Political geography Books

Book SynopsisThe 10-year anniversary edition of the runaway bestseller

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Book SynopsisWhat should a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. Through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities are built into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. She maps the city from new vantage points, laying out a feminist intersectional approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together.Trade ReviewThis original study of the gendering processes occurring in the neoliberal city is a significant addition to scholarly debate on cities and gender. Empirically grounded in the intricacies of the condo market in Toronto, it both adds to, and updates, the pathbreaking work around gendered critical urban analysis. An accessible and incisive text that will no doubt instigate future discussions -- Loretta Lees, Cities Group, Department of Geography, King’s College, London * [for Sex and the Revitalised City] *Cities aren't built to accommodate female bodies, female needs, female desires. In this rich, engaging book the feminist geographer Leslie Kern envisions how we might transform the "city of men" into a city for everyone. Let's all move there immediately.' Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse[An] insightful scholarly work ... This provocative analysis will resonate with theoretically minded feminists. * Publishers Weekly *An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * Tribune *Kern resists drawing a blueprint for a new master-planned feminist city. Instead, she believes we ought to take a closer look at how cities perpetuate inequality from the perspective of race, gender, ability, and class. -- Diana Budds * Curbed *An intersectional analysis of our urban environments through a combination of personal narrative, theory, and pop culture analysis. -- Leilah Stone * Metropolis Magazine *[Feminist City] examines the city's paradoxical ability to oppress and emancipate-how an environment teeming with gendered inconvenience, racial discrimination, and sexual violence can also be a locus of queer independence, community care, and emancipatory feminist world-making. ... Heavily researched but accessibly written, the book is a dynamic mix of high and low, facts and feelings, research and reality. * Hazlitt *Kern delves into the interlocking inequalities and systems of oppression that take concrete shape in cities, using an intersectional feminist approach to explore the gendered aspects of urban space...an enjoyable and accessible book that not only contributes to urban feminist geography, but to urban planning and policy more broadly * LSE Review of Books *[Feminist City is] a small but provocative book. It is both an introduction to feminist geography and to modern feminism, with its multiple meanings and numerous contradictions. ... In a world where the male gaze is so often the only gaze considered, so much so [that] most people don't even think of it as being gendered in any way, Feminist City is revelatory. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *Looking through the lens of geography, pop culture and public and personal history, the book exposes how female bodies are ostracised in urban spaces. * Refinery29 *There should be more books like this...Feminist City is wide-ranging and sophisticated, brief and engaging. * ICON Magazine *Kern [wants] to envi­sion a more inclu­sive city that con­sid­ers the phys­i­cal and cul­tur­al needs of its most mar­gin­al­ized mem­bers. -- Apoorva Tadepalli * In These Times *[Kern] introduces readers to a number of different ways the city is at once emancipatory and endangering. She deploys an intersectional lens to explore such themes as mobility, protest, adolescence, and friendship, weaving together an impressive array of sources from academic writings and popular culture (Doreen Massey appears alongside Two Dope Queens). -- Sophie Gonick * Public Books *

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Book SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, InspiringThe Arctic is demanding global attention. It is warming, melting, and thawing in a manner that threatens fundamental state-change. For communities that call the Arctic ''home'' this is unwelcome. A warming Arctic brings with it the spectre of costly disruption and interference in indigenous lives and communal welfare. For others, the disappearance of sea ice makes the Arctic appear more accessible and less remote. This also brings with it dangers such as the prospect of a new era of great power rivalries involving China, Russia, and the United States. Submarine and long-range bomber patrolling are now commonplace. New terms such as ''global Arctic'' are being used to capture the dynamic of change while others muse about the ''return of a Cold War''.The reality is inevitably more complex. The physical geography of the Arctic is highly varied and variable. Environmental change brings opportunities for indigenous and non-indigenous life-forms to survive and even thrive. The Arctic''s four million people are not helpless pawns in a game of global geopolitics. The Arctic is not only a resource hotspot but also a place where sustainable energy systems are being introduced. A warming Arctic with less ice and permafrost is not unique in the longer history of the Earth either. The Arctic is a complex space. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds and Jamie Woodward consider the major dimensions of the region and the linkages beyond - from the geopolitical to the environmental. They examine the causes, drivers, and effects of cultural, physical, political, and economic change, and ponder the future of the Arctic. As they show, it is a future which will affect us all.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewThis book is an excellent introduction to the region and will appeal to almost every geographer. * Robert A. Francis, Progress in Physical Geography (2022) *This book will be of significant use to students and publics new to the Arctic. The authors have achieved exactly what is suggested by the title: a short but detailed introduction to the Arctic. Accessible and concise but comprehensive, tackling both physical and human Arctic worlds, The Arctic is a strong and necessary addition to the Very Short Introduction series. * Alice Oats, The Polar Journal *Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Arctic world Chapter 2: The physical environment Chapter 3: Arctic ecosystems Chapter 4: Peoples of the Arctic Chapter 5: Exploration and exploitation Chapter 6: Arctic governance Chapter 7: The Arctic carbon vault Chapter 8: Arctic futures

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Book SynopsisThis innovative and thought-provoking text will teach you about the diverse and increasingly expansive sub-discipline of geopolitics. Divided into three sections, Political Geography draws on case studies from a diverse range of scales, contexts, and demographics, to introduce you to the key approaches, concepts, and futures of geopolitics. You will cover an extensive range of key topics in Political Geography, from feminist geopolitics to non-human worlds, and nationalism to peace and resistance. Throughout this first edition you will apply various theoretical lenses, utilise a wide range of examples both past and present, and draw on cutting edge scholarship to reinvigorate your understanding of important themes such as the state, borders, and territory. Based on the award-winning course at RHUL, Politcal Geography includes a variety of sites, spaces, materials, and images alongside ‘In the field’ tips, ideas for practical dissertation research, and tasks to facilitate active follow-on learning. Case studies, key terms, key questions and learning exercises, and annotated readings are included throughout every chapter to aid understanding and help you to engage and reflect on the content. Designed as a core text for undergraduates and an introductory text for postgraduates with an interest in Political Geography. Rachael Squire is lecturer in Human Geography at Royal Holloway University of London Anna Jackman is lecturer in Human Geography at University of Reading Trade ReviewSquire and Jackman have produced the fresh take on political geography for which undergraduates have been waiting. Political geography is more than ever in the news, and students looking for the conceptual tools to make sense of it need look no further: from decolonisation movements, to our relationships to technology and the digital, to the contestation of popular culture, this book has it all. And crucially, it has hope – something that can be in short supply these days. -- Jason DittmerThis impressive textbook makes important and complex ideas understandable and interesting. By presenting pressing topics of violence and inequality alongside hopeful resources for peaceful and sustainable futures it strikes the delicate balance between political urgency and pastoral sensitivity. -- Nick MegoranThis is the must-read textbook for any student studying Political Geography. Exploring how power, politics and space shape our complex world, this cutting-edge textbook takes geopolitics to unexpected and exciting places. Through an exciting range of case studies, Political Geography clearly guides students through the key themes, ideas and concepts that underpin the subdiscipline. -- Sarah HughesTable of ContentsChapter 1: Political Geography: Approaches, concepts, futures Chapter 2: Situating Political Geography: Tracing the emergence of the sub-discipline Chapter 3: Feminist geopolitics: Sites, spaces, scales Chapter 4:. Decolonising: Dismantling architectures of privilege Chapter 5: Non-human worlds: From objects to animals Chapter 6: Popular Geopolitics: Shaping geopolitical imaginations Chapter 7: States and territory: Heights, depths and thinking ‘volume’ Chapter 8: Borders: From state lines to the body Chapter 9: Nationalism: Flags, fears, and fictions Chapter 10: Mobilities: Geopolitics in motion Chapter 11: Violence: Practice and experience Chapter 12: Peace and resistance: Decentring war Chapter 13: Surveillance: Geographies of digital space and life Chapter 14: Crisis and hope: Thinking with geopolitical futures

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Book SynopsisWe are the only species that uses fire. It has determined how we have made our home on this planet and it has propelled us to the role of the dominant species in the biosphere. But at the heart of contemporary climate change is the process of combustion. Simon Dalby explores what a life without burning things might look like, and how we might get there. Fires make the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is heating the planet, melting the ice sheets, changing weather patterns and making wildfires worse. Our civilization is burning things, especially fossil fuels, at prodigious rates. So much so that we are now heading towards a future “Hothouse Earth” with a climate that is very different from what humans have known so far. By focusing on fire and our partial control over one key physical force in the earth system, that of combustion, Simon Dalby is able to ask important and interesting questions about us as humans, including different ways of thinking about how we live, and how we might do so differently in the future. Simply put, there is now far too much “firepower” loose in the world and we need to think much harder about how to live together in ways that don’t require burning stuff to do so.Trade ReviewPyromania explores how we have reached the limit of the planet's natural resources and how we could stop burning up the atmosphere and using it as a free dumping ground for pollutants from fossil fuel. Fire, once an important element to human life, is now possibly our most relevant threat. -- Mia Funk, The Creative ProcessSimon Dalby gives us a radically new approach to the global problem of global heating and climate breakdown. Focusing on the human relationship with fire over time, he shows how our tardy response to the disastrously rapid burning of fossil carbon is forcing us to come to terms with the downside of that relationship. Essential reading. -- Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies, Bradford UniversityIn this remarkable tour de force, Simon Dalby convincingly shows how humanity's drive to exploit fire, in all its forms, has shaped world history and is transforming the planet – in an increasingly destructive fashion. The intensive combustion of fossil fuels, he argues, has enabled the rise of our modern, high-tech civilization, but now threatens to ravage our world unless we rapidly decrease our reliance on those very fuels. Sweeping in its scope and relevance, indisputable in its conclusions, Pyromania is an urgent plea for human and planetary transformation. -- Michael T. Klare, Professor Emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies, Hampshire College, AmherstIn 1954 the anthropologist and essayist Loren Eiselely wrote, ‘Man's long adventure with knowledge has, to a very marked degree, been a climb up the heat ladder ... and he is himself a flame – a great, roaring, wasteful furnace devouring irreplaceable substances of the earth’. In Pyromania, Simon Dalby builds brilliantly on Eiseley’s sketch, laying out the threats posed by humanity’s unbridled 'firepower' and offering a compelling call for a post-combustion path to progress. -- Andrew Revkin, author of The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico MendesThe world is burning but our international politics are ill-suited to firefighting. In this challenging yet accessible book, Dalby analyses the new geopolitics of the fire age, pinpointing the urgent action needed to cure the modern world of pyromania. -- Jo Sharp, Professor of Geography, University of St Andrews and Geographer Royal of ScotlandTable of ContentsIntroduction: A World on Fire 1. The Problem of Firepower 2. Fire History and the Making of the Modern World 3. Rethinking Firepower and Geopolitics 4. Shaping the Future: A World After Firepower Conclusion: Join the Fire Department!

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Book SynopsisOne Korea or two?The persistence of North and South Korea since 1948 has been a source of one war and fears of new wars. Although they share centuries of common culture, society and politics, the two nations differ on fundamentals today: capitalist democracy in the south and totalitarian communism in the north. Dynamics of the Korean State provides a unique overview of how humans treasure their individual lives and how these dynamics intertwine with Korean history and state evolution.The book examines the development of the Korean state from ancient times and sees its roots in the Stone Age struggle for survival. The persistent theme has been to Prolong Life — Postpone Death. Hence, the origins of every state can be found in man's Will-to-Live, and this is demonstrated in the Will/action framework offered by the author. Human Will, not material determinism or divine plan, creates the state. This primary Will generates five other Wills, which motivate actions to culminate in the state and give it a fluidity over time. The six Wills/actions are as follows: Will-to-Live/production; Will-to-Freedom/innovation; Will-to-Power/organization; Will-to-Comply/enforcement; Will-to-Transcend/political vision & religion; and Will-to-Redirect/reform, usurpation, rebellion, revolution. These in combination influence and partially determine state configuration and fluidity, creating order, disorder, war, prosperity, and poverty along the way. This book reveals the undercurrents of Korean society, politics and history from a fresh perspective. Neither pure history nor descriptive politics, it is a significant contribution to a philosophical anthropology paradigm.

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Book SynopsisArtivism, is becoming a common way of denouncing conflicts, of being a megaphone of the unfairness, demanding more public space or pushing political agendas; in short, to highlight what does not work well. Artivists use art as a weapon of public and social exigency charged with particular doses of shrewdness, inventiveness, imagination, sense of humour and, above all, social impact, either throughout impressive pieces or the most subtle and invisible actions. Navigating through the curiosity, emotion and concern of the new artivists; We walk the paths of a creativity committed to reflection, criticism and the eternal pursuit of social justice.

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Book Synopsis''Deserves to be read by everyone interested in the future of the United Kingdom'' Andrew Marr, The Sunday TimesThere can be no relationship in Europe''s history more creative, significant, vexed and uneasy than that between Scotland and England. From the Middle Ages onwards the island of Britain has been shaped by the unique dynamic between Edinburgh and London, exchanging inhabitants, monarchs, money and ideas, sometimes in a spirit of friendship and at others in a spirit of murderous dislike.Tom Devine''s seminal new book explores this extraordinary history in all its ambiguity, from the seventeenth century to the present. When not undermining each other with invading armies, both Scotland and England have broadly benefitted from each other''s presence - indeed for long periods of time nobody questioned the union which joined them. But as Devine makes clear, it has for the most part been a relationship based on consent, not force, on mutual advantageTrade ReviewDeserves to be read by everyone interested in the future of the United Kingdom... this is analytical, synthetic, argumentative history at its best; it slays lazy myths and tells us the "why" of a momentous story every intelligent Briton ought to understand...cracking. -- Andrew Marr * The Sunday Times *Brilliant. Easily surpasses any of the glut of books surrounding our constitutional upheaval of the last five years or so. -- Kevin McKenna * The Observer *Never less than compelling ...Independence or Union is his best book to date, is required reading and a perfect example of why history matters. -- Alan Taylor * The Herald *Surefooted, balanced and reliable in analysis throughout. -- Colin Kidd * London Review of Books *The book offers a crisp and well-paced assessment of the Union... a thoroughly reasoned assessment -- Donald MacRaild * Times Higher Education *Briskly, clearly and fairly he sketches a complex and detailed history, bringing new life and fresh perspectives to old stories... if he hadn't already been knighted for services to Scottish history, Devine would have been high on the list for preferment after this new work. -- John McTernan * Prospect Magazine *Devine brings his usual acute historical critique to the question in hand. -- Keith M. Brown * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisRich in case study insights, this book provides an overview of city-region building and considers how governance restructuring shapes political, economic, social and cultural landscapes. Reviewing city regions in Britain, the authors address the tensions and opportunities for local elites and civil society actors.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Onward devolution and city regions Northern powerhouses Metro governance dynamics Precarious city regions Elite city deals Beyond cities in regions City- region limits Conclusions: City- regional futures

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Book Synopsis''A superb book about the tribalism gripping British politics. Tribes is measured, searching, pitilessly self-scrutinising and would probably amaze anyone who knows its author only from his Twitter persona'' Decca Aitkenhead, Sunday TimesDavid was the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School and practised as a barrister before entering politics. He has served as the Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000. Today, David is one of Parliament''s most prominent and successful campaigners for social justice. He led the campaign for Windrush British citizens to be granted British citizenship and has been at the forefront of the fight for justice for the families affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.In 2007, inspired by the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and looking to explore his own African roots, David Lammy took a DNA test. Ostensibly he was a middle-aged husband & father, MP for Tottenham and a die-hard Spurs fan.Trade ReviewLammy writes with nuance and sensitivity and accepts the lack of easy answers. But his core message is simple. We must cooperate more, compromise more, communicate more. Only connect, but offline * Prospect *A superb book about the tribalism gripping British politics. Tribes is measured, searching, pitilessly self-scrutinising and would probably amaze anyone who knows its author only from his Twitter persona * Sunday Times *Episodes of memoir, including DNA tests, a police frisking and a death threat, enliven the Labour MP's first-rate study of social division * Guardian *It is rich, in thought, history, anecdote and experience * The New European *The best section of the book is a sympathetic account of why people voted Brexit from a zealous Remainer MP who insists Brexit is driven by xenophobia * Evening Standard *Tribes examines how to bring together a fractious country without smothering legitimate political grievances in the process * Guardian *Absorbing analysis . . . thoughtful, nuanced book . . . this book asks the right questions * Observer *Blends memoir with shrewd analysis of the current political landscape . . . He interrogates subjects suchas polarisation, tribalism and identity politics with aplomb, bringing in voices from opposing backgroundsand views . . . The most powerful parts of the book, though, are the explorations of his own compulsion to belong * The Independent *A vital contribution to the political debate * New Statesman *Ambitious . . . [this book] helps us understand aspects of tribalism * Financial Times *Navigating diverse cultures taught him to appreciate different perspectives, and makes him an incisive diagnostician of our familiar ills - economic decline, political polarisation and terrible loneliness. But Lammy also has inspiring ideas for putting things right * East Anglian Daily Times *A fascinating and thought-provoking reflective journey across cultures, centuries and continents. This bookwill become a classic and an important tool for anyone studying social and political history and the rapidly changing dynamics of tribalism -- Floella Benjamin * The House Magazine *Compelling reading for understanding the rich lifeblood of our incredible shared city and the forces which shape us * Big Issue *

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Book SynopsisMigrating borders and moving timesanalyses migrant border crossings in relation to their everyday experiences of time and connects these to wider social and political structures. Sometimes border crossing takes no more than a moment; sometimes hours; some crossers find themselves in the limbo of detention; for others, the crossing lasts a lifetime to be interrupted only by death. Borders not only define separate spaces, but different temporalities. This book provides both a single interpretative frame and a novel approach to border crossing: an analysis of the reconfiguration of memory, personal and group time that follows the migrants' renegotiation of cross-border space and recalibrations of temporality.Trade Review‘A superb collection of contemporary excursions into little explored European worlds and from the vantage point of migrants themselves.’Brad Blitz, Middlesex University, EuropeNow Issue 25 -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: Crossing borders, changing timesMadeleine Hurd, Hastings Donnan and Carolin Leutloff-Grandits1 EU cross-border Passagenwerk Olivier Thomas Kramsch2 Negotiating 'neighbourliness' in Sarajevo apartment blocks Zaira Lofranco3 Border crossings, shame and (re-)narrating the past in the Ukrainian-Romanian borderlandsKathryn Cassidy4 Travelling genealogies: tracing relatedness and diversity in the Albanian-Montenegrin borderlandJelena Tosic5 Living on borrowed time: borders, ticking clocks and timelessness among temporary labour migrants in Israel Robin A. Harper and Hani Zubida6 New pasts, presents and futures: time and space in family migrant networks between Kosovo and western Europe Carolin Leutloff-Grandits7 Silenced border crossings and gendered material flows in southern AlbaniaNataša Gregoric Bon8 Missing migrants: deaths at sea and unidentified bodies in Lesbos Iosif Kovras and Simon Robins

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Book SynopsisThis book addresses the social, political and economic turbulence in which the UK is embroiled. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it explores proliferating crises and conflicts, from the multiplying varieties of social dissent through the stagnation of rentier capitalism to the looming climate catastrophe. Examining arguments about Brexit, class and ‘race’, and the changing character of the state, the book is underpinned by a transnational and relational conception of the UK. It traces the entangled dynamics of time and space that have shaped the current conjuncture. Questioning whether increasingly anti-democratic and authoritarian strategies can provide a resolution to these troubles, it explores how the accumulating crises and conflicts have produced a deepening ‘crisis of authority’ that forms the terrain of the Battle for Britain.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Battle for Britain and Conjunctural Thinking 1. Nations, Nationalisms and the Conjuncture 2. Turbulent Times: The Making of the Present Pause for Thought 1 3. Accounting for Brexit 4. Thinking Relationally: Class and Its Others 5. Building Blocs: Towards a Politics of Articulation Pause for Thought 2 6. An Accumulation of Crises 7. ‘The Best Country in the World’: Race, Culture, History 8. Holding It Together? The Coercive Turn and the Crises of Party and Bloc 9. Unstable Equilibria: The Life of the State 10. The Battle for Britain – and Beyond

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Book SynopsisFrom an expert who understands both sides of one of the world's most complex, controversial conflicts, a modern-day Guide for the Perplexeda primer on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.*Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award*"Can't you just explain the Israel situation to me? In, like, 10 minutes or less?" This is the question Daniel Sokatch is used to answering on an almost daily basis as the head of the New Israel Fund, an organization dedicated to equality and democracy for all Israelis, not just Jews. Can We Talk About Israel? is the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, grappling with a century-long struggle between two peoples that both perceive themselves as (and indeed are) victims. And it''s an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) inspires such extreme feelingswhy it seems like Israel is the answer to "what is wrong with the world" for half the people in it, and "what is right with the world" for the other half. As Sokatch asks, is there any other topic about which so many intelligent, educated, and sophisticated people express such strongly and passionately held convictions, and about which they actually know so little? Complete with engaging illustrations by Christopher Noxon, Can We Talk About Israel? is an easy-to-read yet penetrating and original look at the history and basic contours of one of the most complicated conflicts in the world.

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Book SynopsisWHEN EMPIRES CRUMBLE, WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE LEFT IN THE RUINS? In Rule Britannia, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson argue that the vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche. Fuelled by a misplaced nostalgia, the result was driven by a lack of knowledge of our imperial history, by a profound anxiety about Britain's status today, and by a deeply unrealistic vision of our future. At a time when close relationships with our near neighbours are more crucial than ever before, Britain has opted to surrender its remaining influence and squander international goodwill. And yet, there is hope. In this wide-ranging and thoughtful analysis, now fully updated to cover the fallout from Brexit and the impact of coronavirus, Dorling and Tomlinson argue that if Britain can reconcile itself to its new place on the world stage, a new identity can be born from the ashes. Rule Britannia is a powerful call to leave behind the jingoistic ignorance of the past and build a fairer Britain, eradicating the inequality that blights our society and embracing our true strengths.

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Book SynopsisFrom the United States to the United Kingdom and from China to India, growing inequality has led to social discontent and the emergence of populist parties, also contributing to economic crises. We urgently need a better understanding of the roots and costs of these income gaps. The Costs of Inequality draws on the experience of Latin America, one of the most unequal regions of the world, to demonstrate how inequality has hampered economic growth, contributed to a lack of good jobs, weakened democracy, and led to social divisions and mistrust. In turn, low growth, exclusionary politics, violence and social mistrust have reinforced inequality, generating various vicious circles. Latin America thus provides a disturbing image of what the future may hold in other countries if we do not act quickly. It also provides some useful lessons on how to fight income concentration and build more equitable societies.Trade ReviewThis is an excellent work on the complexities of inequality in Latin America and the lessons we can learn from ideas, social movements, and policies developed in middle income countries to reduce income and wealth inequality. This very important book is a must-read both for scholars of development studies and Latin American politics as well as for practitioners seeking to reduce inequality in developing and developed economies. * Dr Néstor Castañeda, University College London *A compelling case for the urgency of tackling inequality, in Latin America and the world, without falling into the temptation of a silver-bullet approach. Thanks to Diego’s insightful book, we now have a better understanding of the policies, politics and history of Latin American inequality. This book will be useful to succeed in the battle against social injustice in the region. * Rebeca Grynspan, Ibero-American Secretary General *Table of Contents1. Introduction: Lessons from the Land of Inequality 1.1. Inequality is growing in developed countries… and it is even higher in Latin America 1.2. Exploring inequality through case studies 1.3. The book’s argument: the economic, political and social costs of inequality 1.4. How do we move from here? Some Latin American lessons 1.5. The rest of the book 2. Latin America: Always the Most Unequal Region? 2.1. The most unequal region in the world? 2.2. It is about the rich, stupid! 2.3. Always Unequal? 2.4. No longer an exception: growing inequality in other parts of the world 3. The Economic Costs of Inequality: Poor Education, Lack of Innovation and Economic Crises 3.1. A historical excursion 3.2. The problem of education today 3.3. Inequality limits the opportunities to create more dynamic economies 3.4. The difficulties to tax the rich 3.5. Income inequality and financial crises 3.6. From the economy back to inequality 3.7. From Latin America to the rest of the world 4. The Political Costs of Inequality: Weak Democracies and Populist Solutions 4.1. The uncomfortable coexistence of democracy and elite power 4.2. The first wave of populism as a response to the democratic deficit 4.3. Coming to the present: the limits of democracy and a new populist response 4.4. Authoritarian breaks as extreme elite responses 4.5. From politics back to inequality 4.6. From Latin America to the rest of the world 5. The Social Costs of Inequality: Violence, Social Mistrust and its Consequences 5.1. The most unequal and most violent region at the same time 5.2. Inequality contributes to mistrust in neighbours and institutions 5.3. Inequality, discrimination and racism 5.4. From social problems back to inequality: the difficulties to create redistributive coalitions 5.5. From Latin America to the rest of the world: some warning signs 6. Changing Courses 6.1. Latin America as a warning to the rest of the world 6.2. The unexpected reduction of inequality in Latin America during the 2000s 6.3. What can Latin America do to reverse courses? 6.4. An agenda for equity in the rest of the world 6.5. Conclusion: hope or disappear?

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisA collection of political writings by the radical socialist and feminist geographer, Doreen Massey, edited by David Featherstone and Diarmaid Kelliher.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview and reconstruction of Lefebvre's theory of space and of the urban. Henri Lefebvre belongs to the generation of the great French intellectuals and philosophers, together with his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. His theory has experienced a remarkable revival over the last two decades, and is discussed and applied today in many disciplines in humanities and social sciences, particularly in urban studies, geography, urban sociology, urban anthropology, architecture and planning. Lefebvre, together with David Harvey, is one of the leading and most read theoreticians in these fields. This book explains in an accessible way the theoretical and epistemological context of this work in French philosophy and in the German dialectic (Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and reconstructs in detail the historical development of its different elements. It also gives an overview on the receptions of Lefebvre and discusses a wide range of applications of this theory in many research fields, such as urban and regional development, urbanization, urbanity, social space, and everyday life.Trade ReviewChristian Schmid's reception and interpretation of Lefebvre's oeuvre refers strictly to the French originals and represents the first comprehensive epistemological reconstruction of the theory of the production of space. On that basis many of the previous confusions in the development of a critical spatial theory are clarified. This is where I see the highest significance of this path-breaking publication. -- Prof. Dr. Benno Werlen, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, GermanySchmid's publication is a superb theoretical treatise on Lefebvre, clarifying many common misunderstandings. It is particularly timely for those urban China researchers who are keen to avoid past mistakes of randomly indigenising and appropriating Western concepts and develop locally relevant theories in fruitful conversation with critical urban research. -- Prof. Dr. Wing-Shing Tang, Hong Kong Baptist UniversityChristian Schmid provides us with a wonderfully lucid guide through the complexity and richness of Henri Lefebvre's oeuvre. Among the many contributions of the book is the powerful new light it sheds on Lefebvre's spatio-historical and dialectical theory of society. Without question, it opens up vital new possibilities for a renewal of social theory, empirical research and political practice. -- Gillian HartChristian Schmid's carefully translated and strategically updated volume offers the most comprehensive reconstruction of Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space available in the English language today. On the basis of an unusually methodical discussion of the various intellectual currents that converge in Henri Lefebvre's vast life work, Schmid gives us crucial insights about the deeply dynamic and richly multidimensional ways in which space is produced. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space constitutes mandatory reading for a wide audience ranging from specialists of 20th century social theory to thoughtful political organizers and practitioners of urban research. -- Stefan Kipfer, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York UniversityIn this authoritative book, Christian Schmid systematically reconstructs Henri Lefebvre's theory of space production as a general theory of the urban society. By critically expanding the German-language original, this volume shows both the basis and the outcome of four decades of Schmid's thinking and studying cities with Lefebvre. -- Lukasz Stanek, University of Michigan, Ann ArborChristian Schmid has written the most meticulous, comprehensive and lucid interpretation of French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre's incomparable oeuvre on space. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space is distinguished above all by Schmid's imaginative grasp of Lefebvre's dialectical method, especially in exploring spatial mediations of everyday life, state and capital. This book will be essential and exhilarating reading for anyone interested in how space is political. -- Kanishka Goonewardena, Geography and Planning, University of TorontoIn an age of planetary urban transformation, crisis and insurgency, Henri Lefebvre's ideas continue to inspire radical urban research and practice around the world. In this long-awaited translation and elaboration of a work originally published in German over two decades ago, Christian Schmid offers a comprehensive reconstruction and systematic interpretation of Lefebvre's philosophy of space, framed in direct relation to the challenges of deciphering ongoing patterns and pathways of urban restructuring, their contradictions and their potentialities. In so doing, makes a path-breaking contribution to radical urban theory. -- Neil Brenner

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Book SynopsisModels of Immigrant Political Incorporation brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to consider pathways by which immigrants may be incorporated into the political processes of western democracies. It builds on a rich tradition of studying immigrant incorporation, but each chapter innovates by moving beyond singular accounts of particular groups and locations toward a general causal model with the scope and breadth to apply across groups, places, and time.Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation addresses three key analytic questions: what, if anything, are the distinctive features of immigrants or immigrant groups? How broadly should one define and study politics? What are the initial premises for analyzing pathways toward incorporation; does one learn more by starting from an assumption of racialization and exclusion or from an assumption of engagement and inclusion? While all models engage with all three key analytic questions, chapters vary in their relative focus Trade ReviewThis analytically incisive collection by a superb array of scholars provides an indispensable guide to one of the most fundamental social processes of our time. Anyone interested in the political inclusion of newcomers will profit from this state of the art volume. * Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University *Table of ContentsTable of Contents ; Authors' Biosketches ; Acknowledgements and Dedication ; Introduction, by the editors ; I. Are Immigrants Distinctive? ; 1. Incorporation versus Assimilation: The Need for Conceptual Differentiation, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan ; 2. Is Incorporation of Unauthorized Immigrants Possible? Inclusion and Contingency for Non-Status Migrants and Legal Immigrants, Maria Lorena Cook ; 3. Tracks of Immigrant Political Incorporation, Christian Joppke ; 4. Ideas and Institutions in Immigrant Political Incorporation, Robert C. Lieberman ; 5. Immigrant Political Incorporation: Beyond the Foreign-Born vs. Native-Born Distinction, Janelle Wong ; II. How Broad Is Politics In Immigrant Political Incorporation? ; 6. Dimensions of Immigrant Political Incorporation, John Mollenkopf ; 7. Culture, Context, and the Political Incorporation of Immigrant-origin Groups in Europe, Rafaela Dancygier ; 8. Structuring Immigrants' Civic-Political Incorporation into the Host Society, Ewa Morawska ; 9. The Importance of Demographic and Social Contexts in Determining Political Outcomes, Monica McDermott ; 10. Thru-ways, By-ways and Cul-de-sacs of Immigrant Political Incorporation, Michael Jones-Correa ; III. How Should One Approach the Topic of Incorporation? ; 11. <"The Great Concern of Government>": Public Policy as Material and Symbolic Resources, Irene Bloemraad ; 12. The Political Economy of Immigrant Incorporation into the Welfare State, Nolan McCarty ; 13. Continuity and Change in the Citizenship Laws of Europe: The Impact of Public Mobilization and the Far Right, Marc Morje Howard ; 14. Political Opportunity Structures and the Mobilization of Anti-Immigrant Actors: Modeling Effects on Immigrant Political Incorporation, Michael Minkenberg ; 15. Behavioral and Attitudinal Components of Immigrant Political Incorporation, Gary Segura ; 16. Assimilation and Political Attitude Tradeoffs, Rahsaan Maxwell ; 17. Moving Up and In: Two Dimensions of Immigrant Political Incorporation, Jennifer Hochschild ; 18. Acquiescence or Transformation? Divergent Paths of Political Incorporation in America, Gary Gerstle ; IV. Rethinking Immigrant Political Incorporation: What Have We Learned, and What Next? Xavier de Sousa Briggs

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Book SynopsisChina has emerged as a dominant power in Eurasian affairs that not only exercises significant political and economic power, but increasingly, ideational power too.Since the founding of the People's Republic, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to increase state capacity and exercise more effective control over their western frontier through a series of state-building initiatives. Although these initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, increasing globalization, and the party's professed concerns about terrorism, separatism, and extremism have led to a region-building project in Eurasia. Garcia traces how domestic elite-led narratives about security and development generate state-building initiatives, and then region-building projects. He also assesses how region-building projects are promoted through narratives of the historicity of China's engagement in Eurasia, the promotion of norms of non-interference,Trade Review"Zenel Garcia has produced an in-depth examination of the historical underpinnings of China’s westwards expansion, now labelled the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Garcia utilises a rigorous theoretical framework concerning the co-constitutive relationship between state-building and region-building to evaluate the implementation of the BRI in the Eurasian landmass. He achieves this through the judicious deployment of rich troves of empirical data. The book fills a gap in terms of putting China’s current Eurasian expansion via the BRI into historical context in terms of earlier eras of government. Although other authors mention the fact that the BRI builds upon previous Chinese initiatives, few of them make this point the central focus of their research."---Jeremy Garlick, Associate Professor and Director of the Jan Masaryk Centre for International Studies, Prague University of Economics and Business."Zenel Garcia's thorough analysis of the impact of China and its Belt Road Initiative on the Eurasia region is timely and important to understanding the many political, economic and social issues involved. The author brings deep historical knowledge and a solid theoretical approach to explore what has been an understudied area, including the strong link between the Chinese domestic elite-led narratives about security and development with state-building and region-building initiatives. It is a must read for researchers, students, or anyone interested in both Chinese politics and the challenges facing Eurasia in the 21st century."---Sebastien Peyrouse, Research Professor, Central Asia Program, IERES, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington UniversityTable of Contents1.The Co-Constitution of State and Region-Building 2.National Integration and Regional Formation 3.National Consolidation and Regional Institutionalization 4.National Rejuvenation and Regional Transformation 5. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisSoutheast Asia is rapidly becoming a competitive space for geopolitical rivalries. The growth in China-U.S. strategic competition is creating deep anxiety among Southeast Asia leaders, China''s rising power is felt across every corner of Southeast Asia, and many leaders are worried about the long-term implications of rising Chinese influence in the region. The United States'' increasingly assertive approach towards China is welcomed by some governments, but the growth in tensions is creating deep anxiety about a possible new Cold War. How can the region prevent a repeat of the divisions and bitter rivalries of the previous Cold War?This book argues that Southeast Asia is emerging as an open, autonomous region, where small and middle powers can maintain their sovereignty and shape the regional order. Despite new superpower pressures, the region is moving towards a multi-polar order, with greater agency for Southeast Asian countries. The key to Southeast Asia''s future may beTrade ReviewShould feature not only in the briefing packets of those deployed to the region, but on the desks of their many minders back home. * Asia Times *Southeast Asia's Multipolar Future is meticulously researched and written in a lively and engaging manner. Through numerous interviews and conversations, Tom Parks refreshingly offers a view from Southeast Asia and accurately captures the visions and wishes of the people in the region. He demonstrates that smaller countries can shape their own future even in the midst of great power rivalry. In the process, Parks sees a way forward that does not necessarily end in conflict for the United States, China, and the region. * Selina Ho, National University of Singapore, Singapore *By reminding us that the middle powers in and around Southeast Asia have an interest in, and an impact on, the trajectory of great power competition in the Indo-Pacific, Thomas Parks fills in spaces too often ignored by policy makers and commentators. This is required reading for everyone with an interest in Asia's future. * Allan Gyngell, National President, Australian Institute of International Affairs, Australia *Thomas Parks has written an important and timely book, which should be read in all the relevant capitals, especially Beijing and Washington D.C. Parks deftly locates Southeast Asia in the wider context of East Asia, South Asia, and Australasia. The region benefits from multipolarity. * Tej Bunnag, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand *Parks demonstrates Southeast Asia’s agency in the unfolding geopolitics of the region, smashing the trope that ASEAN states are just passive victims of great power maneuvering. A must read for scholars and policymakers focused on the Indo-Pacific. * Michael J. Green, University of Sydney, Australia *Nuanced and insightful, this book offers an essential corrective to portrayals of Southeast Asian states as pawns on a Sino-American chessboard. Parks instead shows the region to be a bamboo forest: Southeast Asian governments bend to geopolitical winds but remain strongly rooted in defending their interests and autonomy. Parks illuminates how Southeast Asians exercise agency as they alternately engage with and resist external powers to craft a multipolar regional order. Anyone keen to understand international relations in Southeast Asia should read this book. * John D. Ciorciari, University of Michigan, USA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Small and Middle Powers in a Dangerous World 1.Southeast Asia’s Emerging Order 2.Unseen Agency 3.ASEAN: Indispensable and Misunderstood 4.The Normative Divide 5.Multipolarity Emerging 6.Diversifying Partners 7.Japan: The Understated Giant 8.Australia: Middle Power Balancing Act 9.India: A Fellow Traveler 10.Europe: Renewed Presence, Uncertain Future Conclusion: Averting History Bibliography Endnotes

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Book SynopsisBuilding on an abolitionist perspective, this book offers an essential critique of migration and border policies, unsettling the distinction between migrants and citizens. This is the only book that brings together carceral abolitionist debates and critical migration literature. It explores the multiplication of modes of migration confinement and detention in Europe, examining how these are justified in the name of migrants’ protection. It argues that the collective memory of past struggles has partly informed current solidarity movements in support of migrants. A grounded critique of migration policies involves challenging the idea that migrants’ rights go to the detriment of citizens. An abolitionist approach to borders entails situating the right to mobility as part of struggle for the commons. Trade Review'Martina Tazzioli’s book challenges us to connect struggles for the freedom of movement to commoning practices and abolitionist worlding projects, to decompartmentalise migration, border and refugee studies. To build these transversal alliances, Tazzioli grounds border abolitionism in migrants’ escapes, autonomous mobilities and spaces, and “free spots,” beginning not from state enclosure projects, but from actually existing abolitionist practices. Border abolitionism calls on us to do more than document the needless drownings, wasted times and choked lives or the injustices of contemporary migration control regimes. To practices border abolition, we must learn from migrants how to live and build institutions otherwise.'Lauren Martin, Associate Professor of Political Geography, Durham UniversityBorder abolitionism is an intellectually ambitious, creative, and original book, linking critical border, migration, and refugee studies to the contemporary insights of carceral abolitionism. Tazzioli starts not from normative abstractions but instead from the material and practical facts of migration and the confinement continuum that chokes migrants’ and refugees’ projects both to move across borders and then to stay and re-make their lives. This book’s refreshingly innovative intervention thus advances an idea of abolition that extends far beyond the border, in order to understand the struggles of migrants and citizens together. It will have a lasting impact on scholarship and activism.Nicholas De Genova, editor of The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 The zero-sum rights game: border abolitionism as an analytical gaze2 ‘Confine to protect’: hybrid spaces of migration containment3 Participatory confinement: extractive humanitarianism and asylum seekers’ unpaid labour4 Towards a genealogy of migrant struggles and border violence5 A history of mountain runaways and rescue: migrants at the Alpine borderConclusion

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Book SynopsisProviding a much-needed perspective on exclusion and discrimination, this book offers a distinct spatial approach to the topic of hate studies. Of interest to academics and students of human geography, criminology, sociology and beyond, the book highlights enduring, diverse and uneven experiences of hate in contemporary society. The collection explores the intersecting experiences of those targeted on the basis of assumed and historically marginalized identities. It illustrates the role of specific spaces and places in shaping hate, why space matters for how hate is encountered and the importance of space in challenging cultures of hate. This analysis of who is able to use or abuse space offers a novel insight into discourses of hate and lived experiences of victimization.Table of Contents1. Introducing Landscapes of Hate - Edward Hall, John Clayton and Catherine Donovan 2. Examining the Contours of Hate: A Critical Hate Studies Analysis - Zoë James and Katie McBride 3. Hiding the Harm? An Argument against Misogyny Hate Crime - Fiona Vera-Gray and Bianca Fileborn 4. Constructing Britain’s Hated Landscapes: The Linguistic and Ideological Construction of Toxteth - Alice Butler-Warke 5. Negotiating Landscapes of (Un)safety: Atmospheres and Ambivalence in Female Students’ Everyday Geographies - Matthew Durey, Nicola Roberts and Catherine Donovan 6. Becoming Visible, Becoming Vulnerable? Bodies, Material Spaces and Affective Economies of Hate - John Clayton, Catherine Donovan and Stephen Macdonald 7. The Role of Space and Place in Learning Disabled People’s Experiences of Disablist Violence - Ellen Daly and Olivia Smith 8. Hostility, Hate and Humiliation: Disability Hate Crime on UK Public Transport - David Wilkin 9. Safe Spaces or Spaces of Control? Racial Tensions at Predominantly White Institutions - Denise Goerisch 10. ‘It’s Not Hate to … [Say] That Gay Sex Leads to Hell’: Contesting Hate, Reiterating Heteronormativities - Kath Browne and Catherine Jean Nash 11. Speaking Back and Seeing Beyond the Landscapes of Hate - Rick Bowler and Amina Razak 12. Rethinking Responses To Hate: Towards a Socio-ecological Approach - Edward Hall  13. Afterword: Spatializing Hate: Relational, Intersectional and Emotional Approaches - Peter Hopkins

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Book SynopsisOver the past decades the nation state lost its political primacy by processes of devolution, Europeanisation and globalisation, which in turn enhanced municipal autonomy. Why do some cities seek to sidestep the state and widen their sphere of action? Bridging political geography, local politics and urban sociology, this book gives a new perspective on the state’s weakening authority and the parallel rise of cities as political actors. The author considers the tensions between central states and European cities, giving a new perspective to students and researchers in the social sciences.Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. The Ebbs and Flows of Cities as Political Actors 3. The Persistence of Urban Identity in the Global World 4. Fleeing the State 5. The Municipalisation of the European Political Space 6. Civitas Activa: The Mobilising Potential of Cities 7. A Municipal Way Out?

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Book SynopsisWinner of the IPEG 2022 Book PrizeThe global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilization - warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere.In this bold and radical new book, Campling and Colás analyse these and other sea-related phenomena through a historical and geographical lens. In successive chapters dealing with the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea, the authors argue that the earth's geographical separation into land and sea has significant consequences for capitalist development. The distinctive features of this mode of production continuously seek to transcend the land-sea binary in an incessant quest for profit, engendering new alignments of sovereignty, exploitation and appropriation in the capture and coding of maritime spaces and resources.Trade ReviewHere at last is a sophisticated and theoretically informed book about the maritime origins and development of capitalism. After this mighty blow against the bias of terracentrism, the history of the modern world will never look quite the same. -- Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human HistoryThis ground-breaking, immensely rich and densely argued book shows how criss-crossing sealanes have connected ports and cities, and brought together different modes of production and social classes. Over the centuries, the sea has circulated values, human subjects, and shifting modes of exploitation; in doing this, global capitalism has established new chains of activities and evolving patterns of extraction, exploitation, circulation and distribution of (surplus) value. This mighty work of scholarship traces these human endeavours; in doing this, it has opened fresh avenues of research. * Alfredo Saad-Filho, King’s College London *I can think of no other book that has dealt with the pivotal role of the sea in the evolution of capitalism as well as the wider canvas of capitalism's interaction with the sea with as much innovation and more comprehensively than this fascinating and lucidly written work by Campling and Colás. This is also a profoundly timely intervention, given the horrifying ways in which global warming, the scourge of plastic waste , and capital's ever faster depletion of marine life have degraded the oceans irreversibly. -- Jairus Banaji, author, Theory as History; and A Brief History of Commercial CapitalismCapitalism and the Sea has liberated me from the shackles of my earthbound imaginary. Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás have given us that rare opportunity: to rethink how historical capitalism works, marshalling a breathtaking crystallization of insights from environmental history, political economy, and social history. Capitalism and the Sea unsettles our conventional thinking about how power, profit and oceanic webs of life have shaped modernity, from its genocidal origins to today's planetary crisis. Their word for these gruesome and lucrative entanglements - "terraqueous" - doesn't roll off the tongue, but it will stick with you for a lifetime after reading this book. I will never think about capitalism the same. -- Jason W Moore, author, Capitalism in the Web of LifeThe role of the sea in the modern world is hugely unappreciated. Campling and Colas offer an unrivalled analysis of the political and economic forces that shape our relationship to the sea, and the labour of those who work on and around it. -- Jeremy Anderson, Head of Strategic Research, International Transport Workers' FederationA rich Marxian account of how the maritime made capitalism. Campling and Colas tell the absorbing, deeply researched, and sweeping story of how capitalism was forged through slavery, seaborne trade, naval projection of power, vast maritime empires and modern logistics. Capitalism and the Sea shows us that, in the words of the great St Lucian poet Derek Walcott, the sea is history. -- Laleh KhaliliA novel perspective...Capitalism and the Sea brings into focus important questions from the history of capitalism. -- Steve Edwards * Marx and Philosophy *An important and rewarding read, as well as a valuable addition to the growing body of work studying capital's relationship to ecology and the destruction of the environment on which we all rely. * International Socialism *An oceanic journey through the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea. * Morning Star *A fabulously wide-ranging new history of the last five centuries, covering the slave-trade, ecology, modern container ports and EEZ's, industrial fisheries, territorial disputes and much more. -- Tim Barton * Hastings Independent *An ambitious, systematic, and convincing account of the reciprocal impact of capital upon the salt-water world in the past 400 years. -- Nikolas Kosmatopoulos * Antipode *An engrossing and meticulously researched book that challenges conventional wisdom about the role of the sea in the modern world. -- Soumik Sarkar * Odisha Economic Journal *

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Book SynopsisWe are living in a unique "geo" age, where geography is appreciated again. The 21st century encompasses political and economic games where the multi-polar world, a new world order, and a new value system combine to develop new actors and new Industries. Business leaders are focusing more and more on global social issues, putting pressure on international political decisions such as the Space Race, global warming and migration. The 21st century is the era of knowledge & creativity (technology + knowledge + geography = "techknowledgeography" or Geofusion) where education and innovation are the most important investment. Knowledge is the currency of the future. When drawn with knowledge, the map of 21st century can be utilized to discover and conform to this new world! This book helps to explain how `Geofusion' provides the opportunities, which can give lasting value to the world.

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Book SynopsisHow the U.S. empire-state transformed post-1945 Afghanistan into a key site for reimagining development Established in 1961 by President Kennedy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is often viewed as an extension of the security state, playing a constant role on the ground in Afghanistan since the early sixties. The Quiet Violence of Empire traces USAID’s long and bloody history of development work in the region, revealing an empirically rich account of the transnational entanglements of imperialism and racial capitalism.Wesley Attewell carefully analyzes three chronological moments of development as counterinsurgency in action: the Helmand Valley Project, the Soviet–Afghan conflict, and the post-9/11 occupation in Afghanistan. These case studies expose how USAID’s very public commitment to bringing seemingly inclusionary forms of self-help, technical assistance, and market development to Afghanistan has been undergirded by longer-standing infrastructures of race war and racial management. Attewell exposes how one of the net effects of USAID’s development mission to Afghanistan has been to constrain the life chances of Afghan beneficiaries while simultaneously diverting development capital back to U.S. contractors, deftly underscoring the notion of development as a form of slow violence.The Quiet Violence of Empire asks the critical question: how might we refuse the ruse of USAID and its endlessly deferred promise of development? Thinking relationally across the fields of human geography, global studies, and critical ethnic studies, it uncovers the explicitly racial underpinnings of international development theory and praxis.Trade Review"This richly detailed and thoughtfully argued book shows the United States's deadly politics of aid and development as the race war that it is. A necessary reading of the twenty-first-century war on Afghanistan."—Laleh Khalili, Queen Mary University of London

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Book SynopsisGathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an "anti-state state" that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.Trade ReviewScholars like Ruthie Gilmore, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay, and formerly incarcerated people like Glenn Martin have all done work to expose the many injustices of the industry of our prison system. -- Jay-Z * Time *Ruth Gilmore lays bare the diabolical logic of neoliberal incarceration. She shows us that the prison is a symptom of the decline of our civilization, how the California Nightmare has produced its disposable population. Gilmore's depressingly hopeful analysis is a wake-up call for our somnolence. -- Vijay Prashad, author of Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, WorkfareRuth Gilmore, indefatigable activist-scholar, is one of our most dangerous and important minds. A radical geographer with roots in the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she pioneered the study of mass incarceration's catastrophic impacts on inner-city families and neighborhoods, and together with Angela Davis has played a catalytic role in the creation of today's movement for prison abolition. This powerful collection of essays is an indispensable conceptual armory for that struggle. -- Mike DavisRuthie's clarity and courage is a talisman for these monstrous times, and a guide out of them. -- Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.Abolition Geography isn't shallow romanticism. It is a rigorous criticism of capitalist social relations, which foment premature death and needless suffering of the poor and destroy the planet. Abolition geography is a human necessity for there to be freedom and a livable earth. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, one of the foremost revolutionary thinkers on abolition, draws on real historical traditions of getting free, showing us what is possible and necessary. -- Nick Estes, author of Our History is the FutureThis well-crafted assemblage of thirty years worth of Ruthie Gilmore's countless, brilliant interventions is a tremendous gift to our movements. While tending to grounded practices and particularities, Ruthie's meticulous mapping of interconnected histories offers us prescient analyses across scale, geography, and time. At a time of incredible uncertainty and global upheaval, Abolition Geography illuminates a political vocabulary and vision that reorganizes even conventional left ideologies; a tour de force and absolute must read for our collective trajectories of freedom making as world making. -- Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule and Undoing Border ImperialismThe leaderly wisdom of Ruth Wilson Gilmore infuses this hefty volume, making it an indispensible compendium of practical abolitionism. In her hands, reducing police powers and dismantling the prison industrial complex become immediate matters of political struggle. If you want to come to terms with the movement that shaped the "American Summer" of 2020, this is the best available starting point. -- Paul Gilroy, author of The Black AtlanticRuth Wilson Gilmore is one of the most impactful radical thinkers of our time. This compilation of thirty years' worth of essays, interviews, and co-written reflections, is evidence of the depth and breadth of her extraordinary political praxis. Powerful, provocative, inspiring and inciting, this edited collection offers a formidable indictment of racial capitalism and the carceral state, a deep, complex and multi-faceted portrait of abolitionist work, and a call to action. Readers concerned with freedom-making and liberation will read this brilliant body of work carefully and act decisively. -- Barbara Ransby, activist, historian and author of several books, including Making All Black Lives Matter and Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.Abolition Geography is a collection of three decades of Ruth Wilson's Gilmore's brilliance in the form of essays and interviews on the politics of abolition as a theorist, researcher and organizer. The result is a precious gift that will be read, studied and cherished for years to come by those of us who believe her when she says to be green we must be red, and to be red our world building must be planetary. -- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Noopiming: The Cure for White LadiesAn essential collection of writings from one of the most important thinkers on abolition, geography and racism of our time. -- Karla J. Strand * Ms.Magazine *Abolition Geography is the first collection of writing by this major thinker, activist, and writer in the fields of racism, geography, and incarceration. The book includes essays, articles, and interviews from the last two decades, covering topics such as the origin of mass incarceration and racial violence and the concept of the 'anti-state state'. * Autostraddle *Anyone with an interest in the critical theory of mass incarceration and social justice can't miss this first-ever compendium of writing by one of the most brilliant and radical minds in the field. [An] impactful guidebook for a whole new generation looking to join the movement. * The Chicago Review of Books *For over three decades, Gilmore's work has been crucial to the study of policing and prison abolition...Her newest anthology, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, includes essays on policing, capitalism and organizing [that] are more critical than ever two years after the largest street mobilization in decades. Expertly assembled by scholars Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, the anthology reproduces Gilmore's essays chronologically from 1991 to 2018. The only way to escape the cycles of police violence, protest and retrenchment will be to collectively build popular, abolitionist frameworks for relating to each other. Gilmore's work helps us move toward that goal. -- Andreas Petrossiants * AJ+ *A geographer by training, Gilmore has a sweeping understanding of prisons and policing, one that approaches the issue at scale. If you haven't read her yet, it's a good year to start. -- Lexi McMenamin * Teen Vogue *A scathing exploration of global systems of oppression through a lens of geography, in which [Gilmore] asserts that freedom and liberation are a physical, tangible place - they're material conditions, not platitudes and niceties from ultra-rich politicians. -- Kylie Cheung * Jezebel *Introduced by a stimulating essay by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, [Abolition Geography] ranges from theoretical chapters originally published in academic journals to public speeches and interviews conducted with other scholars. This anthology format allows the reader to see how Gilmore introduces, experiments with and then develops ideas in real time, taking us from the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the 2021 neo-fascist attack on the US Capitol building. -- Christopher McMichael * New Frame *Gilmore is clear as a bell: potent and factual on injustice, filled with sharp intelligence and even wit, but also somehow continuously surprising and emotional. With every page, Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, and the world in entirely new ways. -- Kamil Ahsan * NPR *Gilmore's work is enlightening and informative, a must-read for scholars and activists seeking a complex and interdisciplinary deep dive to effectively drive systemic change...Anyone committed to prison reform and social justice has much to learn from Gilmore's insights about the cognitive work and tactical organizing required to imagine and build an abolitionist future. -- Maileen Hamto * Seattle Book Review *Gilmore's prose is descriptive and direct; it describes a society whose economy has failed too many of its members and whose only solution is to create a police state. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *More than explaining or urging any single scalar change in social life, the purpose of Abolition Geography is to develop the ability of its readers to study the transformations of racial capitalism, figure out what to do about them, and follow through with enough patience to withstand the enormity of the task and enough urgency to get it done...Abolition Geography is written to be used. -- Kay Gabriel * Dissent *As Gilmore always reminds us, theory is a guide for action. This volume is a call to get on with the practice of getting free together. -- Orlando R. Serrano, Jr. * Smithsonian Magazine, Best Books of 2022 *Notable book, 2022 * Seminary Co-op *[Abolition Geography] is only the latest generous and supportive gift from Gilmore to liberation-minded abolitionist movements. This gift seems to be written as a call, an invitation to act and do...Abolition Geography contains fire, grit, and hope as well. -- Brit Schulte * The Avery Review *Gilmore highlights the role of social justice unionism and the ideological work of recognizing the continuum of exploitation and oppression and imperialism. Understanding the prison and policing system enables us to see how racist oppression and worker exploitation function to try to resolve the crisis of capitalism. Our people, our class, and our communities are the victims. * People's World *

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Book SynopsisIn what ways is climate change political? This book addresses this key - but oddly neglected - question. It argues that in order to answer it we need to understand politics in a three-fold way: as a site of authoritative, public decision-making; as a question of power; and as a conflictual phenomenon. Recurring themes center on de- and re-politicization, and a tension between attempts to simplify climate change to a single problem and its intrinsic complexity. These dynamics are driven by processes of capital accumulation and their associated subjectivities. The book explores these arguments through an analysis of a specific city - Ottawa - which acts as a microcosm of these broader processes. It provides detailed analyses of conflicts over urban planning, transport, and attempts by city government and other institutions to address climate change. The book will be valuable for students and researches looking at the politics of climate change.Table of Contents1. Introduction; 2. Making Climate Policy In The City Of Ottawa; 3. Networked Governance and Carbon Accounting In Ottawa; 4. Complete Streets and Its Discontents; 5. Intensifying Conflicts: Agonism and The Politics Of Urban Spatial Transformations; 6. Mapping Climate Experimentation In Ottawa; 7. The University Of Ottawa: Strategic Energy Management, Experimentation, and Repoliticization; 8. Renewing Democratic Politics: The Ottawa Renewable Energy Cooperative; 9. Conclusions; Index.

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Book SynopsisBetween 2002 and 2013, bilateral donors spent over $64 billion on AIDS intervention in low- and middle-income countries. During the same period, nearly 25 million died of AIDS and more than 32 million were newly infected with HIV. In this book for students of political economy and public policy in Africa, as well as global health, Kim Yi Dionne tries to understand why AIDS interventions in Africa often fail. The fight against AIDS requires the coordination of multiple actors across borders and levels of governance in highly affected countries, and these actors can be the primary sources of the problem. Dionne observes misaligned priorities along the global chain of actors, and argues this misalignment can create multiple opportunities for failure. Analyzing foreign aid flows and public opinion polls, Dionne shows that while the international community highly prioritizes AIDS, ordinary Africans view AIDS as but one of the many problems they face daily.Trade Review'In this sophisticated and insightful book, Kim Yi Dionne illuminates the challenges to global intervention against AIDS in Africa. With multi-method research and rich data, Dionne convincingly shows the disconnect between the priorities of international donors and the intended beneficiaries of aid and she argues that global intervention is undermined when donor priorities are privileged over citizens' priorities.' Dominika Koter, Colgate University, New York'Dionne uses fascinating cases across a number of sub-Saharan African countries to demonstrate how the mismatch between donor and citizen priorities limits the effectiveness of HIV programming, as does the sheer number of actors involved at multiple levels of governance. One of the book's key contributions is its attention to AIDS interventions at the subnational level, particularly the role of village headmen, which Dionne situates with rich detail in what she aptly calls the global supply chain of AIDS interventions.' Rachel Sullivan Robinson, American University, Washington, DC'Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Malawi, Dionne offers a provocative warning to the international AIDS community about the dangers of pushing policies without sufficient consultation and buy-in from local people who may have other priorities. This book will be of great interest to AIDS experts and development practitioners alike.' Joshua Busby, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin and author of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (with Ethan Kapstein)'Despite the massive investment of international donors to support HIV/AIDS programs in Africa, there has been far too little investigation of the politics of the allocation of these resources. Building off more than a decade of research, Kim Yi Dionne fill this gap by demonstrating how the priorities of global health donors are oftentimes misaligned with those who benefit from these programs (citizens) and those who are often engaged implement these programs (communities). She demonstrates how misalignments of priorities have contributed to poor program outcomes and likely poor health outcomes. Notably, her book shines an important light on the little understood role of village headmen in Malawi in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The implications of her work are clear and apply to all global health programs, donors need to invest more to better understand the needs of citizens to make better use of stagnating global health aid.' Karen A. Grépin, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario'This book will interest scholars in political science, public policy, public administration, development studies, public health, sociology, and anthropology. Its chapters provide an excellent and provocative introduction to the challenges and shortfalls of the AIDS response that would be suitable for undergraduate or graduate classes.' Lauren M. MacLean, Africa TodayTable of Contents1. Introduction; 2. AIDS in Africa: a significant challenge and a disconnected response; 3. Principal-agent problems and AIDS interventions in Africa; 4. AIDS in Malawi; 5. Policy priorities in the time of AIDS; 6. Seeing like a village: headmen as agents of the global AIDS intervention; 7. Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisOn 2 August 1708 Captain Woodes Rogers set sail from Bristol with two ships, the Duke and Dutchess, on an epic voyage of circumnavigation that was to make himfamous. His mission was to attack, plunder and pillage Spanish ships wherever he could. And, as Graham Thomas shows in this tense and exciting narrative, after a series of pursuits and sea battles he returned laden with booty and with a reputation as one of the most audacious and shrewd fighting captains of the age. He was then appointed governor of the Bahamas by George I with the task of suppressing the pirates who roamed this corner of the Caribbean and preyed on its shipping. He was equally successful as a privateer and pirate-hunter in an age when brutality and ruthlessness were the law of the sea. This study of Woodes Rogers is the first modern biography of an extraordinary adventurer. It is fascinating reading.

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Book SynopsisScientific practices of removing waste in mega-cities of the global South are embedded in socio-cultural belief systems which reproduce existing social hierarchies. Thus going beyond a techno-managerial approach in waste management, Sneha Sharma critically interrogates the politics around urban waste disposal in Mumbai, India. She undertakes an ethnographic journey to the city's most unwanted space, a dumping site, to reveal how spaces and people are made into waste through exclusionary formal and informal practices. Offering new insights on topics of urban marginality, informality, urban planning this book will attract scholars from sociology, urban studies, and human geography.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisPeople around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism and what difference does it make that neo-conservatives rather than neo-liberals are now in power? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics?These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. Closely argued but clearly written, ''The New Imperialism'' builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a ''new imperialism'' are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see.This new paperback edition contains Trade ReviewReview from previous edition 'The New Imperialism' merits the widest possible public. David Harvey is a social theorist known for a cool, analytical style born of interdisciplinary inquiry, coupled with a keen feeling for political significance. This book showcases his talent.' * The Boston Phoenix *'Harvey makes an important theoretical contribution to understanding contemporary empire's vicissitudes.' * The Times Higher Education Supplement *'This book is beautifully crafted, its prose accessible, its narrative one of mounting intensity and urgency. 'The New Imperialism' mounts a stunning indictment of our present institutions of power, while offering hopeful insights about how these institutions could be changed.' * Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics *'Navigating effortlessly between history, economics, geography and politics, with persuasive argument and lucid prose, David Harvey places today's headlines in context and makes sense of the early twenty-first century maelstrom we're all caught up in. His concept of accumulation by dispossession will go far. 'The New Imperialism' is a truly useful book.' * Susan George, Associate Director, The Transnational Institute, Amsterdam *Table of Contents1. All about Oil ; 2. How America's Power Grew ; 3. Capital Bondage ; 4. Accumulation by Dispossession ; 5. Consent to Coercion ; AFTERWORD ; Further Reading ; Bibliography ; Notes ; Index

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Book SynopsisA lucid and vibrant contribution to the field of urban studies, tracing the connections between radical urban theory and political activism.Trade Review'Merrifield is accessible, optimistic and even fun' -- New York Times'An exciting writer who brings a fresh perspective to the political debate' -- New Internationalist'Read Merrifield, whose writing is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly arid intellectual field' -- Duncan Bowie, The ChartistTable of ContentsPreface: Neo-Haussmannization and Its Discontents 1. Whither Urban Studies? 2. Old Urban Questions Revisited (and Reconstituted) 3. Cities under Tension 4. Strategic Embellishment and Urban Civil War 5. Sentimental Urban Education 6. Urban Jacobinism 7. Old Discourse on New Inequality 8. Every Revolution Has Its Agora 9. Taking Back Urban Politics 10. Whose City? The Parasites’, of Course... Afterword: The Parasitic Mode of Urbanization Index

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Book SynopsisThe 1990s saw geography transformed by a range of cultural and philosophical approaches. Designed for students as an introduction to these ideas, this book covers the history of geographic thought and explores world issues in social, cultural, political and economic geography using modern theory.Trade Review"Thinking Geographically offers students and faculty alike an elegant, concise, and thorough overview of contemporary theoretical concerns in geography. Easily accessible to those unfamiliar with social theory, this volume "pushes the envelope" of understanding by sketching the contours of post-structuralist spatial thought, including such critical emerging topics as geographies of text, the body, money, and globalisation. Brief biographies of influential theorists demonstrate how ideas are embodied and personified. This volume is highly useful for courses in human geography, the history and status of the discipline, and will stand as a milestone in the discipline's conceptual understanding over the next decade or more." Barney Warf, Florida State UniversityTable of ContentsHistory of geographic thought; new geographies; geographies of the body; geographies of text; geographies of money; geographies of governance; geographies of globalization.

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Book SynopsisJenny Pickerill is a Professor of Environmental Geography at University of Sheffield, UK.

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Book SynopsisDavid Harvey is unquestionably the most influential, as well as the most cited, geographer of his generation. This book brings together for the first time seminal articles published over three decades on the tensions between geographical knowledges and political power and on the capitalist production of space.

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