Polity press jan 2017 (23 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - We have long since lost our faith in the idea that human beings could achieve human happiness in some future ideal state - a state that Thomas More, writing five centuries ago, tied to a topos, a fixed place, a land, an island, a sovereign state under a wise and benevolent ruler. But while we have lost our faith in utopias of all hues, the human aspiration that made this vision so compelling has not died. Instead it is re-emerging today as a vision focused not on the future but on the past, not on a future-to-be-created but on an abandoned and undead past that we could call retrotopia.The emergence of retrotopia is interwoven with the deepening gulf between power and politics that is a defining feature of our contemporary liquid-modern world - the gulf between the ability to get things done and the capability of deciding what things need to be done, a capability once vested with the territorially sovereign state. This deepening gulf has rendered nation-states unable to deliver on their promises, giving rise to a widespread disenchantment with the idea that the future will improve the human condition and a mistrust in the ability of nation-states to make this happen. True to the utopian spirit, retrotopia derives its stimulus from the urge to rectify the failings of the present human condition - though now by resurrecting the failed and forgotten potentials of the past. Imagined aspects of the past, genuine or putative, serve as the main landmarks today in drawing the road-map to a better world. Having lost all faith in the idea of building an alternative society of the future, many turn instead to the grand ideas of the past, buried but not yet dead. Such is retrotopia, the contours of which are examined by Zygmunt Bauman in this sharp dissection of our contemporary romance with the past.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - China is home to a fifth of the world's inhabitants. For the last several decades, this huge population has been in flux: fertility has fallen sharply, mortality has declined, and massive rural-to-urban migration is taking place. The state has played a direct role in these changes, seeing population control as an important part of its intention to modernize the country.In this insightful new work, Nancy E. Riley argues that China's population policies and outcomes are not simply imposed by the state onto an unresponsive citizenry, but have arisen from the social organization of China over the past sixty years. Riley demonstrates how China's population and population policy are intertwined and interact with other social and economic features. Riley also examines the unintended consequences of state directives, including the extraordinary number of 'missing girls,' the rapid aging of the population, and an increase in inequality, particularly between rural and urban residents.Ultimately, China's demographic story has to be understood as a complex, multi-pieced phenomenon. This book will be essential reading for researchers and students of China and social demography, as well as non-specialists interested in the changing nature of China's population.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In what ways has global urbanization affected the political process This book offers a reflection on the transformations of urban politics worldwide in the past four decades, from interpersonal street-level politics to transnational governing institutions.Organized thematically, the book examines urban social movements, diversity politics, environmental politics and security politics at a global level and argues that living in an urban world calls for a profound rethinking of how we act politically. Through ethnographic incursions into the worlds of youth activists, domestic workers, rioters, barrio bandits and peripheral villagers, among others, from Mexico City and Hanoi to Montreal and New York, the book makes a number of theoretical propositions to redefine the field of urban political studies.Extending the view of urban politics beyond municipal and metropolitan institutions to the broader political process in cities, this book will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars interested in our urban future. For, as Boudreau convincingly suggests, global urban life is political life.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Multiculturalism is controversial in the liberal state and has frequently been declared dead, even in countries that have never had a policy under that name. This authoritative book reviews the different meanings multiculturalism has acquired across theories, countries, and domains to evaluate the extent of its demise and the ways in which it lives on.Christian Joppke intriguingly argues that, beyond the ebb and flow of policy, liberal constitutionalism itself bears out a 'multiculturalism of the individual' that is not only alive but necessary in a liberal society. Through a provocative comparison of gay rights in the United States and the accommodation of Islam in Europe, he shows that liberal constitutionalism constrains majority power, requiring the state to be neutral about people's values and ethical commitment. It cannot but give rise to multiple ways of life or cultures, as people are endowed with the freedom to embrace them. Accordingly, impulses toward multiculturalism persist, despite its political crisis, but with a new accent on the individual, rather than group, as the unit of integration.Tightly argued and clearly written, this book provides a judicious assessment of multiculturalism in the West and will be of interest to a broad readership across the social sciences and legal studies. …

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Since the end of the Cold War a significant number of peace agreements have been signed, many of them in bloody intra-state conflicts that were previously thought beyond resolution. How have these agreements addressed issues of territory, security, power and justice Do they reveal a blueprint for peace, and what can we learn from both their successes and their failures This timely book provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge analysis of peace agreements signed in separatist conflicts from 1990 to the present day. Drawing on a diverse range of cases, including Bosnia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sudan, Israel-Palestine and Ukraine, it analyses the different peace 'packages', focusing on the interaction of the elements in play, and exploring the impact of political contestation within conflict parties and of peace process dynamics.Though some of these agreements have displayed great ingenuity in finding lasting solutions, many have relied on more traditional, and often problematic, designs. For all such agreements, the enduring challenge is that of ensuring flexibility while avoiding destructive ambiguity. This is why the content of peace agreements really matters - not only to sustain peace once it is achieved but to make the prospect of peace possible in the first place.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'Business-as-usual' has been transformed across the music industries in the post-CD age. Against widespread hype about the purported decline of the major music labels, this book provides a critique of the ways these companies have successfully adapted to digital challenges - and what is at stake for music makers and for culture.Today, recording artists are positioned as 'artist-brands' and popular music as a product to be licensed by consumer and media brands. Leslie M. Meier examines key consequences of shifting business models, marketing strategies, and the new 'common sense' in the music industries: the gatekeeping and colonization of popular music by brands.Popular Music as Promotion is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, cultural studies and sociology, and will appeal to anyone interested in new intersections of popular music, digital media and promotional culture.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In this book leading cultural anthropologist Anton Blok sheds new light on the lives and achievements of pioneers who revolutionized science and art over the past five centuries, demonstrating that adversity rather than talent alone was crucial to their success.Through a collective biography of some ninety radical innovators, including Erasmus, Spinoza, Newton, Bach, Sade, Darwin, Melville, Mendel, Cézanne, Curie, Brâncusi, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Keynes, and Goodall, Blok shows how a significant proportion in fact benefited from social exclusion. Beethoven's increasing deafness isolated him from his friends, creating more time for composing and experimenting, while Darwin's chronic illness gave him an excuse to avoid social gatherings and get on with his work.Adversity took various forms, including illegitimate birth, early parental loss, conflict with parents, bankruptcy, chronic illness, physical deficiencies, neurological and genetic disorders, minority status, peripheral origins, poverty, exile, and detention. Blok argues, however, that all these misfortunes had the same effect: alienation from mainstream society. As outsiders, innovators could question conventional beliefs and practices. With little to lose, they could take chances and exploit opportunities.With governments, universities and industry all emphasizing the importance of investing in innovation, typically understood to mean planned and focussed research teams, this book runs counter to conventional wisdom. For far more often, radical innovation in science and art is entirely unscripted, resulting from trial and error by individuals ready to take risks, fail, and start again.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What Journalism Could Be asks readers to reimagine the news by embracing a conceptual prism long championed by one of journalism's leading contemporary scholars. A former reporter, media critic and academic, Barbie Zelizer charts a singular journey through journalism's complicated contours, prompting readers to rethink both how the news works and why it matters.Zelizer tackles longstanding givens in journalism's practice and study, offering alternative cues for assessing its contemporary environment. Highlighting journalism's intersection with interpretation, culture, emotion, contingency, collective memory, crisis and visuality, Zelizer brings new meaning to its engagement with events like the global refugee crisis, rise of Islamic State, ascent of digital media and twenty-first-century combat.Imagining what journalism could be involves stretching beyond the already-known. Zelizer enumerates journalism's considerable current challenges while suggesting bold and creative ways of engaging with them. This book powerfully demonstrates how and why journalism remains of paramount importance.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The Russian protests, sparked by the 2011 Duma election, have been widely portrayed as a colourful but inconsequential middle-class rebellion, confined to Moscow and organized by an unpopular opposition. In this sweeping new account of the protests, Mischa Gabowitsch challenges these journalistic clichés, showing that they stem from wishful thinking and media bias rather than from accurate empirical analysis. Drawing on a rich body of material, he analyses the biggest wave of demonstrations since the end of the Soviet Union, situating them in the context of protest and social movements across Russia as a whole. He also explores the legacy of the protests in the new era after Ukraine¿s much larger Maidan protests, the crises in Crimea and the Donbass, and Putin¿s ultra-conservative turn. As the first full-length study of the Russian protests, this book will be of great value to students and scholars of Russia and to anyone interested in contemporary social movements and political protest.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a central figure in the thought of his time, but he was also something of an outsider. His father died in the First World War, he enjoyed his mother's unfailing love, he spent long years in the sanatorium, and he was aware of his homosexuality from an early age: all this soon gave him a sense of his own difference. He experienced the great events of contemporary history from a distance. However, his life was caught up in the violent, intense sweep of the twentieth century, a century that he helped to make intelligible.This major new biography of Barthes, based on unpublished material never before explored (archives, journals and not Elektronisches Buch), sheds new light on his intellectual positions, his political commitments and his ideas, beliefs and desires. It details the many themes he discussed, the authors he defended, the myths he castigated, the polemics that made him famous and his acute ear for the languages of his day. It also underscores his remarkable ability to see which way the wind was blowing and he is still a compelling author to read in part because his path-breaking explorations uncovered themes that continue to preoccupy us today.Barthes's life story gives substance and cohesion to his career, which was guided by desire, perspicacity and an extreme sensitivity to the material from which the world is shaped as well as a powerful refusal to accept any authoritarian discourse. By allowing thought to be based on imagination, he turned thinking into both an art and an adventure. This remarkable biography enables the reader to enter into Barthes's life and grasp the shape of his existence, and thus understand the kind of writer he became and how he turned literature into life itself.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to contemporary bioethics. It also presents provocative, philosophically informed arguments on current bioethical issues. Holland engages with debates ranging from the more familiar - such as euthanasia, advance decisions to refuse treatment, and new reproductive technologies - to the philosophical implications of recent developments in genetics, including prenatal genetic therapy, genetic enhancement and human cloning. The book is built around four crucial themes. The first is moral status: what are the implications of the moral status of human embryos or animals for our biomedical practices The second theme - life, death and killing - looks at the ethics of ending, or failing to lengthen, human life. Holland then explores various questions of personal identity raised in contemporary bioethical debates. Finally, he presents and develops a version of the argument from nature - which continues to be influential in bioethics - in order to make sense of the objection that some biomedical innovations are 'unnatural'. Structuring the discussions in this way creates an engaging introduction to bioethics that is an ideal textbook for students, whilst offering much to stimulate colleagues in the field.This second edition has been thoroughly and comprehensively updated to reflect the most recent advances in bioethics, and includes an entirely new chapter on the ethical treatment of patients in the minimally conscious state. …

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended.Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies - American, French and British - as by the members of the Red Army, and they occurred not only in Berlin but throughout Germany. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes.Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In what ways has global urbanization affected the political process This book offers a reflection on the transformations of urban politics worldwide in the past four decades, from interpersonal street-level politics to transnational governing institutions.Organized thematically, the book examines urban social movements, diversity politics, environmental politics and security politics at a global level and argues that living in an urban world calls for a profound rethinking of how we act politically. Through ethnographic incursions into the worlds of youth activists, domestic workers, rioters, barrio bandits and peripheral villagers, among others, from Mexico City and Hanoi to Montreal and New York, the book makes a number of theoretical propositions to redefine the field of urban political studies.Extending the view of urban politics beyond municipal and metropolitan institutions to the broader political process in cities, this book will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars interested in our urban future. For, as Boudreau convincingly suggests, global urban life is political life.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - China is home to a fifth of the world's inhabitants. For the last several decades, this huge population has been in flux: fertility has fallen sharply, mortality has declined, and massive rural-to-urban migration is taking place. The state has played a direct role in these changes, seeing population control as an important part of its intention to modernize the country.In this insightful new work, Nancy E. Riley argues that China's population policies and outcomes are not simply imposed by the state onto an unresponsive citizenry, but have arisen from the social organization of China over the past sixty years. Riley demonstrates how China's population and population policy are intertwined and interact with other social and economic features. Riley also examines the unintended consequences of state directives, including the extraordinary number of 'missing girls,' the rapid aging of the population, and an increase in inequality, particularly between rural and urban residents.Ultimately, China's demographic story has to be understood as a complex, multi-pieced phenomenon. This book will be essential reading for researchers and students of China and social demography, as well as non-specialists interested in the changing nature of China's population.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Since the end of the Cold War a significant number of peace agreements have been signed, many of them in bloody intra-state conflicts that were previously thought beyond resolution. How have these agreements addressed issues of territory, security, power and justice Do they reveal a blueprint for peace, and what can we learn from both their successes and their failures This timely book provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge analysis of peace agreements signed in separatist conflicts from 1990 to the present day. Drawing on a diverse range of cases, including Bosnia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sudan, Israel-Palestine and Ukraine, it analyses the different peace 'packages', focusing on the interaction of the elements in play, and exploring the impact of political contestation within conflict parties and of peace process dynamics.Though some of these agreements have displayed great ingenuity in finding lasting solutions, many have relied on more traditional, and often problematic, designs. For all such agreements, the enduring challenge is that of ensuring flexibility while avoiding destructive ambiguity. This is why the content of peace agreements really matters - not only to sustain peace once it is achieved but to make the prospect of peace possible in the first place.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In this book leading cultural anthropologist Anton Blok sheds new light on the lives and achievements of pioneers who revolutionized science and art over the past five centuries, demonstrating that adversity rather than talent alone was crucial to their success.Through a collective biography of some ninety radical innovators, including Erasmus, Spinoza, Newton, Bach, Sade, Darwin, Melville, Mendel, Cézanne, Curie, Brâncusi, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Keynes, and Goodall, Blok shows how a significant proportion in fact benefited from social exclusion. Beethoven's increasing deafness isolated him from his friends, creating more time for composing and experimenting, while Darwin's chronic illness gave him an excuse to avoid social gatherings and get on with his work.Adversity took various forms, including illegitimate birth, early parental loss, conflict with parents, bankruptcy, chronic illness, physical deficiencies, neurological and genetic disorders, minority status, peripheral origins, poverty, exile, and detention. Blok argues, however, that all these misfortunes had the same effect: alienation from mainstream society. As outsiders, innovators could question conventional beliefs and practices. With little to lose, they could take chances and exploit opportunities.With governments, universities and industry all emphasizing the importance of investing in innovation, typically understood to mean planned and focussed research teams, this book runs counter to conventional wisdom. For far more often, radical innovation in science and art is entirely unscripted, resulting from trial and error by individuals ready to take risks, fail, and start again.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Multiculturalism is controversial in the liberal state and has frequently been declared dead, even in countries that have never had a policy under that name. This authoritative book reviews the different meanings multiculturalism has acquired across theories, countries, and domains to evaluate the extent of its demise and the ways in which it lives on.Christian Joppke intriguingly argues that, beyond the ebb and flow of policy, liberal constitutionalism itself bears out a 'multiculturalism of the individual' that is not only alive but necessary in a liberal society. Through a provocative comparison of gay rights in the United States and the accommodation of Islam in Europe, he shows that liberal constitutionalism constrains majority power, requiring the state to be neutral about people's values and ethical commitment. It cannot but give rise to multiple ways of life or cultures, as people are endowed with the freedom to embrace them. Accordingly, impulses toward multiculturalism persist, despite its political crisis, but with a new accent on the individual, rather than group, as the unit of integration.Tightly argued and clearly written, this book provides a judicious assessment of multiculturalism in the West and will be of interest to a broad readership across the social sciences and legal studies. …

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Information overload, the shallows, weapons of mass distraction, the googlization of minds: countless commentators condemn the flood of images and information that dooms us to a pathological attention deficit.In this new book, cultural theorist Yves Citton goes against the tide of these standard laments to offer a new perspective on the problem of attention in the digital age. Phrases like 'paying attention' and 'investing one's attention' attest to our mistaken belief that attention can be conceptualized in narrow economic terms. We are constantly drawn towards attempts to quantify and commodify attention, even down to counting the number of 'likes' a picture receives on Facebook or a video on YouTube. By contrast, Citton argues that we should conceptualize attention as a kind of ecology and examine how the many different environments to which we are exposed - from advertising to literature, search engines to performance art - condition our attention in different ways.In a world where the demands on our attention are ever-increasing, this timely and original book will be of great interest to students and scholars in media and communications and in literary and cultural studies, and to anyone concerned about the long-term consequences of the profusion of images as well as digital content in the age of the internet.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The idea of socialism has given normative grounding and orientation to the outrage over capitalism for more than 150 years, and yet today it seems to have lost much of its appeal. Despite growing discontent, many would hesitate to invoke socialism when it comes to envisioning life beyond capitalism. How can we explain the rapid decline of this once powerful idea And what must we do to renew it for the twenty-first century In this lucid, political-philosophical essay, Axel Honneth argues that the idea of socialism has lost its luster because its theoretical assumptions stem from the industrial era and are no longer convincing in our contemporary post-industrial societies. Only if we manage to replace these assumptions with a concept of history and society that corresponds to our current experiences will we be able to restore confidence in a project whose fundamental idea remains as relevant today as it was a century ago - the idea of an economy that realizes freedom in solidarity.The Idea of Socialism was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book of 2015.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'Business-as-usual' has been transformed across the music industries in the post-CD age. Against widespread hype about the purported decline of the major music labels, this book provides a critique of the ways these companies have successfully adapted to digital challenges - and what is at stake for music makers and for culture.Today, recording artists are positioned as 'artist-brands' and popular music as a product to be licensed by consumer and media brands. Leslie M. Meier examines key consequences of shifting business models, marketing strategies, and the new 'common sense' in the music industries: the gatekeeping and colonization of popular music by brands.Popular Music as Promotion is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, cultural studies and sociology, and will appeal to anyone interested in new intersections of popular music, digital media and promotional culture.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In July 2014 the Belgian newspaper Le Soir claimed that France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and the United States may lose between 43 and 50 per cent of their jobs within ten to fifteen years. Across the world, integrated automation, one key result of the so-called 'data economy', is leading to a drastic reduction in employment in all areas - from the legal profession to truck driving, from medicine to stevedoring.In this first volume of a new series, the leading cultural theorist Bernard Stiegler advocates a radical solution to the crisis posed by automation and consumer capitalism more generally. He calls for a decoupling of the concept of 'labour' (meaningful, intellectual participation) from 'employment' (dehumanizing, banal work), with the ultimate aim of eradicating 'employment' altogether. By doing so, new and alternative economic models will arise, where individuals are no longer simply mined for labour, but also actively produce what they consume.Building substantially on his existing theories and engaging with a wide range of figures - from Deleuze and Foucault to Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan - Automatic Society will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, as well as anyone concerned with the central question of the future of work.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This popular and engaging text, now revised in a second edition, offers readers a social perspective on food, food practices, and the modern food system. It engages readers' curiosity by highlighting several paradoxes: how food is both individual and social, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary global era, comes from everywhere but nowhere in particular. With updates and enhancements throughout, the new edition provides an empirically deep, multifaceted, and coherent introduction to this fascinating field.Each chapter begins with a vivid case study, proceeds through a rich discussion of research insights, and ends with discussion questions and suggested resources. Chapter topics include food's role in socialization, identity, health and social change, as well as food marketing and the changing global food system. The new edition gives more focused attention to labor (both paid and unpaid) in all aspects of the food system. In synthesizing insights from diverse fields of social inquiry, the book addresses issues of culture, structure, and social inequality throughout.Written in a lively style, this book will continue to be both accessible and revealing to beginning and intermediate students alike.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What Journalism Could Be asks readers to reimagine the news by embracing a conceptual prism long championed by one of journalism's leading contemporary scholars. A former reporter, media critic and academic, Barbie Zelizer charts a singular journey through journalism's complicated contours, prompting readers to rethink both how the news works and why it matters.Zelizer tackles longstanding givens in journalism's practice and study, offering alternative cues for assessing its contemporary environment. Highlighting journalism's intersection with interpretation, culture, emotion, contingency, collective memory, crisis and visuality, Zelizer brings new meaning to its engagement with events like the global refugee crisis, rise of Islamic State, ascent of digital media and twenty-first-century combat.Imagining what journalism could be involves stretching beyond the already-known. Zelizer enumerates journalism's considerable current challenges while suggesting bold and creative ways of engaging with them. This book powerfully demonstrates how and why journalism remains of paramount importance.…