Tim Christiaens, "Digital Working Lives: Worker Autonomy and the Gig Economy "
English | ISBN: 1538173735 | 2022 | 170 pages | PDF | 1372 KB
Recent innovations in digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the world of work. A digital gig economy is emerging that threatens to displace traditional labour relations based on legally regulated labour contracts. Companies like Uber, Deliveroo, or Amazon Mechanical Turk rely increasingly on 'independent contractors' who earn piece-rate wages by completing tasks sent to them via their smartphones. This development understandably pushes workers to desire more autonomy, but what would workers' autonomy mean in the digital age?

James Furner, "Rescuing Autonomy from Kant: A Marxist Critique of Kant's Ethics "
English | ISBN: 9004527508 | 2023 | 352 pages | PDF | 1375 KB
In Rescuing Autonomy from Kant, James Furner argues that Marxism's relation to Kant's ethics is not one of irrelevance, complementarity or incompatibility, but critique. Although Kant's formulas of the categorical imperative presuppose a belief in God that Kant cannot motivate, the value of autonomy can instead be grounded by appeal to an antinomy in capitalism's basic structure, and this commits us to socialism.

From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus: The Soviet Union and the Making of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh (Central Asian Studies) By Arsène Saparov
2014 | 216 Pages | ISBN: 0415658020 | PDF | 6 MB
This book is the first historical work to study the creation of ethnic autonomies in the Caucasus in the 1920s - the transitional period from Russian Empire to Soviet Union. Seventy years later these ethnic autonomies were to become the loci of violent ethno-political conflicts which have consistently been blamed on the policies of the Bolsheviks and Stalin. According to this view, the Soviet leadership deliberately set up ethnic autonomies within the republics, thereby giving Moscow unprecedented leverage against each republic. From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus questions this assumption by examining three case studies: Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh are placed within the larger socio-political context of transformations taking place in this borderland region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines demographic, social and economic consequences of the Russian colonization and resulting replacement of traditional societies and identities with modern ones. Based on original Russian language sources and archival materials, the book brings together two periods that are usually studied separately - the period of the Russian Civil War 1917-20 and the early Soviet period - in order to understand the roots of the Bolshevik decision-making policy when granting autonomies. It argues that rather than being the product of blatant political manipulation this was an attempt at conflict resolution. The institution of political autonomy, however, became a powerful tool for national mobilization during the Soviet era. Contributing both to the general understanding of the early Soviet nationality policy and to our understanding of the conflicts that have engulfed the Caucasus region since the 1990s, this book will be of interest to scholars of Central Asian studies, Russian/Soviet history, ethnic conflict, security studies and International Relations.

Fiscal Federalism in Multinational States: Autonomy, Equality, and Diversity
English | 2021 | ISBN: 0228006090 | 301 Pages | PDF (True) | 12 MB
Substate nationalism is often studied as a question of political identity and cultural recognition. The same applies to the study of multinational federalism - it is mainly conceived as a tool for the accommodation of minority cultures and identities. Few works in political philosophy and political science pay attention to the fiscal and redistributive dimensions of substate nationalism and multinational federalism. Yet nationalist movements in Western countries make crucial claims about fiscal autonomy and the fair distribution of resources between national groups within the same state.

The Autonomy of the Political: Carl Schmitt's and Lenin's Political Realism By Eckard Bolsinger
2001 | 240 Pages | ISBN: 0313316929 | PDF | 5 MB
In contrast to sociological debates about the inherently violent nature of modern politics, current political theory has little to say about the place of force, violent conflicts, and coercive power in politics. Bolsinger urges a reexamination of the political thought of Carl Schmitt and Lenin since they conceptualized the nature of politics as founded on force, domination, and conflict. Bolsinger argues that a fresh look at these two thinkers may serve as a remedy for the contemporary neglect of these hard facts of political life. Much as one might reject their views as politically dangerous or morally repulsive, political theory has to come to terms with the problems they raised and the solutions they offered.In conceptualizing politics mainly in terms of violence, struggle, and power, Bolsinger explains that Schmitt's and Lenin's theories represent central contributions to the realist or power politics traditional in political thought. In focusing on the conceptual relations between politics and armed conflicts and between power and violence, he demonstrates how Schmitt and Lenin succeed in constructing the specificity and autonomy of the political in opposition to other spheres of social life. Bolsinger maintains that realist political theory provides a valuable frame of reference to understand the basic mechanisms of political change and order. An important resource for scholars and students involved with the foundations of politics, twentieth-century political thought, and the relation between politics and violence.

The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism By Robert P. George (editor)
1999 | 352 Pages | ISBN: 0198267908 | PDF | 61 MB
This collection of original papers from distinguished legal theorists offers a challenging assessment of the nature and viability of legal positivism, a branch of legal theory which continues to dominate contemporary legal theoretical debates. To what extent is the law adequately described asautonomous? Should law claim autonomy? These and other questions are addressed by the authors in this carefully edited collection, and it will be of interest to all lawyers and scholars interested in legal philosophy and legal theory.

Jerome B. Schneewind, "The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy"
English | 1997 | ISBN: 052147938X, 0521473993 | PDF | pages: 632 | 32.6 mb
J.B. Schneewind's remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. In its range, analyses, and discussion of the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics.

Christopher Watkin, "New Interdisciplinary Perspectives On and Beyond Autonomy "
English | ISBN: 1032364076 | 2022 | 228 pages | PDF | 12 MB
What does 'autonomy' mean today? Is the Enlightenment understanding of autonomy still relevant for contemporary challenges? How have the limits and possibilities of autonomy been transformed by recent developments in artificial intelligence and big data, political pressures, intersecting oppressions and the climate emergency? The challenges to autonomy today reach across society with unprecedented complexity, and in this book leading scholars from philosophy, economics, linguistics, literature and politics examine the role of autonomy in key areas of contemporary life, forcefully defending a range of different views about the nature and extent of resistance to autonomy today. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the predicament and prospects of one of modernity's foundational concepts and one of our most widely cherished values.

Giedrius Česnakas, "European Strategic Autonomy and Small States' Security: In the Shadow of Power "
English | ISBN: 1032350075 | 2022 | 226 pages | PDF | 16 MB
This book analyses whether the EU's drift towards European strategic autonomy presents a challenge or a window of opportunity for its small member states to advance their security interests.

Jennifer Goett, "Black Autonomy: Race, Gender, and Afro-Nicaraguan Activism"
English | 2016 | ISBN: 1503600548, 0804799563 | PDF | pages: 235 | 9.4 mb
Decades after the first multicultural reforms were introduced in Latin America, Afrodescendant people from the region are still disproportionately impoverished, underserved, policed, and incarcerated. In Nicaragua, Afrodescendants have mobilized to confront this state of siege through the politics of black autonomy. For women and men grappling with postwar violence, black autonomy has its own cultural meanings as a political aspiration and a way of crafting selfhood and solidarity.