Books published by Cambridge University Press

Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history's theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised, even to those using them. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history's most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. Rethinking Global History prompts historians to pause and think about the methodology and premises underpinning their work. The volume reflects on the structure and direction of history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances in the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Lava Jato, the largest transnational bribery case in history, shocked Latin American politics. This book explains why the investigation gained momentum in some countries, becoming an anti-corruption crusade. It examines public reactions, finding that prosecutors' unprecedented zeal eroded the tacit consensus around the merits of anti-corruption.

Examines the ethical considerations and wide range of values underpinning healthcare improvement work, enabling more rigorous reflection and discussion. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in the balance until relatively late in the war. Using new evidence from diaries, letters and memoirs, he fundamentally revises our understanding of German strategy from the decision to go to war and the failure of the western offensive to the radicalisation of Germany's war effort under Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the ultimate collapse of the Central Powers. He uncovers the struggles in wartime Germany between supporters of peace and hardliners who wanted to fight to the finish. He suggests that Germany was not nearly as committed to all-out conquest as previous accounts argue. Numerous German peace advances could have offered the opportunity to end the war before it dragged Europe into the abyss.

Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history's theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised, even to those using them. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history's most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. Rethinking Global History prompts historians to pause and think about the methodology and premises underpinning their work. The volume reflects on the structure and direction of history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances in the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which has come to global attention in recent years for its efforts in resisting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but has been present and active in the region for much longer, Francis O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK's insurgency in Turkey. Looking at how the relationship between armed groups and their supporters should be conceptually understood, how this relationship varies spatially and what role violence has in their relationship, he draws on Civil War, Social Movements and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, the targeted use of violence and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives. In doing so, it provides an historical narrative to an organisation which has managed to successfully resist NATO's second largest army with limited weapons for decades and has become a key player of Kurdish rights in the wider region.

Dignity, or karama in Arabic, is a nebulous concept that challenges us to reflect on issues such as identity, human rights, and faith. During the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, Egyptians that participated in these uprisings frequently used the concept of dignity as a way to underscore their opposition to the Mubarak regime. Protesting against the indignity of the poverty, lack of freedom and social justice, the idea of karama gained salience in Egyptian cinema, popular literature, street art, music, social media and protest banners, slogans and literature. Based on interviews with participants in the 2011 protests and analysis of the art forms that emerged during protests, Zaynab El Bernoussi explores understandings of the concept of dignity, showing how protestors conceived of this concept in their organisation of protest and uprising, and their memories of karama in the aftermath of the protests, revisiting these claims in the years subsequent to the uprising.

A comparative analysis of the nation-building projects in Turkey under both Ataturk and Erdogan, concentrating on the concept of the desired, undesired and tolerated citizen. This shows how resulting historical traumas, victimhood, insecurities, anxieties, and fears have had influenced both state and society throughout these different periods.

Israel attracts enormous attention among scholars, journalists, politicians, and the general public. Some regard the country as an apartheid regime that can only be challenged through boycotts and sanctions. Others believe it is a stable liberal democracy, created under extreme conditions. This book seeks to unravel these conflicting interpretations by focusing on three questions: How can the Israeli regime be classified? What are the borders of the Israeli regime? And what are the key factors that shape the regime and support its relative stability? Gal Ariely calls for an approach which disaggregates democracy into specific dimensions, examining the diverse aspects of the Israeli regime to determine the level of 'democraticness' exhibited rather than classifying the regime as a whole. In doing so he provides a comprehensive account of the Israeli regime, untangling conflicting interpretations and illustrates the advantages of using this approach for analysing disputed regimes more widely.

White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, Privileged Precariat examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. Starting from the 1970s, it shows how apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, sending workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers' Union, culminating in its reinvention, by the 2010s, as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism. Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, Privileged Precariat offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa's recent past and contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the era of neoliberalism.

Zongos, wards in West Africa populated by traders and migrants from the northern savannahs and the Sahel, are a common sight in Ghana's Asante region where the people of these wards represent a dual-minority as both foreigners and Muslims in a largely Christian area, facing marginalisation as a result. Islam provides the people of the zongos with a common ground and shared values, becoming central to their identity and to their shared sense of community. This detailed account of Islamic lifeworlds highlights the irreducible diversity and complexity of 'everyday' lived religion among Muslims in a zongo community. Benedikt Pontzen traces the history of Muslim presence in the region and analyses three Islamic phenomena encountered in its zongos in detail: Islamic prayer practices, the authorisation of Islamic knowledge, and ardently contested divination and healing practices. Drawing on empirical and archival research, oral histories, and academic studies, he demonstrates how Islam is inextricably bound up with the diverse ways in which Muslims live it.

Investigating state responses to the Kimberley Process, an ambitious international agreement meant to reduce the trade of conflict diamonds, this study looks at the political economy of resource-wealthy states in Africa to understand why some African states have higher levels of compliance and co-operation than others.

This historical study transforms our understanding of modern Egyptian national culture by applying social theory to the history of Egypt's first teacher-training school. It focuses on Dar al-Ulum, which trained students from religious schools to teach in Egypt's new civil schools from 1872. During the first four decades of British occupation (1882-1922), Egyptian nationalists strove to emulate Europe yet insisted that Arabic and Islamic knowledge be reformed and integrated into Egyptian national culture despite opposition from British officials. This reinforced the authority of the alumni of the Dar al-Ulum, the daramiyya, as arbiters of how to be modern and authentic, a position that graduates Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood would use to resist westernisation and create new modes of Islamic leadership in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Establishing a 130-year history for tensions over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modernized public spaces, tensions which became central to the outcomes of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, Hilary Kalmbach demonstrates the importance of Arabic and Islamic knowledge to notions of authority, belonging, and authenticity within a modernising Muslim-majority community.

This volume discusses the theory, practice, and interpretation of customary international law, as well as new developments and future research trajectories. Combining discussions of familiar concepts with new ideas, it is useful for researchers, scholars, and practitioners of international law. Available Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Written under the sign of Beckett, this book addresses comparative law's commitment to the deterritorialization of the legal and its attendant claim for the normative relevance of foreign law locally in the fabrication of statutory determinations, judicial opinions, or academic reflections. Wanting to withstand the law's persistent tendency towards nationalist retrenchment and counter comparative law's institutional marginalization, the fifteen essays at hand impart radical and discerning intellectual equipment in order to foster the valorization of the legally foreign and the comparative motion. In particular, the critique informing this manifesto examines pre-eminent topics like culture and difference, understanding and translatability, objectivity and truth, invention and tracing. Harnessing insights from a range of disciplinary discourses, this book contends that comparatists must boldly desist from their field's dominant epistemology and embrace a practice much better attuned to the study of foreignness.

As the first major handbook to music composition in decades, this book is primarily aimed at students and practitioners in the area of composition, but the range of topics and genres covered by this book will appeal to academics and practitioners in complementary fields of contemporary music, sound art and creativity.

As the first major handbook to music composition in decades, this book is primarily aimed at students and practitioners in the area of composition, but the range of topics and genres covered by this book will appeal to academics and practitioners in complementary fields of contemporary music, sound art and creativity.

This handbook provides a comprehensive, practical, and independent guide to all aspects of making weather observations. The second edition has been fully updated throughout with new material, new instruments and technologies, and the latest reference and research materials. Traditional and modern weather instruments are covered, including how best to choose and to site a weather station, how to get the best out of your equipment, how to store and analyse your records and how to share your observations. The book's emphasis is on modern electronic instruments and automatic weather stations. It provides advice on replacing 'traditional' mercury-based thermometers and barometers with modern digital sensors, following implementation of the UN Minamata Convention outlawing mercury in the environment. The Weather Observer's Handbook will again prove to be an invaluable resource for both amateur observers choosing their first weather instruments and professional observers looking for a comprehensive and up-to-date guide.