Search results for ""john wiley and sons ltd""

From ancient philosophy to contemporary theories of fiction, it is a common practice to relegate illusory appearances to the realm of the non-existent, like shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. Contrary to this traditional mode of drawing a metaphysical distinction between reality and fiction, Markus Gabriel argues that the realm of the illusory, fictional, imaginary and conceptually indeterminate is as real as it gets. Being in touch with reality need not and cannot require that we overcome appearances in order to grasp a meaningless reality which exists out there', outside and maybe even beyond our minds. Human mindedness (Geist) exists in the mode of fictions through which we achieve self-consciousness. This novel approach provides a fresh perspective on our existence as subjects who lead their lives in the light of self-conceptions. Fictionsalso develops a social ontology according to which the social unfolds as a constant renegotiation of dissent, of different points of view

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This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries. Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years – the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books – was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs. The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age. This unrivalled account of the book publishing industry as it faces its greatest challenge since Gutenberg will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.

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COVID-19 has made us all aware of the fact that we live in a world full of invisible enemies. Normally, we don’t even realize they’re there, but from time to time one of these microscopic creatures becomes powerful enough to turn everything upside down. What are these invisible enemies, and how can we prepare ourselves for the pandemics of the future? A specialist in the cellular biology of diseases, Salvador Macip explains, in a language everyone can understand, what it means to share the planet with millions of microbes – some wonderful allies, others terrible foes. He provides a concise account of epidemics that changed history, and focuses on the great modern plagues that are still causing millions of deaths every year, from influenza, TB and malaria to COVID-19. Macip also examines the methods we have used – from vaccines to improved sanitation and social distancing – to try to control these invisible enemies. This authoritative overview of modern epidemics and the pathogens that cause them will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand our world today, a world in which some of the greatest threats to the human species come from the invisible microbes with which we share this planet.

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All forms of recreational digital consumption – whether on smartphones, tablets, game consoles or TVs – have skyrocketed in the younger generations. From the age of 2, children in the West clock up more than 2.5 hours of screen time a day; by the time they reach 13, it’s more than 7 hours a day. Added up over the first 18 years of life, this is the equivalent of almost 30 school years, or 15 years of full-time employment. Most media experts do not seem overly concerned about this situation: children are adaptable, they say, they are ‘digital natives’, their brains have changed and screens make them smarter. But other specialists – including some paediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and speech therapists – dispute these claims, and many parents worry about the long-term consequences of their children’s intensive exposure to screens. Michel Desmurget, a leading neuroscientist, has carefully weighed up the scientific evidence concerning the impact of the digital activities of our children and adolescents, and his assessment does not make for happy reading: he shows that these activities have significant detrimental consequences in terms of the health, behaviour and intellectual abilities of young people, and strongly affect their academic outcomes. A wake-up call for anyone concerned about the long-term impacts of our children’s over-exposure to screens.

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All forms of recreational digital consumption – whether on smartphones, tablets, game consoles or TVs – have skyrocketed in the younger generations. From the age of 2, children in the West clock up more than 2.5 hours of screen time a day; by the time they reach 13, it’s more than 7 hours a day. Added up over the first 18 years of life, this is the equivalent of almost 30 school years, or 15 years of full-time employment. Most media experts do not seem overly concerned about this situation: children are adaptable, they say, they are ‘digital natives’, their brains have changed and screens make them smarter. But other specialists – including some paediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and speech therapists – dispute these claims, and many parents worry about the long-term consequences of their children’s intensive exposure to screens. Michel Desmurget, a leading neuroscientist, has carefully weighed up the scientific evidence concerning the impact of the digital activities of our children and adolescents, and his assessment does not make for happy reading: he shows that these activities have significant detrimental consequences in terms of the health, behaviour and intellectual abilities of young people, and strongly affect their academic outcomes. A wake-up call for anyone concerned about the long-term impacts of our children’s over-exposure to screens.

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Identifying gaps in knowledge is the first duty of any historian who sets out to understand the past. It is impossible fully to understand our forebears without some idea of what they did not know: the history of ignorance is an indispensable part of history itself. Here Alain Corbin focuses on our planet, exploring its mysteries past and present, and the intensity and eventual decline of the modes of terror and wonder it aroused. For thousands of years, humans knew nearly nothing about the earth. Certain locations on the map simply read ‘Terra Incognita’. Corbin recounts the many errors and uncertainties that littered the paths we followed in the attempt to discover the secrets of our blue planet, with a particular focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the mysteries of volcanoes, the polar regions, glaciers, the stratosphere and the oceans began to be uncovered. While ignorance stimulated our ancestors’ imagination, Corbin’s history of ignorance reawakens our thirst for knowledge and changes our view of the world.

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Populism is an expression of anger; its appeal stems from being presented as the solution to disorder in our times. The vision of democracy, society, and the economy it offers is coherent and attractive. At a time when the words and slogans of the left have lost much of their power to inspire, Pierre Rosanvallon takes populism for what it is: the rising ideology of the twenty-first century. In The Populist Century he develops a rigorous theoretical account of populism, distinguishing five key features that make up populist political culture; he retraces its history in modern democracies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; and he offers a well-reasoned critique of populism, outlining a robust democratic alternative. This wide-ranging and insightful account of the theory and practice of populism will be of great interest to students and scholars in politics and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the key political questions of our time.

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A spirit is haunting contemporary thought – the spirit of Hegel. All the powers of academia have entered into a holy alliance to exorcize this spirit: Vitalists and Eschatologists, Transcendental Pragmatists and Speculative Realists, Historical Materialists and even ‘liberal Hegelians’. Which of these groups has not been denounced as metaphysically Hegelian by its opponents? And which has not hurled back the branding reproach of Hegelian metaphysics in its turn? Progressives, liberals and reactionaries alike receive this condemnation. In light of this situation, it is high time that true Hegelians should openly admit their allegiance and, without obfuscation, express the importance and validity of Hegelianism to the contemporary intellectual scene. To this end, a small group of Hegelians of different nationalities have assembled to sketch the following book – a book which addresses a number of pressing issues that a contemporary reading of Hegel allows a new perspective on: our relation to the future, our relation to nature and our relation to the absolute.

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This book examines how the interplay between globalization and the assertion of local identities is reshaping the political landscape of Africa. While defending their values against external forces, people simultaneously – and paradoxically – use the interconnectivity of global networks to maximize their particular interests. Focusing on the relation between national identity and state formation, the authors explore the far-reaching consequences of these contradictory dynamics. Although Africa shares many common trends with other parts of the world, it also displays distinctive features. A region characterized by the increased mobility of people, goods and ideas challenges some conventional assumptions of statecraft and also highlights the advantages of federalism – not merely as a constitutional option, but as a pragmatic device for managing diversity and holding fragile states together. The book further explores emerging types of state formation in the same political space, as exemplified by the combination of elements of a kingdom, an independent state and a national power base in the province of KwaZulu-Natal and the careful crafting of an alternative state within a state by the Solidarity Movement in South Africa. Informed by examples and case studies drawn from different parts of Africa, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Africa, politics, sociology, media studies and the social sciences more generally.

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The sociological imagination and the artistic imagination have been historically intertwined, at once reciprocal and conflicting, complementary and tensional. This connection is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Zygmunt Bauman. His conception and practice of sociology were always infused with a literary and artistic sensibility. He wrote extensively on the relationship between sociology and the arts, and especially on sociology and literature; he frequently drew on literary writers in his exploration and elucidation of sociological problems; and he was an avid and passionate consumer and practitioner of art, especially film and photography. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of culture and art, including previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. The first volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, Culture and Art will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.

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The most intense hopes and fears of our collective lives centre around large-scale events – from competitions, celebrations and festivals to environmental disasters, pandemics and terror attacks. The media are a crucial part of this process: they enable the planning, resource allocation and circulation of the vital information needed to mount major events. They are also where traces of events are stored for history. In short, large-scale and collective events have been, and still are, mediated. Starting from nineteenth-century industrialisation, Media and Events in History explains how contemporary life has become saturated with events. It discusses how they have come to involve extensive infrastructures, forms of control and anticipation, attention and participation, contingency and transformation, and articulations of the past and the future. Synthesising and developing insights from history, media studies, philosophy and the social sciences, Ytreberg surveys the rise of event-planning via mediation, and exposes the historical driving forces behind ‘media events’, global ‘mega-events’ and ‘pseudo-events’. Revealing the importance of events in history, this eye-opening book will be of interest to students of media studies, history, historical sociology and cultural history, as well as the general reader.

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On 20 May 1961 Foucault defended his two doctoral theses; on 2 December 1970 he gave his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. Between these dates, he published four books, travelled widely, and wrote extensively on literature, the visual arts, linguistics, and philosophy. He taught both psychology and philosophy, beginning his explorations of the question of sexuality. Weaving together analyses of published and unpublished material, this is a comprehensive study of this crucial period. As well as Foucault’s major texts, it discusses his travels to Brazil, Japan, and the USA, his time in Tunisia, and his editorial work for Critique and the complete works of Nietzsche and Bataille. It was in this period that Foucault developed the historical-philosophical approach he called ‘archaeology’ – the elaboration of the archive – which he understood as the rules that make possible specific claims. In its detailed study of Foucault’s archive the book is itself an archaeology of Foucault in another sense, both excavation and reconstruction. This book completes a four-volume series of major intellectual histories of Foucault. Foucault’s Last Decade was published by Polity in 2016; Foucault: The Birth of Power followed in 2017; and The Early Foucault in 2021.

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Whether understood as a long-run historical process or an intentional political project, international development transforms not only societies and economies but also key ideas about how the world works and how problems should be solved. In this compelling book, Michael Woolcock demonstrates that achieving peace and prosperity for all is supremely contingent and often contentious: the means and ends of development are often perceived as alien, unjust, and disruptive, its benefits and costs unequally borne. Many development challenges are not technical problems amenable to an expert’s solution, but require extensive deliberation to find and fit context-specific responses. Woolcock insists that it is each generation’s challenge to find shared, legitimate, and durable solutions to the moral imperative to reduce human suffering while simultaneously redressing the challenges that development success (let alone failure) inexorably brings. This skillful guide will be essential reading for students and practitioners working in this complex field, and for anyone seeking to help “make the world a better place.”

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As the end of December draws near, Facebook routinely sends users a short video entitled ‘Your Year on Facebook’. It lasts about a minute and brings together the images and posts that received the highest number of comments and likes over the last year. The video is rounded off with a message from Facebook that reads: ‘Sometimes, looking back helps us remember what matters most. Thanks for being here.’ It is this ‘looking back’, increasingly the focus of social networks, that is the inspiration behind Davide Sisto’s brilliant reflection on how our relationship with remembering and forgetting is changing in the digital era. The past does not really exist: it is only a story we tell ourselves. But what happens when we tell this story not only to ourselves but also to our followers, when it is recorded not only on our social media pages but also on the pages of hundreds or thousands of others, making it something that can be viewed and referenced forever? Social media networks are becoming vast digital archives in which the past merges seamlessly with the present, slowly erasing our capacity to forget. And yet at the same time, our memory is being outsourced to systems that we don’t control and that could become obsolete at any time, cutting us off from our memories and risking total oblivion. This timely and thoughtful reflection on memory and forgetting in the digital age will be of interest to students and scholars in media studies and to anyone concerned with the ways our social and personal lives are changing in a world increasingly shaped by social media and the internet.

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What do mompreneurs, angry working-class men, and migrant domestic workers all have in common? They are all gendered subjects responding to the economic, political, and cultural realities of neoliberalism’s global gender order. In this ambitious book, Radhakrishnan and Solari map the varied gendered pathways of a global hegemonic regime. Focusing on the US, the former Soviet Union, and South and Southeast Asia, they argue that the interconnected histories of imperialism, socialism, and postcolonialism have converged in a new way since the fall of the Soviet Union, transforming the post-war international order that preceded it. Today, the ideal of the empowered woman – a striving, entrepreneurial subject who overcomes adversity and has many “choices” – symbolizes modernity for diverse countries competing for status in the global hierarchy. This ideal bridges the painful gap between aspiration and lived reality, but also spurs widespread discontent. Blending social theory, rich empirical evidence, and a multi-sited understanding of neoliberalism, this book invites all of us to question taken-for-granted knowledge about gender and capitalism, and to look to grassroots international movements of the past to chart the path to a fairer future.

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The global crisis of our time involves a complex of ecological, economic, technological and migratory challenges that no state is able to control. The result is a provincialisation of our democracies with respect to the new planetary powers confronting humanity. It is from this that our increasingly impotent and rabid politics stems. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely the decline of the nation-state that is the source of the great nationalist uprising of our time.We need a new planetary vision that is able to reclaim and liberate our world, starting today and engaging each of us. This is the task of philosophy as much as it is of politics, of theory as it is of activism. Connecting with a new generation taking to the streets across the globe, this book tells the story of the ever-closer union of our world, from the age of empire to the climate crisis, and presents a plea and a roadmap to step beyond the mental and material boundaries of our nations.

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How do the dead live among us today? Approaching death from the perspective of media and communication studies, anthropology, and sociology, this book explains how the all-encompassing presence of mediated death profoundly transforms contemporary society. It explores rituals of mourning and the livestreaming of death in hybrid media, as well as contemporary media-driven practices of immortalization. Sumiala draws on examples ranging from the iconic deaths of Margaret Thatcher and David Bowie to those of ordinary people ritualized on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. In addition, this book examines digital mourning of global events including the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Coronavirus pandemic. Mediated Death is a must-read for scholars and students of communication studies, as well as general readers interested in exploring the meaning of mediated death in contemporary society.​

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How do the dead live among us today? Approaching death from the perspective of media and communication studies, anthropology, and sociology, this book explains how the all-encompassing presence of mediated death profoundly transforms contemporary society. It explores rituals of mourning and the livestreaming of death in hybrid media, as well as contemporary media-driven practices of immortalization. Sumiala draws on examples ranging from the iconic deaths of Margaret Thatcher and David Bowie to those of ordinary people ritualized on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. In addition, this book examines digital mourning of global events including the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Coronavirus pandemic. Mediated Death is a must-read for scholars and students of communication studies, as well as general readers interested in exploring the meaning of mediated death in contemporary society.​

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A pervasive sense has taken hold that any and all of us are under suspicion and surveillance, walking on a tightrope, a step away from erasure of rights or security. Nothing new for many long-targeted populations, it is now surfacing as a broad social sensibility, ramped up by environmental crisis and pandemic wreckage. We have come to live in proliferating dread, even of dread itself. In this brilliant analysis of the nature, origins, and implications of this gnawing feeling, David Theo Goldberg exposes tracking-capitalism as the operating system at the root of dread. In contrast to surveillance, which requires labor-intensive analysis of people's actions and communications, tracking strips back to the fundamental mapping of our movements, networks, and all traces of our digitally mediated lives. A simultaneous tearing of the social fabric – festering culture wars, the erosion of truth, even "civil war" itself – frays the seams of the sociality and solidarity needed to thwart this transformation of people into harvestable, expendable data. This searing commentary offers a critical apparatus for interrogating the politics of our time, arguing that we need not just a politics of refusal and resistance, but a creative politics to counter the social life of dread.

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This first volume in a new trilogy of books by Antonio Negri examines and develops the Italian tradition of radical Marxist thought known as operaismo or ‘autonomist Marxism’ – the tradition to which Negri himself adheres and in which he is a leading figure. The tradition of operaismo emphasizes the role of the worker in capitalism and the primacy of class struggle. Within this framework, Negri’s key contribution has been to theorize the transition from the ‘mass worker’ to the ‘social worker’ – that is, to broaden the concept of living labour and liberate it from the theoretical cages that locked it into the factory. It was only by moving beyond the ideology and political practice of the mass worker that the revolutionary character of the Marxist concept of class could be updated for our times and developed in relation to the exploitation and socialization of living labour, including networks of cognitive work, reproductive work and care work, networks which also have the potential to become the bases for new forms of resistance to capitalist exploitation. By bringing together Negri’s key contributions to the reconceptualization of the worker and class struggle, this volume demonstrates the vitality of the Marxist tradition of operaismo and its continued relevance for understanding the key social and political struggles of our time.

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Traditional economics is built on the assumption of self-interested individuals seeking to maximize personal gain, but that is far from the whole story. Sharing, caring, and a desire to uphold the collective good are also powerful motives. In a world wracked by inequality, social divisions, and ecological destruction, can we build an alternative economics based on cooperation? In this book Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor invite us to imagine a new sort of solidarity economics – an approach grounded in our instincts for connection and community – and in so doing, actually build a more robust and sustainable economy. They argue that our current economy is already deeply dependent on mutuality, but that the inequality and fragmentation created by the status quo undermine this mutuality and with it our economic well-being. They outline the theoretical framing, policy agenda, and social movements that we need to revive solidarity and apply it to whole societies. Solidarity Economics is an essential read for anyone who longs for a fairer economy that can generate prosperity and preserve the planet.

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Against the bleak backdrop of pressing issues in today’s world, civil societies remain vibrant, animated by people’s belief that they should and can solve such issues and build a better society. Their imagination of a good society, their understanding of their engagement, and the ways they choose to act constitute the cultural aspect of civil society. Central to this cultural aspect of civil society is the “culture of democracy,” including normative values, individual interpretations, and interaction norms pertaining to features of a democratic society, such as civility, independence, and solidarity. The culture of democracy varies in different contexts and faces challenges, but it shapes civic actions, alters political and social processes, and thus is the soul of modern civil societies. The Culture of Democracy provides the first systematic survey of the cultural sociology of civil society and offers a committed global perspective. It shows that, as everyone is eager to have their voice heard, cultural sociology can serve as an “art of listening,” a thoroughly empirical approach that takes ideas, meanings, and opinions seriously, for people to contemplate significant theoretical and public issues.

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Against the bleak backdrop of pressing issues in today’s world, civil societies remain vibrant, animated by people’s belief that they should and can solve such issues and build a better society. Their imagination of a good society, their understanding of their engagement, and the ways they choose to act constitute the cultural aspect of civil society. Central to this cultural aspect of civil society is the “culture of democracy,” including normative values, individual interpretations, and interaction norms pertaining to features of a democratic society, such as civility, independence, and solidarity. The culture of democracy varies in different contexts and faces challenges, but it shapes civic actions, alters political and social processes, and thus is the soul of modern civil societies. The Culture of Democracy provides the first systematic survey of the cultural sociology of civil society and offers a committed global perspective. It shows that, as everyone is eager to have their voice heard, cultural sociology can serve as an “art of listening,” a thoroughly empirical approach that takes ideas, meanings, and opinions seriously, for people to contemplate significant theoretical and public issues.

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Bots – automated software applications programmed to perform tasks online – have become a feature of our everyday lives, from helping us navigate online systems to assisting us with online shopping. Yet, despite enabling internet users, bots are increasingly associated with disinformation and concerning political intervention. In this ground-breaking book, Monaco and Woolley offer the first comprehensive overview of the history of bots, tracing their varied applications throughout the past sixty years and bringing to light the astounding influence these computer programs have had on how humans understand reality, communicate with each other, and wield power. Drawing upon the authors' decade of experience in the field, this book examines the role bots play in politics, social life, business, and artificial intelligence. Despite bots being a fundamental part of the web since the early 1990s, the authors reveal how the socially oriented ones continue to play an integral role in online communication globally, especially as our daily lives become increasingly automated. This timely book is essential reading for students and scholars in Media and Communication Studies, Sociology, Politics, and Computer Science, as well as general readers with an interest in technology and public affairs.

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Bots – automated software applications programmed to perform tasks online – have become a feature of our everyday lives, from helping us navigate online systems to assisting us with online shopping. Yet, despite enabling internet users, bots are increasingly associated with disinformation and concerning political intervention. In this ground-breaking book, Monaco and Woolley offer the first comprehensive overview of the history of bots, tracing their varied applications throughout the past sixty years and bringing to light the astounding influence these computer programs have had on how humans understand reality, communicate with each other, and wield power. Drawing upon the authors' decade of experience in the field, this book examines the role bots play in politics, social life, business, and artificial intelligence. Despite bots being a fundamental part of the web since the early 1990s, the authors reveal how the socially oriented ones continue to play an integral role in online communication globally, especially as our daily lives become increasingly automated. This timely book is essential reading for students and scholars in Media and Communication Studies, Sociology, Politics, and Computer Science, as well as general readers with an interest in technology and public affairs.

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Capitalism appears to be endlessly in crisis but without ever loosening its hold on our lives. New modes of racism and exclusion emerge, but the old ones never go away. We continue to struggle to live and survive in its wake but are unable, still now, to build commonality with each other. In this incisive book, Gargi Bhattacharyya revisits debates about racial capitalism and its violence through differentiation. Taking the four lenses of prisons, borders, debt and platforms, Bhattacharyya reveals how this moment of capitalist crisis positions humans as expendable, but differentially so, in a process that remakes longstanding racialized hierarchies. Uncovering practices and techniques embedded in the shifting processes of accumulation and state power, the chapters illuminate how value is extracted from populations through non-wage routes and indebtedness. This engaging introduction to racial capitalism offers an interlocking and insightful analysis of capitalist renewal, essential for students and scholars interested in issues of race, racism and inequality.

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Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, world peace is at risk again. The United States has withdrawn from the disarmament treaty with Russia, Europe is disintegrating, China is surging forward and a wave of nationalism and populism is destabilizing established political institutions and endangering hard-won liberties. Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharp relief the fragility of the global order and the speed with which it can slide into chaos. In view of this dangerous and unpredictable state of affairs, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last great statesman of the 1989 revolution, has written this short book to warn us of the grave risks we now face and to urge us all, political leaders and citizens alike, to take action to address them. He focuses on the big challenges of our time, such as the renewal of the arms race and the growing risks of nuclear war, the new tension between Russia and the West, the global environmental crisis, the global threat of diseases and epidemics, the rise of populism and the decline of democracy. He argues that self-serving policies and narrow-minded politics aimed at the pursuit of national interests are taking the place of political principles and overshadowing the vision of a free and just world for all peoples. He offers his view of where Russia is heading and he urges political leaders in the West to recognize that re-establishing trust between Russia and the West requires the courage of true leadership and a commitment to genuine dialogue and understanding on both sides. Now more than ever, the responses to the great challenges we face cannot be purely national in character but must be based on a collaborative effort in which political leaders put aside their differences and work together to advance the human security of all.

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In this remarkable book, Albert Baiburin provides the first in-depth study of the development and uses of the passport, or state identity card, in the former Soviet Union. First introduced in 1932, the Soviet passport took on an exceptional range of functions, extending not just to the regulation of movement and control of migrancy but also to the constitution of subjectivity and of social hierarchies based on place of residence, family background, and ethnic origin. While the basic role of the Soviet passport was to certify a person’s identity, it assumed a far greater significance in Soviet life. Without it, a person literally ‘disappeared’ from society. It was impossible to find employment or carry out everyday activities like picking up a parcel from the post office; a person could not marry or even officially die without a passport. It was absolutely essential on virtually every occasion when an individual had contact with officialdom because it was always necessary to prove that the individual was the person whom they claimed to be. And since the passport included an indication of the holder’s ethnic identity, individuals found themselves accorded a certain rank in a new hierarchy of nationalities where some ethnic categories were ‘normal’ and others were stigmatized. Passport systems were used by state officials for the deportation of entire population categories – the so-called ‘former people’, those from the pre-revolutionary elite, and the relations of ‘enemies of the people’. But at the same time, passport ownership became the signifier of an acceptable social existence, and the passport itself – the information it contained, the photographs and signatures – became part of the life experience and self-perception of those who possessed it. This meticulously researched and highly original book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union and to anyone interested in the shaping of identity in the modern world.

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What does it mean for the future of the planet when one of the world’s most durable authoritarian governance systems pursues “ecological civilization”? Despite its staggering pollution and colossal appetite for resources, China exemplifies a model of state-led environmentalism which concentrates decisive political, economic, and epistemic power under centralized leadership. On the face of it, China seems to embody hope for a radical new approach to environmental governance. In this thought-provoking book, Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro probe the concrete mechanisms of China’s coercive environmentalism to show how ‘going green’ helps the state to further other agendas such as citizen surveillance and geopolitical influence. Through top-down initiatives, regulations, and campaigns to mitigate pollution and environmental degradation, the Chinese authorities also promote control over the behavior of individuals and enterprises, pacification of borderlands, and expansion of Chinese power and influence along the Belt and Road and even into the global commons. Given the limited time that remains to mitigate climate change and protect millions of species from extinction, we need to consider whether a green authoritarianism can show us the way. This book explores both its promises and risks.

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Some people facing violence and persecution flee. Others stay. How do households in danger decide who should go, where to relocate, and whether to keep moving? What are the conditions in countries of origin, transit, and reception that shape people's options? This incisive book tells the story of how one Syrian family, spread across several countries, tried to survive the civil war and live in dignity. This story forms a backdrop to explore and explain the refugee system. Departing from studies that create siloes of knowledge about just one setting or ""solution"" to displacement, the book's sociological approach describes a global system that shapes refugee movements. Changes in one part of the system reverberate elsewhere. Feedback mechanisms change processes across time and place. Earlier migrations shape later movements. Immobility on one path redirects migration along others. Past policies, laws, population movements, and regional responses all contribute to shape states’ responses in the present. As Arar and FitzGerald illustrate, all these processes are forged by deep inequalities of economic, political, military, and ideological power. Presenting a sharp analysis of refugee structures worldwide, this book offers invaluable insights for students and scholars of international migration and refugee studies across the social sciences, as well as policy makers and those involved in refugee and asylum work.

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Why does anti-Semitism seem to be so deeply engrained in our societies, our institutions and our attitudes? To answer this question we need to look beyond our current practices and see that anti-Semitism has much deeper roots – that it is woven into the very structures of Western thought. Jean-Luc Nancy argues that anti-Semitism emerged from the conflictual conjunction of two responses to the eclipse of archaic cultures. The Greek and the Jewish responses both affirmed a humanity freed from myth but put forward two very different conceptions of autonomy: on the one hand, the infinite autonomy of knowledge, of logos, and on the other, the paradoxical autonomy of a heteronomy guided by a hidden god. The first excluded the second while simultaneously absorbing and dominating it; the second withdrew into itself and its condition of exclusion and domination. How could the long and terrible history of the hatred of the Jew, masking a self-loathing, be generated by these intrinsically contradictory beginnings? That is the question to which this short book gives a compelling answer.

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This book by one of Latin America’s leading cultural theorists examines the place of the subject and the role of biographical and autobiographical genres in contemporary culture. Arfuch argues that the on-going proliferation of private and intimate stories – what she calls the ‘biographical space’ – can be seen as symptomatic of the impersonalizing dynamics of contemporary times. Autobiographical genres, however, harbour an intersubjective dimension. The ‘I’ who speaks wants to be heard by another, and the other who listens discovers in autobiography possible points of identification. Autobiographical genres, including those that border on fiction, therefore become spaces in which the singularity of experience opens onto the collective and its historicity in ways that allow us to reflect on the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions not only of self-representation but also of life itself. Opening up debate through juxtaposition and dialogue, Arfuch’s own poetic writing moves freely from the Holocaust to Argentina’s last dictatorship and its traumatic memories, and then to the troubled borderlands between Mexico and the United States to show how artists rescue shards of memory that would otherwise be relegated to the dustbin of history. In so doing, she makes us see not only how challenging it is to represent past traumas and violence but also how vitally necessary it is to do so as a political strategy for combating the tides of forgetting and for finding ways of being in common.

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Shortly before his death, Zygmunt Bauman spent several days in conversation with the Swiss journalist Peter Haffner. Out of these conversations emerged this book in which Bauman shows himself to be the pre-eminent social thinker for which he became world renowned, a thinker who never shied away from addressing the great issues of our time and always strove to interrogate received wisdom and common sense, to make the familiar unfamiliar. As in Bauman’s work more generally, the personal and the political are interwoven in this book. Bauman’s life, which followed the same trajectory as the social and political upheavals of the 20th century, left its trace on his thought. Bauman describes his upbringing in Poland, military service in the Red Army, working for the Polish Secret Service after the war and expulsion from Poland in 1968, providing personal accounts of the historical events on which he brings his social and political insights to bear. His reflections on history, identity, Jewishness, morality, happiness and love are rooted in his own personal journey through the turbulent events of the 20th century to which he bore witness. These last conversations shed new light on one of the greatest social thinkers of our time, offering a more personal perspective on a man who changed our way of thinking about the modern world.

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This important intervention interrogates keystone features of the dominant European theoretical landscape in the field of populism studies, advancing existing debates and introducing new avenues of thought, in conjunction with insights from the contemporary Latin American political experience and perspectives. In each essay – the title a nod to the influential socialist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui, from whom the authors draw inspiration – leading Argentine scholars Paula Biglieri and Luciana Cadahia pair key dimensions of populism with diverse themes such as modern-day feminism, militancy, and neoliberalism, in order to stimulate discussion surrounding the constitutive nature, goals, and potential of populist social movements. Biglieri and Cadahia are unafraid to court provocation in their frank assessment of populism as a force which could bring about essential emancipatory social change to confront emerging right-wing trends in policy and leadership. At the same time, this fresh interpretation of a much-maligned political articulation is balanced by their denunciation of right-aligned populisms and their failure to bring to bear a sustainable alternative to contemporary neo-authoritarian forms of neoliberalism. In their place, they articulate a populism which offers a viable means of mobilizing a response to hegemonic forms of neoliberal discourse and government.

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Liberal left orthodoxy holds that Brexit is a disastrous coup, orchestrated by the hard right and fuelled by xenophobia, which will break up the Union and turn what’s left of Britain into a neoliberal dystopia. Richard Tuck’s ongoing commentary on the Brexit crisis demolishes this narrative. He argues that by opposing Brexit and throwing its lot in with a liberal constitutional order tailor-made for the interests of global capitalists, the Left has made a major error. It has tied itself into a framework designed to frustrate its own radical policies. Brexit therefore actually represents a golden opportunity for socialists to implement the kind of economic agenda they have long since advocated. Sadly, however, many of them have lost faith in the kind of popular revolution that the majoritarian British constitution is peculiarly well-placed to deliver and have succumbed instead to defeatism and the cultural politics of virtue-signalling. Another approach is, however, still possible. Combining brilliant contemporary political insights with a profound grasp of the ironies of modern history, this book is essential for anyone who wants a clear-sighted assessment of the momentous underlying issues brought to the surface by Brexit.

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The idea of socialism is making a comeback, particularly among rising generations. Their interest is likely to prove transitory, however, if socialism ignores their yearning for individual autonomy. Why should “soloists” embrace socialism? In this highly original new book, William Edmundson argues that there are compelling reasons for even the most resolute of individualists to embrace socialism. Political equality is incompatible with private ownership of the means of production – which today incorporates not only the highway system, the currency, and the power grid but also platforms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Socialism is therefore essential to protect the basic liberal rights and freedoms that underpin our social contract. This pathbreaking defence of liberal democratic socialism will be essential reading not only for all on the left, but also for students and scholars of liberalism, libertarianism, and the social contract.

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The use of renewables is spreading rapidly. Over a quarter of global electricity is already generated from solar, wind, hydro and biomass energy. With costs falling significantly, renewables are booming, helping to avoid the major climate change risks associated with fossil fuel use in power stations, homes and vehicles. But can we get rid of all of these dirty energy sources – and nuclear power, as well – and deliver 100% of our energy from renewables? Or are renewable energy systems inherently unreliable and expensive, given the need to deal with their variability? In this timely analysis, leading energy expert David Elliott tackles these issues head on and asks to what extent renewables can deliver a technologically and economically viable energy future. Exploring both the progress and problems of renewables against a backdrop of rising energy demand, he argues that, on balance, they do seem to be living up to their promises. With renewables rapidly expanding across the globe, and China now leading the pack, a renewable future could really be on the horizon.

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China is poised to become the world's largest economy in the next decade. But its great struggle to modernise has been one of tragedy, conflict, and challenge. From the first attempts to introduce Western ideas into the country two centuries ago, China's long march to global primacy has been above all an epic fight to renew an ancient country and culture. Leading Sinologist Kerry Brown traces this quest for renewal through the major moments of China’s modern history. Taking the reader on a journey that includes war, revolution, famine and finally regeneration, he describes concisely and authoritatively where China has come from, and where it is heading as it achieves great power status. This is a story that is no longer just about China, but concerns the rest of the world.

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Political parties that once dominated Western democracies have been shaken to the core. Many have suffered electoral debacles, as in France, Italy and Greece, while mainstream political parties in the UK and the US have found themselves struggling to cope with outcomes – in the form of Brexit and the election of Trump – that were not anticipated. We are witnessing nothing less than the exhaustion of a century-old cleavage between traditional left and right parties due to their inability to perceive and tackle present-day challenges, such as declining social mobility, mounting environmental crises, rising geographic inequality, tensions over migration and multiculturalism, etc. The ‘populists’, from Salvini and Le Pen to Trump and Bolsonaro, were the first to understand this and supply an alternative. But contrary to what many observers now predict, we are not doomed to witness the replacement of the ancient political order by the populists’ rise to power. In France, Emmanuel Macron launched a new movement that stopped them. Though things have sometimes been tough, ‘En Marche!’ has successfully implemented an entirely new programme of reforms and has been given some comfort by recent election results. In this short book, David Amiel and Ismaël Emelien – two of Macron’s closest advisers and key architects of ‘En Marche!’ – build on this experiment and reflect on its successes and failures to define a new grassroots progressivism for Western countries based on three principles and ranging from public policies to electoral strategy, from ideology to party organization. This could form the bedrock for a wider counter-offensive against the populism of our times.

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The birth of democracies owes much to the interventions and mobilizations of ordinary people. Yet many feel as though they have inherited democratic institutions which do not deliver for the people – that a rigid democratic process has been imposed from above, with increasing numbers of people feeling left out or left behind. In this well-researched volume, leading political sociologist Donatella della Porta rehabilitates the role social movements have long played in fostering and deepening democracy, particularly focusing on progressive movements of the Left which have sought to broaden the plurality of voices and knowledge in democratic debate. Bridging social movement studies and democratic theory, della Porta investigates contemporary innovations in times of crisis, particularly those in the direction of participatory and deliberative practices – ‘crowd-sourced constitutions’, referendums from below and movement parties – and reflects on the potential and limits of such alternative politics. In a moment in which concerns increase for the potential disruption of a Great Regression led by xenophobic movements and parties, the cases and analyses of resistance in this volume offer important material for students and scholars of political sociology, political science and social movement studies.

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Phenomenology is one of the leading movements in twentieth-century philosophy and continues to exert a strong influence on many contemporary philosophical traditions and investigations. In recent years, phenomenological insights have been increasingly developed in relation to philosophy of illness, disability, race, gender, sexuality, and politics, leading to the emergence of critical phenomenology as a new, prominent field for interdisciplinary research. Magrì and McQueen's Critical Phenomenology: An Introduction is the first book of its kind, addressing the critical questions at the core of both classical and contemporary phenomenology. This book provides a concise, accessible introduction to key areas of phenomenological research, such as intersubjectivity, bodily experience, race, gender, social experience, and political action. In doing so, it demonstrates both the rich history of phenomenology and its continuing philosophical and ethical importance. This textbook will be essential reading for undergraduate philosophy students and academics interested in critical phenomenology.

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Conventional wisdom suggests that the pervasiveness of digital media into our everyday lives is undermining cherished notions of politics and ethics. Is this concern unfounded?In this daring new book, Tim Markham argues that what it means to live ethically and politically is realized through, not in spite of, the everyday experience of digital life. Drawing on a wide range of philosophers from Hegel and Heidegger to Levinas and Butler, he investigates what is really at stake amid the constant distractions of our media-saturated world, the way we present ourselves to that world through social media, and the relentless march of data into every aspect of our lives.A provocation to think differently about digital media and what it is doing to us, Digital Life offers timely insights into distraction and compassion fatigue, privacy and surveillance, identity and solidarity. It is essential reading for scholars and advanced students of media and communication.

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Launched in 2007, tumblr became a safe haven for LGBT youth, social justice movements, and a counseling station for mental health issues. For a decade, this micro-blogging platform had more users than either Twitter or Snapchat, but it remained an obscure subculture for nonusers. Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry, and Crystal Abidin offer the first systematic guide to tumblr and its crucial role in shaping internet culture. Drawing on a decade of qualitative data, they trace the prominent social media practices of creativity, curation, and community-making, and reveal tumblr’s cultlike appeal and position in the social media ecosystem. The book demonstrates how diverse cultures can – in felt and imagined silos - coexist on a single platform and how destructive recent trends in platform governance are. The concept of “silosociality” is introduced to critically re-think social media, interrogate what kinds of sociality it affords, and what (unintended) consequences arise. This book is an essential resource for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as anyone interested in an influential but overlooked platform.

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There are few issues more contentious today than the nature and purpose of borders. Migration flows and the refugee crisis have propelled the issue of borders into the centre of political debate and revealed our moral unease more clearly than ever. Who are we to deny others access to our territory? Is not freedom of movement a basic human right, one that should be defended above all others? In this book Paul Scheffer takes a different view. Rather than thinking of borders as obstacles to freedom, he argues that borders make freedom possible. Democracy and redistributive justice are only possible with the regulation of access to territories and rights. When liberals ignore an open society’s need for borders, people with authoritarian inclinations will begin to erect them. In the context of Europe, the project of removing internal borders can therefore only be successful if Europe accepts responsibility for its external border. This timely and important book challenges conventional ways of thinking and will be of interest to everyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

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How should we talk about desire, power and equality in the wake of the #Me Too debate? For Carolin Emcke, bestselling author and winner of the German Peace Prize, the debate demonstrates one thing above all: a conversation about abuse and sexuality has emerged that can no longer be stifled. Too many questions remain unanswered: which images and concepts shape our imaginings of desire and revulsion? How is violence exposed and obstructed? How do the norms and structures into which men, women and those in between must fit get constructed? What gets hushed up, and who remains powerless? How can the plurality of desire and sexuality be expressed, without sacrificing their intricacies? By interrogating her own experiences as well as social practices, music and literature, Emcke demonstrates the enduring complexity of the relationship between sexuality and truth.

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Does work give our lives purpose, meaning and status? Or is it a tedious necessity that will soon be abolished by automation, leaving humans free to enjoy a life of leisure and basic income? In this erudite and highly readable book, Jon Cruddas MP argues that it is imperative that the Left rejects the siren call of technological determinism and roots it politics firmly in the workplace. Drawing from his experience of his own Dagenham and Rainham constituency, he examines the history of Marxist and social democratic thinking about work in order to critique the fatalism of both Blairism and radical left techno-utopianism, which, he contends, have more in common than either would like to admit. He argues that, especially in the context of COVID-19, socialists must embrace an ethical socialist politics based on the dignity and agency of the labour interest. This timely book is a brilliant intervention in the highly contentious debate on the future of work, as well as an ambitious account of how the left must rediscover its animating purpose or risk irrelevance.

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In the wake of major terrorist attacks, calls for ever more draconian policies to prevent further outrages are common. Such responses raise the pressing question: is it possible to effectively fight terrorism while respecting democratic values of equality and trust? Examining recent examples of terrorist atrocities – from the murder of Muslims in New Zealand and Jews in Pittsburgh to the Charlie Hebdo attacks – Patti Tamara Lenard considers how democracies should tackle terrorism within the constraints imposed by democratic principles. For many, the tension between liberty and security necessarily means that the only way to protect security is to sacrifice liberty—but Lenard rejects this claim, and instead argues that security’s goal should be to keep all citizens equally secure in the face of terrorist threats. Critiquing existing policies, from exile to racial profiling, she outlines what ethical counter-terrorism policies should look like, arguing for strategies that respect equality and thereby maintain trust among diverse communities in democratic states. This erudite guide to how states might ethically fight terrorism will be essential reading for any student or scholar of public affairs, security, counter-terrorism, and democratic governance.

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We are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis. How can we communicate and act more effectively to make the political and economic changes required to survive and even thrive within the life-support capacities of our planet? This is the question at the heart of W. Lance Bennett’s much-anticipated book. Bennett challenges readers to consider how best to approach the environmental crisis by changing how we think about the relationships between environment, economy, and democracy. He introduces a framework that citizens, practitioners, and scholars can use to evaluate common but unproductive communication that blocks thinking about change; develop more effective ways to define and approach problems; and design communication processes to engage diverse publics and organizations in developing understandings, goals, and political strategies. Until advocates develop economic programs with built-in environmental solutions, they will continue to lose policy fights. Putting “intersectional” communication into action requires acknowledging that communication is not only an exchange of messages, but an organizational process. Communicating the Future is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as general readers concerned about the environmental crisis.

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