Political science and theory Books

Book SynopsisThe relationship between established powers and emerging powers is one of the most important topics in world politics. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated how the leading state in the international system responds to rising powers in peripheral regionsactors that are not yet and might never become great powers but that are still increasing their strength, extending their influence, and trying to reorder their corner of the world. In the Hegemon''s Shadow fills this gap. Evan Braden Montgomery draws on different strands of realist theory to develop a novel framework that explains why leading states have accommodated some rising regional powers but opposed others.Montgomery examines the interaction between two factors: the type of local order that a leading state prefers and the type of local power shift that appears to be taking place. The first captures a leading state''s main interest in a peripheral region and serves as the baseline for its evaluation of any changesTrade ReviewIn this thoughtful study, Montgomery seeks to understand the logic that leads hegemons to variously support, accommodate, and oppose upstart states on their periphery. -- G. John Ikenberry * Foreign Affairs *Montgomery (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) provides a unique look at how leading states in the international system deal with rising states that challenge prevailing regional orders. Taking elements from a realist balance of power and a preponderance of power theories, the author develops a model to explain why leading states have supported some rising regional powers and opposed others.... The author seeks to determine the different strategies the leading states of Great Britain (and later the US) adopted concerning regional power struggles, including Egypt from 1831–41, the Confederate States of America, the rise of Japan from 1894–1902, India's emergence from 1962–71, and the rise of Iraq from 1979–91. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Puzzle of Regional Power Shifts 1: How Leading States Respond to Rising Regional Powers 2: Egypt's Bid for Mastery of the Middle East, 1831–1841 3: The Confederacy’s Quest for Intervention and Independence, 1861–1862 4: Japan and the Creation of a New Order in East Asia, 1894–1902 5: India’s Rise and the Struggle for South Asia, 1962–1971 6: The Emergence of Iraq and the Competition to Control the Gulf, 1979–1991 Conclusion: The Past and Future of Rising Regional Powers

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Book SynopsisOneida Utopia is a fresh and holistic treatment of a long-standing social experiment born of revival fervor and communitarian enthusiasm. The Oneida Community of upstate New York was dedicated to living as one family and to the sharing of all property, work, and love. Anthony Wonderley is a sensitive guide to the things and settings of Oneida life from its basis in John H. Noyes's complicated theology, through experiments in free love and gender equality, to the moment when the commune transformed itself into an industrial enterprise based on the production of silverware. Rather than drawing a sharp boundary between spiritual concerns and worldly matters, Wonderley argues that commune and company together comprise a century-long narrative of economic success, innovative thinking, and abiding concern for the welfare of others. Oneida Utopia seamlessly combines the evidence of social life and intellectual endeavor with the testimony of built environment and materiTrade ReviewThe most thoroughly researched and insightful study yet published about the development of the controversial Oneida Community.... Striking new insights abound.... Oneida Utopia is a remarkable scholarly achievement, a model community study.... Wonderley genuinely breaks new ground in this skillfully written and broad-ranging study. It is now the first book I would recommend to anyone seeking to gain a nuanced understanding of how the Oneida Community functioned and how it changed over time. * Communal Societies *Why do readers need another book on the Oneida Community when so many have already been published? Wonderley quickly addresses this question, arguing convincingly for his distinctive contribution, with evidence provided in carefully written and well-documented chapters followed by an extensive bibliography.... Because Wonderley is the former curator of the Oneida Community's historical collections, he is in a unique position to provide such an account. Fascinating reading! * Choice *Anthony Wonderley re-tells the [Oneida] community's history, stressing the collective dynamics of the group over its leader and effectively contextualizing it in nineteenth-century American culture. * The Journal of American History *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Perfectionism 2. Putney 3. Oneida Birthed and Left Behind 4. Creating a Community 5. Gender and Sex 6. Buildings, Landscapes, and Traps 7. Industrialization 8. Breakup 9. A Silverware Company 10. Welfare Capitalism Conclusion Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisIn Samurai to Soldier, D. Colin Jaundrill rewrites the military history of nineteenth-century Japan. In fifty years spanning the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the Meiji nation-state, conscripts supplanted warriors as Japan's principal arms-bearers. The most common version of this story suggests that the Meiji institution of compulsory military service was the foundation of Japan's efforts to save itself from the imperial ambitions of the West and set the country on the path to great power status. Jaundrill argues, to the contrary, that the conscript army of the Meiji period was the culminationand not the beginningof a long process of experimentation with military organization and technology. Jaundrill traces the radical changes to Japanese military institutions, as well as the on-field consequences of military reforms in his accounts of the Boshin War (18681869) and the Satsuma Rebellions of 1877. He shows how pre-1868 developments laid the foundatTrade ReviewJaundrill’s impressively researched study traces the origin of the modern Japanese military to the 1840s, when one martial arts teacher introduced a more westernized style of musketry and artillery training based on the Dutch example. * Foreign Affairs *An enthralling story with numerous twists and turns.... We already know a fair amount about the role the modern Japanese military played in inspiring innovations in science and public health, as well as in more generally modernizing society at large. Jaundrill provides a much-needed inverse perspective on what such innovations meant for the military by elucidating how the enormous conscription obstacles were overcome.... Historians of military and war in the Japan field have much favored writing about earlier periods—or of the Imperial armed forces of the twentieth century, particularly of the Asia-Pacific War. Samurai to Soldier constitutes an important missing link between these two strongholds. * Cross-Currents *... a genuine contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century Japan—rich in detail, but also focused and succinct. * Monumenta Nipponica *D. Colin Jaundrill's Samurai to Soldier is an important, well-argued book that addresses a significant gap in our understanding of Japan's transition from the Tokugawa to Meiji periods. * Harvard Asia Pacific Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Rise of "Western" Musketry, 1841–18602. Rising Tensions and Renewed Reform, 1860–1866 3. The Drives to Build a Federal Army, 1866–1872 4. Instituting Universal Military Service, 1873–1876 5. Dress Rehearsal: The Satsuma Rebellion, 1877 6. Organizational Reform and the Creation of the Serviceman,1878–1894 Conclusion

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Book SynopsisOn the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner provides a major reinterpretation of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in...Trade ReviewForgotten Foundations is classic interdisciplinary history, drawing on literatures from political science and economics as well as primary sources.... Helleiner has made an important contribution that will permanently re-frame how scholars conceptualize Bretton Woods. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *By tracing back the origins of the World Bank and the IMF to the Latin American push for creating an Inter-American Bank and US initiatives around the Good Neighbor financial partnership, especially the financial advisory mission to Cuba in 1941–2, the author succeeds in demonstrating that the development of poor countries was indeed a key issue for the founders of the post-war financial institutions. Helleiner drew heavily on detailed primary material for his research and presents with his beautifully written book a completely new reading of the Bretton Woods negotiations. * Political Studies Review *Helleiner's book is an erudite study of US financial diplomacy during the Roosevelt administration. To trace back the origins of state-led economic development to White and the 1930s, Helleiner covered a vast amount of secondary and archival sources. He thereby ends up doing much more than he set out to do. His book is in fact a tour de force of US financial diplomacy before and during the Second World War, set in the larger context of global relations, and it is essential reading for scholars interested in the history of international monetary affairs. * The Economic History Review *In a masterly historical analysis based on extensive archival research, Helleiner shows that poorer nations were anything but voiceless. Their delegates played an active role in shaping the discussions, and their development aspirations were by no means ignored. In previous works on topics as varied as the postwar revival of global finance and the evolution of money, Helleiner has already established himself as an outstanding historian of the international political economy. In this book, once again, he has done an important service in correcting the historical record. The book is organized in eight chapters—four on steps leading up to the 1944 conference and four on the conference itself, all written in the author's usual lucid manner. * Political Science Quarterly *Somewhat surprising given his background in Political Science, Helleiner has eschewed grand theorising in favour of arduous archival research. But this certainly works to his advantage: He is neither forced to plaster historical material with concepts nor is he running the risk of selecting facts according to the demands of a specific theoretical paradigm.... That it will attract a huge readership is beyond doubt. It is certain to become a landmark study for all those interested in Economic History, Development Studies and Global Political Economy, and aside from academia, all those who want to understand the shoals of international economic cooperation. * Journal of International Development *The author has done a lot of arduous work in archives, and has come up with highly interesting, even provocative results.... [T]his book is highly recommended reading, of interest not only to people working on Bretton Woods and its two institutions, but also to people doing research on the dogmengeschichte of development. * Zagreb International Review of Economics & Business *The central argument of Eric Helleiner's important and original new book is that economic development was a core goal of the Bretton Woods architects.... He marshals impressive new evidence to show that... U.S. policy makers focused as much—or more—on the development needs and aspirations of poorer countries as on the future reconstruction requirements of war-torn Europe and Asia.... The tragedy, says Helleiner, is that despite initial good intentions, the Bretton Woods system ultimately failed to live up to its developmental promise. Post-war idealism was soon eclipsed by Cold War realities, leaving the IMF and the World Bank as tools, not of global development, but of western anti-communist crusaders and free market ideologues. * Literary Review of Canada *In this remarkable book, Helleiner challenges the long held view that the Bretton Woods agreements were a product of Anglo-American negotiations, in which development issues received little attention and southern voices were largely absent. The book offers a very different interpretation... and shows how international support for the economic development of southern countries, particularly Latin American, was widely discussed during the negotiations.... Helleiner further suggests that this forgotten history and goals of the Bretton Woods may continue to generate some inspiration for policy makers in their efforts to recover from the current global economic downturn. Highly recommended. * Choice *The story Helleiner tells is based upon exhaustive archival research and an intimate knowledge of the secondary literature. The argument is persuasive; and it is expressed in a clear and unpretentious manner, a genuine bonus for the reader. Both the author and Cornell University Press have produced a book of which they can be justly proud. It deserves the attention of economists and historians with an interest in the origins of development economics and the evolution of the international monetary system. * Economic Record *Investigates the origins and content of the Bretton Woods agreements, illustrating how international development goals were incorporated into the liberal multilateral financial architecture and explaining how leaders of Southern countries, particularly those from Latin America, played a significant role in shaping the Bretton Woods outcomes. * Journal of Economic Literature *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: International Development and the North-South Dialogue of Bretton Woods1. Good Neighbors Prepare the Ground2. The First Draft: The Inter-American Bank3. A New Approach to Money Doctoring: Cuba4. Building Foundations: US Postwar Planning5. Strengthening the Foundations: Paraguay6. Latin American Backing for Bretton Woods7. Development Aspirations in East Asia8. Lukewarm and Inconsistent Britain9. Enthusiasm from Eastern Europe and IndiaConclusion: The Aftermath and the ForgettingReferences Index

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Book SynopsisAfter Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign of 195758, Chinese intellectuals were subjected to re-education by the state. In Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness, Ning Wang draws on labor farm archives, interviews, and memoirs to provide a remarkable look at the suffering and complex psychological world of these banished Beijing intellectuals. Wang's use of newly uncovered Chinese-language sources challenges the concept of the intellectual as renegade martyr, showing how exiles often declared allegiance to the state for self-preservation. While Mao's campaign victimized the banished, many of those same people also turned against their comrades. Wang describes the ways in which the state sought to remold the intellectuals, and he illuminates the strategies the exiles used to deal with camp officials and improve their chances of survival.Trade ReviewA fine piece of scholarly work contributing to knowledge of life within Chinese penal camps. The reading is essential to students and scholars of political banishment, China’s labor reformatory, Chinese intellectuals and the Communist Party, and China studies under Mao in general. * Choice *Wang Ning has presented us with an extremely rich study of beidahuang, and the transparency of his deployment of sources, as well as his acknowledgement of their limits, ensures this book will remain relevant and valuable in the long term.... Given the details he has from such a range of survivors of beidahuang, Wang's book is highly relevant to broader questions of how political prisoners experienced their sentence and life after release, on transitional justice, and on trauma and memory.... The first authoritative work on the topic. * The PRC History Review *Ning Wang's work inspires us to rethink thought and labour reform in China as part of a larger global history that continues to evolve. * Pacific Affairs *Wang's exploration of political exiles in Mao's China incorporates his exhaustive research into a truly beautiful narrative, full of individual voices, that is every bit as raw and moving as Yan's novel. The careful but deeply thoughtful readings of sources—recollections from captives, cadres, and guards, supplemented by official documents—makes Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). * Historical Studies in Education *This is a marvelously level-headed book. Until the concluding chapter, Ning Wang is restrained in describing horrors on the individual level and devastation in terms of the impact on the general society. But finally the pulling of punches ends, and we are asked to try to imagine 'the waste of human talent.' * The China journal *Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness turns out to be a piece of scholarship impressively grounded in a serious engagement with original materials. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. The Anti-Rightist Campaign and Political Labelling 2. Beijing Rightists on the Army Farms of Beidahuang 3. Political Offenders in Xingkaihu Labour Camp 4. Life and Death in Beidahuang 5. Inner Turmoil and Internecine Strife among Political Exiles 6. End without End Conclusion Appendix A: Interview List Appendix B: Note on the Sources and Methodology Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this sweeping portrait of the political culture of the early People''s Republic of China (PRC), Chang-tai Hung mines newly available sources to vividly reconstruct how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightened its rule after taking power in 1949. With political-cultural projects such as reconstructing Tiananmen Square to celebrate the Communist Revolution; staging national parades; rewriting official histories; mounting a visual propaganda campaign, including oil paintings, cartoons, and New Year prints; and establishing a national cemetery for heroes of the Revolution, the CCP built up nationalistic fervor in the people and affirmed its legitimacy. These projects came under strong Soviet influence, but the nationalistic Chinese Communists sought an independent road of nation building; for example, they decided that the reconstructed Tiananmen Square should surpass Red Square in size and significance, against the advice of Soviet experts sent from Moscow.Combining historTrade ReviewMao's New World is a series of illuminating essays on the culture of the early People’s Republic. * New York Review of Books *Chang-tai Hung's study of political culture in China in the 1950s is rich in detailed insights that complement his earlier treatment of the entwined subjects of politics and culture in War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945. * China Journal *Hung's meticulous research reveals the struggles over values and power behind the granite surface of revolutionary China’s new look. * Foreign Affairs *The book contains much comparison of Mao's China with Joseph Stalin’s Russia, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and the early years of the French Revolution. This authoritative survey of an important subject will be welcome to students of the period. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *The book makes a definite contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of cultural politics and political culture during the PRC's formative era. * American Historical Review *This study of the newly established regime in China in the early 1950s will appeal to a wide range of readers. Hung is particularly good at delineating the contested areas of modernity and tradition that were crucial in creating a new national identity. * China Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroductionI. Space1. Tiananmen Square: Space and Politics2. Ten Monumental Buildings: Architecture of PowerII. Celebrations3. Yangge: The Dance of Revolution4. ParadesIII. History5. The Red Line: The Museum of the Chinese Revolution6. Oil Paintings and HistoryIV. Visual Images7. Devils in the Drawings8. New Year Prints and Peasant ResistanceV. Commemoration9. The Cult of the Red Martyr10. The Monument to the People's HeroesConclusionNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisWorking the System offers key insights into the politics of the everyday in twenty-first-century dominant party and neo-authoritarian regimes in Africa and elsewhere. Detailing the many ways ordinary Angolans fashion their relationships with the systeman emic notion of their current political and socioeconomic environmentJon Schubert explores what it means and how it feels to be part of the contemporary Angolan polity.Schubert finds that for many ordinary Angolans, the benefits of the post-conflict New Angola, flush with oil wealth and in the midst of a construction boom, are few. The majority of the inhabitants of the capital, Luanda, struggle to make ends meet and live on under $2.00 per day. The New Angola as promoted by the ruling MPLA, Schubert contends, is an essentially urban, upwardly mobile, and aspirational project, premised on the acceptance of the regime's political and economic dominance by its citizens. In the first ethnography of Angola to be published sTrade ReviewWorking the System is a great book. It holds the promise of its subtitle and offers a deep ‘political ethnography of the new Angola’.... [It] skillfully keeps the balance between the sensitivity of an account at the first person and the reflexivity of an analysis in dialogue with a wide range of scholars. The result is that every encounter sounds both intimate and purposeful.... The capacity of this book to absorb the shock of fast-paced political transformation in Angola is certainly the best proof that it is worth not only being read but being read again! * Allegra Lab *Although the book is intended to be a political ethnography, it rapidly evolves into something more, becoming a vivid journey during which, anchored in the author's experience and mental map, the reader is masterfully taken through those "very real places" "where people live and die, and trade, shop, walk, love" (p. 54). Indeed, the novelty in Schubert's analysis of contemporary politics in Angola is that, through his enmeshed topdown/bottom-up approach, he masterfully connects people's memories, aspirations, and individual stories with the larger political history of the country * H-Luso-NET *This book is short and well written enough to use in courses in anthropology, sociology, international relations, and political science. It also serves as a great supplement to courses on urbanity and the city, contemporary Africa, comparative politics, and ethnography. At a time when few folks are doing real ethnography, along comes Working the System to refortify my belief that good ethnographic research and political ethnography are more important now than ever. * American Ethnologist *How do you explain the workings of a system where, ostensibly, there is no system? This is the central puzzle of Jon Schubert's highly relevant book on the 'New Angola.' The book is skillfully structured around key themes of everyday life that help to explain state-society relations in the capital. * Journal of Southern African Studies *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments A Note on Language, Names, and Money Introduction 1. 2002, Year Zero 2. Sambizanga 3. Angolanidade 4. Cunhas 5. A Culture of Immediatism 6. Against the System, within the System Conclusion Epilogue Glossary and Abbreviations Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisWorking the System offers key insights into the politics of the everyday in twenty-first-century dominant party and neo-authoritarian regimes in Africa and elsewhere. Detailing the many ways ordinary Angolans fashion their relationships with the systeman emic notion of their current political and socioeconomic environmentJon Schubert explores what it means and how it feels to be part of the contemporary Angolan polity.Schubert finds that for many ordinary Angolans, the benefits of the post-conflict New Angola, flush with oil wealth and in the midst of a construction boom, are few. The majority of the inhabitants of the capital, Luanda, struggle to make ends meet and live on under $2.00 per day. The New Angola as promoted by the ruling MPLA, Schubert contends, is an essentially urban, upwardly mobile, and aspirational project, premised on the acceptance of the regime's political and economic dominance by its citizens. In the first ethnography of Angola to be published sTrade ReviewWorking the System is a great book. It holds the promise of its subtitle and offers a deep ‘political ethnography of the new Angola’.... [It] skillfully keeps the balance between the sensitivity of an account at the first person and the reflexivity of an analysis in dialogue with a wide range of scholars. The result is that every encounter sounds both intimate and purposeful.... The capacity of this book to absorb the shock of fast-paced political transformation in Angola is certainly the best proof that it is worth not only being read but being read again! * Allegra Lab *Although the book is intended to be a political ethnography, it rapidly evolves into something more, becoming a vivid journey during which, anchored in the author's experience and mental map, the reader is masterfully taken through those "very real places" "where people live and die, and trade, shop, walk, love" (p. 54). Indeed, the novelty in Schubert's analysis of contemporary politics in Angola is that, through his enmeshed topdown/bottom-up approach, he masterfully connects people's memories, aspirations, and individual stories with the larger political history of the country * H-Luso-NET *This book is short and well written enough to use in courses in anthropology, sociology, international relations, and political science. It also serves as a great supplement to courses on urbanity and the city, contemporary Africa, comparative politics, and ethnography. At a time when few folks are doing real ethnography, along comes Working the System to refortify my belief that good ethnographic research and political ethnography are more important now than ever. * American Ethnologist *How do you explain the workings of a system where, ostensibly, there is no system? This is the central puzzle of Jon Schubert's highly relevant book on the 'New Angola.' The book is skillfully structured around key themes of everyday life that help to explain state-society relations in the capital. * Journal of Southern African Studies *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments A Note on Language, Names, and Money Introduction 1. 2002, Year Zero 2. Sambizanga 3. Angolanidade 4. Cunhas 5. A Culture of Immediatism 6. Against the System, within the System Conclusion Epilogue Glossary and Abbreviations Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisSince his death, the writings of Carl Schmitt (18881985) have been debated, cited, and adopted by political and legal thinkers on both the left and right with increasing frequency, though not without controversy given Schmitt''s unwavering support for National Socialism before and during World War II. In Perilous Futures, Peter Uwe Hohendahl calls for critical scrutiny of Schmitt''s later writings, the work in which Schmitt wrestles with concerns that retain present-day relevance: globalization, asymmetrical warfare, and the shifting international order. Hohendahl argues that Schmitt''s work seems to offer solutions to these present-day issues, although the ambiguity of his beliefs means that Schmitt''s later work is a problematic guide.Focusing on works Schmitt published after the warincluding The Nomos of the Earth, Theory of the Partisan and Political Theology IIas well as his posthumously published diaries, Hohendahl reads these works crTrade ReviewIt is on the whole a careful discussion of these works that neither ignores Schmitt's shortcomings and his close connection to the Nazis, nor treats his works as motivated merely by self-justification. For those who seek to understand Schmitt's postwar writings this is a useful companion. * Choice *"Is There a Usable Schmitt?"—the subtitle of Peter Hohendahl's conclusion encapsulates the thematic thrust of Perilous Futures. It is also one of the most pressing and contentious questions in political and legal theory around the globe. * The Germanic Review *An important book. * Monatshefte *Hohendahl expresses a refreshing skepticism towards the enthusiastic appropriation of Schmittian ideas by many scholars on the left in the Anglophone world, especially in the field of international relations.... The volume is organized around insightful readings of key texts from Schmitt's career... Partisans and foes of Schmitt alike will benefit from his scrupulous exploration and fair-minded judgment of the work. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Outlaw: Carl Schmitt's Postwar Notebooks and Small Essays 2. Transition: The Concept of Großraum and Global Politics 3. The Fate of European Colonialism and Carl Schmitt's New World Order 4. Revolutionary War and Absolute Enemy: Rereading Theory of the Partisan 5. The Return of Political Theology 6. Final Reflections: Is There a Usable Schmitt? Notes Index

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Book SynopsisHow do modern states emerge from the turmoil of undergoverned spaces? This is the question Reo Matsuzaki ponders in Statebuilding by Imposition. Comparing Taiwan and the Philippines under the colonial rule of Japan and the United States, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he shows similar situations produce different outcomes and yet lead us to one conclusion.Contemporary statebuilding efforts by the US and the UN start from the premise that strong states can and should be constructed through the establishment of representative government institutions, a liberalized economy, and laws that protect private property and advance personal liberties. But when statebuilding runs into widespread popular resistance, as it did in both Taiwan the Philippines, statebuilding success depends on reconfiguring the very fabric of society, embracing local elites rather than the broad population, and giving elites the power to discipline the people. In Taiwan under JapTrade ReviewThis tightly argued institutional analysis of "statebuilding by imposition" in two colonial settings contends that Japan successfully built the machinery of a "high-scope" state in Taiwan while the United States largely failed in a similar effort in the Philippine Islands... this book is a valuable contribution to colonial studies. It is well written, exhaustively researched, and heartily recommended. * Diplomatic History *The book should be essential reading for scholars and policymakers interested or engaged in statebuilding by imposition, with its provocative but convincing arguments and detailed evidence about the dilemma of the liberal-democratic—yet inherently undemocratic—approach to statebuilding. * Pacific Affairs *Reo Matsuzaki's Statebuilding by Imposition moves beyond familiar theoretical formulations examining intra-imperial state formations to the more challenging task of comparing inter-imperial administrative divergence. Matsuzaki's approach is both refreshing and insightful. * The Journal of American-East Asian Relations *

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Book SynopsisIn Emotional Diplomacy, Todd H. Hall explores the politics of officially expressed emotion on the international stage, looking at the ways in which state actors strategically deploy emotional behavior to shape the perceptions of others. Examining diverse instances of emotional behavior, Hall reveals that official emotional displays are not simply cheap talk but rather play an important role in the strategies and interactions of state actors. Emotional diplomacy is more than rhetoric; as this book demonstrates, its implications extend to the provision of economic and military aid, great-power cooperation, and even the use of armed force.Emotional Diplomacy provides the theoretical tools necessary for understanding the nature and significance of state-level emotional behavior and offers new observations of how states seek reconciliation, strategically respond to unforeseen crises, and demonstrate resolve in the face of perceived provocations. Hall investigates three specTrade ReviewHall paints a fascinating picture of emotionalism as both diplomatic theater and rational calculation. * Foreign Affairs *Hall offers an innovative theoretical lens.... to explain interstate relations that seemingly belie the logic of rational choice. The volume offers an original approach to explain political crises, demonstrating the power of emotional diplomacy as a significant driver of statecraft. * International Affairs *Supplementing a rich theoretical framework with a set of compelling case studies and an in-depth conceptual exploration, Hall's work is an important contribution to the study of international relations.... He provides persuasive evidence in support of his thesis that contemporary analyses must be extended to non-material state aspirations. * Journal of East Asian Studies *With a study that is rife with political lessons and rich with analytic achievements, Hall has done more than one profession a great service. Combining rationalist and constructivist political science with contemporary history, he defines emotional diplomacy as 'coordinated state-level behavior that explicitly and officially projects the image of a particular emotional response toward other states.' Hall's concept expands the study of state-level encounters, specifically among heads of state, by focusing on the premises, expressions and consequences of emotional practice as an element of political competence. * New Diplomatic History *Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1. Emotional Diplomacy What Is Emotional Diplomacy? Emotional Diplomacy and the Emotions in International Relations Official Emotion as Emotional Labor Emotional Diplomacy as a Team Performance The Consequences of Engaging in Emotional Diplomacy Variation in Emotional Diplomacy Empirical InvestigationsChapter 2. The Diplomacy of Anger Explaining the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis from the Traditional Perspective The Diplomacy of Anger Empirical Investigations Looking at the Crisis as an Episode of Coercion vs. Official AngerChapter 3. The Diplomacy of Sympathy Explaining the RF and PRC Responses in Terms of Traditional Statecraft The Diplomacy of Sympathy Empirical Investigations Looking at RF and PRC Responses as Official SympathyChapter 4. The Diplomacy of Guilt Explaining Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)-Israeli Relations from the Traditional Perspective The Diplomacy of Guilt Empirical Investigations The Luxembourg Agreement Bullets Instead of Ambassadors: FRG Weapons for Israel The Path to Normalization Subsequent YearsChapter 5. Further Studies in Emotional Diplomacy The Diplomacy of Anger The Diplomacy of Sympathy The Diplomacy of GuiltConclusion Additional Strains Quotidian and Signature Forms of Emotional Diplomacy Official Emotion, Popular Emotion, and "Stickiness"Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThe humanist perception of fourteenth-century Rome as a slumbering ruin awaiting the Renaissance and the return of papal power has cast a long shadow on the historiography of the city. Challenging this view, James A. Palmer argues that Roman political culture underwent dramatic changes in the late Middle Ages, with profound and lasting implications for city''s subsequent development. The Virtues of Economy examines the transformation of Rome''s governing elites as a result of changes in the city''s economic, political, and spiritual landscape.Palmer explores this shift through the history of Roman political society, its identity as an urban commune, and its once-and-future role as the spiritual capital of Latin Christendom. Tracing the contours of everyday Roman politics, The Virtues of Economy reframes the reestablishment of papal sovereignty in Rome as the product of synergy between papal ambitions and local political culture. More broadly, Palmer emphasizes RTrade ReviewPalmer tells the political story of how the papacy eventually asserted its mastery of Rome, and he understands governance and power. * SPECULUM *This book is a welcome addition to the history of late medieval Rome, which plunged us into the world of the nascent elite surrounding what will become "the papal prince." * H-Italy *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note about Currency Introduction: Late Medieval Rome, an Elusive Phantom Part One: Rome in the Late Middle Ages 1. Ruin and Reality 2. Power, Morality, and Political Change in Fourteenth- Century Rome Part Two: Performances of Virtue 3. Living and Dying Together: Testamentary Practice in Fourteenth-Century Rome 4. For the Benefit of Souls: Chapels, Virtue, and Justice Part Three: Roman Political Society and the Question of Audience 5. The Houses of Women: Citizens, Spiritual Economy, and Community 6. Good Governance and the Economy of Violence Conclusion: To Govern but Not to Rule Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisPriests of Prosperity explores the unsung revolutionary campaign to transform postcommunist central banks from command-economy cash cows into Western-style monetary guardians. Juliet Johnson conducted more than 160 interviews in seventeen countries with central bankers, international assistance providers, policymakers, and private-sector finance professionals over the course of fifteen years. She argues that a powerful transnational central banking community concentrated in Western Europe and North America integrated postcommunist central bankers into its network, shaped their ideas about the role of central banks, and helped them develop modern tools of central banking. Johnson's detailed comparative studies of central bank development in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan take readers from the birth of the campaign in the late 1980s to the challenges faced by central bankers after the global financial crisis. As the comfortable certainties Trade ReviewThe United States is not the only country in which the consensus on central-bank independence is in trouble: central bankers across the former communist world are facing sustained political challenge as well. The difference in the latter is that central-bank norms, practices and policies never sat that well within regimes in transition, and the consensus spread only weakly beyond the central banks themselves. This is the argument Juliet Johnson makes in her brilliant book on the role that central bankers played in the transformation of the post-communist world. * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *Investigates how the transnational central banking community actively guided the transformation of postcommunist central banks through transplantation and its stages of choice, transformation, and internalization. Discusses why and how central bankers in advanced industrial democracies formed a cohesive community championing price stability and political independence in the 1900s. * JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE *This book provides insight into an important element of the transition of postcommunist economies. * Choice *How timely is Juliet Johnson's Priests of Prosperity, which highlights not only the intricacies of central bank development and practice but also the role of an international community of banks in shaping this development. The book provides an illuminating comparison of central bank evolution and transformation across a number of postcommunist countries, including Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. * Business History Review *Provides a unique theoretical framework for institutional emulation and a well-developed analysis of the diffusion of central bank independence throughout the postcommunist countries. It will be read and valued by experts and anyone working on the political economy of transition, central bank independence, or institutional emulation worldwide. * Slavic Review *A substantively significant and exciting contribution to the field of comparative political economy and to the understanding of postcommunist societies' transformation. The book is clear and persuasive because of a combination of a carefully developed theory, a deep understanding of postcommunist countries, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence. * Perspectives on Politics *Priests of Prosperity is Juliet Johnson's exhaustively researched account of the adoption of politically independent, inflation-targeting central banking in the post-communist world. * Economic and Political Weekly *Table of ContentsPreface Notes on Nomenclature 1. E Pluribus Unum 2. Transplantation 3. Choosing Independence 4. The Transformation Campaign 5. The Politics of European Integration 6. The Trials of Post-Soviet Central Bankers 7. Paradise Lost

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Book SynopsisGeorge F. Kennan is well known as the preeminent American expert on the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the author of the doctrine of containment. In Mr. X and the Pacific, Paul J. Heer chronicles and assesses Kennan''s work in affecting US policy toward East Asia. Heer traces the origins, development, and bearing of Kennan''s strategic perspective on the Far East during his time as director of the State Department''s Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to 1950. The author follows Kennan''s career and evolution of his thinking as he subsequently became a prominent critic of American participation in the Vietnam War. Mr. X and the Pacific offers readers a new view of Kennan, revealing his importance and the totality of his role in East Asia policy, his struggle with American foreign policy in the region, and the ways in which Kennan''s legacy still has implications for how the United States approaches the region in the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewMeticulously researched and well-crafted.... Paul Heer’s insightful look into George Kennan’s views of the region during the early years of the Cold War can help us better understand and cope with the geopolitical challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. * Asian Review of Books *Heer's work is clearly written, widely researched, fair and balanced in its assessments, and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the influence of, and contradictory ideas sometimes held by, one of the most important foreign policymakers in the twentieth century. The organization by theme or nation works well due both to the nature of the material and to Heer's brief yet clear reminders of how one topic fits into another when appropriate. Also, although begun in the 1990s, as Heer explains in his opening, the work is quite timely. In the current international environment, a study that examines warnings against miscalculating America's interests, if not also capabilities, in East Asia is a welcome reminder that such miscalculations can often have serious and lasting ramifications for both the United States and the people in the region. * H-Diplo *There are insightful references to Kennan's hopes for reconciliation with Japan and China and much detail on Kennan's frustrations with US strategy changes in the Pacific and with Dean Acheson's replacing George Marshall as secretary of state. * Choice *[W]hat Heer has done in Mr. X and the Pacific is a success. His sober narrative proves worthy of his subject's powerful intellect in its careful analysis of the nuances of the historical record. * Journal of American-East Asian Relations *There has been no monograph focusing solely on Kennan's role in formulating U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, until Paul Heer's Mr. X and the Pacific. Heer's study meticulously traces Kennan's views of Asian countries and evaluates positive and negative legacies of Kennan's policy recommendations on the region. * Pacific Historical Review *Although known primarily as a Sovietologist, Kennan played a vital role in early Cold War US policy in East Asia, primarily with respect to the Chinese civil war and US policy in occupied Japan. Those several years are the primary focus of intelligence analyst-cum-scholar Paul Heer's meticulous and well-balanced critical study of Kennan's involvement in US East Asia policy. * PACIFIC AFFAIRS *Mr. X and the Pacific sheds light on how containment applied to East Asia... For those who are interested in US grand strategy in East Asia, especially in the era of the Cold War, this book is a must read. * H-War *

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Book SynopsisThe Equality of Flesh traces a new genealogy of equality before its formalization under liberalism. While modern ideas of equality are defined through an inner human nature, Brent Dawson argues that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conceptualized equality as an ambivalent and profoundly bodily condition. Everyone was made from the same lowly matter and, as a result, shared the same set of vulnerabilities, needs, and passions. Responding to the political upheavals of colonialism and the intellectual turmoil of new natural philosophies, leading figures of the English Renaissance, including Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare, anxiously imagined that bodily commonality might undermine differences of religion, race, and class.As the period progressed, later authors developed the revolutionary possibilities of bodily equality even as new ideas of fixed racial inequality emerged. Somelike the utopian radical Gerrard Winstanley and the republican poet

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Book SynopsisAdvocates within the growing field of children's rights have designed dynamic campaigns to protect and promote children's rights. This expanding body of international law and jurisprudence, however, lacks a core text that provides an up-to-date look at current children's rights issues, the evolution of children's rights law, and the efficacy of efforts to protect children. Campaigning for Children focuses on contemporary children's rights, identifying the range of abuses that affect children today, including early marriage, female genital mutilation, child labor, child sex tourism, corporal punishment, the impact of armed conflict, and access to education. Jo Becker traces the last 25 years of the children's rights movement, including the evolution of international laws and standards to protect children from abuse and exploitation. From a practitioner's perspective, Becker provides readers with careful case studies of the organizations and campaigns that are making a difference in the lives of children, and the relevant strategies that have been successful—or not. By presenting a variety of approaches to deal with each issue, this book carefully teases out broader lessons for effective social change in the field of children's rights.Trade Review"For decades I have been familiar with Jo Becker's passion, thorough knowledge, and consistent drive for the children whose rights are systematically denied. This book examines initiatives and strategies to show that change for children is possible, and that remarkable transformation is achievable. Campaigning for Children, with its most compelling evidence, will go a long way in ensuring that human rights of children are protected worldwide."—Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Children's Rights Activist"This compelling introduction to children's rights draws on the experience of activists addressing critical problems such as child marriage, child labor, child sex tourism, child soldiers, and access to education. Becker shows the interconnections between these issues both in causation and approaches to remediation. Clear and interesting, Campaigning for Children provides a key guide for moving forward and hope for the future of children across the globe."—Cynthia Grant Bowman, Cornell Law School"Campaigning for Children carefully explores the concrete initiatives that have improved the lives of children, and highlights successful advocacy strategies. State authorities, academics, human rights institutions, civil society organizations, as well as the professionals who work with and for children will benefit from reading it. Becker's book is a vital resource in our collective effort to create a world fit for children."—Benyam Dawit Mezmur, UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildTable of Contents1. From Property to People: The Evolution of Children's Rights 2. Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting 3. Juvenile Justice 4. Child Marriage 5. Child Labor 6. Corporal Punishment 7. Child Sex Tourism 8. Child Soldiers 9. Access to Education 10. Attacks on Education 11. Lessons for the Future

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Book SynopsisAdvocates within the growing field of children's rights have designed dynamic campaigns to protect and promote children's rights. This expanding body of international law and jurisprudence, however, lacks a core text that provides an up-to-date look at current children's rights issues, the evolution of children's rights law, and the efficacy of efforts to protect children. Campaigning for Children focuses on contemporary children's rights, identifying the range of abuses that affect children today, including early marriage, female genital mutilation, child labor, child sex tourism, corporal punishment, the impact of armed conflict, and access to education. Jo Becker traces the last 25 years of the children's rights movement, including the evolution of international laws and standards to protect children from abuse and exploitation. From a practitioner's perspective, Becker provides readers with careful case studies of the organizations and campaigns that are making a difference in the lives of children, and the relevant strategies that have been successful—or not. By presenting a variety of approaches to deal with each issue, this book carefully teases out broader lessons for effective social change in the field of children's rights.Trade Review"For decades I have been familiar with Jo Becker's passion, thorough knowledge, and consistent drive for the children whose rights are systematically denied. This book examines initiatives and strategies to show that change for children is possible, and that remarkable transformation is achievable. Campaigning for Children, with its most compelling evidence, will go a long way in ensuring that human rights of children are protected worldwide."—Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Children's Rights Activist"This compelling introduction to children's rights draws on the experience of activists addressing critical problems such as child marriage, child labor, child sex tourism, child soldiers, and access to education. Becker shows the interconnections between these issues both in causation and approaches to remediation. Clear and interesting, Campaigning for Children provides a key guide for moving forward and hope for the future of children across the globe."—Cynthia Grant Bowman, Cornell Law School"Campaigning for Children carefully explores the concrete initiatives that have improved the lives of children, and highlights successful advocacy strategies. State authorities, academics, human rights institutions, civil society organizations, as well as the professionals who work with and for children will benefit from reading it. Becker's book is a vital resource in our collective effort to create a world fit for children."—Benyam Dawit Mezmur, UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildTable of Contents1. From Property to People: The Evolution of Children's Rights 2. Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting 3. Juvenile Justice 4. Child Marriage 5. Child Labor 6. Corporal Punishment 7. Child Sex Tourism 8. Child Soldiers 9. Access to Education 10. Attacks on Education 11. Lessons for the Future

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Book SynopsisIn The Atlantic Realists, intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue between American and German intellectuals beginning in the late nineteenth century. Specter uncovers an "Atlantic realist" tradition of reflection on the prerogatives of empire and the nature of power politics conditioned by fin de siècle imperial competition, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Focusing on key figures in the evolution of realist thought, including Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and Wilhelm Grewe, this book traces the development of the realist worldview over a century, dismantling myths about the national interest, Realpolitik, and the "art" of statesmanship.Trade Review"One may believe there is little left to know about the realist theory of international relations and its founder Hans Morgenthau. But through the complex figure of Morgenthau, Matthew Specter is able not only to work out the ambivalent pathways of the German mandarins who emigrated to the USA, but also put the theory of political realism itself into a wholly new light as a transatlantic exchange of ideas between the US and Germany. This dates back to the geopolitical thought and social Darwinistic milieu of both rising industrial powers in the 1880s. A particular gem is the surprising chapter on Wilhelm Grewe—a student of Carl Schmitt, who continued his Nazi career in the Federal Republic unbroken—and here, in postwar Germany, played a role similar to that of Morgenthau in the USA. An original, an illuminating, a brilliant book."—Jürgen Habermas, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt"A singular aspect of the German-American relationship is the cross-pollination of political and constitutional thought going back to the Revolutionary era. Matthew Specter's fascinating study shows that the concept of realism made several Atlantic crossings—beginning not, as has long been assumed, in the global cataclysm of World War II, but in the heyday of US and German empire. His trenchant critique of the 'imperial blindspots and democratic deficits' of realism is also a useful warning to the current advocates of restraint seeking to wrap themselves in the mantle of the Atlantic realist tradition."—Constanze Stelzenmüller, Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic relations, Brookings Institution"Matthew Specter's rich history rewrites the genealogy of realism. Specter lays bare the intellectual foundations of the default setting of American foreign policy. This is not just a major addition to trans-Atlantic intellectual history. In a world of escalating international tension, it is an urgent book."—Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Davis Professor of History and Director of the European Institute, Columbia University"An intensively grounded study of a carefully defined body of thought, ambitiously pitched, and persuasively contextualized, The Atlantic Realists brings both clarity and challenge to some vital cross-disciplinary conversations, from international relations and political theory to intellectual history and political history. Among its many particular virtues is a thought-provokingly helpful commentary on the influence of Carl Schmitt."—Geoff Eley, Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History, University of Michigan"Specter's important cultural-historical reinterpretation of Realism relocates its intellectual origins from the Weimar Republic back to late nineteenth-century imperialism. He shows how American and German thinkers, steeped in provincial assumptions about imperialism and competition, developed the apologies for empire and the international use of force that still haunt international relations theory today."—Isabel Hull, John Stambaugh Professor of History Emerita, Cornell University"Matthew Specter has written a superb study that spans the intellectual history of realism across two centuries and between two continents, and traces in a most original way the network of interconnections among Atlantic Realists, notably between the US and Germany."—Karl Kaiser, Harvard Kennedy SchoolA Financial Times Best summer book of 2022: Politics"Atlantic Realists stands as a significant and important contribution to the history of international political thought and to continuing debates over what it means to be realistic in world politics."—Michael C. Williams, Contemporary Political Theory"Specter makes a solid case that the classical realists in many ways invented a noble lineage for themselves, identifying great historical philosophers whose work fit in with their notions of the world (such as Hobbes) while eliding or avoiding altogether their more questionable historical antecedents. ...This intellectual genealogy of realism is an impressive contribution."—Emma Ashford, Foreign Affairs"[Specter] makes the innovative choices of studying the timespan from the late 19th century to the present to show the long emergence of post-WW II realism and identifying relevant currents of thought between Europe, especially Germany, and the United States. These choices reveal new sources for tracking the development of realism, and readers come to appreciate that the key tenets of the theory are historical constructs that evolved somewhat erratically as currents of German and American thought interacted. ... Recommended."—M. A. Morris, CHOICE"[Specter's] criticisms are compelling and they are grounded in a close reading of the published writings and private correspondence of key figures in Germany and the United States. Specter shows that modern realism does indeed have connections to imperial pretensions from the late nineteenth century, and it smuggles subjective value judgments and political aims into its naturalized discourse. The realist worldview is not any more organic than non-realist frameworks, including liberal internationalism, Leninism, or others."—Jeremi Suri, Diplomatic History"By forcing us once more to confront the quixotic character of realism as both aggressively imperial, but with a hyperromantic attachment to politics as the art and exercise of power, Specter compels us to consider very carefully what exactly we think we are doing if we are also teachers of political thought in the first place."—Duncan Kelly, Perspectives on Politics"Specter'sThe Atlantic Realistsis an invaluable, thought-provoking addition to the history of International Relations and sheds further lights on the debates that made this discipline. Readers will learn a great deal about American-German intellectual relations since the end of the nineteenth century and how they shaped International Relations. More of this kind of work is needed."—Felix Rösch, E-International Relations

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Book SynopsisNeoliberalism has become a dirty word. In political discourse, it stigmatizes a political opponent as a market fundamentalist; in academia, the concept is also mainly wielded by its critics, while those who might be seen as actual neoliberals deny its very existence. Yet the term remains necessary for understanding the varieties of capitalism across space and time. Arguing that neoliberalism is widely misunderstood when reduced to a doctrine of markets and economics alone, this book shows that it has a political dimension that we can reconstruct and critique. Recognizing the heterogeneities within and between both neoliberal theory and practice, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism looks to distinguish between the two as well as to theorize their relationship. By examining the views of state, democracy, science, and politics in the work of six major figures—Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow, Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan—it offers the first comprehensive account of the varieties of neoliberal political thought. Ordoliberal perspectives, in particular, emerge in a new light. Turning from abstract to concrete, the book also interprets recent neoliberal reforms of the European Union to offer a diagnosis of contemporary capitalism more generally. The latest economic crises hardly brought the neoliberal era to an end. Instead, as Thomas Biebricher shows, we are witnessing an authoritarian liberalism whose reign has only just begun. Trade Review"This book makes a timely and formidable intervention in current political theory, combining a meticulous analysis of the history of neoliberal thought with a compelling critique of elitist, technocratic, and undemocratic modes of economic governance in this age of austerity." -- Yves Winter * McGill University *"A concise, nuanced, and wide-ranging introduction to the leading theorists of neoliberalism and to the role their ideas have played in recent economic crises.Thomas Biebricher looks beyond familiar critiques of neoliberal ideology and its proponents to ask provocative, insightful questions that are rooted in deep engagement." -- Angus Burgin * Johns Hopkins University *"Thomas Biebricher carefully demonstrates that what unites the many varieties of neoliberalism is not a unified 'theory of politics,' but rather that neoliberalisms share a distinctly political theory. A powerful corrective to the existing scholarship, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism shows readers that within the sweeping generalizations so often made about neoliberalism, the devil truly is in the details." -- Andrew Dilts * Loyola Marymount University *"This is a brilliant book—one of the most illuminating I have read in a long time. Biebricher provides an original account of the emergence of neoliberalism, tracing its development from the 1930s into the present. At once deeply scholarly and profoundly relevant, it is a model of what political theory should be." -- Margaret Kohn * University of Toronto *"At once addressing...skeptics and guiding newcomers to the concept, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism provides one of the most perceptive and analytic treatments of neoliberal thought to date....Going beneath and beyond its usual associations with "mere" economic theory and economic policy, Biebricher offers a compelling reading of neoliberalism as a distinct and internally diverse tradition of political thought." -- William Callison * Contemporary Political Theory *

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Book SynopsisThe environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice.Trade Review"Matthias Fritsch brings clarity and depth to issues of environmental justice and responsibility for future generations through a close engagement with the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Arendt. This book is an indispensable resource for both continental and analytic philosophers seeking to understand what it means to live and die ethically on the earth." -- Lisa Guenther * Queen's University *"With characteristic precision and rigor, Matthias Fritsch has produced an original contribution to thinking about intergenerational justice and our relationship to the planet. Taking Turns with the Earth is an exemplary model for how to theorize pressing ethical and political issues through a creative inheritance of the philosophical tradition." -- Samir Haddad * Fordham University *"Intergenerational ethics is at the heart of many of the biggest problems facing humanity today, yet our theories, institutions, and practices remain inadequate to the challenge. This admirable book offers us an ontological approach that is distinctive, innovative, and an important contribution to our ethical self-understanding." -- Stephen M. Gardiner * University of Washington *"Fritsch makes a convincing case for thinking of intergenerational and ecological relationships not as additional features or theoretical extensions of intragenerational and humanistic models of justice, but as constitutive features of justice...[His] style of cogent argumentation appears quite prudent, as it makes phenomenology and deconstruction directly relevant and applicable to those discourses and accessible to other scholars and professionals who are interested in justice and the future of the humanly habitable earth." -- Sam Mickey * Environmental Philosophy *"Fritsch argues that our moral obligation to tackle and respond to climate change is grounded in intergenerational justice...The key notion here is asymmetrical intergenerational reciprocity; the author's explication of this notion, and his discussion of potential objections to it, is especially useful and thought provoking...Recommended." -- M. A. Michael * CHOICE *"Taking Turns With the Earthoffers to the reader a rich and incisive analysis of intergenerational justice, especially as it relates to issues pertaining to the environment. With intergenerational ethics being relevant to so many issues that we face today, this book offers a timely theoretical analysis of the nature of our obligations to non-contemporary others." -- Christopher Black * Phenomenological Reviews *"Matthias Fritsch has written a supremely challenging and timely book about the ontological-normative dimensions of our intergenerational being....[I am] fully on board with the notion that we require ontological thinking in this area, and as far as I know, nobody has attempted this on the same scale or with as much boldness of philosophical vision as Fritsch. His book is a major contribution to our thinking about the philosophical foundations of our intergenerational being. I predict that it will have a profound effect on environmental philosophy, in both analytic and continental circles, for decades to come." -- Byron Williston * Environmental Ethics *"Taking Turns with the Earth is a model of scholarship in continental philosophy. Written in a clear argumentative style that never sacrifices depth or complexity, it shows how central ideas found in Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida—ideas often dismissed as obtuse—can be put to work to help us rethink some of the most pressing ethical issues of our times." -- Marie-Eve Morin * Research in Phenomenology *"Matthias Fritsch's Taking Turns with the Earth is a significant, illuminating, and timely—just in time, perhaps—phenomenological and deconstructive ontology and 'hauntology' of the problem of intergenerational justice. To my mind, it is the widest ranging and most profound work on this problem that I have so far encountered." -- Jason M. Wirth * Ethics & Politics *"[How] is one to respond in a meaningful and responsible way to a book that is this meticulously researched, this powerfully argued, this broad in its scope and implications, and, of course, this urgent not just for philosophy but for all of us who have inherited the earth and who have some responsibility for passing it on?[A] uniquely powerful work." -- Michael Naas * Ethics & Politics *"The cogency of [Fritsch's] proposals and, notwithstanding the complexity of the philosophical arguments supporting of them, the impressive clarity of their presentation, make the book a significant contribution to the field of environmental ethics." -- Scott Marratto * Ethics & Politics *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Ontological Problems and Methods in Intergenerational Justice chapter abstractThis chapter begins by reviewing the so-called ontological problems that affect relations with future people, from the nonexistence challenge and poor epistemic access to problems affecting interaction and world constitution. It is then argued that ontological problems call for ontological solutions—here, investigations of moral agents' being in relation to time and world. Drawing on phenomenological sources, the chapter provides a first sketch of the book's overarching claim that justice becomes an issue for human beings to the extent we are generational beings who are noncontingently subject to birth and death. Birth and death, the argument continues, link us to previous and subsequent generations in ways that are socially and morally relevant. If we take this into account, the dead and the unborn will appear less absent and more (albeit "spectrally") present. The chapter ends by outlining possible responses to many of the ontological problems. 2Levinas's "Being-for-Beyond-My-Death" chapter abstractThe second chapter elaborates the constitutive role of natality and mortality, sketched in the previous chapter, in much greater detail, with particular focus on Levinas. In the wake of Heidegger and others, Levinas argues that, in accessing the finite time that is co-disclosive of agency, I necessarily encounter the mortal, vulnerable other whose face demands that I let the other live. Agency is co-constituted by a futural demand to let others have possibilities for life beyond my death. Thus, the demand from actual future people on the living comes to be seen as exemplary of moral normativity. However, Levinas insufficiently links this futural responsibility to debts to previous others (including mothers), drawing legitimate feminist and Derridean critiques of his "fecundity" and "paternity." The chapter concludes that the moral demand cannot just be futural but must also be related to gifts from predecessors. 3Asymmetrical Reciprocity and the Gift in Mauss and Derrida chapter abstractTaking off from the insight offered at the end of the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates indirect, asymmetrical reciprocity as a model of intergenerational justice. This notion is meant to capture the idea that indebtedness to preceding others plays a role in giving to future others, no matter how asymmetrical and altruistic the gift to future people is taken to be. With this goal in view, the chapter connects Derrida's critical reading of Levinas to economic literature on intergenerational transfers, specifically economists who draw on the premodern, indigenous notion of the gift, as famously elaborated by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss. The chapter distinguishes four (ideal) types of intergenerational three-party reciprocities and concludes that the notion of the gift points to the enabling conditions of economic activity. Both gifts of nature and benefits from nonpresent generations belong to these conditions, conditions that are too often "externalized" by market economies. 4Double Turn-Taking among Generations and with Earth chapter abstractWith this topic of collectively shared goods in mind, the fourth chapter presents turn-taking as the second model of intergenerational justice that elaborates the "spectral" presence of nonpresent generations. Taking turns is more appropriate than reciprocity when the "object" of intergenerational sharing, in particular the natural environment and democratic institutions, is quasi-holistic and organically interrelated, such that it cannot easily be divided into parts nor can parts be substituted for one another. Drawing on Derrida's work on time and democracy, this model's distinct advantages are discussed in view of answering the question as to what a fair turn with earth and future people might be. The chapter concludes by showing that quasi-holistic objects such as earth and climate necessarily precede and outlive generations, and thus are not indifferent to, but co-constitutive of, the very being of generations, the subjects of sharing by turn-taking. 5Interment chapter abstractTo avoid the humanism that takes the earth to be an indifferent object of intergenerational sharing, the final chapter complicates taking turns by arguing that the earth, understood as the history and habitat of life, for its part turns human beings about. We do not only have human generations taking turns with the earth, but individuals being born of the earth into a generation, while returning to the earth upon death. Humans are both "interred'" (agonistically belonging to a larger time and space here called the earth) and "interring" (responsible for returning others to the earth, as in burial).

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Book SynopsisThe environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice.Trade Review"Matthias Fritsch brings clarity and depth to issues of environmental justice and responsibility for future generations through a close engagement with the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Arendt. This book is an indispensable resource for both continental and analytic philosophers seeking to understand what it means to live and die ethically on the earth." -- Lisa Guenther * Queen's University *"With characteristic precision and rigor, Matthias Fritsch has produced an original contribution to thinking about intergenerational justice and our relationship to the planet. Taking Turns with the Earth is an exemplary model for how to theorize pressing ethical and political issues through a creative inheritance of the philosophical tradition." -- Samir Haddad * Fordham University *"Intergenerational ethics is at the heart of many of the biggest problems facing humanity today, yet our theories, institutions, and practices remain inadequate to the challenge. This admirable book offers us an ontological approach that is distinctive, innovative, and an important contribution to our ethical self-understanding." -- Stephen M. Gardiner * University of Washington *"Fritsch makes a convincing case for thinking of intergenerational and ecological relationships not as additional features or theoretical extensions of intragenerational and humanistic models of justice, but as constitutive features of justice...[His] style of cogent argumentation appears quite prudent, as it makes phenomenology and deconstruction directly relevant and applicable to those discourses and accessible to other scholars and professionals who are interested in justice and the future of the humanly habitable earth." -- Sam Mickey * Environmental Philosophy *"Fritsch argues that our moral obligation to tackle and respond to climate change is grounded in intergenerational justice...The key notion here is asymmetrical intergenerational reciprocity; the author's explication of this notion, and his discussion of potential objections to it, is especially useful and thought provoking...Recommended." -- M. A. Michael * CHOICE *"Taking Turns With the Earthoffers to the reader a rich and incisive analysis of intergenerational justice, especially as it relates to issues pertaining to the environment. With intergenerational ethics being relevant to so many issues that we face today, this book offers a timely theoretical analysis of the nature of our obligations to non-contemporary others." -- Christopher Black * Phenomenological Reviews *"Matthias Fritsch has written a supremely challenging and timely book about the ontological-normative dimensions of our intergenerational being....[I am] fully on board with the notion that we require ontological thinking in this area, and as far as I know, nobody has attempted this on the same scale or with as much boldness of philosophical vision as Fritsch. His book is a major contribution to our thinking about the philosophical foundations of our intergenerational being. I predict that it will have a profound effect on environmental philosophy, in both analytic and continental circles, for decades to come." -- Byron Williston * Environmental Ethics *"Taking Turns with the Earth is a model of scholarship in continental philosophy. Written in a clear argumentative style that never sacrifices depth or complexity, it shows how central ideas found in Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida—ideas often dismissed as obtuse—can be put to work to help us rethink some of the most pressing ethical issues of our times." -- Marie-Eve Morin * Research in Phenomenology *"Matthias Fritsch's Taking Turns with the Earth is a significant, illuminating, and timely—just in time, perhaps—phenomenological and deconstructive ontology and 'hauntology' of the problem of intergenerational justice. To my mind, it is the widest ranging and most profound work on this problem that I have so far encountered." -- Jason M. Wirth * Ethics & Politics *"[How] is one to respond in a meaningful and responsible way to a book that is this meticulously researched, this powerfully argued, this broad in its scope and implications, and, of course, this urgent not just for philosophy but for all of us who have inherited the earth and who have some responsibility for passing it on?[A] uniquely powerful work." -- Michael Naas * Ethics & Politics *"The cogency of [Fritsch's] proposals and, notwithstanding the complexity of the philosophical arguments supporting of them, the impressive clarity of their presentation, make the book a significant contribution to the field of environmental ethics." -- Scott Marratto * Ethics & Politics *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Ontological Problems and Methods in Intergenerational Justice chapter abstractThis chapter begins by reviewing the so-called ontological problems that affect relations with future people, from the nonexistence challenge and poor epistemic access to problems affecting interaction and world constitution. It is then argued that ontological problems call for ontological solutions—here, investigations of moral agents' being in relation to time and world. Drawing on phenomenological sources, the chapter provides a first sketch of the book's overarching claim that justice becomes an issue for human beings to the extent we are generational beings who are noncontingently subject to birth and death. Birth and death, the argument continues, link us to previous and subsequent generations in ways that are socially and morally relevant. If we take this into account, the dead and the unborn will appear less absent and more (albeit "spectrally") present. The chapter ends by outlining possible responses to many of the ontological problems. 2Levinas's "Being-for-Beyond-My-Death" chapter abstractThe second chapter elaborates the constitutive role of natality and mortality, sketched in the previous chapter, in much greater detail, with particular focus on Levinas. In the wake of Heidegger and others, Levinas argues that, in accessing the finite time that is co-disclosive of agency, I necessarily encounter the mortal, vulnerable other whose face demands that I let the other live. Agency is co-constituted by a futural demand to let others have possibilities for life beyond my death. Thus, the demand from actual future people on the living comes to be seen as exemplary of moral normativity. However, Levinas insufficiently links this futural responsibility to debts to previous others (including mothers), drawing legitimate feminist and Derridean critiques of his "fecundity" and "paternity." The chapter concludes that the moral demand cannot just be futural but must also be related to gifts from predecessors. 3Asymmetrical Reciprocity and the Gift in Mauss and Derrida chapter abstractTaking off from the insight offered at the end of the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates indirect, asymmetrical reciprocity as a model of intergenerational justice. This notion is meant to capture the idea that indebtedness to preceding others plays a role in giving to future others, no matter how asymmetrical and altruistic the gift to future people is taken to be. With this goal in view, the chapter connects Derrida's critical reading of Levinas to economic literature on intergenerational transfers, specifically economists who draw on the premodern, indigenous notion of the gift, as famously elaborated by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss. The chapter distinguishes four (ideal) types of intergenerational three-party reciprocities and concludes that the notion of the gift points to the enabling conditions of economic activity. Both gifts of nature and benefits from nonpresent generations belong to these conditions, conditions that are too often "externalized" by market economies. 4Double Turn-Taking among Generations and with Earth chapter abstractWith this topic of collectively shared goods in mind, the fourth chapter presents turn-taking as the second model of intergenerational justice that elaborates the "spectral" presence of nonpresent generations. Taking turns is more appropriate than reciprocity when the "object" of intergenerational sharing, in particular the natural environment and democratic institutions, is quasi-holistic and organically interrelated, such that it cannot easily be divided into parts nor can parts be substituted for one another. Drawing on Derrida's work on time and democracy, this model's distinct advantages are discussed in view of answering the question as to what a fair turn with earth and future people might be. The chapter concludes by showing that quasi-holistic objects such as earth and climate necessarily precede and outlive generations, and thus are not indifferent to, but co-constitutive of, the very being of generations, the subjects of sharing by turn-taking. 5Interment chapter abstractTo avoid the humanism that takes the earth to be an indifferent object of intergenerational sharing, the final chapter complicates taking turns by arguing that the earth, understood as the history and habitat of life, for its part turns human beings about. We do not only have human generations taking turns with the earth, but individuals being born of the earth into a generation, while returning to the earth upon death. Humans are both "interred'" (agonistically belonging to a larger time and space here called the earth) and "interring" (responsible for returning others to the earth, as in burial).

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Book SynopsisNeoliberalism has become a dirty word. In political discourse, it stigmatizes a political opponent as a market fundamentalist; in academia, the concept is also mainly wielded by its critics, while those who might be seen as actual neoliberals deny its very existence. Yet the term remains necessary for understanding the varieties of capitalism across space and time. Arguing that neoliberalism is widely misunderstood when reduced to a doctrine of markets and economics alone, this book shows that it has a political dimension that we can reconstruct and critique. Recognizing the heterogeneities within and between both neoliberal theory and practice, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism looks to distinguish between the two as well as to theorize their relationship. By examining the views of state, democracy, science, and politics in the work of six major figures—Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow, Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan—it offers the first comprehensive account of the varieties of neoliberal political thought. Ordoliberal perspectives, in particular, emerge in a new light. Turning from abstract to concrete, the book also interprets recent neoliberal reforms of the European Union to offer a diagnosis of contemporary capitalism more generally. The latest economic crises hardly brought the neoliberal era to an end. Instead, as Thomas Biebricher shows, we are witnessing an authoritarian liberalism whose reign has only just begun. Trade Review"This book makes a timely and formidable intervention in current political theory, combining a meticulous analysis of the history of neoliberal thought with a compelling critique of elitist, technocratic, and undemocratic modes of economic governance in this age of austerity." -- Yves Winter * McGill University *"A concise, nuanced, and wide-ranging introduction to the leading theorists of neoliberalism and to the role their ideas have played in recent economic crises.Thomas Biebricher looks beyond familiar critiques of neoliberal ideology and its proponents to ask provocative, insightful questions that are rooted in deep engagement." -- Angus Burgin * Johns Hopkins University *"Thomas Biebricher carefully demonstrates that what unites the many varieties of neoliberalism is not a unified 'theory of politics,' but rather that neoliberalisms share a distinctly political theory. A powerful corrective to the existing scholarship, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism shows readers that within the sweeping generalizations so often made about neoliberalism, the devil truly is in the details." -- Andrew Dilts * Loyola Marymount University *"This is a brilliant book—one of the most illuminating I have read in a long time. Biebricher provides an original account of the emergence of neoliberalism, tracing its development from the 1930s into the present. At once deeply scholarly and profoundly relevant, it is a model of what political theory should be." -- Margaret Kohn * University of Toronto *"At once addressing...skeptics and guiding newcomers to the concept, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism provides one of the most perceptive and analytic treatments of neoliberal thought to date....Going beneath and beyond its usual associations with "mere" economic theory and economic policy, Biebricher offers a compelling reading of neoliberalism as a distinct and internally diverse tradition of political thought." -- William Callison * Contemporary Political Theory *

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Book SynopsisIn India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just "the Northeast." In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country's troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a "frontier" in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly as a result of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for decades, but they coexist comfortably with functioning electoral institutions. The region has some of India's highest voter turnout rates, but special security laws produce significant democracy deficits that are now almost as old as the Republic. That these policies have been enforced to foment national unity while multiple alternative conceptions of the "nation" animate politics in the region forces us to reflect on the very foundations of the nation form. Sanjib Baruah offers a nuanced account of this impossibly complicated story, asking how democracy can be sustained, and deepened, in these conditions. Trade Review"In this book, Sanjib Baruah provides scholars and students up-to-date facts, new revelations, astute analysis, and basic background for understanding history and politics in northeast India. This is also essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of sovereignty in India, where national state territorialism is rife with contradictions, ambiguities, militarism, and conflicting allegiances."—David Ludden, New York University"With In the Name of the Nation, Sanjib Baruah completes an impressive trilogy of books on India's Northeast. This book unravels the paradoxes of postcolonial life in the periphery of the nation-state with theoretical elegance, intimate knowledge, and political commitment. It is a wonderful read that sets a new standard for South Asian scholarship."—Bengt G. Karlsson, Stockholm University"Elegantly written and cogent, Baruah's simultaneous 'insider-outsider' analysis of the region known generically as 'India's Northeast' is rich, nuanced, and multilayered. It captures the long-lasting impact of colonial policies and their present-day legacies, particularly in terms of how the 'center' and the 'peripheries' were imagined. A superb book for anyone wishing to understand how issues of citizenship, identity, and nation-making play out in the region today."—Urvashi Butalia, author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India"This is an important, accessibly written scholarly work that illuminates what democracy means by viewing it from the margins. A must-read for those interested in the contemporary politics of the Indian northeast and for those interested in the theory, history, and practice of democracy."—Kanchan Chandra, New York University"Carefully composed in a highly readable style, this book is an important contribution to the study of democracy, nationalism and vernacular politics on the Indian subcontinent and beyond."—Ashild Kolas, Journal of Peace Research"Baruah offers enormous insights into the causes of intensifying resistance, armed or otherwise, to harshly centralised political decision-making in India. The grasp of comparative politics that informs the author's analyses also contributes towards an understanding of increasing authoritarianism in South Asia and beyond."—Siddiq Wahid, India Today"This survey of [northeastern India] is an excellent guide to its diversity and complexity and is characterized by a heartfelt criticism of the actions of the Indian government, guided by Baruah's scholarly authority and personal experiences. Highly recommended."—R. D. Long, CHOICE"This is a rare gem of a book....While grappling with contentious issues of present politics, Sanjib Baruah provides depth, context and perspective."—Mahesh Rangarajan, The Indian Express"This is a reflective book, borne out of several decades of engagement[It] can be read as a prescient ledger of how things came to pass in Northeast India."—Sanjay Barbora, The India Forum"Baruah's intimate history and ethnography shows how neglect, corruption, uneven development, and repression—and recently the rise of Hindu nationalism at the federal level—have intensified the Northeast's alienation from the rest of the country."—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs"[This] deceptively slim volume condenses a lifetime of deep intellectual, scholarly and normative engagement with the Northeast into an erudite and insightful analysis. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the violent and chequered career of postcolonial nationalism in India, and the complex details of the history and present of its Northeast."—Sankaran Krishna, South Asia"[A] magnificent work of scholarship and is most timely....The author's main contribution lies in raising awareness about the issues faced by the Northeast and its people and in highlighting the need for alternative politics in the region. It is indispensable for social scientists interested in understanding the society and politics of the region and for policymakers dealing with the issues of Northeast India."—Ganeshdatta Poddar, Journal of Contemporary Asia"In the Name of the Nationis a stellar exposure of the fractal nature of the relationship between India and its Northeast, one rich in insights for anyone seeking to understand not just contemporary India, but also the pitfalls of postcolonial, would-be nation-states. It will be read for a long time yet."—Berenice Guyot-Rechard, H-Net Reviews"In the Name of the Nation is an essential read that helps us better understand how ordinary people can reclaim moral sovereignty in the face of state violence. In the process, Northeast India is reconceived as central, not peripheral, to the history of Indian territorial sovereignty." –Ahona Panda, The Indian Economic and Social History Review"This monograph will be of particular interest to scholars of Asian political economy who wish to better understand the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial societies. The lucidity of the prose makes the monograph amenably suitable for general readership as well."—Tathagata Dutta, New Zealand Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: 1. The Invention of Northeast India 2. Partition's Long Shadow: Nation and Citizenship in Assam 3. Development and the Making of a Postcolonial Resource Frontier 4. The Naga Conflict: Ceasefire Politics and Elusive Peace 5. Discourse of Insurgency and the Pedagogy of State Violence 6. The Strange Career of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act Conclusion:

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Book SynopsisIn India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just "the Northeast." In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country's troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a "frontier" in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly as a result of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for decades, but they coexist comfortably with functioning electoral institutions. The region has some of India's highest voter turnout rates, but special security laws produce significant democracy deficits that are now almost as old as the Republic. That these policies have been enforced to foment national unity while multiple alternative conceptions of the "nation" animate politics in the region forces us to reflect on the very foundations of the nation form. Sanjib Baruah offers a nuanced account of this impossibly complicated story, asking how democracy can be sustained, and deepened, in these conditions. Trade Review"In this book, Sanjib Baruah provides scholars and students up-to-date facts, new revelations, astute analysis, and basic background for understanding history and politics in northeast India. This is also essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of sovereignty in India, where national state territorialism is rife with contradictions, ambiguities, militarism, and conflicting allegiances."—David Ludden, New York University"With In the Name of the Nation, Sanjib Baruah completes an impressive trilogy of books on India's Northeast. This book unravels the paradoxes of postcolonial life in the periphery of the nation-state with theoretical elegance, intimate knowledge, and political commitment. It is a wonderful read that sets a new standard for South Asian scholarship."—Bengt G. Karlsson, Stockholm University"Elegantly written and cogent, Baruah's simultaneous 'insider-outsider' analysis of the region known generically as 'India's Northeast' is rich, nuanced, and multilayered. It captures the long-lasting impact of colonial policies and their present-day legacies, particularly in terms of how the 'center' and the 'peripheries' were imagined. A superb book for anyone wishing to understand how issues of citizenship, identity, and nation-making play out in the region today."—Urvashi Butalia, author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India"This is an important, accessibly written scholarly work that illuminates what democracy means by viewing it from the margins. A must-read for those interested in the contemporary politics of the Indian northeast and for those interested in the theory, history, and practice of democracy."—Kanchan Chandra, New York University"Carefully composed in a highly readable style, this book is an important contribution to the study of democracy, nationalism and vernacular politics on the Indian subcontinent and beyond."—Ashild Kolas, Journal of Peace Research"Baruah offers enormous insights into the causes of intensifying resistance, armed or otherwise, to harshly centralised political decision-making in India. The grasp of comparative politics that informs the author's analyses also contributes towards an understanding of increasing authoritarianism in South Asia and beyond."—Siddiq Wahid, India Today"This survey of [northeastern India] is an excellent guide to its diversity and complexity and is characterized by a heartfelt criticism of the actions of the Indian government, guided by Baruah's scholarly authority and personal experiences. Highly recommended."—R. D. Long, CHOICE"This is a rare gem of a book....While grappling with contentious issues of present politics, Sanjib Baruah provides depth, context and perspective."—Mahesh Rangarajan, The Indian Express"This is a reflective book, borne out of several decades of engagement[It] can be read as a prescient ledger of how things came to pass in Northeast India."—Sanjay Barbora, The India Forum"Baruah's intimate history and ethnography shows how neglect, corruption, uneven development, and repression—and recently the rise of Hindu nationalism at the federal level—have intensified the Northeast's alienation from the rest of the country."—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs"[This] deceptively slim volume condenses a lifetime of deep intellectual, scholarly and normative engagement with the Northeast into an erudite and insightful analysis. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the violent and chequered career of postcolonial nationalism in India, and the complex details of the history and present of its Northeast."—Sankaran Krishna, South Asia"[A] magnificent work of scholarship and is most timely....The author's main contribution lies in raising awareness about the issues faced by the Northeast and its people and in highlighting the need for alternative politics in the region. It is indispensable for social scientists interested in understanding the society and politics of the region and for policymakers dealing with the issues of Northeast India."—Ganeshdatta Poddar, Journal of Contemporary Asia"In the Name of the Nationis a stellar exposure of the fractal nature of the relationship between India and its Northeast, one rich in insights for anyone seeking to understand not just contemporary India, but also the pitfalls of postcolonial, would-be nation-states. It will be read for a long time yet."—Berenice Guyot-Rechard, H-Net Reviews"In the Name of the Nation is an essential read that helps us better understand how ordinary people can reclaim moral sovereignty in the face of state violence. In the process, Northeast India is reconceived as central, not peripheral, to the history of Indian territorial sovereignty." –Ahona Panda, The Indian Economic and Social History Review"This monograph will be of particular interest to scholars of Asian political economy who wish to better understand the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial societies. The lucidity of the prose makes the monograph amenably suitable for general readership as well."—Tathagata Dutta, New Zealand Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: 1. The Invention of Northeast India 2. Partition's Long Shadow: Nation and Citizenship in Assam 3. Development and the Making of a Postcolonial Resource Frontier 4. The Naga Conflict: Ceasefire Politics and Elusive Peace 5. Discourse of Insurgency and the Pedagogy of State Violence 6. The Strange Career of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act Conclusion:

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Book SynopsisIn the last decade, we have witnessed the return of one of the most controversial terms in the political lexicon: totalitarianism. What are we talking about when we define a totalitarian political and social situation? When did we start using the word as both adjective and noun? And, what totalitarian ghosts haunt the present? Philosopher Simona Forti seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing not only the genealogy of the concept, but also by clarifying its motives, misunderstandings, and the controversies that have animated its current resurgence. Taking into account political theories and historical discussions, Totalitarianism especially focuses on philosophical reflections, from the question of totalitarian biopolitics to the alleged totalitarian drifts of neoliberalism. The work invites the relentless formulation of a radical question about the democratic age: the possibilities it has opened up, the voids it leaves behind, the mechanisms it activates, and the "voluntary servitude" it produces. Forti argues that totalitarianism cannot be considered an external threat to democracy, but rather as one of the possible answers to those questions posed by modernity which democracies have not been able to solve. Her investigation of the uses and abuses of totalitarianism as one of the fundamental categories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries promises to provoke much-needed discussion and debate among those in philosophy, politics, ethics, and beyond.Trade Review"Forti's compact, philosophical discussion of the history of the concept of 'totalitarianism' is the best available in any language. With the ongoing rise of right-wing populists eager to leave 'behind' their totalitarian lineage, this book is more pertinent than ever."—Miguel Vatter, author of Divine Democracy"It takes a scholar of both exceptional learning and critical acuity to explain with precision the metamorphoses of an idea as multifaceted and elusive as totalitarianism. This gripping book has particularly urgent and disquieting implications for readers today."—Alessia Ricciardi, author of Finding Ferrante"Forti asks us a sharp question, the child of our ambiguous and confused times: why do we need the category of totalitarianism? This book is both beautiful and disturbing. It must be read in one go."—Nadia Urbinati, author of Me the PeopleTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. How the Concept "Totalitarianism" Came to Be 2. From the Construction of Models to the Practice of Dissent 3. Philosophy in the Face of Extremes 4. Specters of Totality Conclusion

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Book SynopsisAn incisive exploration of the way Greek myths empower us to defeat tyranny. As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold. From the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies exposed the tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. These stories identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation. Following her highly praised book Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, the classicist Emily Katz Anhalt retells tales from key ancient Greek texts and proceeds to interpret the important message they hold for us today. As she reveals, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone encourage us—as they encouraged the ancient Greeks—to take responsibility for our own choices and their consequences. These stories emphasize the responsibilities that come with power (any power, whether derived from birth, wealth, personal talents, or numerical advantage), reminding us that the powerful and the powerless alike have obligations to each other. They assist us in restraining destructive passions and balancing tribal allegiances with civic responsibilities. They empower us to resist the tyrannical impulses not only of others but also in ourselves. In an era of political polarization, Embattled demonstrates that if we seek to eradicate tyranny in all its toxic forms, ancient Greek epics and tragedies can point the way.Trade Review"Anhalt encourages readers to look with fresh eyes at how easily power can be abused and how to fight back against despotic rule. Her engaging retellings of stories from ancient Greek epic and tragedy show just how relevant these texts are in the political climate of the twenty-first century." —Donna Zuckerberg, author of Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age"The Greeks endured violence and demagoguery but also created antidotes, from the Odyssey's depiction of survival skills like rational deliberation, to the deep probes of politics by Aeschylus and Sophocles. Emily Katz Anhalt brilliantly articulates what this hard-won ancient wisdom offers those battling anti-democratic forces today."—Richard Martin, author of Myths of the Ancient Greeks"A thought-provoking exploration of how the ancient Greeks developed forms of storytelling to interrogate what it means to be a leader and how despotic leaders tend to abuse their power. The ancient myths at the center of this book speak to the present moment with uncanny prescience, as if written for our time as both a warning and an opportunity to rehearse the moral choices that we and our leaders must make each day."—Bryan Doerries, author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today"Anhalt's prose is wonderfully readable and at the same time deeply scholarly. She elucidates the social/political/psychological realities represented in these classic texts and demonstrates how critical reading of literature enables one to see one's own realities and their inherent dangers more clearly...Recommended."—M. F. McClure, CHOICEOur current political climate presents us with steep challenges. We could start by working toward exposing more students, and others, to these stories and texts in the first place. Even that seems an increasingly high bar. An engaging and readable volume like this one can help by presenting readers with the complexities and subtleties of Homer and the tragedies in an accessible way, and by encouraging us all to think with these myths as we try to understand our modern world, and, one hopes, work to improve it."—Daniel W. Berman, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Confronting Tyranny Today chapter abstractToday, as in ancient times, tyrannical abuses of power—whether by one person, a few, or many—destroy individuals, corrode communities, and endanger democratic institutions. During the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, however, ancient Greece witnessed an unprecedented movement away from tyranny and tribalism and toward civil society and broader forms of political participation. Democracy emerged as a consequence of gradual changes in social and political attitudes fostered by epic and tragic reworkings of Greek myths over many centuries. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone identify aspirations and skills crucial to preventing abuses of power in any and every era. The ancient Greeks never removed tyrannical abuses of power from their world or from themselves, but their stories show us why and how we could. 1Leadership (Iliad 1–2) chapter abstractThe Iliad's opening scenes depict a hierarchical, destructively competitive power structure familiar to the epic's earliest archaic audiences and not unfamiliar to us today. High achievers compete ruthlessly for honor, wealth, and supremacy at the expense of the community's welfare. Truth succumbs to violence and intimidation. Cruelty and bystanders' enjoyment of it constitute the emblems of tyrannical leadership and thoughtless subjection to it. By adhering to the principles of their own society, leading men harm their communities and themselves. The epic's human characters blame the gods for their suffering, but the audience sees that human choices are far more determinative than divine actions, and their consequences more predictable. Democracy was not even a concept when tales of the Trojan War began to circulate, but the Iliad begins by exposing the cost to everyone of exclusively self-serving leadership, and suggesting that the community bears the responsibility for defining "good" leadership. 2Community (Odyssey 1–4) chapter abstractThe Odyssey begins by emphasizing that human communities need some form of mortal political authority capable of maintaining order. In the archaic world of Homer's characters and earliest audiences, "political authority" meant a king or a small group of powerful elites; but the epic begins to undermine the legitimacy of unfettered and unaccountable autocratic authority by suggesting that the powerful are responsible for the quality of life of everyone subject to their power. The Odyssey defines a "good" king as a ruler who benefits not merely himself but everyone in the community by promoting respect for reciprocal obligations among everyone, including himself. The ancient Greeks themselves failed to achieve this goal, but the Odyssey's portrait of communal order and happiness excludes all forms of tyranny. It offers both a challenge and an invitation to every human community. 3Reality (Odyssey 5–8) chapter abstractOdysseus's adventures begin with his remarkable choice of reality over fantasy. This choice initiates his return home and permits him to recover his political authority and reestablish order and happiness for himself, his household, and his community. The seductions and deceptions of imaginative non-reality-based narratives can help cultivate our evidence-based reasoning skills. But Odysseus's example reminds us that a preference for fantasy, irrationality, and magical thinking over the reality of empirical lived experience can corrode our capacity for rational thought and prevent constructive political discourse and creative problem-solving. Preferring fantasy to reality, we risk empowering the tyrants and would-be tyrants in our own times, because they are hard at work in the real world while we amuse ourselves in imaginary ones. The rejection of tyranny originates in the realization that real-life problems require real-life solutions. 4Deception (Odyssey 9–16) chapter abstractThis section of the Odyssey reminds us that the distinction between "true" and "false" matters, and that recognizing the distinction is our responsibility. Instead of asking or permitting the audience to suspend disbelief, tales narrated by Odysseus evoke our skepticism and cultivate our empiricism because we have other evidence against which to measure them. The Odyssey suggests that the determination of "true" or "false" is not merely a matter of opinion. Truth must be objectively verifiable. Matching wits with Odysseus, we develop the skills to defend ourselves against authoritative speakers who bombard us with fictions, even contradictory fictions, so as to eradicate the very concept of objective fact. 5Success (Odyssey 17–24) chapter abstractThe Odyssey's conclusion introduces a profoundly egalitarian challenge to any narrowly based or exclusive power structure, and to the primitive equation of vengeance with justice. Ingenuity, skepticism, empiricism, and self-restraint enable Odysseus to succeed in exacting violent revenge against the rapacious, shortsighted suitors. But the epic presents these essential survival skills as potentially accessible to anyone, and Odysseus's successful defeat of the suitors offers no guarantee of permanently benevolent leadership, political harmony, or future prosperity. The epic's unsatisfying ending reminds the audience that vengeance is not a solution but a problem, a source of greater conflict. Violent revenge manifests as a lethal threat to civil society, since it is likely to escalate and become interminable. Not violence but farsighted wisdom and self-restraint, symbolized by Athena's ultimate intervention, prove vital to individual and communal survival and success. 6Justice (Aeschylus's Oresteia) chapter abstractAthenian tragedies in the fifth century BCE challenged traditional, archaic tribal goals and promoted new ideals more conducive to preserving civil society and democratic institutions. The Oresteia undermines the age-old equation of revenge with justice, revising an ancient tale and dramatizing the devastating consequences of retributive violence. As each violent act in this new version derives from and produces others, Aeschylus exposes the common fallacy of assuming that because one side in a dispute appears deeply wrong the other side must be right. In the trilogy's conclusion, persuasive speech permits a zero-sum conception of justice and victory to evolve from a crushing conquest of one side at the expense of another into a conception of victory as a win for all concerned. The Oresteia presents the trial by jury as a healthier alternative to vengeance killings. Our great challenge is to make that vision a reality. 7Conflict (Sophocles's Antigone) chapter abstractLike the Homeric epics, Athenian tragedies offer us, as they offered fifth-century Athenians, the opportunity to learn from others' mistakes. Sophocles's Antigone explores the great challenge confronting every human community: What do we do when we disagree? Antigone exposes the catastrophic consequences of a closed mind incapable of accepting new information or thinking creatively. Neither Creon nor Antigone is a constructive role model. The collision between Creon's rejection of the family in favor of civic loyalties and Antigone's "family first" certainty and disregard for civic loyalties destroys family, city, and the relevant individuals. Inflexible, hot-tempered, and impervious to reasoned argument, Antigone and Creon collide and self-destruct. Antigone learns nothing. Creon learns too late. They cannot be helped, but maybe we can be. Dramatizing how not to go about resolving disputes, Sophocles's cautionary tale reminds us that in every conflict our certainties may blind us to better ideas. Conclusion: The Art of Self-Governance chapter abstractTwenty-first-century tyranny is merely the latest iteration of an age-old pestilence. The Iliad, Odyssey, Oresteia, and Antigone can help to inoculate us against it. These stories remind us that words have consequences and that discernment is our responsibility. They teach us to value evidence and expertise, and to choose leaders who will not sacrifice the welfare of the community to their own shortsighted greed. Exposing the tyrannical potential of a closed mind, these tales encourage us to resist the seductions of violence, assess facts, value diverse viewpoints, and resolve complex problems creatively. They not only fortify us against liars, magical thinkers, con artists, and thugs, but also remind us to beware of becoming liars, magical thinkers, con artists, or thugs ourselves. Fortified by ancient Greek tales against the tyrannical forces of today, we can learn to govern ourselves.

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Book SynopsisWith its title borrowed from Machiavelli, The Persian Prince goes far beyond Machiavelli's wildest imagination as to how to rule the world. Hamid Dabashi articulates a bold new idea of the Persian Prince—a metaphor of political authority, a figurative ideal deeply rooted in the collective memories of multiple nations, and a literary construct that connected Muslim empires across time and space and continues to inform political debate today. Drawing on works from Classical Antiquity and the vast Persianate worlds from India to the Mediterranean, as well as the Hebrew Bible and European medieval mirrors for princes, Dabashi engages a diverse body of political thought to reveal the construction of the Persian Prince as a potent archetype. He traces this archetype through its varied historic gestations and finds it resurfacing in postcolonial political thought as a rebel, a prophet, a poet, and a nomad. Bringing poetics and politics together, Dabashi shows how this archetypal figure has long defined political authority throughout the wider Iranian and Islamic worlds. With meticulous attention to literary and poetic texts, moral and philosophical treatises, allegorical and anecdotal stories, sacred and secular evidence, visual and performing arts, histories of global empires and colonial conquests, this sweeping work offers a deeply learned, richly erudite, and transformative piece of critical thinking. As Dabashi shows, the Persian Prince remains the stuff of current debate across the Muslim and Persianate worlds, in contestations over the public domain and the collective will to power, and above all in the prospects of democratic institutions. Trade Review"Hamid Dabashi's book takes the reader on a journey across time and place. 'More a persona than a person,' the Persian Prince reunites in one archetype such different images as the rebellious poet, the just monarch, and the charismatic prophet. Both a historical investigation and a philosophical-political proposal, the book will reward readers with many unusual intellectual encounters."—Giovanni Giorgini, University of Bologna and Columbia University"Disarmingly accessible, laden with millennia of Persian cultural riches, The Persian Prince deftly and decisively shifts the axis of history and of the conception of subjectivity itself. Colonizers and ayatollahs are mere blips in the long temporality of the Persian Prince, a figure of transformation that ultimately resides in the collective heart of rebellion."—Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Enfoldment and Infinity"In this gorgeously written tour de force, Hamid Dabashi spins the contrapuntal narrative of an archaic Iranian archetype as it weaves its way through political-poetical history. Building on his impressive body of work, The Persian Prince is a unique and formidable text that encapsulates the brilliance, vivacity, and political ferocity of Dabashi's mind."—Jeanne Morefield, University of Oxford, author of Unsettling the World"Hamid Dabashi's illuminating study, while both provincializing and enriching the classic frameworks of Machiavelli and Gramsci, provides a provocative and compelling archetype for understanding political power and organization."—Michael Hardt, Duke University, author of The Subversive Seventies"Rejecting an ideologically and politically manufactured binary between 'Islam and the West' and arguing for an 'irretrievably pluralistic' view of cultures and history, Dabashi illuminates the model of the Persian Prince as the archetype of 'a human being best fitted to face and embrace the world.' He eschews an overemphasis on 'political ideals' over 'literary aspects' in defining the nature of sovereignty and relations between rulers and the ruled, and he advocates a rediscovery of democratic institutions in the Muslim and Persianate worlds, and far beyond. Recommended."—B. Tavakolian, CHOICETable of ContentsPrelude: Who Is the Persian Prince—What Is the Persian Prince? Chapter One: The Idea and the Dominion of the Persian Prince Chapter Two: The Persian Prince Comes of Age Chapter Three: On the Histories, Geographies, and Iconographies of Muslim Empires Chapter Four: The Persian Literary Provenance of Muslim Empires Five: In the Light and Shadows of the Persian Prince Six: The Resurrection of the Persian Prince Under Colonial Duress Seven: Colonial Modernity and the Metamorphosis of the Persian Prince Eight: The Nomadic Fate of the Persian Prince Conclusion: The Sublimation of an Imperial Archetype

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Book SynopsisA pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to humanity's looming existential challenges. Utopia in the Age of Survival makes the case that critical social theory needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth. At the same time the left must reassume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. S. D. Chrostowska looks to the vibrant, visionary mid-century resurgence of embodied utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake, reconstructing utopia's link to survival through to the earliest, most radical phase of the French environmental movement. Survival emerges as the organizing concept for a variety of democratic political forms that center the corporeality of desire in social movements contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions across the globe. Vigilant and timely, balancing fine-tuned analysis with broad historical overview to map the utopian impulse across contemporary cultural and political life, Chrostowska issues an urgent report on the vitality of utopia.Trade Review"This is an important book and an original and stimulating contribution to the political theory of utopias. Revisiting the utopian tradition from a critical theory perspective, Chrostowska argues that utopia is a hypothesis and an impetus for action rather than a blueprint ofthe future. It is neither an abstract ideal nor a local miniature but a universal politics ofdesire at a moment in history when human survival is at stake. There are many books on utopia, of course, but this one has a singular and original approach, which has no equivalent." -- Michael Löwy * author of Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" *"In this elegant and bold ode to utopian thinking in the shadow of climate change and pandemics, Chrostowska masterfully argues that critique and utopia should be inextricably linked as a double helix in the theoretical DNA of a global left politics. Laying bare both the seductions and the traps of utopianism, she makes the compelling case that a utopianism that begins from the body, its desires and imagination, is absolutely crucial for an ethical and political life beyond survival. Erudite and filled with brilliant insight, this forceful book is a candid invitation for the kind of thinking beyond that never leaves criticism behind." -- Banu Bargu * author of Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsPrologue chapter abstractThe opening offers a brief overview of the senses of the word utopia and historical attitudes toward utopian designs. It draws attention to the ways in which utopia functions these days less as a term of abuse than as a popular marketing label, which points to utopia's cultural relevance. I then move on to review different conceptions of utopia in order to set up the book's conceptual framework and argument, beginning with hope, despair, anxiety, and their relationship to desire and will. The conceptions defended in the book—utopia as myth and as hypothesis—are introduced. Turning to survival as also generative of utopian desire, I address the fate of utopian thinking in these our dark times. Retrieving the social imaginary of Cockaigne allows me to recast utopia in light of bodily desires and practices while delinking it from capital accumulation. The Utopian Hypothesis: From Radical Politics to Speculative Myth chapter abstractThe first chapter makes the case that critical social theory broadly understood needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth, told and retold in diverse and conflicting ways, attesting to its continued productivity and dynamism as it sidelines the "ideal city" blueprint tradition in utopianism. At the same time, to gain political purchase, the left must again assume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. I begin by discussing the melancholy affecting left-wing intellectuals and proceed to lengthy engagements with T. J. Clark and Roland Barthes. In the first reading, I argue against the tragic conception of politics proposed by Clark. In the second, I analyze and critique Barthes's theory of myth. Armed with critical insights thus gleaned, I contrast the myth model of utopia, drawing principally on Georges Sorel, with the wager model. The Emancipation of Desire: Preludes and Postludes of May '68 chapter abstractThe second chapter turns to the visionary decades of the twentieth century, looking back at the resurgence of bodily utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake. The first three sections are historical, focused on radical utopian projects and critiques between the 1930s and 1970s in France. The fourth teases out three theoretical questions arising from this historical material, while the fifth reconstructs the meaning of survival through the earliest and most radical phase of the French environmental movement, when ecology was inseparable from social emancipation and transformation. The eventual split in the movement on the question of survival ended in its embrace of the Situationist critique of survival. The work of Marc Pierret and Italian thinker Giorgio Cesarano from this period provides a little-known counterpoint and critique of these undialectical conceptions and libidinal liberation as antidote. The Utopia of Survival: Critical Theory against the State chapter abstractIn the third chapter, survival emerges as the organizing concept for an array of bodily democratic political forms in social movements across the globe contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions. The utopian dimension of such politics leads me to recast the experience or condition of survival as potentially political and productive of utopianizing practices, including gestures beyond the state form as well as claims made on democratic and authoritarian states by individuals or groups from the margins of normal politics and disruptive of it. For this purpose, I bring in the concepts of necropolitics (Achille Mbembe) and necroresistance (Banu Bargu), referring to desperate subversive acts of self-directed violence refusing survival and undermining in this way the biopoliticization of sovereignty or, as shown by Marc Abélès's politics of survivance, governmentality beyond the state. I conclude with responses to several anticipated objections. Epilogue: The Displaced Imagination chapter abstractThe epilogue takes up the centrality of bodies in utopian social dreaming and the constitution of community approximating the utopia to be universalized. I discuss the relationship of desires in the present to their idealized utopian form, and the configuration of the utopian imagination by bodily whereabouts, structured by displacement, physical or imaginary. I move on to say that utopianism's strength as a myth continues to lie in its "iconoclasm," its resistance to determinate content. Utopia's normative "deficit," for which first-generation critical theorists have been criticized, is also the dialectical guarantee of its truth. I briefly take up the body in Theodor W. Adorno's thought to highlight its importance as an ethical index. The final accent falls on the living conditions sufficient for utopia-inspired or utopianizing action and on what utopia might look like in our survival-centered age. Postscript chapter abstractThe postscript presents a balance sheet of the ongoing pandemic and climate change, revealing the failings in crisis management and the fragility of the global economic system as fertile ground for utopian dreaming.

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Book SynopsisA pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to humanity's looming existential challenges. Utopia in the Age of Survival makes the case that critical social theory needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth. At the same time the left must reassume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. S. D. Chrostowska looks to the vibrant, visionary mid-century resurgence of embodied utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake, reconstructing utopia's link to survival through to the earliest, most radical phase of the French environmental movement. Survival emerges as the organizing concept for a variety of democratic political forms that center the corporeality of desire in social movements contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions across the globe. Vigilant and timely, balancing fine-tuned analysis with broad historical overview to map the utopian impulse across contemporary cultural and political life, Chrostowska issues an urgent report on the vitality of utopia.Trade Review"This is an important book and an original and stimulating contribution to the political theory of utopias. Revisiting the utopian tradition from a critical theory perspective, Chrostowska argues that utopia is a hypothesis and an impetus for action rather than a blueprint ofthe future. It is neither an abstract ideal nor a local miniature but a universal politics ofdesire at a moment in history when human survival is at stake. There are many books on utopia, of course, but this one has a singular and original approach, which has no equivalent." -- Michael Löwy * author of Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" *"In this elegant and bold ode to utopian thinking in the shadow of climate change and pandemics, Chrostowska masterfully argues that critique and utopia should be inextricably linked as a double helix in the theoretical DNA of a global left politics. Laying bare both the seductions and the traps of utopianism, she makes the compelling case that a utopianism that begins from the body, its desires and imagination, is absolutely crucial for an ethical and political life beyond survival. Erudite and filled with brilliant insight, this forceful book is a candid invitation for the kind of thinking beyond that never leaves criticism behind." -- Banu Bargu * author of Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsPrologue chapter abstractThe opening offers a brief overview of the senses of the word utopia and historical attitudes toward utopian designs. It draws attention to the ways in which utopia functions these days less as a term of abuse than as a popular marketing label, which points to utopia's cultural relevance. I then move on to review different conceptions of utopia in order to set up the book's conceptual framework and argument, beginning with hope, despair, anxiety, and their relationship to desire and will. The conceptions defended in the book—utopia as myth and as hypothesis—are introduced. Turning to survival as also generative of utopian desire, I address the fate of utopian thinking in these our dark times. Retrieving the social imaginary of Cockaigne allows me to recast utopia in light of bodily desires and practices while delinking it from capital accumulation. The Utopian Hypothesis: From Radical Politics to Speculative Myth chapter abstractThe first chapter makes the case that critical social theory broadly understood needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth, told and retold in diverse and conflicting ways, attesting to its continued productivity and dynamism as it sidelines the "ideal city" blueprint tradition in utopianism. At the same time, to gain political purchase, the left must again assume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. I begin by discussing the melancholy affecting left-wing intellectuals and proceed to lengthy engagements with T. J. Clark and Roland Barthes. In the first reading, I argue against the tragic conception of politics proposed by Clark. In the second, I analyze and critique Barthes's theory of myth. Armed with critical insights thus gleaned, I contrast the myth model of utopia, drawing principally on Georges Sorel, with the wager model. The Emancipation of Desire: Preludes and Postludes of May '68 chapter abstractThe second chapter turns to the visionary decades of the twentieth century, looking back at the resurgence of bodily utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake. The first three sections are historical, focused on radical utopian projects and critiques between the 1930s and 1970s in France. The fourth teases out three theoretical questions arising from this historical material, while the fifth reconstructs the meaning of survival through the earliest and most radical phase of the French environmental movement, when ecology was inseparable from social emancipation and transformation. The eventual split in the movement on the question of survival ended in its embrace of the Situationist critique of survival. The work of Marc Pierret and Italian thinker Giorgio Cesarano from this period provides a little-known counterpoint and critique of these undialectical conceptions and libidinal liberation as antidote. The Utopia of Survival: Critical Theory against the State chapter abstractIn the third chapter, survival emerges as the organizing concept for an array of bodily democratic political forms in social movements across the globe contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions. The utopian dimension of such politics leads me to recast the experience or condition of survival as potentially political and productive of utopianizing practices, including gestures beyond the state form as well as claims made on democratic and authoritarian states by individuals or groups from the margins of normal politics and disruptive of it. For this purpose, I bring in the concepts of necropolitics (Achille Mbembe) and necroresistance (Banu Bargu), referring to desperate subversive acts of self-directed violence refusing survival and undermining in this way the biopoliticization of sovereignty or, as shown by Marc Abélès's politics of survivance, governmentality beyond the state. I conclude with responses to several anticipated objections. Epilogue: The Displaced Imagination chapter abstractThe epilogue takes up the centrality of bodies in utopian social dreaming and the constitution of community approximating the utopia to be universalized. I discuss the relationship of desires in the present to their idealized utopian form, and the configuration of the utopian imagination by bodily whereabouts, structured by displacement, physical or imaginary. I move on to say that utopianism's strength as a myth continues to lie in its "iconoclasm," its resistance to determinate content. Utopia's normative "deficit," for which first-generation critical theorists have been criticized, is also the dialectical guarantee of its truth. I briefly take up the body in Theodor W. Adorno's thought to highlight its importance as an ethical index. The final accent falls on the living conditions sufficient for utopia-inspired or utopianizing action and on what utopia might look like in our survival-centered age. Postscript chapter abstractThe postscript presents a balance sheet of the ongoing pandemic and climate change, revealing the failings in crisis management and the fragility of the global economic system as fertile ground for utopian dreaming.

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Book SynopsisIn this elegant and personal new work, Michael P. Steinberg reflects on the story of Moses and the Exodus as a foundational myth of politics—of the formation not of a nation but of a political community grounded in universal law. Modern renderings of the story of Moses, from Michelangelo to Spinoza to Freud to Schoenberg to Derrida, have seized on the story's ambivalences, its critical and self-critical power. These literal returns form the first level of the afterlife of Moses. They spin a persistent critical and self-critical thread of European and transatlantic art and argument. And they enable the second strand of Steinberg's argument, namely the depersonalization of the Moses and Exodus story, its evolving abstraction and modulation into a varied modern history of political beginnings. Beginnings, as distinct from origins, are human and historical, writes Steinberg. Political constitutions, as a form of beginning, imply the eventuality of their own renewals and their own reconstitutions. Motivated in part by recent reactionary insurgencies in the US, Europe, and Israel, this astute work of intellectual history posits the critique of myths of origin as a key principle of democratic government, affect, and citizenship, of their endurance as well as their fragility. Trade Review"Personal in this book in all the right ways, Michael Steinberg reaches the human and universal by turning over the German-Jewish past and connecting it to contemporary politics."—Samuel Moyn, Yale University"Steinberg's application of Said's distinction between 'origins' and 'beginnings' to the Moses myth of political founding is a tour de force powerful enough to force a rethinking much beyond Freud or Assmann."—Omri Boehm, The New School for Social ResearchTable of ContentsIntroduction: Introduction 1. Moses and Modernism 2. Under Lincoln's Eyes 3. Hannah Arendt Crosses the Atlantic 4. Yaron Ezrahi: Democracy and the Post-Epic Nation

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Book SynopsisIn this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community. Trade Review"Thompson ranges confidently over philosophy, psychoanalysis, and economics in this thoughtful and original study of the individual in a mass society."—Russell Jacoby, University of California, Los Angeles"Thompson is a preeminent scholar who has produced a controversial, interdisciplinary work that speaks to the future of the critical tradition. This is an innovative and important work that deserves to be read."—Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University"In the tradition of the great diagnostic philosophers—from Marx and Nietzsche, Lukács and Foucault, to Wendy Brown, Nancy Fraser, and Rahel Jaeggi—Michael J. Thompson's Twilight of the Self probes the central problems of contemporary social and political life. Like a 'doctor' for 'sick cultures,' this ambitious book seeks to identify the source of our ailment, theorize its origins, and prescribe a treatment."—Jeremy Kingston Cynamon, The Review of PoliticsTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Rise of Cybernetic Society: The Patterned World and the Fate of the Individual 2. Social Domination, Social Systems, and the Constitution of the Self 3. The Reification Problem and the Normative Entanglement Hypothesis 4. Alienation: From Autonomy to Moral Atrophy 5. Reconsidering False Consciousness: An Etiology of Defective Social Cognition 6. Cultivating Consent: Reification and the Web of Norms 7. The Withering of the Self and the Regression of the Ego 8. Autonomy as Critical Agency: Reconstructing the Democratic Self

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Book SynopsisIn this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community. Trade Review"Thompson ranges confidently over philosophy, psychoanalysis, and economics in this thoughtful and original study of the individual in a mass society."—Russell Jacoby, University of California, Los Angeles"Thompson is a preeminent scholar who has produced a controversial, interdisciplinary work that speaks to the future of the critical tradition. This is an innovative and important work that deserves to be read."—Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University"In the tradition of the great diagnostic philosophers—from Marx and Nietzsche, Lukács and Foucault, to Wendy Brown, Nancy Fraser, and Rahel Jaeggi—Michael J. Thompson's Twilight of the Self probes the central problems of contemporary social and political life. Like a 'doctor' for 'sick cultures,' this ambitious book seeks to identify the source of our ailment, theorize its origins, and prescribe a treatment."—Jeremy Kingston Cynamon, The Review of PoliticsTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Rise of Cybernetic Society: The Patterned World and the Fate of the Individual 2. Social Domination, Social Systems, and the Constitution of the Self 3. The Reification Problem and the Normative Entanglement Hypothesis 4. Alienation: From Autonomy to Moral Atrophy 5. Reconsidering False Consciousness: An Etiology of Defective Social Cognition 6. Cultivating Consent: Reification and the Web of Norms 7. The Withering of the Self and the Regression of the Ego 8. Autonomy as Critical Agency: Reconstructing the Democratic Self

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Book SynopsisAs the US becomes a second-place nation, can it shed the superpower nostalgia that still haunts the UK? The debate over the US's fading hegemony has raged and sputtered for 50 years, glutting the market with prophecies about American decline. Media experts ask how fast we will fall and how much we will lose, but generally ignore the fundamental question: What does decline mean? What is the significance, in experiential and everyday terms, in feelings and fantasies, of living in a country past its prime? Drawing on the example of post-WWII Britain and looking ahead at 2020s America, Jed Esty suggests that becoming a second-place nation is neither disastrous, as alarmists claim, nor avoidable, as optimists insist. Contemporary declinism often masks white nostalgia and perpetuates a conservative longing for Cold War certainty. But the narcissistic lure of "lost greatness" appeals across the political spectrum. As Esty argues, it resonates so widely in mainstream media because Americans have lost access to a language of national purpose beyond global supremacy. It is time to shelve the shopworn fables of endless US dominance, to face the multipolar world of the future, and to tell new American stories. The Future of Decline is a guide to finding them.Trade Review"The USA will never again dominate world politics as it did at the end of the twentieth century. So far, American politics and culture have mainly thrashed and flailed in the face of this reality. The Future of Decline offers the necessary and urgent lesson that comparative national decline can, instead, be managed with good grace—as a blessing rather than a curse. In keeping with its teaching, Esty's book is a wise and even beautiful one."—Benjamin Kunkel, author of Utopia or Bust"The best thing about history is that it can always take another turn. The Future of Decline is a powerful provocation to craft a new national narrative, one that faces reality and locates tools for building something better."—Catherine Hall, author of Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain"This is a consistently intelligent, sweepingly synthetic, and urgently important book."—Michael Szalay, author of Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television"This book is a generative call to arms. Esty insists we have reasons to be cheerful amidst American decline—if we do the hard work of providing a renewed vision of a more equitable future for the nation."—James Vernon, author of Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern"The Future of Decline is sharp, provocative, and engaging at every turn."—Gayle Rogers, author of Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI"This short, insightful treatise adds to and challenges the genre of American decline on the world stage.... Recommended."—G. Donato, CHOICE"This book stuck with me, and my experience is not an isolated one.The Future of Declineis the brain worm working quietly upon the professoriate."—Matt Seybold,The American VandalTable of Contents. Preface: Lost Greatness as a Way of Life 1. Against Declinism 2. After Supremacy: Ten Theses 3. British Pasts, American Futures 4. American Culture in the Age of Limits

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Book SynopsisWith its title borrowed from Machiavelli, The Persian Prince goes far beyond Machiavelli's wildest imagination as to how to rule the world. Hamid Dabashi articulates a bold new idea of the Persian Prince—a metaphor of political authority, a figurative ideal deeply rooted in the collective memories of multiple nations, and a literary construct that connected Muslim empires across time and space and continues to inform political debate today. Drawing on works from Classical Antiquity and the vast Persianate worlds from India to the Mediterranean, as well as the Hebrew Bible and European medieval mirrors for princes, Dabashi engages a diverse body of political thought to reveal the construction of the Persian Prince as a potent archetype. He traces this archetype through its varied historic gestations and finds it resurfacing in postcolonial political thought as a rebel, a prophet, a poet, and a nomad. Bringing poetics and politics together, Dabashi shows how this archetypal figure has long defined political authority throughout the wider Iranian and Islamic worlds. With meticulous attention to literary and poetic texts, moral and philosophical treatises, allegorical and anecdotal stories, sacred and secular evidence, visual and performing arts, histories of global empires and colonial conquests, this sweeping work offers a deeply learned, richly erudite, and transformative piece of critical thinking. As Dabashi shows, the Persian Prince remains the stuff of current debate across the Muslim and Persianate worlds, in contestations over the public domain and the collective will to power, and above all in the prospects of democratic institutions. Trade Review"Hamid Dabashi's book takes the reader on a journey across time and place. 'More a persona than a person,' the Persian Prince reunites in one archetype such different images as the rebellious poet, the just monarch, and the charismatic prophet. Both a historical investigation and a philosophical-political proposal, the book will reward readers with many unusual intellectual encounters."—Giovanni Giorgini, University of Bologna and Columbia University"Disarmingly accessible, laden with millennia of Persian cultural riches, The Persian Prince deftly and decisively shifts the axis of history and of the conception of subjectivity itself. Colonizers and ayatollahs are mere blips in the long temporality of the Persian Prince, a figure of transformation that ultimately resides in the collective heart of rebellion."—Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Enfoldment and Infinity"In this gorgeously written tour de force, Hamid Dabashi spins the contrapuntal narrative of an archaic Iranian archetype as it weaves its way through political-poetical history. Building on his impressive body of work, The Persian Prince is a unique and formidable text that encapsulates the brilliance, vivacity, and political ferocity of Dabashi's mind."—Jeanne Morefield, University of Oxford, author of Unsettling the World"Hamid Dabashi's illuminating study, while both provincializing and enriching the classic frameworks of Machiavelli and Gramsci, provides a provocative and compelling archetype for understanding political power and organization."—Michael Hardt, Duke University, author of The Subversive Seventies"Rejecting an ideologically and politically manufactured binary between 'Islam and the West' and arguing for an 'irretrievably pluralistic' view of cultures and history, Dabashi illuminates the model of the Persian Prince as the archetype of 'a human being best fitted to face and embrace the world.' He eschews an overemphasis on 'political ideals' over 'literary aspects' in defining the nature of sovereignty and relations between rulers and the ruled, and he advocates a rediscovery of democratic institutions in the Muslim and Persianate worlds, and far beyond. Recommended."—B. Tavakolian, CHOICETable of ContentsPrelude: Who Is the Persian Prince—What Is the Persian Prince? Chapter One: The Idea and the Dominion of the Persian Prince Chapter Two: The Persian Prince Comes of Age Chapter Three: On the Histories, Geographies, and Iconographies of Muslim Empires Chapter Four: The Persian Literary Provenance of Muslim Empires Five: In the Light and Shadows of the Persian Prince Six: The Resurrection of the Persian Prince Under Colonial Duress Seven: Colonial Modernity and the Metamorphosis of the Persian Prince Eight: The Nomadic Fate of the Persian Prince Conclusion: The Sublimation of an Imperial Archetype

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Book SynopsisIn the last decade, we have witnessed the return of one of the most controversial terms in the political lexicon: totalitarianism. What are we talking about when we define a totalitarian political and social situation? When did we start using the word as both adjective and noun? And, what totalitarian ghosts haunt the present? Philosopher Simona Forti seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing not only the genealogy of the concept, but also by clarifying its motives, misunderstandings, and the controversies that have animated its current resurgence. Taking into account political theories and historical discussions, Totalitarianism especially focuses on philosophical reflections, from the question of totalitarian biopolitics to the alleged totalitarian drifts of neoliberalism. The work invites the relentless formulation of a radical question about the democratic age: the possibilities it has opened up, the voids it leaves behind, the mechanisms it activates, and the "voluntary servitude" it produces. Forti argues that totalitarianism cannot be considered an external threat to democracy, but rather as one of the possible answers to those questions posed by modernity which democracies have not been able to solve. Her investigation of the uses and abuses of totalitarianism as one of the fundamental categories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries promises to provoke much-needed discussion and debate among those in philosophy, politics, ethics, and beyond.Trade Review"Forti's compact, philosophical discussion of the history of the concept of 'totalitarianism' is the best available in any language. With the ongoing rise of right-wing populists eager to leave 'behind' their totalitarian lineage, this book is more pertinent than ever."—Miguel Vatter, author of Divine Democracy"It takes a scholar of both exceptional learning and critical acuity to explain with precision the metamorphoses of an idea as multifaceted and elusive as totalitarianism. This gripping book has particularly urgent and disquieting implications for readers today."—Alessia Ricciardi, author of Finding Ferrante"Forti asks us a sharp question, the child of our ambiguous and confused times: why do we need the category of totalitarianism? This book is both beautiful and disturbing. It must be read in one go."—Nadia Urbinati, author of Me the PeopleTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. How the Concept "Totalitarianism" Came to Be 2. From the Construction of Models to the Practice of Dissent 3. Philosophy in the Face of Extremes 4. Specters of Totality Conclusion

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Book SynopsisMichel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called �new philosophers�? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.Trade Review"In recent years, Michel Foucault has garnered a reputation as a fierce critic of the neoliberal order, especially through his analyses of micro-politics and governmentality. But the essays in this terrific collection raise important questions about Foucault�s relation to neoliberalism. They show that Foucault himself was quite sympathetic to some of its core elements, and, more importantly, that his theory has in many ways diluted the intellectual resources that might enable more successful resistance to it. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in critical social theory and in contemporary political culture." Vivek Chibber, New York University �Michel Foucault was a far-sighted theorist, but also a creature of his time. This superlative collection moves beyond early polemics in order to force reflection on the uses and limits of the great philosopher�s now celebrated investigation of neoliberalism – in part by providing a reminder of how it fit in the various contexts of French intellectual life in the 1970s that informed it. Michael Behrent and Daniel Zamora deserve credit for offering precautions, rather than �burning� Foucault, as the next stage of his reception unfolds.� Samuel Moyn, Harvard University �The antistatist turn of much of the global left has disturbing but largely unexamined affinities with neoliberalism. Michel Foucault, for all his greatness, is a key figure in this turn. This collection is a stimulating exploration of those affinities, and, to put it provocatively, but not inaccurately, Foucault's commonalities with the likes of Gary Becker and Friedrich Hayek. This excellent book will annoy many, but it has the potential, for those with sufficiently open minds, of being a productive annoyance.� Doug Henwood, The Nation �Foucault and Neoliberalism has already begun to launch a crucial historical and political debate. Its critique and historical contextualization of Foucault�s late work open up new perspectives on the rise of neoliberalism in France and the general evolution of the intellectual left since the 1980s. From the retreat of class analysis to the triumph both of identity politics and of a conception of social justice limited to equality of opportunity, Foucault and Neoliberalism helps us first to understand and then to imagine an alternative to the political dead end of the contemporary left.� Walter Benn Michaels, University of Illinois at ChicagoTable of ContentsList of endorsers Title page Copyright page Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1: Foucault and New Philosophy: Why Foucault Endorsed André Glucksmann's The Master Thinkers 2: Liberalism without Humanism: Michel Foucault and the Free-Market Creed, 1976–1979 3: Foucault, the Excluded, and the Neoliberal Erosion of the State 4: Foucault, Ewald, Neoliberalism, and the Left 5: Bourdieu, Foucault, and the Penal State in the Neoliberal Era 6: The Unfulfilled Promises of the Late Foucault and Foucauldian "Governmentality Studies" 7: Michel Foucault and the Spiritualization of Philosophy 8: The Great Rage of Facts Conclusion: The Strange Failure (and Peculiar Success) of Foucault's Project Notes Index End User License Agreement

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Book SynopsisThis second volume of a new three-part series of Antonio Negri's work is focussed on the consequences of the rapid process of deindustrialisation that has occurred across the West in recent years.In this volume Negri investigates exactly what happens when the class subjects of industrial capitalism are demobilised and the factories close. Evidently capital continues to make profit, but how and where? According to Negri, the creation of value extends beyond the factory walls to embrace the whole of society; the 'mass worker' of industrialism gives way to the 'socialised worker' (operaio sociale) and the terrain of exploitation now becomes the whole of human life. In postmodernity, the metropolis becomes the privileged arena of value extraction. We must therefore understand the global city, with its stratifications, its enclosures and its resistances. Old categories of the private and the public are inadequate to describe the new matrix of production, which is characterised rather by the 'common', the productive space of cognitive and immaterial labour. Today's metropolis can be defined as a space of antagonisms between forms of life produced, on the one hand, by finance capital (the capital that operates around rents), and on the other by the 'cognitive proletariat'. The central question is then how 'the common' of the latter can be mobilised for the destruction of capitalism.In an analysis that runs from the Italian workerism (operaismo) of the 1970s to the present day, From the Factory to the Metropolis offers readers valuable insight into the far-reaching impact of deindustrialisation, presenting both the challenges and opportunities. It will appeal to the many interested in the continuing development of Negri's project and to anyone interested in radical politics today.Table of ContentsPreface Part I. Exodus from the factory 1. The reappropriation of public space 2. Midway terrains 3. The multitude and the metropolis: Notes in the form of hypotheses for an inquiry into the precariat in the global cities 4. Exiting from industrial capitalism 5. From the factory to the metropolis 6. Metropolis and multitude: Inquiry notes on precarity in global cities Part II. Inventing common 7. Banlieue and city: A philosophical overview Co-written with the late Jean-Marie Vincent 8. Democracy versus rent 9. Presentation of Rem Koolhaas’s Junkspace 10. The capital-labour relation in cognitive capitalism Co-written with Carlo Vercellone 11. Inventing the commons of humanity Co-written with Judith Revel 12. The Commune of social cooperation: Interview with Federico Tomasello on questions regarding the metropolis 13. The common lung of the metropolis: Interview with Federico Tomasello 14. The habitat of general intellect: A dialogue between Antonio Negri and Federico Tomasello on living in the contemporary metropolis Part III. First fruits of the new metropolis 15. Reflections on the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics 16. Notes on the abstract strike 17. From the factory to the metropolis ... and back again Origin of the Texts

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Book SynopsisThis third and final volume of the series of writings by Antonio Negri examines how Spinoza’s thought constitutes a radical break with past ideas and an essential tool for envisaging a form of politics beyond capitalism. Negri shows how Spinoza’s ideas have facilitated radical renewal from their beginnings to the present day. It was the democratic freedoms and spirit of solidarity fostered in The Netherlands of the 17th century that allowed Spinoza to develop a radically new form of thought, redefining notions of the state and outlining a republican alternative to absolutist monarchy. In our own era, Negri argues that the rediscovery of Spinoza was critical in reinvigorating political theory. Instead of acquiescing to the economic order of capitalism and abandoning the class struggle, Spinoza’s ideas enable us to reconstruct a revolutionary perspective. His treatment of concepts such as multitude, necessity, and liberty have given us new ways of looking critically at our present, revealing that power must always be seen as a question of antagonism and class struggle. The writings that make up this volume – some written from prison as Negri fought for his own freedom – provide an important account of the enduring relevance of Spinoza’s thought. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and political theory, as well anyone interested in radical politics today.Table of ContentsPreface: Two histories for Spinoza Part I: Spinoza in '68 1) Starting from Masaniello ... Deleuze / Spinoza: a political becoming 2) Spinoza / Deleuze: the good moment 3) Joyous Spinozists Part II: Spinoza and today 4) Spinoza: an other power for action 5) Concerning multitude 6) Reflections on the immaterial (Spinoza, Marx ... and today) 7) Spinoza, necessity and freedom: some interpretational alternatives 8) Justice: Spinoza and others 9) A small note on fear in Spinoza 10) Hatred, as a passion Part III: Spinoza in the seventeenth century 11) Politics of immanence, politics of transcendence 12a) Preface to Hegel 12) Rereading Hegel, the philosopher of right 13) Problems of the historiography of the modern state: France: 1610-1650 13a) Notes for the same 14) Considerations on Macpherson 15) Reflections on Grossmann and Borkenau 16) Notes on the history of politics in Tronti

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Book SynopsisOn the occasion of Habermas’s 80th birthday, the German publisher Suhrkamp brought out five volumes of Habermas’s papers that spanned the full range of his philosophical thought, from the theory of rationality to the critique of metaphysics. For each of these volumes, Habermas wrote an introduction that crystallized, in a remarkably clear and succinct way, his thinking on the key philosophical issues that have preoccupied him throughout his long career. This new book by Polity brings together these five introductions and publishes them in translation for the first time. The resulting volume provides a unique and comprehensive overview of Habermas’s philosophy in his own words. In the five chapters that make up this volume, Habermas discusses the concept of communicative action and the grounding of the social sciences in the theory of language; the relationship between rationality and the theory of language; discourse ethics; political theory and problems of democracy and legitimacy; and the critique of reason and the challenge posed by religion in a secular age. The volume includes a substantial introduction by Jean-Marc Durand-Gasselin, which offers a synoptic view of the development of Habermas’s thought as a whole followed by concise accounts of his contributions in each of the areas mentioned. Together they provide the reader with the necessary background to understand Habermas’s distinctive and original contribution to philosophy. Philosophical Introductions will be an indispensable text for students and scholars in philosophy and in the humanities and social sciences generally, as well as anyone interested in the most important developments in philosophy and critical theory today.Table of Contents Preface Introduction: The Work of Jürgen Habermas: Roots, Trunk and Branches Jean-Marc Durand-Gasselin 1. Foundations of Sociology in the Theory of Language 2. Theory of Rationality and Theory of Meaning I. Formal Pragmatics II. Communicative Rationality III. Discourse Theory of Truth IV. On Epistemology 3. Discourse Ethics I. Moral Theory II. On the System of Practical Discourses 4. Political Theory I. Democracy II. The Constitutional State III. Nation, Culture and Religion IV. Constitutionalization of International Law? 5. Critique of Reason I. Metaphilosophical Reflections II. Postmetaphysical Thinking III. The Challenge of Naturalism IV. The Challenge of Religion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisCatastrophic events like the bombing of Hiroshima, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, and drone strikes periodically achieve renewed political significance as subsequent developments summon them back to public awareness. But why and how do different conceptions of time inform and challenge these key events and the narratives they create?In this book, Michael J. Shapiro provides an approach to politics and time that unsettles official collective histories by introducing analyses of lived experience articulated in cinematic, televisual, musical, and literary genres. His investigation is framed by questions of our responsibility to acknowledge those victims of violence and catastrophe who have failed to rise above the threshold of public recognition. Ultimately, by focusing on time as an active force shaping our conception of political life, we can deepen our understanding of complex political dynamics and improve the theories and methods we rely on to interpret them.This bold and original book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, cultural studies and cinema studies looking for a new perspective on the temporal aspects of political life.Trade Review“Dashiell Hammett once said we must remember that the events we grow tired of hearing about are real to those who are their subjects. In this excellent book, Michael Shapiro stops us being tired, shows how we can continue to pay attention, and why it matters.”Keith Tester, LaTrobe University “Indefatigable in his pursuit of the lived experience of time, Shapiro’s symphony of a text engages cinema, literature, music, and art to take us to the heart of political life. Reckoning with the competing temporalities of contemporary life is crucial to understanding the political stakes at hand: Michael Shapiro’s work is indispensable for the task.”Caroline Holmqvist, Université libre de BruxellesTable of ContentsChapter 1: Critical Temporalities: Thinking the EventChapter 2: Hiroshima TemporalitiesChapter 3: Hurricane Katrina’s Bio-TemporalitiesChapter 4: Keeping Time: The Rhythms of Work and the Arts of ResistanceChapter 5: “Fictions of Time” : Necro-Biographies

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Book SynopsisCatastrophic events like the bombing of Hiroshima, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, and drone strikes periodically achieve renewed political significance as subsequent developments summon them back to public awareness. But why and how do different conceptions of time inform and challenge these key events and the narratives they create?In this book, Michael J. Shapiro provides an approach to politics and time that unsettles official collective histories by introducing analyses of lived experience articulated in cinematic, televisual, musical, and literary genres. His investigation is framed by questions of our responsibility to acknowledge those victims of violence and catastrophe who have failed to rise above the threshold of public recognition. Ultimately, by focusing on time as an active force shaping our conception of political life, we can deepen our understanding of complex political dynamics and improve the theories and methods we rely on to interpret them.This bold and original book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, cultural studies and cinema studies looking for a new perspective on the temporal aspects of political life.Trade Review“Dashiell Hammett once said we must remember that the events we grow tired of hearing about are real to those who are their subjects. In this excellent book, Michael Shapiro stops us being tired, shows how we can continue to pay attention, and why it matters.”Keith Tester, LaTrobe University “Indefatigable in his pursuit of the lived experience of time, Shapiro’s symphony of a text engages cinema, literature, music, and art to take us to the heart of political life. Reckoning with the competing temporalities of contemporary life is crucial to understanding the political stakes at hand: Michael Shapiro’s work is indispensable for the task.”Caroline Holmqvist, Université libre de BruxellesTable of Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Critical Temporalities: Thinking the Event Chapter 2: Hiroshima Temporalities Chapter 3:Hurricane Katrina Bio-Temporalities Chapter 4: Keeping Time: The Rhythms of Work and the Arts of Resistance Chapter 5:“Fictions of Time”: Necro-Biographies Afterword

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Book SynopsisThe world is troubled and full of misunderstandings. It seems a new world order of fundamentalist violence and meaningless atrocity is upon us, whilst civilised instruments for cooperation and compromise are becoming increasingly ineffective. In this timely book, Stephen Chan explores the historical and philosophical roots of difference and discord in the international system. He begins with the introduction of the Westphalian system, showing how, throughout the 20th century, new states - from the Middle East, Asia and Africa - entered that system with reservations, preconditions, and great efforts to introduce new forms of concerts and congresses but without seriously challenging the international status-quo. By contrast, the 21st century has brought turmoil and change in the form of militant Islam - be it the Taleban, Al Qaeda, or ISIS - whose varied roots and fluid emergence have so far prevented the West from being able to understand and combat it. Developing Kissinger's suspicion of Saudi Arabia as an Islamic state in Westphalian dress, Chan argues that what is at stake today is not the development of a new Caliphate or an old radicalism - but the effort to supplant and replace the Westphalian system itself. This is the complex and challenging reality to which a truly modern and persuasively relevant plural international relations must now adapt. Whether it can do so remains to be seen.Trade Review"This book is vintage Chan. In characteristically brisk and accessible style, it offers, among many things, a new way of thinking about difference at play in international relations and in International Relations. I especially like Chan's consideration of a question that concerns many: is the Daesh/ISIS difference a threat to the state system as we understand it? (Hint: probably not.)" - Christine Sylvester, University of Connecticut and Gothenburg University, Sweden (affiliate) "Stephen Chan is a rare voice of originality in the study of international relations. He also writes well, a relatively unusual trait in a subject befogged by jargon. Chan cuts through the thickets to make a clear and impassioned plea for more openness and intellectual honesty in the subject. In the process he tells a rattling good yarn, with marvelous character portraits, momentous events and synthesis of very difficult ideas, all in clear language. I can only applaud him for it." - Andrew Williams, University of St. Andrews, UKTable of ContentsPreface Part I Chapter One WESTPHALIA AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THEORY Chapter Two THE SYSTEM UNDER STRAIN: NEW WORLD VISIONS EMERGE Chapter Three REGIONAL SEARCHES FOR THOUGHTFUL VALUE Chapter Four VIOLENCE, MEMORIES OF VIOLENCE, AND EFFORTS AT SOLIDARITY AND UNION Part II Chapter Five THE REVENGE OF THE POST-SECULAR Chapter Six NEW WARS, NEW STATES, AND NEW STATES OF OLD THOUGHT Chapter Seven WILL THE FOUNDATIONS STAND? Part III Chapter Eight THE END OF UNIVERSALISM: TOWARDS A SETTLEMENT OF WORLDLY CONDITIONALITY

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Book SynopsisThe world is troubled and full of misunderstandings. It seems a new world order of fundamentalist violence and meaningless atrocity is upon us, whilst civilised instruments for cooperation and compromise are becoming increasingly ineffective. In this timely book, Stephen Chan explores the historical and philosophical roots of difference and discord in the international system. He begins with the introduction of the Westphalian system, showing how, throughout the 20th century, new states - from the Middle East, Asia and Africa - entered that system with reservations, preconditions, and great efforts to introduce new forms of concerts and congresses but without seriously challenging the international status-quo. By contrast, the 21st century has brought turmoil and change in the form of militant Islam - be it the Taleban, Al Qaeda, or ISIS - whose varied roots and fluid emergence have so far prevented the West from being able to understand and combat it. Developing Kissinger's suspicion of Saudi Arabia as an Islamic state in Westphalian dress, Chan argues that what is at stake today is not the development of a new Caliphate or an old radicalism - but the effort to supplant and replace the Westphalian system itself. This is the complex and challenging reality to which a truly modern and persuasively relevant plural international relations must now adapt. Whether it can do so remains to be seen.Trade Review"This book is vintage Chan. In characteristically brisk and accessible style, it offers, among many things, a new way of thinking about difference at play in international relations and in International Relations. I especially like Chan's consideration of a question that concerns many: is the Daesh/ISIS difference a threat to the state system as we understand it? (Hint: probably not.)" Christine Sylvester, University of Connecticut and Gothenburg University, Sweden (affiliate) "Stephen Chan is a rare voice of originality in the study of international relations. He also writes well, a relatively unusual trait in a subject befogged by jargon. Chan cuts through the thickets to make a clear and impassioned plea for more openness and intellectual honesty in the subject. In the process he tells a rattling good yarn, with marvelous character portraits, momentous events and synthesis of very difficult ideas, all in clear language. I can only applaud him for it." Andrew Williams, University of St. Andrews, UKTable of ContentsPreface Part I Chapter One WESTPHALIA AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THEORY Chapter Two THE SYSTEM UNDER STRAIN: NEW WORLD VISIONS EMERGE Chapter Three REGIONAL SEARCHES FOR THOUGHTFUL VALUE Chapter Four VIOLENCE, MEMORIES OF VIOLENCE, AND EFFORTS AT SOLIDARITY AND UNION Part II Chapter Five THE REVENGE OF THE POST-SECULAR Chapter Six NEW WARS, NEW STATES, AND NEW STATES OF OLD THOUGHT Chapter Seven WILL THE FOUNDATIONS STAND? Part III Chapter Eight THE END OF UNIVERSALISM: TOWARDS A SETTLEMENT OF WORLDLY CONDITIONALITY

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Book Synopsis Teresa Forcades, Spanish Benedictine nun, theologian, physician and political activist, is one of Europe’s leading radical thinkers. Marrying her Catholic faith with a passion for social justice, she came to prominence for her eloquent condemnation of the abuses of some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. She has gone on to found a leading Catalonian anti-capitalist independence movement and is one of the leading voices in the world today against the injustices of capitalism and the patriarchy of modern society and of her own church. In Faith and Freedom, her first book written in English, she skilfully weaves together her personal experiences with a reflection on morality, religion and politics to give a trenchant account of how the Christian faith can be a dynamic force for radical change. Placing herself in a powerful tradition of Catholic social doctrine and Liberation Theology, she applies her perspective to the issues most precious to her: freedom and love, social justice and political engagement, public health, feminism, faith and forgiveness. Structured around the five canonical hours that give its peculiar rhythm to the monastic day, this book is a thoughtful and bold polemic against the exploitation and injustice of the status quo. Its call for liberty, love and justice will resonate with anyone disaffected with a savage and destructive political and economic system that marginalises and murders the poor and undermines the very fabric of social life.Trade Review“Teresa Forcades offers a lucid and inspiring reflection on the mutually enriching relationship between contemplation and action, the spiritual and the political, faith and feminism. Structuring her book around the liturgy of the hours, she shows how the Christian life can be lived in a way that is deeply rooted in prayer and tradition, but also radically engaged with the contemporary world.”Tina Beattie, University of Roehampton “Sister Teresa's meditations, gracefully woven out of the daily Benedictine cycle of prayer, confront some of the most profound personal challenges of contemporary life. Let noone say that the religious life is a-political: Sister Teresa combines fearless intellectual analysis, radical resistance to injustice, and an unwavering commitment to the mystery and power of Christian forgiveness.” Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge “Eye-opening and invigorating, Faith and Freedom demonstrates the power of faith combined with inquiry.”Foreword Reviews"Forcades' book, her first in English, may be brief at just over a hundred pages, but with nearly every sentence containing a bit of wisdom, it requires a contemplative reading. If a reader gives the book the time it deserves, however, they will be richly rewarded."Bob Shine, Vice President of the Women's Ordination ConferenceTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1MATINS: LOVE AND FREEDOMthe biblical genesis and the Enuma Elish / creation vs. emanation / tzimtzum and perichorese / Augustine’s notion of freedomChapter 2LAUDS: SOCIAL JUSTICEliberation theology / the case of Guatemala / a critique of capitalism / my political experienceChapter 3SEXT: PUBLIC HEALTHpublic health systems / privatization and the WHO / the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies / medicalizationChapter 4RECREATION: FEMINISMmy experience of femininity and of feminism / the mother as object of desire / sexism in today’s society / feminist theologyChapter 5VESPERS: FAITHfaith and reason / the gospel of Judas / Gertrude of Helfta / María Jesús of ÁgredaChapter 6COMPLINE: FORGIVENESSthe testimony of a monastic sister / Lacan’s subject vs. the Christian person / Jesus’ parables / forgiveness and freedom

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Book SynopsisAmid the turmoil of economic crisis, Greece has become the first European experiment of left rule in a sea of neoliberalism. What happens when a government of the Left, committed to social justice and the reversal of austerity, is blackmailed into following policies it has fought against and strongly opposes? What can the experience of the Syriza government tell us about the prospects for the Left in the twenty-first century? In this engaging and provocative book, Costas Douzinas uses his position as an 'accidental politician', unexpectedly propelled from academia into the world of Greek politics as a Syriza MP, to answer these urgent questions. He examines the challenges facing Syriza since its ascent to power in 2015 and draws out the theoretical and political lessons from one of the boldest and most difficult experiments in governing from the Left in an age of neoliberalism and austerity.Trade Review"What a rare and wonderful book! Douzinas reflects with searing honesty on the challenges facing left parties trying to govern and protect embattled nations in an age of financialization and globalization. Because he is one of the most perspicacious critical legal and political theorists of our time, he has also offered a brilliant set of political theoretical meditations. By turns ironic, tragic, caustic and moving, Syriza in Power is essential reading for serious leftists everywhere." Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley "While the Syriza government, elected in 2015 in Greece, was teaching the world a lesson of courage and fidelity, Costas Douzinas, its "professor elect", was teaching a lesson of lucidity, intelligence and imagination. Above all, he makes plain that, in the darkest hour, history is not finished, because the resistance is rooted in the life and ideals of the people itself. Whether one entirely agrees or not with Douzinas' "left Euroscepticism that can save Europe", his politics of truth will prove immensely helpful." Étienne Balibar, Kingston UniversityTable of Contents Prologue: The Accidental Politician A. Resistance Rising 1. From Utopia to Dystopia and Resistance, a Short Run 2. Hunger Strikers and Hunger Artists 3. Radical Philosophy Encounters Syriza 4. A Philosophy of Resistance B. Syriza Agonistes 5. A Very European Coup 6. Contradiction is the Name of the Governing Left C. Reflections on Life as Politician 7. Welcome To The Desert Of Disorderly Order 8. Learning from Ideology 9. The Curious Incident of the Missing TV Licenses D. The Moral Advantage of the Left 10. The Ethos of the Left 11. Greeks or Europeans? 12. The Euro, the Sacred and the Holy E. Left History 13. The Left and the Philosophy Of History 14. 1949, 1969, 1989: The Cycles of History F. From Grexit to Brexit 15. Putting the Demos On Stage 16. Grexit and Brexit, Oxi and Leave 17. Brexit and Euroscepticism G. Finis Europae 18. Finis Europae? 19. The Left and the Future of Europe H. Cities of Refuge 20. Europe Between Two Infant Deaths 21. Human Rights For Martians Notes

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Book SynopsisAmid the turmoil of economic crisis, Greece has become the first European experiment of left rule in a sea of neoliberalism. What happens when a government of the Left, committed to social justice and the reversal of austerity, is blackmailed into following policies it has fought against and strongly opposes? What can the experience of the Syriza government tell us about the prospects for the Left in the twenty-first century? In this engaging and provocative book, Costas Douzinas uses his position as an 'accidental politician', unexpectedly propelled from academia into the world of Greek politics as a Syriza MP, to answer these urgent questions. He examines the challenges facing Syriza since its ascent to power in 2015 and draws out the theoretical and political lessons from one of the boldest and most difficult experiments in governing from the Left in an age of neoliberalism and austerity.Trade Review"What a rare and wonderful book! Douzinas reflects with searing honesty on the challenges facing left parties trying to govern and protect embattled nations in an age of financialization and globalization. Because he is one of the most perspicacious critical legal and political theorists of our time, he has also offered a brilliant set of political theoretical meditations. By turns ironic, tragic, caustic and moving, Syriza in Power is essential reading for serious leftists everywhere." Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley "While the Syriza government, elected in 2015 in Greece, was teaching the world a lesson of courage and fidelity, Costas Douzinas, its "professor elect", was teaching a lesson of lucidity, intelligence and imagination. Above all, he makes plain that, in the darkest hour, history is not finished, because the resistance is rooted in the life and ideals of the people itself. Whether one entirely agrees or not with Douzinas' "left Euroscepticism that can save Europe", his politics of truth will prove immensely helpful." Étienne Balibar, Kingston University"Costas Douzinas’ Syriza in Power carries a wondrous resemblance to Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince... Both works scrutinise without moralization the world of politics at a critical historical juncture… As they set out to expose the tensions between the logic of moral rectitude and the demands of public action, they advance positions that are in direct conflict with the dominant doctrines of the time. The insights into the world of politics are invariably delivered with flair and erudition that simultaneously seduce and intimidate."Open DemocracyTable of Contents Prologue: The Accidental Politician A. Resistance Rising 1. From Utopia to Dystopia and Resistance, a Short Run 2. Hunger Strikers and Hunger Artists 3. Radical Philosophy Encounters Syriza 4. A Philosophy of Resistance B. Syriza Agonistes 5. A Very European Coup 6. Contradiction is the Name of the Governing Left C. Reflections on Life as Politician 7. Welcome To The Desert Of Disorderly Order 8. Learning from Ideology 9. The Curious Incident of the Missing TV Licenses D. The Moral Advantage of the Left 10. The Ethos of the Left 11. Greeks or Europeans? 12. The Euro, the Sacred and the Holy E. Left History 13. The Left and the Philosophy Of History 14. 1949, 1969, 1989: The Cycles of History F. From Grexit to Brexit 15. Putting the Demos On Stage 16. Grexit and Brexit, Oxi and Leave 17. Brexit and Euroscepticism G. Finis Europae 18. Finis Europae? 19. The Left and the Future of Europe H. Cities of Refuge 20. Europe Between Two Infant Deaths 21. Human Rights For Martians Notes

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Book SynopsisThe idea of socialism has given normative grounding and orientation to the outrage over capitalism for more than 150 years, and yet today it seems to have lost much of its appeal. Despite growing discontent, many would hesitate to invoke socialism when it comes to envisioning life beyond capitalism. How can we explain the rapid decline of this once powerful idea? And what must we do to renew it for the twenty-first century? In this lucid, political-philosophical essay, Axel Honneth argues that the idea of socialism has lost its luster because its theoretical assumptions stem from the industrial era and are no longer convincing in our contemporary post-industrial societies. Only if we manage to replace these assumptions with a concept of history and society that corresponds to our current experiences will we be able to restore confidence in a project whose fundamental idea remains as relevant today as it was a century ago – the idea of an economy that realizes freedom in solidarity. The Idea of Socialism was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book of 2015. Trade Review"Axel Honneth explores the contemporary meaning of the socialist ideal. Drawing on Hegel, Dewey, Marx, and the utopian socialist tradition, Honneth argues – with great power – that socialism is about harmonizing ideals of freedom and solidarity, creating institutions of social freedom that more fully realize the Enlightenment’s normative project. Creating that order will require socialists to think beyond economy and social class, to imagine a form of democratic society animated by an experimental spirit – a society that expands the scope of problem-solving through free communication among equals. I hope this important and illuminating book gets the wide readership it deserves." Joshua Cohen, Stanford University "Axel Honneth makes a lucid and compelling case for renewing the utopian impulse of the early Marx in the context of the present. In this quite remarkable book, Honneth asks why various contemporary forms of discontent do not easily transform into a vision of the future. He returns to the early documents of socialism in order to mark their limits and to formulate a more substantial account of social freedom. The great ambition of this small book is to show that a more robust understanding of social freedom, cooperative life, and ideals of solidarity, can be derived from a reformulated account of the social sphere. In his view, freedom only makes sense on the basis of cooperative orientations. This early ideal can, and must, be renewed in light of the contemporary differentiation of needs, and the contemporary political demands on communication and recognition. Mindful of what remains vibrant in the past and imperative for the future, Honneth deftly shows how the ideal of socialism can orient our thought and action in the contemporary political world." Judith Butler, University of California

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