In the past two decades, democratic institutions have faced a crisis of representation. From authoritarian backsliding in countries with recent democratic transformations, to severe challenges to established liberal democracies, the meaning of political representation and whether and when it succeeds has become highly debated. In response to an increasingly fraught political climate, Contested Representation brings together scholars from across the United States and Europe to critically assess the performance of representative institutions in Europe and North America. Taking an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, this volume looks at the viability of electoral institutions, the responsiveness of government to public preferences, alternative institutions for more inclusive democracy, and the political economy of populism. Chapters also address the broader normative question of how democratic institutions can be adapted to new conditions and challenges. Expertly researched and exceedingly timely, Contested Representation provides critical frameworks that highlight realistic pathways to democratic reform.

Popular Hindi cinema has become a significant signpost of contemporaneity due to its construction of social language. Generally, Hindi cinema has been understood through internal (auteur or genre or cinéma verité) and external aspects (consumption spheres and moviegoers’ complex response in the form of catharsis or everydayness mimesis). However, cinema also needs a new way of discerning with respect to ‘Dalit Representation’. The study needs to look at the construction and meaning of the social language of Hindi cinema. Construction refers to exploring factors beyond the film industry responsible for shaping the social language. Meaning entails the exhibition of social language in the form of messages. Herein, relational exploration becomes crucial. The relationship between factors of social language of Hindi cinema and Dalits must be unraveled for understanding the meaning of social language for Dalits. Contested representation encompasses the nature of absence and presence of Dalits in Hindi cinema.

The controversy surrounding the significant "Into the Heart of Africa" exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada is explored in this compelling and analytical text. The exhibit has become an international, controversial touchstone for issues surrounding the politics of visual representation, such as the challenges to curatorial and ethnographic authority in multicultural and postcolonial contexts. Asking why the museum's exhibit failed so many people, the author examines such issues as institutional politics, the broad political and intellectual climate surrounding museums, the legacies of colonialism and traditions of representation of Africa, and the politics of irony. By drawing upon anthropological and cultural criticism, the book offers a unique account of the ways in which an ambiguous exhibit about colonialism became the site of an expansiveInto the Heart of Africa."

The controversy surrounding the significant "Into the Heart of Africa" exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada is explored in this compelling and analytical text. The exhibit has become an international, controversial touchstone for issues surrounding the politics of visual representation, such as the challenges to curatorial and ethnographic authority in multicultural and postcolonial contexts. Asking why the museum's exhibit failed so many people, the author examines such issues as institutional politics, the broad political and intellectual climate surrounding museums, the legacies of colonialism and traditions of representation of Africa, and the politics of irony. By drawing upon anthropological and cultural criticism, the book offers a unique account of the ways in which an ambiguous exhibit about colonialism became the site of an expansiveInto the Heart of Africa."

War creates brutal landscapes of control and domination that embed historical differences, creating physical legacies of inequality and denial. Contested Spaces is a global study of sites of conflict, places of loss, fear, resistance and pilgrimage where the materiality of violence forcibly brings the past into the present. The collection draws together scholars from cultural history, cultural geography, art history, architecture, archaeology, media studies, international relations and American studies to examine a series of internationally significant sites and how they are inhabited, represented, witnessed and visited.

This text challenges mainstream thinking on welfare states, citizenship, family, work and social policy. It analyses the corresponding shifts in political discourse, and the changes in socio-political configurations that mirror changing gender relations.

This book provides the first in-depth look at male and female elected officials of color using survey and other empirical data.