Search results for ""C Hurst Co Publishers Ltd""
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation
This book examines Western military technological innovation through the lens of developments in small arms during the twentieth century. These weapons have existed for centuries, appear to have matured only incrementally and might seem unlikely technologies for investigating the trajectory of military-technical change. Their relative simplicity, however, makes it easy to use them to map patterns of innovation within the military- industrial complex. Advanced technologies may have captured the military imagination, offering the possibility of clean and decisive outcomes, but it is the low technologies of the infantryman that can help us develop an appreciation for the dynamics of military-technical change. Tracing the path of innovation from battlefield to back office, and from industry to alliance partner, Ford develops insights into the way that small arms are socially constructed. He thereby exposes the mechanics of power across the military- industrial complex. This in turn reveals that shifting power relations between soldiers and scientists, bureaucrats and engineers, have allowed the private sector to exploit infantry status anxiety and shape soldier weapon preferences. Ford's analysis allows us to draw wider conclusions about how military innovation works and what social factors
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Jihadism Transformed: Al-Qaeda and Islamic State's Global Battle of Ideas
Jihadist narratives have evolved dramatically over the past five years, driven by momentous events in the Middle East and beyond; the death of bin Laden; the rise and ultimate failure of the Arab Spring; and most notably, the rise of the so-called Islamic State.For many years, al-Qaeda pointed to an aspirational future Caliphate as their utopian end goal - one which allowed them to justify their violent excesses in the here and now. Islamic State turned that aspiration into a dystopic reality, and in the process hijacked the jihadist narrative, breathing new life into the global Salafi-Jihadi movement. Despite air-strikes from above, and local disillusionment from below, the new caliphate has stubbornly persisted and has been at the heart of ISIS's growing global appeal.This timely collection of essays examines how jihadist narratives have changed globally, adapting to these turbulent circumstances. Area and thematic specialists consider transitions inside the Middle East and North Africa as well as in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. As these analyses demonstrate, the success of the ISIS narrative has been as much about resonance with local contexts, as it has been about the appeal of the global idea of a tangible and realised caliphate.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Famine in Somalia
Some 250,000 people died in the southern Somalia famine of 2011-12, which also displaced and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands more. Yet this crisis had been predicted nearly a year earlier. The harshest drought in Somalia's recent history coincided with a global spike in food prices, hitting this arid, import-dependent country hard. The policies of Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group that controlled southern Somalia, exacerbated an already difficult situation, barring most humanitarian assistance, while donors counter-terrorism policies led to cuts and criminalized any aid falling into their hands. A major disaster resulted from the production and market failures precipitated by the drought and food price crisis, while the famine itself was the result of the failure to quickly respond to these events-and was thus largely human-made. This book analyses the famine: the trade-offs between competing policy priorities that led to it, the collective failure in response, and how those affected by it attempted to protect themselves and their livelihoods.It also examines the humanitarian response, including actors that had not previously been particularly visible in Somalia-from Turkey, the Middle East, and Islamic charities worldwide.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Muted Modernists: The Struggle Over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia
Analysis of both official and opposition Saudi divine politics is often monolithic, conjuring images of conservatism, radicalism, misogyny and resistance to democracy. Madawi Al-Rasheed challenges this stereotype as she examines a long tradition of engaging with modernism that gathered momentum with the Arab uprisings and incurred the wrath of both the regime and its Wahhabi supporters. With this nascent modernism, constructions of new divine politics, anchored in a rigorous reinterpretation of foundational Islamic texts and civil society activism are emerging in a context where authoritarian rule prefers its advocates to remain muted. The author challenges scholarly wisdom on Islamism in general and blurs the boundaries between secular and religious politics.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd To End a Civil War: Norway's Peace Engagement with Sri Lanka
Between 1983 and 2009 Sri Lanka was host to a bitter civil war fought between the Government and the Tamil Tigers, which sought the creation of an independent Tamil state. In May 2009 came the war's violent end with the crushing defeat of the Tamil Tigers at the hands of the Sri Lanka Army. But prior to this grim finale, for some time there had been hope for a peaceful end to the conflict. Beginning with a ceasefire agreement in early 2002, for almost five years a series of peace talks between the two sides took place in locations ranging from Thai- land and Japan to Norway, Germany and Switzerland.To End a Civil War tells the story of trying to bring peace to Sri Lanka. In particular it tells the story of how a faraway European nation--Norway--came to play a central role in efforts to end the conflict, and what its small, dedicated team of mediators did in their untiring efforts to reach what ultimately proved the elusive goal of a negotiated peace.In doing so it fills a critical gap in our understanding of the Sri Lankan conflict. But it also illuminates in detail a much wider problem: the intense fragility that surrounds peace processes and the extraordinary lengths to which their proponents often stretch in order to secure their progress.
£24.21
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy
In his disturbing and timely book Jean-Pierre Filiu lays bare the strategies and tactics employed by the Middle Eastern autocracies, above all those of Syria, Egypt, Yemen and Algeria, that set out to crush the democratic uprisings of the 'Arab Revolution'. In pursuit of these goals they turned to the intelligence agencies and internal security arms of the 'deep state', the armed forces and to street gangs such as the Shabiha to enforce their will. Alongside physical intimidation, imprisonment and murder, Arab counter- revolutionaries discredited and split their opponents by boosting Salafi - Jihadi groups such as Islamic State. They also released from prison hardline Islamists and secretly armed and funded them. The full potential of the Arab counter-revolution surprised most observers, who thought they had seen it all from the Arab despots: their perversity, their brutality, their voracity. But the wider world underestimated their ferocious readiness to literally burn down their countries in order to cling to absolute power.Bashar al-Assad clambered to the top of this murderous class of tyrants, driving nearly half of the Syrian population in to exile and executing tens of thousands of his opponents. He has set a grisly precedent, one that other Arab autocrats are sure to follow in their pursuit of absolute power.
£24.21
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Critical Muslim 15: Educational Reform
Jeremy Henzel-Thomas argues that educational reform is the biggest challenge facing Muslim societies, Richard Pringle highlights the purpose of education, Abdelwahab El-Affendi suggests how Muslim education should be reconfigured, Abdulkader Tayob argues that issues of identity are intrinsically linked with Islamic education reform, Farid Panjwani is convinced that conventional approaches to education in Islam are deeply flawed, Ebrahim Moosa rethinks the whole idea of the madrassas, Ali Asani experiments with new methods of teaching Islam, Keri Facer explores the future of public knowledge building, Moneef R. Zou'bi suggests how science education can be improved in the Muslim World, Sindre Bangstad highlights the problems in researching Islamophobia, Paul Ashwin wants to improve student engagement, Nejatullah Siddiqi thinks Islamic economics is passed its 'sell by' date, and Ziauddin Sardar takes us from 'Islamisation of Knowledge' to 'Integration of Knowledge'.Also in this issue: the art of Ahmed Moustafa, a short story by Sadaf Halai, poems by Ilona Yusuf, and the 'Last Word' on university rankings
£20.08
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Critical Muslim 16: Turkey
Tahir Abbas explores the enigma of modern Islamist Turkey, Ahmet Kuru discovers Turkey's political history, Nagihan Halilolu gets tangled in Turkish heritage wars, Zeynep Okten has reservations about the country's Islamic finance industry, Gokhan Bacik wonders why Turkey fails to have a social contract, Iftikhar H Malik is enchaned by the whirling darvishes, John Crofoot revisits the Seljuk era, Charles Allen Scarboro listens to local stories, Onur Suzan Nobrega fights for the oppressed Zaza Alawis, Semiha Topal is appalled by violence against women, Rebecca Soble spends a day in Dogubayazit, and Mohammed Bakari remembers Istanbul. Also in this issue: Suzanne Mordue on Turkish coffee, street beggars in Istanbul, and our usual short stories, poems, list and the 'Last Word'"
£20.08
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd A Short History of Modern Angola
This book begins in 1820 with the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire after the virtual loss of Asia and America. In the nineteenth century the most valuable resource extracted from Angola was agricultural labour, first as privately owned slaves and later as conscript workers. The colony was managed by a few marine officers, by several hundred white political convicts, and by a couple of thousand black Angolans who had adopted Portuguese language and culture. The hub was the harbour city of Luanda which grew in the twentieth century to be a dynamic metropolis of several million people. The export of labour was gradually replaced when an agrarian revolution enabled white Portuguese immigrants to drive black Angolan labourers to produce sugar-cane, cotton, maize and above all coffee. During the twentieth century this wealth was supplemented by Congo copper, by gem-quality diamonds, and by off-shore oil. Although much of the countryside retained its dollar-a-day peasant economy, new wealth generated conflict which pitted white against black, north against south, coast against highland, American allies against Russian allies.The generation of warfare finally ended in 2002 when national reconstruction could begin on Portuguese colonial foundations.
£21.74
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Genoa, 'La Superba': The Rise and Fall of a Merchant Pirate Superpower
Genoa has an incredible story to tell. It rose from an obscurity imposed by its harsh geography to become a merchant-pirate superpower that helped create the medieval world. It fought bitter battles with its great rival Venice and imprisoned Marco Polo, as the feuding city states connected Europe to the glories of the East. It introduced the Black Death to Europe, led the fight against the Barbary Corsairs, bankrolled Imperial Spain, and gave the world Christopher Columbus and a host of fearless explorers. Genoa and Liguria provided the brains and the heroism behind the Risorgimento, and was the last place emigrants saw before building new lives across the Atlantic. It played host to writers and Grand Tourists, gave football to the Italians, and helped build modern Italy. Today, along with the glorious Riviera coast of Liguria, Genoa provides some of the finest places on earth to sip wine, eat pesto and enjoy spectacular views. This book brings the past alive and paints a portrait of a modern port city and region that is only now coming to terms with a past that is as bloody, fascinating and influential as any in Europe.
£19.25
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Critical Muslim 14: Power
Ziauddin Sardar explores the limits of power, Barnaby Rogerson is enchanted with the notion of governance in the life of Prophet Muhammad, Bruce Lawrence deconstructs the idea of AoIslamic State', Kecia Ali surveys sexual politics of Muslim groups, Abdelwahab El-Efendi travels to AoLondonistan', Ehsan Masood is awe struck with the power of military/business complex, Mohamed Bakari get involved with the struggle for power in Turkey, and Boyd Tonkin highlights the power of words. Also in this issue: Nader Hashemi on the geo-politics of the 'Arab Spring', Aamer Hussain reads the fiction of the Turkish Sufi novelist Samiha Ayverdi, poems, short story, and our list of ten most powerful women in Islam.
£20.08
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990
External Mission is the Winner of the Recht Malan Prize for Non-Fiction awarded by Media24 in South Africa. Nelson Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 was one of the most memorable moments of recent decades. It came a few days after the removal of the ban on the African National Congress; founded a century ago and outlawed in 1960, it had transferred its headquarters abroad and opened what it termed an External Mission. For the thirty years following its banning, the ANC had fought relentlessly against the apartheid state. Finally voted into office in 1994, the ANC today regards its armed struggle as the central plank of its legitimacy. External Mission is the first study of the ANC s period in exile, based on a full range of sources in southern Africa and Europe. These include the ANC s own archives and also those of the Stasi, the East German ministry that trained the ANC's security personnel. It reveals that the decision to create the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) -- a guerrilla army which later became the ANC's armed wing -- was made not by the ANC but by its allies in the South African Communist Party after negotiations with Chinese leader Mao Zedong.In this impressive work, Ellis shows that many of the strategic decisions made, and many of the political issues that arose during the course of that protracted armed struggle, had a lasting effect on South Africa, shaping its society even up to the present day.
£26.28
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared
Why are relations between politically mobilised ethnic identities and the nation-state sometimes peaceful and at other times fraught and violent? Madurika Rasaratnam's book sets out a novel answer to this key puzzle in world politics through a detailed comparative study of the starkly divergent trajectories of the 'Tamil question' in India and Sri Lanka from the colonial era to the present day. Whilst Tamil and national identities have peaceably harmonised in India, in Sri Lanka these have come into escalating and violent contradiction, leading to three decades of armed conflict and simmering antagonism since the war's brutal end in 2009. Tracing these differing outcomes to distinct and contingent patterns of political contestation and mobilisation in the two states, Rasaratnam shows how, whilst emerging from comparable conditions and similar historical experiences, these have produced very different interactions between evolving Tamil and national identities, constituting in India a nation-state inclusive of the Tamils, and in Sri Lanka a hierarchical Sinhala-Buddhist national and state order hostile to Tamils' political claims. Locating these dynamics within changing international contexts, she also shows how these once largely separate patterns of national-Tamil politics, and Tamil diaspora mobilisation, are increasingly interwoven in the post-war internationalisation of Sri Lanka's ethnic crisis.
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C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Shi'ism in South East Asia: 'Alid Piety and Sectarian Constructions
This is the first work available in any language to extensively document and critically discuss traditions of 'Alid piety and their modern contestations in the region. The concept of 'Alid piety allows for a reframing of our views on the widespread reverence for 'Ali, Fatima and their progeny that emphasises how such sentiments and associated practices are seen as part of broad traditions shared by many Muslims, which might or might not have their origins in a specifically Shi'a identity. In doing so, it facilitates the movement of academic discussions out from under the shadow of polemical sectarian discourses on 'Shi'ism' in Southeast Asia. The chapters include presentations of new material from previously unpublished early manuscript sources from Muslim vernacular literatures in the Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Acehnese and Bugis languages, as well as rich new ethnography from across the region. These studies engage with cultural, intellectual, and performative traditions, as well as the ways in which 'Alid piety has been transformed in relation to more strictly sectarian identifications since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
£44.81
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Death of the Mehdi Army: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Iraq's Most Powerful Militia
The Mehdi Army militia was a towering force in Iraq during the early years of the post-Saddam era. As an aggressive opponent of foreign occupation and one of the principal antagonists in Iraq's brutal sectarian civil war, the militia was central to the violence that ravaged the country and a pivotal political actor. Growing rapidly in size and strength, and controlling entire districts of Baghdad and broad swathes of southern and central Iraq, the Mehdi Army seemed poised to become a Hezbollah-like 'state within a state' that would remain enormously powerful for years to come. Drawing from extensive field experience in one of Baghdad's most volatile militia-held districts, Krohley exposes how, and why, the militia suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed in the midst of the Americans' 'Surge' of forces during 2008. Building from an examination of the Mehdi Army's social and ideological roots, he presents a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood study of the militia's changing fortunes that offers unparalleled local detail and specificity. Krohley shows how the Mehdi Army's demise was ultimately a self-inflicted 'death' as opposed to a triumph of its foes.In so doing, he not only challenges prevailing orthodoxies of counterinsurgency doctrine and the mythology of the Surge, but also offers penetrating insights into the battered state of Iraqi society after decades of dictatorship, privation and war.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Country of Football: Politics, Popular Culture and the Beautiful Game in Brazil
Brazil has done much to shape football, but how has football shaped Brazil? Despite the political and social importance of the beautiful game to the country, the subject has hitherto received little attention. This book presents groundbreaking work by historians and researchers from Brazil, the United States, Britain and France, who examine the political significance, in the broadest sense, of the sport in which Brazil has long been a world leader. The authors consider questions such as the relationship between football, the workplace and working class culture; the formation of Brazilian national identity; race relations; political and social movements; and the impact of the sport on social mobility. Contributions to the book range in time from the late nineteenth century, when the British first introduced the sport to Brazil, to the present day, as the 'country of football' prepares itself to host the 2014 World Cup, painting a vivid picture of the many ways in which football exists and functions in Brazil, both on and off the pitch.
£17.60
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Understanding Namibia: The Trials of Independence
Since independence in 1990, Namibia has witnessed only one generation with no memory of colonialism - the 'born frees', who voted in the 2009 elections. The anti-colonial liberation movement, SWAPO, dominates the political scene, effectively making Namibia a de facto one-party state dominated by the first 'struggle generation'. While those in power declare their support for a free, fair, and just society, the limits to liberation are such that emancipation from foreign rule has only been partially achieved. Despite its natural resources Namibia is among the world's most unequal societies and indicators of wellbeing have not markedly improved for many among the former colonised majority, despite a constitution enshrining human rights, social equality, and individual liberty. This book analyses the transformation of Namibian society since independence. Melber explores the achievements and failures and contrasts the narrative of a post-colonial patriotic history with the socio-economic and political realities of the nation-building project. He also investigates whether, notwithstanding the relative stability prevailing to date, the negotiation of controlled change during Namibia's decolonisation could have achieved more than simply a change of those in control.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant
Throughout the turbulent history of the Levant the 'Alawis - a secretive, resilient and ancient Muslim sect - have aroused suspicion and animosity, including accusations of religious heresy. More recently they have been tarred with the brush of political separatism and com--plicity in the excesses of the Assad regime, claims that have gained greater traction since the onset of the Syrian uprising and subse--quent devastating civil war. The contributors to this book provide a com--plex and nuanced reading of Syria's 'Alawi communities - from loyalist gangs (Shabiha) to outspoken critics of the regime. Drawing upon wide-ranging research that examines the historic, political and social dynamics of the 'Alawi and the Syrian state, the current social identities, and relations to the Ba'ath party, the Syrian state and the military apparatus. The analysis also extends to Leba--non with a focus on the embattled 'Alawi community of Jabal Mohsen in Tripoli and state rela--tions with Hizballah amid the current crisis.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade
China is in the midst of the fastest and most intense process of urbanisation the world has ever known, and Shanghai - its biggest, richest and most cosmopolitan city - is positioned for acceleration into the twenty-first century. Yet, in its embrace of a hopeful - even exultant - futurism, Shanghai recalls the older and much criticised project of imagining, planning and building the modern metropolis. Today, among Westerners, at least, the very idea of the futuristic city - with its multilayered skyways, domestic robots and flying cars - seems doomed to the realm of nostalgia, the sadly comic promise of a future that failed to materialise. Shanghai Future maps the city of tomorrow as it resurfaces in a new time and place. It searches for the contours of an unknown and unfamiliar futurism in the city's street markets as well as in its skyscrapers. For though it recalls the modernity of an earlier age, Shanghai's current re-emergence is only superficially based on mimicry. Rather, in seeking to fulfill its ambitions, the giant metropolis is reinventing the very idea of the future itself. As it modernises, Shanghai is necessarily recreating what it is to be modern.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Afghan Way of War: Culture and Pragmatism: A Critical History
Readers of this book are presented with a novelty, namely the Afghan perspective on the successive military and counterinsurgency campaigns that the British, Russians and Americans/Coalition have fought against the Afghans, from the first encounter in the 1830s to today's ongoing war waged by the Taliban. Included in the narrative is the wider Pashtun population that lived astride the British Imperial/Pakistan border, not just those Pashtuns resident in the modern state of Afghanistan. The literature on the Afghan wars and frontier actions is almost entirely Anglo-centric and 'agency' on the part of Afghans/Pashtuns is almost entirely absent. Even modern accounts by journalists, former soldiers, policy-makers and commentators have tended to reduce the Afghans and Pashtuns to stereotypes and deprive them of any initiative. Ironically their nineteenth-century contemporaries were rather more generous in their appraisal of their fighting prowess. Rob Johnson therefore presents more than just another military history of the Afghan Wars; he seeks to open a new chapter in the debate about Afghanistan and, crucially, aims to 'tell the story' from the Afghan side, countering the inaccurate and sometimes rather fanciful interpretations of events, in order to present a more precise and utilitarian account of the military history of the Afghans. Successive chapters illustrate the various methods adopted by the Afghans to confront their enemies, focussing on a limited number of themes to create coherence. Collectively, they demonstrate that the 'Afghan Way of War' was eminently pragmatic, but that the spirit by which Afghans fought the British, or the Soviets, or each other, was coloured by a cultural code. In recent decades, that code has been altered and eroded dramatically so that in the last ten years what has been paramount is the Afghans' sense that they are resisting coercive governance, foreign influences and ideas and occupation.
£19.25
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Tribes and States in a Changing Middle East
At the outset of the twenty-first century and in the midst of the Arab Spring, tribe-state relations are a useful frame of reference through which to analyse the Middle East on a state-by-state basis. Tribes and States in a Changing Middle East looks beyond the dichotomy between tribe and state. Its central theme is the role of tribes and tribalism in state politics, society, and identity, as demonstrated in case studies from the Arab East (mashriq). The book is a comparative endeavour that seeks to address questions related to the interplay between tribal organisations and state institutions, tribal solidarity and nationalism, and tribal power and the centralised government. It further discusses the impact and role of tribal polities in modern states in times of regional and national turmoil.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Stalin's American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show-trials
Stalin's American Spy tells the remarkable story of Noel Field, a Soviet agent in the US State Department in the mid-1930s. Lured to Prague in May 1949, he was kidnapped and handed over to the Hungarian secret police. Tortured by them and interrogated too by their Soviet superiors, Field's forced 'confessions' were manipulated by Stalin and his East European satraps to launch a devastating series of show-trials that led to the imprisonment and judicial murder of numerous Czechoslovak, German, Polish and Hungarian party members. Yet there were other events in his very strange career that could give rise to the suspicion that Field was an American spy who had infiltrated the Communist movement at the behest of Allen Dulles, the wartime OSS chief in Switzerland who later headed the CIA. Never tried, Field and his wife were imprisoned in Budapest until 1954, then granted political asylum in Hungary, where they lived out their sterile last years. This new biography takes a fresh look at Field's relationship with Dulles, and his role in the Alger Hiss affair. It sheds fresh light upon Soviet espionage in the United States and Field's relationship with Hede Massing, Ignace Reiss and Walter Krivitsky. It also reassesses how the increasingly anti-Semitic East European show-trials were staged and dissects the 'lessons' which Stalin sought to convey through them.
£24.21
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd America and Britain: Was There Ever A Special Relationship?
Britain's political and military elite has for decades nurtured the idea that enduring ties bind the interests of London and Washington, in good times and bad. Irrespective of the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks and the economic rise of the East, these links are allegedly impregnable. But how accurate a picture is this? Are the British engaged in a monumental act of self-delusion? Guy Arnold investigates the 'American disease' at the heart of Whitehall, which, he argues, has tied British policies too closely to those of Washington. The 'special relationship' became a Foreign Office priority and gave Britain the illusion of power it no longer enjoyed. As Churchill put it acidly, 'the British and the Americans were stuck with each other - a junior partner and a senior partner respectively'. For the Americans it provided a way of keeping Britain 'on side' but in return Washington accelerated Britain's imperial decline. The Americans always saw Britain in Europe as a Trojan Horse to safeguard their interests and as a military outpost for their global ambitions. They derided or ignored the 'special relationship', even in their dealings with Thatcher and Blair, and latterly the Foreign Office has failed to convince President Obama of its unique importance.
£28.34
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Critical Muslim 05: Love and Death
Aamer Hussein takes love to its logical conclusion, Robert Irwin traces the origins of the ghazal (love lyric ), Christopher Shackle recites epic Panjabi poems of sacred love and lyrical death, Imranali Panjwani mourns the massacre of Karbala, Martin Rose is taken hostage by Saddam Hussain, Jalees Rahman reflects on Nazi doctors who took delight in deathly experiments, Ramin Jehanbegloo is incarcerated in the notorious Evin prison, Hamza Elahi visits England's Muslim graveyards, Shanon Shah receives valuable guidance on love and sex from the 'Obedient Wives Club', Samia Rahman sets out in search of love, Khola Hasan has mixed feelings about her hijab, Sabita Manian promotes love between India and Pakistan, Boyd Tonkin discovers that dead outrank the living in Jerusalem , Alev Adil takes 'a night journey through a veiled self' and Irna Qureshi's mother finally makes a decision on her final resting place. Also in this issue: Parvez Manzoor throws scorn on a nihilistic, revisionist history of Islam, Naomi Foyle reads the first novel of a British Palestinian, Ahmad Khan explores the colonial history of The Aborigines' Protection Society, a short story by the famous Fahmida Riaz, Syrian scenarios by Manhal al-Sarraj, poems by Sabrina Mahfouz and Michael Wolf, Rachel Dwyer's list of Top Ten Muslim Characters in Bollywood and Merryl Wyn Davies's 'last word' on love and death at the movies.
£20.08
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India
Written in the wake of the widely publicised attacks by Hindu nationalist activists on the late M. F. Husain, India's most famous artist and a prominent Muslim, The Art of Secularism addresses the entanglement of visual art with political secularism. The crisis in secularism in India, commonly associated with the rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1980s, transformed the meaning of art. It challenged the relation- ships between modernism, national culture, secularism and modernity that had been built since India's independence in 1947. The Art of Secularism describes how four renowned artists - M. F. Husain, K. G. Subramanyan, Gulammohammed Sheikh, and Bhupen Khakhar - developed their practice in an era when secular nationalism grappled with the recent re-enchantment of signs. Com- bining close readings of these artists' work with ethnography of the art worlds of Mumbai and Vadodara, Karin Zitzewitz describes both the everyday forms of cosmopolitanism in the Indian art world and the increasing vulnerability of art world spaces to cultural regulation. She also presents the shifting conditions of the production and exhibition of art within the particularly urgent, varied, and sophisticated public debates about secularism in India, in which artists have been increasingly prominent interlocutors.
£26.28
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd From Above: War, Violence and Verticality
The arrival of the aerostatic balloon at the end of the nineteenth century ushered in a new perspective on the battlefield, taking over from the mount - the hill at the edge of the field of combat - and the fortified tower positioned within it. Since then there has been no perspective more culpable in war, violence and security than the aerial one. From Above explores the aerial view in new depth and clarity. It draws in vivid detail on studies of the aerial perspective today and on rich empirical investigations of the aerial view from the past. Chapters examine a range of case studies and examples, from Vietnam and the balloon prospect, camouflage, colonial policing, to today's drone wars. The contributors draw on perspectives from history, international relations, political geography and cultural studies in order to provide a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the view from above. They also consider the view from above in relation to its technologies, legalities, practices, doctrines, and visual culture. Among the contributors are renowned international experts such as Derek Gregory, Trevor Paglen, Caren Kaplan, Klaus Dodds and Priya Satia. The aerial view is a perspective that can no longer be ignored, one that is of growing significance for those interested in geopolitics, militarism and conflict.
£57.18
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
When the convulsions of the Arab Spring first became manifest in Syria in March 2011, the Ba'athist regime was quick to blame the pro- tests on the 'Syrian Muslim Brotherhood' and its 'al-Qaeda affiliates.' But who are these Islamists so determined to rule a post-Assad Syria? Little has been published on militant Islam in Syria since Hafez Assad's regime destroyed the Islamist movement in its stronghold of Hama in February 1982. This book bridges that gap by providing readers with the first comprehensive account of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's history to date. In this ground-breaking account of Syria's most prominent, yet highly secretive, Islamist organisation, the author draws on previously untapped sources: the memoirs of former Syrian jihadists; British and American archives; and also a series of wide-ranging interviews with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's historical leaders as well as those who battled against them - many speaking on the record for the first time. Ashes of Hama uncovers the major aspects of the Islamist struggle: from the Brotherhood's radicalisation and its 'jihad' against the Ba'athist regime and subsequent exile, to a spectacular comeback at the forefront of the Syrian revolution in 2011 - a remarkable turnaround for an Islamist movement which all analysts had pronounced dead amid the ruins of Hama in 1982.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Gulf Monarchies and Climate Change: Abu Dhabi and Qatar in an Era of Natural Unsustainability
At the heart of Mari Luomi's salutary book is whether oil- and gas-dependent authoritarian monarchies can keep their natural resource use and the environment in balance. She argues that the Gulf monarchies have already reached their limits of 'natural sustainability', given that several of them are dependent on natural gas imports. Water resources are dwindling, and food import dependence is high and rising. Qatar's per capita emission of CO2 is ten times the global average. As a result of their booming economies, the Gulf monarchies' surging electricity and water demand have exerted unexpected pressures on domestic energy supply. Simultaneously, the consolidation of climate change on the international agenda has created a new uncertainty for local rulers whose survival depends on sales of oil and gas. Meanwhile domestic resource consumption, together with climate change, are putting unprecedented stress on the region's fragile desert environment. The Gulf is under stress, but so too are its states' power, wealth and ecosystems. Luomi reveals how Abu Dhabi and Qatar have responded to these new natural re- source-related pressures, particularly climate change, and how their responses are inextricably linked with elite legitimacy strategies and the 'natural unsustainability' of their political economies.
£36.58
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Negotiating Relief: The Dialectics of Humanitarian Space
While humanitarianism is unquestionably a fast-growing subject of practitioner and scholarly engagement, much discussion about it is predicated on a dangerous dichotomy between 'aid givers' and 'relief takers' that largely misrepresents the negotiated nature of the humanitarian enterprise. To highlight the tension between these relationships, this book focuses on the 'humanitarian spaces' and the dynamics of 'humanitarian diplomacy' (both 'local' and 'global') that sustain them. It gathers key voices to provide a critical analysis of international theory, geopolitics and dilemmas underpinning the negotiation of relief. Offering up-to-date examples from cases such as Kosovo and the Tsunami, or ongoing crises like Haiti, Libya, Darfur and Somalia, the contributors analyse the complexity of humanitarian diplomacy and the multiplicity of geographies and actors involved in it. By investigating the transformations that both diplomacy and humanitarianism are undergoing, the authors prompt us towards a critical and eclectic understanding of the dialectics of humanitarian space. Negotiating Relief aims to present humanitarianism not only as a relief delivery mechanism but also as a phenomenon in dialogue with both localised crises and global politics.
£36.58
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Aiding Afghanistan: A History of Soviet Assistance to a Developing Country
For close to sixty years Afghanistan was one of the largest recipients of foreign development aid and yet it remains one of the poorest countries on the planet. The Soviet Union pro- vided Afghanistan with large-scale economic and technical assistance for nearly twenty-five years before invading in 1979 and then in- creased the volume of assistance even further during the 1980s in an effort to prop up the government and undermine the anti-Soviet insurgency. None of this aid made any lasting difference to Afghan poverty. As in so many other countries, foreign aid did not promote economic growth. Using unexplored Russian sources, this book describes and analyses the economic and technical assistance programs run by the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s through to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and places them in the context of both Soviet-era development theories and more recent ideas about the role of institutions in fostering economic growth. In some respects Soviet development theorists were actually ahead of their contemporary Western counterparts in realising the centrality of institution-building, but they proved unable to translate their theories into practical solutions. The reasons why their assistance programs failed so completely in Afghanistan remain compellingly relevant today.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Israel's Clandestine Diplomacies
For over sixty years the state of Israel has proved adept at practising clandestine diplomacy - - about which little is known, as one might expect. These hitherto undisclosed episodes in Israel's diplomatic history are revealed for the first time by the contributors to this volume, who explore how relations based upon patronage and personal friendships, as well as ties born from kinship and realpolitik both informed the creation of the state and later defined Israel's relations with a host of actors, both state and non-state. The authors focus on the extent to which Israel's clandestine diplomacies have indeed been regarded as purely functional and sub- ordinate to a realist quest for security amid the perceived hostility of a predominantly Muslim-Arab world, or have in fact proved to be manifestations of a wider acceptance - political, social and cultural - of a Jewish sovereign state as an intrinsic part of the Middle East. They also discuss whether clandestine diplomacy has been more effective in securing Israeli objectives than reliance upon more formal diplomatic ties constrained by inter- national legal obligations and how this often complex and at times contradictory matrix of clandestine relationships continues to influence perceptions of Israel's foreign policy.
£36.58
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Iraq's Democratic Moment
In 1936, a coup d'etat brought the nationalist forces to power amid great public jubilation, only for the coup to fail when its leaders fell out among themselves. In 1941, the Iraqi army went to war with the British for violating the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The Iraqis lost the war, and as a result, had to endure British military occupation for the next five years. In 1946, political parties were allowed a certain degree of freedom, but the opportunity was thwarted as the regime failed to deliver on the democratic reforms promised. Further opportunities presented themselves, especially in 1948, when a massive uprising known as al-Wathba forced the cancellation of the Portsmouth Treaty. In 1952, the Iraqi intifada brought more pressure to bear on the regime to introduce the political reforms that the Iraqi people were clamouring for. On both these two occasions, the ruling regime failed yet again to implement free elections and parliamentary democracy. Perhaps the best opportunity of all was presented by the 1958 Revolution. This ended with the army retaining power and the political parties collapsing in disarray. The failure of the revolution and the brutal authoritarian rule that followed dashed the country's hopes for the democracy that it had so long struggled and sacrificed for, but which it has yet to achieve.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd China or Japan: Which Will Lead Asia?
The twenty-first century will doubtless be that of Asia, which by 2030 will be home to three of the four world's mightiest economies, including India. This stimulating book opens a debate on the question of leadership in Asia for which China and Japan are competing. It assesses the two rivals' strengths and weaknesses as well as the major challenges which they will face in that battle for supremacy. On this basis, it proposes the most probable scenario for the next two decades in the light of the dialectical relationship between economics and strategic power. Without neglecting the strategic aspects which give advantage to China, priority is given to an economic approach, because that is the primary arena in which Asian integration is taking place and the one in which a resilient Japan still maintains firmly its leadership, based on productivity, competitiveness and technological edge.
£28.34
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf
In some countries of the Persian Gulf as much as 85 to 90 per cent of the population is made-up of expatriate workers.Unsurprisingly, all of the concerned states spend inordinate amounts of their political energies managing the armies of migrant labourers employed in their countries, and there are equally fundamental social, cultural, and economic consequences involved as well. Despite the pervasive and farreaching nature of the phenomenon, to date there have not been any comprehensive, easily accessible studies of labour migration in the Persian Gulf. Migrant Labour in the Persian Gulf is a multi-disciplinary examination of the manifold causes, nature, processes, and consequences of labour migration into the Persian Gulf. It critically analyses the effects of migration for native communities, looking at the types and functions of informal - and at times formal - bi-national and multinational networks that emerge from and in turn sustain migration patterns over time, the role and functions of recruitment agencies, and the values, behaviours, and plans of migrants workers prior to and after setting off for the Persian Gulf.
£26.28
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Afghanistan in Ink: Literature Between Diaspora and Nation
Afghanistan In Ink uses a wide and largely unknown corpus of twentieth century Afghan Dari and Pashto literature to show not only how Afghans have reflected on their modern history, but also how the state has repeatedly sought to dominate the ideological contours of that history through the patronage or exile of writers. Drawing on an abundance of Afghan language sources, the chapters by leading international experts reveal a disruptive twentieth century dynamic between the importing of multiple conflicting ideologies through literary globalisation and the destabilisation of the state as a consequence of these literary and ideological flows. As the first scholarly survey of modern Afghan literature, Afghanistan In Ink places the twentieth century's itinerant and exiled Afghan writers into their transnational contexts to trace Afghan artistic and ideological interactions with Muslim and Western nations. The volume emphasises the study of literatures in their social and political contexts. With its extensive contextualising introduction, this book provides both specialists and non-specialists with unique 'inside' perspectives on the interweaving of religious, political and cultural debates that have shaped modern Afghan society.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe
Key protagonists in these debates included Erasmus, Luther and Machiavelli. Today we might call them intellectuals, yet mostly they did not travel, and direct contact with the Ottoman Empire was scarce or nonexistent. Nor were they well disposed to its predecessor, the Byzantine Empire, whose fall presented them with an intellectual conundrum: how were they to explain the irresistible advance of the Ottomans across the Balkans and the inability of Christian Europe to hold the line? They also felt compelled to incorporate this significant new threat into their vision of a world order, to rationalise it, to unravel its origins. These discussions spawned a common market of ideas in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, as Europeans debated and represented the Ottoman threat. Readers of this book will find many echoes in Pippidi's analysis of today's debates about the relationship of Turkey with Europe and the struggle to accommodate the descendants of the Ottomans in our midst.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd When More is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan
The Western-led efforts to establish a new post-Taliban order in Afghanistan are in serious trouble, and in this book Suhrke sets out to explain why. She begins with the dynamic of the intervention and its related peace-building mission. What were the forces shaping this grand international project? What explains the apparent systemic bias towards a deeper and broader international involvement? Many reasons have been cited for its limited achievements and ever-growing difficulties, the most common explanation being that the national, regional, and international contexts were unfavourable. But many policies were misguided while the multinational operation itself was extraordinarily and unnecessarily complex. Astri Suhrke's main thesis is that the international project itself contains serious tensions and contradictions that significantly contributed to the lack of progress. As a result, the deepening involvement proved dysfunctional: massive international support has created an extreme version of a rentier state that is predictably weak, corrupt and unaccountable; US-led military operations undercut the peacebuilding agenda, and more international aid and monitoring to correct the problems generate Afghan resentment and evasion. Continuing these policies will only reinforce the dynamic. The alternative is a less intrusive international presence, a longer time-frame for reconstruction and change, and negotiations with the militants that can end the war and permit a more Afghan-directed order to emerge.
£28.34
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban / Al-Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010
There is a widespread belief that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are in many respects synonymous, that their ideology and objectives are closely intertwined and that they have made common cause against the West for decades. Such opinions have been stridently supported by politicians, media pundits and senior military figures, yet they have hardly ever been scrutinised. This is all the more surprising given that the West's present entanglement in Afghanistan is commonly predicated on the need to defeat the Taliban in order to forestall further terrorist attacks worldwide. The relationship between the two groups and the individuals who established them is undeniably complex, and has remained so for many years. Links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda were retained in the face of a shared enemy following the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, an adversary that was selected by al-Qaeda rather than by the Taliban, and which led the latter to become entangled in a war that was not of its choosing. This book is the first to examine in detail the relationship from the Taliban's perspective based on Arabic, Dari and Pashtu sources, drawing on the authors' many years experience in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's heartland. They also interviewed Taliban decision-makers, field commanders and ordinary fighters while immersing themselves in Kandahar's society. Van Linschoten and Kuehn's forensic examination of the evolution of the two groups allows the background and historical context that informed their respective ideologies to come to the fore. The story of those individuals who were to become their key decision-makers, and the relationships among all those involved, from the mid-1990s onwards, reveal how complex the interactions were between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and how they frequently diverged rather than converged. An Enemy We Created concludes that there is room to engage the Taliban on the issues of renouncing al-Qaeda and guaranteeing that Afghanistan will deny sanctuary to international terrorists. Yet the insurgency is changing, and it could soon be too late to find a political solution. The authors contend that certain aspects of the campaign, especially night raids and attempts to fragment and decapitate the Taliban, are transforming the resistance, creating more opportunities for al-Qaeda and helping it to attain its goals.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Many Reasons to Intervene: French and British Approaches to Humanitarian Action
In the humanitarian field those we rather mockingly call 'French doctors' seem always to be in the vanguard, the first to arrive in any critical situation. If they hold such a position in modern humanitarian intervention it is because these French doctors - first and foremost Medecins Sans Frontieres and its 'little sister' Medecins du Monde - have created a style of humanitarian action that combines intervention in crises with critical assessment of and commentary on the human tragedies -- wars, famines, earthquakes -- in which they find themselves involved. The humanitarian practices we are familiar with today were devised, through trial and errors, by agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Switzerland. France was the last to join the group of so-called 'founder democracies' in the humanitarian field. A closer examination of the history of humanitarianism reveals that it was by drawing on already existing forms of action that MSF, MDM and many others gradually developed its particular brand of intervention, which combines relief practices learnt from the Red Cross with efforts to mobilise public opinion using strategies invented by Amnesty International. The contributors to this volume assess the competing French and 'Anglo-Saxon' models of intervention in the hope of learning from both and formulating approaches to humanitarianism for the twenty-first century. CONTRIBUTORS: Philippe Ryfman, Hugo Slim, Egbert Sondorp, Francois Grunewald, Hugh Goyder, Sami Makki, James Darcy, Christophe Courtin, Adeel Jafferi.
£20.08
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Inglorious Disarray: Europe, Israel and the Palestinians Since 1967
Since that fateful week of war in June 1967, when Israel's speedy military victory over the Arab states redrew the map of the Middle East, Europe, at least in terms of its influence in this crucial region, has been a cause looking for an opportunity (to borrow Henry Kissinger's classic description of Russian foreign policy). Europe's ongoing attempt to assert itself as a key player in the Middle East conflict has come to nought and it has failed to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. For the most part it has not even been able to arrive at a united and coherent view regarding how to act vis a vis this conflict. Even when it has overcome this obstacle it has rarely succeeded in turning this united position into effective action. Though successive generations of European leaders have shared Joschka Fischer's belief that 'solving the Middle East and developing a real vision of peace is the major, major challenge for Europe', nowhere has the contrast between rhetoric and action been more obvious than in its attempts to meet this challenge. Inglorious Disarray tells the story of Europe's evolving, albeit stilted and often frustrating, involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict over the last half century. It doing so it sets out how Europe's role has affected its relationship with Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world, not to mention Europe's Muslim population, and how it has influenced Europe's political development in the decades since it became an economic powerhouse.
£28.34
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey
History is rife with tales of fighting women. More often than not, these stories prove more legend than history. Dating back to the Amazons of ancient Asia Minor, myths of fierce, autonomous women of martial excellence abound. And yet, the only thoroughly documented Amazons in world history are the women warriors of Dahomey, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western African kingdom. Once dubbed a "small black Sparta," residents of Dahomey shared with the Spartans an intense militarism and sense of collectivism. Moreover, the women of both kingdoms prided themselves on bodies hardened from childhood by rigorous physical exercise. But Spartan women kept in shape to breed male warriors, Dahomean Amazons to kill them. Originally palace guards, the Amazons had evolved by the 1760s into professional troops armed mainly with muskets, machetes and clubs. Theoretically wives of the king and quartered in his palaces, they were sworn to celibacy on pain of death. In compensation they enjoyed a semi-sacred status and numerous privileges, including the right to own slaves. By the 1840s their numbers had grown to 6,000. The Amazons served under female officers and had their own bands, flags and insignia: they outdrilled, outshot and outfought men, became frontline troops and fought tenaciously and with great valour till the kingdom's defeat by France in 1892. The product of meticulous archival research, Amazons of Black Sparta is defined by Alpern's gift for narrative and will stand as the most comprehensive and accessible account of the woman warriors of Dahomey.
£15.95
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd War and War Crimes: The Military, Legitimacy and Success in Armed Conflict
The laws of war have always been concerned with issues of necessity and proportionality, but how are these principles applied in modern warfare? What are the pressures on practitioners where an increasing emphasis on legality is the norm? Where do such boundaries lie in the contexts, means and methods of contemporary war? What is wrong, or right, in the view of military-political practitioners, in how those concepts relate to today's means and methods of war? These are among the issues addressed by James Gow in his compelling analysis of war and war crimes, which draws upon research conducted over many years with defence professionals from all over the world. Today more than ever, military strategy has to embrace justice and law, with both being deemed essential prerequisites for achieving success on the battlefield. And in a context where legitimacy defines success in warfare, but is a fragile and contested concept, no group has a greater interest in responding to these pressures and changes positively than the military. It is they who have the greatest need and desire to foster legitimacy in war by getting the politics-law-strategy nexus right, as well as developing a clear understanding of the relationship between war and war crimes, and calibrating where war becomes a war crime.
£28.34
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict
The size and intensity of the Israeli army's operations since 2000 as well as the unprecedented scale of settlement construction brought about a qualitative change in the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, altering it, Klein argues, from a border conflict to an ethnic struggle, pure and simple. Jewish Israel has now established its ethno-security regime over the whole area, from Jordan to the Mediterranean, a process that was accelerated and facilitated by election results in Israel, the United States and the Palestinian Authority. Arguing against the prevailing wisdom, which describes Israel's control system as merely one of 'occupation', in The Shift Klein contends that it is based now on twin ethnic and security pillars and seeks to include Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin. The core of his book examines the current ruling structure of the shrinking Jewish majority over the almost majority Palestinians and its different levels: Israeli Palestinian citizens, the residents of Jerusalem, the two West Bank groups divided by the Separation Barrier and those living under siege in the Gaza Strip. The Shift is based on primary sources and data that usually are published separately. Klein weaves them into his ground-breaking book, offering the reader a comprehensive portrayal of the on-the-ground realities and providing a new framework for understanding the status of the durable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its history, and its likely future course.
£20.09
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Fragments of the Afghan Frontier
Despite the long and intimate history of engagement along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's North-West, this area and its relationship to the world remains poorly understood in the West's popular imagination. Through the construction of a collage of historical narratives and intense ethnographic encounters, Marsden and Hopkins argue that the simplistic stereotypes and tropes that all too often masquerade as knowledge about the Frontier not only conceal a more complex reality, but are also a source of the problems that local and international actors alike face there. Not some simple isolated depot of radical terrorists or instrumental tribesmen, the Frontier is a space of richly textured meaning, constructed through a history of movement of its inhabitants and their understanding of the world beyond. Fragments of the Afghan Frontier offers a corrective to simplistic understanding both of the region's history and its current realities, leaving the reader with a deeper understanding of the ever-evolving complexity of this globally significant region.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Islamic World in the New Century: The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, 1969-2009
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the Muslim world's only intergovernmental body-the largest such system operating outside of the United Nations. Based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was founded forty years ago to respond to the Palestinian crisis and counts fifty-seven Muslim countries among its members. It has since branched out into the areas of economic development, education, culture, science, technology, conflict resolution, and tackling Islamophobia. Sharing the history of the OIC with Western readers for the first time, this book details the achievements, successes, and failures of this singular political body and demonstrates why modernization is so central to the continued development of Islamic society. In 2005, the OIC elected Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of Turkey to transform the organisation's platform and intentions. Ihsanoglu has since tackled the difficult problems of illiteracy and poverty, economic underdevelopment, and ethnic and sectarian conflict. In this history he devotes an important chapter to Islamophobia and its impact on relations between Islam and the West. The OIC treats Islamophobia as a form of racism and xenophobia, and Ihsanoglu explains why it is essential for international institutions to work together to combat violent extremism. He also argues that representative government, free speech, and equal rights for all citizens are critical for Muslim societies, and he envisions the need to reform the OIC as a necessary step toward renewing the Muslim world. One of the most important studies of the Muslim world to emerge directly from its participants, The Islamic World in the New Century ushers in a new era of change.
£44.81
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Political Islam Observed
This book offers a framework for understanding the interaction between the academic disciplines 'observing' contemporary political Islam and the individuals and communities being 'observed' practising it. Volpi investigates how different disciplinary approaches in the social sciences explain and understand their 'Islamic' subject matter, revealing how political Islam is a phenomenon that each academic discipline analyses using its own dominant paradigms. He offers a multidisciplinary account of political Islam based on the insights provided by postorientalism, international studies, sociology of religion, democratisation studies, multiculturalism studies, security studies, and globalisation studies. His book outlines the areas of convergence and the synergies between these approaches and highlights the gaps and misunderstanding that still exist between parallel narratives on Islamism.
£32.45
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Prisoners of America's Wars: From the Early Republic to Guantanamo
Prisoners of war have featured in virtually every conflict that the US has engaged in since its revolutionary beginnings. Today visitors to Washington will frequently see a black POW flag flying high on government buildings or war memorials in silent memory. This act of fealty towards prisoners reflects a history where they have frequently been a rallying point, source of outrage and problem for both military and political leaders. This is as true for the 2003 Iraq War as it was the American Revolution. Yet, the story of prisoners in American wars (both enemies taken and soldiers captured) reveals much about the nation itself; how it fights conflicts and its attitudes towards laws of war. A nation born out of an exceptional ideology, the United States has frequently found itself faced with the contradictory imperatives to be both exemplary and secure: while American diplomats might be negotiating a treaty at The Hague, American soldiers could be fighting a bloody insurrection where it seemed that few if any rules applied. By taking a historical approach, this book demonstrates that the challenges America faced regarding international law and the war on terror were not entirely unique or unprecedented. Rather, to be properly understood, such dilemmas must be contextualized within the long history of those prisoners captured in American wars.
£40.70
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd Lithium
How a little-known mineral will affect our jobs and daily lives as much as, if not more than, AI or Big Data have done.
£17.60