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
The Bible

Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, the literal truth of the Bible, apocalyptical prophecies, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sexual education, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. The intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism—an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. It is rather what makes America an exception, for better or worse. While exceptionalism once was largely a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts and injustices. They also shed light on the peculiar ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, radical anti-governmentalism, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, Mugambi Jouet explores American exceptionalism’s intriguing roots as a multicultural outsider-insider. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, he then lived throughout America, from the Bible Belt to New York, California, and beyond. His articles have notably been featured in The New Republic, Slate, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, and Le Monde. He teaches at Stanford Law School.

Alexis de Tocqueville

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Reese-Schäfer ◽  
Hubertus Buchstein ◽  
Harald Bluhm ◽  
Skadi Krause ◽  
Ewa Atanassow ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alexis De Tocqueville

Domestic Colonies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Peter Kropotkin

Colonization is generally defined as a process by which states settle and dominate foreign lands or peoples. Thus, modern colonies are assumed to be outside Europe and the colonized non-European. This volume contends such definitions of the colony, the colonized, and colonization need to be fundamentally rethought in light of hundreds of ‘domestic colonies’ proposed and/or created by governments and civil society organizations initially within Europe in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and then beyond. The three categories of domestic colonies in this book are labour colonies for the idle poor, farm colonies for the mentally ill, and disabled and utopian colonies for racial, religious, and political minorities. All of these domestic colonies were justified by an ideology of domestic colonialism characterized by three principles: segregation, agrarian labour, improvement, through which, in the case of labour and farm colonies, the ‘idle’, ‘irrational’, and/or custom-bound would be transformed into ‘industrious and rational’ citizens while creating revenues for the state to maintain such populations. Utopian colonies needed segregation from society so their members could find freedom, work the land, and challenge the prevailing norms of the society around them. Defended by some of the leading progressive thinkers of the period, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Owen, Tommy Douglas, and Booker T. Washington, the turn inward to colony not only provides a new lens with which to understand the scope of colonization and colonialism in modern history but a critically important way to distinguish ‘the colonial’ from ‘the imperial’ in Western political theory and practice.

PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF FREEDOM: ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE PRESS AND FREE SPEECH IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Khalil M. Habib
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of The Press ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Constituent Element ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractAccording to Tocqueville, the freedom of the press, which he treats as an extension of the freedom of speech, is a primary constituent element of liberty. Tocqueville treats the freedom of the press in relation to and as an extension of the right to assemble and govern one’s own affairs, both of which he argues are essential to preserving liberty in a free society. Although scholars acknowledge the importance of civil associations to liberty in Tocqueville’s political thought, they routinely ignore the importance he places on the freedom of the press and speech. His reflections on the importance of the free press and speech may help to shed light on the dangers of recent attempts to censor the press and speech.

Attention Deficit Democracy: The Paradox of Civic Engagement. By Ben Berger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. 216p. $35.00.

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 805-807
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Attention Deficit ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Intrinsic Good ◽  
Good For

“Civic engagement” is the cornerstone of democracy, right? Everyone knows we need more civic engagement—everyone, that is, except Ben Berger, whose willingness to argue against convention, particularly when that convention is a key tenet of good governmentism, makes me reflexively sympathetic to his argument. Berger and I both attack foundational assumptions of conventional democratic thought, but we differ in our approaches. I base my arguments on economic theory and quantitative analysis, whereas he bases his arguments primarily on interpretations of canonical theorists, most importantly Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville. Ultimately, I am convinced by Berger's argument that civic engagement is a messy concept that cannot be considered an “intrinsic good” for democracy, but like most formal theorists, I needed little convincing because the debate that he characterizes is remarkably similar to one that game theorists held some years ago, and resolved in the same direction. Ironically, then, he may face a more hostile audience from within his own subfield than outside of it.

Alexis de Tocqueville and the abolition of slavery

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Strong
Keyword(s):  
Alexis De Tocqueville

Democracy and Unfreedom: Revisiting Tocqueville and Beaumont in America

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara M. Benson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Jacksonian America

This essay reexamines the famous 1831 prison tours of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont. It reads the three texts that emerged from their collective research practice as a trilogy, one conventionally read in different disciplinary homes ( Democracy in America in political science, On the Penitentiary in criminology, and Marie, Or Slavery: A Novel of Jacksonian America in literature). I argue that in marginalizing the trilogy’s important critique of slavery and punishment, scholars have overemphasized the centrality of free institutions and ignored the unfree institutions that also anchor American political life. The article urges scholars in political theory and political science to attend to this formative moment in mass incarceration and carceral democracy.

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