Synopses & Reviews
William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George F. Will, and Dick Cheney. These are todays neoconservatives“confident, clear-cut, and a political force to be reckoned with. But how should we define this new conservatism? What is new about it? In this volume, some of today's top political scholars take on the charge of explaining, defining, and confronting the new conservatism of the last twenty-five years. The authors examine the ideas, policies and roots of this ideological movement showing that contemporary neoconservatism has been able to blend many of the aspects of social conservatism—such as religious populism and nationalism—with economic liberalism and the rhetoric of equality of opportunity and individualism. With their emphasis on dismantling the welfare state and a rhetorical return to economic laissez faire and individual rights, neoconservatives have been able to harness populist sentiment in terms of both economics and cultural issues. And with their belief in moral and cultural “simplicity,” their turn away from science, their conviction in American superiority on the global stage, and their embrace of “anti-government” rhetoric, they have effectively changed the nature of the American political landscape.
The contributors to Confronting the New Conservatism offer a trenchant analysis and substantive critique of the neoconservative ethos, arguing that it is an ideology that needs to be better understood if change is to be had.
Contributors: Stanley Aronowitz, Chip Berlet, Stephen Eric Bronner, Lawrence Davidson, Greg Grandin, Philip Green, Diana M. Judd, Thomas M. Keck, Charles Noble, R. Claire Snyder, Michael J. Thompson, and Nicholas Xenos.
Review
"This exciting book is based on the premise that we do not already know what Jewish identities are. Mapping Jewish Identities offers pathways away from essentialized notions of Jewishness and provides the intellectual tool for 'alternative modes of Jewish becoming.' A treat to read."
"The pleasures and rewards of this volume are ample. Mapping Jewish Identities opens up—and reinvigorates—questions of Jewish identity and difference. En route to revealing the multiple possibilities of modern Jewish identity, it also succeeds in charting vital new routes for Jewish Cultural Studies today."
Review
“Thompson . . . has put together a book of essays that seeks to ‘confront this new conservatism and lay bare its inner workings. The collection brings together commentators on contemporary American politics. . . . The group has an unabashedly progressive bent and their stated objective is to bury the new conservatism even as they enviously praise its successes.”
-Popmatters,
Review
“A useful resource that will enable the careful reader to understand the similarities and differences among these multiple ideologies.”
-Choice,
Review
“Arguing that American conservatism today is not only a rejoinder to liberalism but a reflection of at least some of its values, Confronting the New Conservatism subjects the neo-conservative and Christian conservative movements to thoughtful scrutiny and original scholarly analysis. While animated by progressive politics, this collection offers students and citizens alike a deeper look at the intellectual and ideological foundations of the American right in ways that will encourage understanding as well as a more effective liberal response.”
-Benjamin R. Barber,author of Jihad vs. McWorld
Review
“Thompson has assembled an exciting collection of essays written by a high quality group of scholars. The essays are sharp and academically rigorous, but also highly engaging and readable.”
-Judith Grant,author of Fundamental Feminism
Synopsis
Is Jewish identity flourishing or in decline? Community leaders and scholarly researchers continually seek to determine the attitudes, beliefs, and activities that best measure Jewish identity. At issue, according to these studies, is the very survival of the Jewish community itself. But such studies rarely ask what actually is being examined when we attempt to assess "Jewish identity" or any identity. Most tend to assume that identity is a preexisting, relatively fixed frame of reference reflecting shared cultural and historical experiences.
Drawing on recent work in such fields as cultural studies, poststructuralist theory, postmodern philosophy, and feminist theory, Mapping Jewish Identities challenges this premise. Contesting conventional approaches to Jewish identity, contributors argue that Jewish identity should be conceptualized as an ongoing dynamic process of "becoming" in response to changing cultural and social conditions rather than as a stable defining body of traits.
Contributors, including Daniel Boyarin, Laura Levitt, Adi Ophir, and Gordon Bearn, examine such topics as American Jews' desires to connect with a lost immigrant past through photography, the complicated function of the Holocaust in the identity formation of contemporary Jews, the impact of the struggle with the Palestinians on Israeli group identity construction, and the ways in which repressed voices such as those of women, Mizrahim, and Israeli Arabs have changed our ways of thinking about Jewish and Israeli identity.
About the Author
LAURENCE J. SILBERSTEIN is Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University. His most recent book is Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture.