Political Keywords: A Guide for Students, Activists, and Everyone Else

Recent history has seen profound change in the world s political landscape. With these changes, many formerly secure understandings of political terms have become lost, and the meanings of the words we use to describe our politics have become muddied. Frequently confusing, and often intentionally misleading, this language can be easily distorted in order to spin disputed ideas or justify questionable actions. At the same time, fresh insights about modern politics have been developed that remain little known or discussed outside academic circles. This account of political keywords addresses these circumstances with a view to rectifying them for the benefit of students, political activists, and a public desperately in need of clarity.

The entries in Political Keywords work together to create a timely dictionary of contemporary political vernacular from ′alienation′ to ′Zionism.′ Extensive cross–referencing, suggested further readings, and a comprehensive glossary make Political Keywords the ideal guide to navigating a landscape of dangerously vague terms.

Introduction.

Political Keywords A Z.

Glossary

Andrew Levine is Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington DC), and Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is author of many books, most recently Rethinking Liberal Equality: From A Utopian Point of View (1998), Engaging Political Philosophy: Hobbes to Rawls (Blackwell, 2001), A Future for Marxism? (2003), and The American Ideology (2004).

Andrew Levine s Keywords is at the same time a political dictionary, a course on political philosophy, and an analysis of the current political scene and prospects. It is also extremely readable, its abundant learning lightened by Levine s openness and wit, all helping to make Keywords accessible to a wide range of people interested in politics, propaganda, and the human prospect.
Edward S. Herman, co–author (with Noam Chomsky) of Manufacturing Consent, and author of Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda

Learned and lucid, impiously defiant of the academic church, this syllabus of heresies is a liberal education by and for itself.
Norman Birnbaum, author of After Progress: American Social Thought and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century

Andrew Levine has performed a monumental feat. He clarifies meanings of words and concepts which have been drained of value, but which people use as ear plugs to increase the deafness of thought and practice in our befuddled period. This book is an amazing accomplishment.
Marcus Raskin, co–founder of the Institute for Policy Studies and Professor, School of Public Policy George Washington University