Books published by Rowman & Littlefield International

Modern civilization and the social reproduction of capitalism are bound inextricably with fossil fuel consumption. But as carbon energy resources become scarcer, what implications will this have for energy-intensive modes of life? Can renewable energy sustain high levels of accumulation?? Or will we witness the end of existing capitalist economies?This book provides an innovative and timely study that mobilizes a new theory of capitalism to explain the rise and fall of petro-market civilization. Di Muzio investigates how theorists of political economy have largely taken energy for granted and illuminates how the exploitation of fossil fuels increased the universalization and magnitude of capital accumulation. He then examines the likelihood of renewable resources providing a feasible alternative and asks whether they can beat peak oil prices to sustain food production, health care, science and democracy. Using the capital as power framework, this book considers the unevenly experienced consequences of monetizing fossil fuels for people and the planet.

Integrating Indifference explores the various faces of citizens' indifference, from fatalism, to detachment, via sheer indecision.

Is Stuart Hall a Cultural Studies Scholar or a Postcolonial Scholar? Or is it better to engage with his work as an intellectual of both fields?Postwar Britain witnessed the concurrent evolution of two new intellectual movements which have since become institutionalized as two major academic fields of enquiry; Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Although both fields are enormously diverse they have developed a parallel focus around the place of individuals in terms of race, ethnicity, class and gender.Beyond Britain offers a history of the major ideas that have shaped the evolution of a shared space of inquiry in British Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies. It uses the work of Stuart Hall, a figure a uniquely well positioned in both fields, to offer a rich cultural-historical study of the evolution of both movements. It argues that the questions which both movements have continued to preoccupy themselves, are as relevant today as they were when they first originated, which was also a moment of challenging a conformist, exclusivist, and self-sufficient nation's view of itself.

Words are everywhere. Ubiquitous, pervasive. Yet our relations with words are narrowly defined. How does the sound, feel, touch, taste, place, position, speed, and direction of words come to matter in their uses? Word begins from the premise that, if we consider words only in terms of language and as images, we overlook a range of bodily, sensory, affective and non-conscious relations with words. We overlook, too, their epistemological, methodological, experiential and political implications. This book seeks to redress this neglect by exploring words themselves in histories of language and contemporary theory, in print and typography, and through a series of empirical examples which include religion, embodiment, photography and performance. Word is a reminder that words live richly in the world. It is an invitation to recognise those non-linguistic word-relations that are already existing, and to bring new and generative encounters with words into being.

Desire is a term often used in conjunction with the subject. This desire is directed towards the real, which is defined as the generic core of the linguistic order. As a result of the focus on affect, the three termsdesire, the subject, the realhave been fundamentally shaken up and called into question. Affect, in various forms, is now a matter of concern across a wide range of disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, the humanities, and social sciences. All of these fields have a declared interest in affect, in emotions and sensations, in pathos, passions, and the senses.Desire After Affect argues that this affective euphoria cannot be explained solely in terms of a repression of language, logos, and reason. It argues that the affective turn is symptomatic of a fundamental shift in modes of thinking about the human condition. It explores what this means for the human and the posthuman, animal and machine, and calls for a new theory of subjectivation, a philosophy of media affect.

The image of the Caribbean figure has been reconfigured by photography from the mid-19th century onwards. Initial images associated with the slave and indentured worker from the locations and legacies associated with plantation economies have been usurped by visual representations emerging from struggles for social, political and cultural autonomy. Contemporary visual artists engaging with the Caribbean as a 21st century globalised space have focused on visually re-imagining historical material and events as memories, histories and dreamscapes. Creole in the Archive uses photographic analysis to explore portraits, postcards and social documentation of the colonial worker between 1850 and 1960 and contemporary, often digital, visual art by post-independent, postcolonial Caribbean artists. Drawing on Derridean ideas of the archive, the book reconceptualises the Caribbean visual archive as contiguous and relational. It argues that using a creolising archive practice, the conjuncture of contemporary artworks, historical imagery and associated locations can develop insightful new multimodal representations of Caribbean subjectivities.

Political and economic models of society often operate at a level of abstraction so high that the connections between them, and their links to culture, are beyond reach. Bearing Society in Mind challenges these disciplinary boundaries and proposes an alternative frameworkthe social formation. The theory of social formation demonstrates how the fabric of society is made up of threads that are simultaneously economic, political, and cultural. Drawing on the work of theorists including Marx, Althusser, Butler, Zizek and Ranciere, Bearing Society in Mind makes the strongest case possible for the theoretical importance and political necessity of this concept. It simultaneously demonstrates that the social formation proves to be a very particular and peculiar type of ';concept'it is not a reflection or model of the world, but is definitively and concretely bound up with and constitutive of the world.

The notion of conscience remains one of the most widely used moral concepts and a cornerstone of ordinary moral thinking. This book explores where this widespread confidence in conscience stems from, examining the history of conscience as a moral concept and its characteristic moral phenomenology.Jason Howard provides a comprehensive reassessment of the function of conscience in moral life, detailing along the way the manifold problems that arise when we believe our conscience is more reliable than is actually warranted. The result is a step-by-step evaluation of our most accepted assumptions. Howard goes on to argue, from a phenomenological perspective, that conscience is indispensable for understanding moral experience. He capitalizes on a dialectical perspective developed by Hegel and Ricoeur, in which conscience is seen as the recognition of the other, and integrates this with work in the philosophy of emotion, arguing that conscience is best seen in terms of the function it serves in moderating the moral emotions of shame, guilt and pride.

Affective Critical Regionality offers a new approach to developing a sharper, more nuanced understanding of the relations between place, space, memory and affect. It builds on the author's extensive work on the American West, where he developed the idea of ';expanded critical regionalism' to underline the West as multiple, dynamic and relational; engaged in global / local processes, tensions between the rooted and the routed, and increasingly as relevant to debates around the politics of precarity and vulnerability. This book uses affective critical regionality to enable a re-valuing of the local as a powerful means to appreciate the everyday and the over-looked as vital elements within a more inclusive understanding of how we live. Exploring a variety of cultural materials including fiction, memoir, theory, poetry and film it demonstrates how this approach can deepen our understanding of, and simultaneously provoke new relations with, place. Moving beyond the US context through its use of international theoretical voices and texts, it will show how the concept is applicable to other cultural spheres.

Representative democracy has long been problematic and subject to erosion through the introduction of components of direct democracy (referenda, voter initiatives and systems of recall). Following the increase of direct action across the world, through the Occupy movement and the rise of new populist parties championing greater citizen inclusion in decision making, many are considering whether the hierarchical system of political control might have had its day. But what might be the alternative, next democracy? This book considers the viability of a populist conception of democratic organization, which puts power into the hands of ordinary citizens. Examining contemporary and classic theory to contextualize the critique of existing systems, the book goes on to explore alternative arrangements tested out by activists, eco-protestors and anti-capitalists from the recent Occupy agenda to Gandhi's experiments in alternative living. Milligan confronts the practical challenges posed by these systems of direct democracy and discusses the considerable difficulties of scaling up and sustaining them in state-level contexts. Whilst the book concedes that such concerns are genuine, it argues that a theory of generalized direct democracy can shake off its utopian aspirations and become a legitimate alternative for the future.

The volume reflects on citizenship practices and policies across post-socialist states. Seven original research chapters look at the effects of institution-building on the relationship between citizens residing beyond the borders of "their" state and the political processes taking place both in their countries of residence and in their kin states.

Since the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995, Giorgio Agamben has become one of the world's most revered and controversial thinkers. His ideas on our current political situation have found supporters and enemies in almost equal measure. His wider thoughts on topics such as language, potentiality, life, law, messianism and aesthetics have had significant impact on such diverse fields as philosophy, law, theology, history, sociology, cultural studies and literary studies.Yet although Agamben is much read, his work has also often been misunderstood. This book is the first to fully take into account Agamben's important recent publications, which clarify his method, complete his ideas on power, and finally reveal the role of language in his overall system. William Watkin presents a critical overview of Agamben's work that, through the lens of indifference, aims to give a portrait of exactly why this thinker of indifferent and suspensive legal, political, ontological and living states can rightfully be considered one of the most important philosophers in the world today.

Is Democracy a Lost Cause? explores the current debate on democracy.

Sixty years of democratic representation in Germany allow us to study the working of a specific type of electoral system, namely a mixed system combining proportional and majoritarian rules, in great detail. Mixed systems have figured as a reference point in many reform debates of the recent past. This is because they appear to combine advantageous traits of proportional and majoritarian rules, such as fairness, proximity between constituencies and representatives, and stable government majorities. Mixed systems have also attracted much scholarly attention of late, because they allow us to study the effects of electoral rules while holding many intervening variables constant. But they also attract interest because the proportional and majoritarian electoral tiers affect each other in ways that differ from what would have resulted under pure PR or plurality. All this makes mixed systems a fascinating object of study, and the German system is its oldest and prototypical exemplar. 'Professor Manow's book establishes a new standard for work on German elections and on mixed-member proportional electoral systems more generally. Given the influence of the German system on electoral system designers around the world in the past quarter century, this book should rightly find a broad audience.'John M Carey, Dartmouth College 'Professor Manow provides a terrific summary of the modern literature on Germany's mixed electoral system and extends it in several directions. Highly recommended for scholars of mixed electoral systems.'Jens Hainmueller, Stanford University

Insiders and outsiders agree; there is something particular about negotiating in Brussels. This book analyses ten years of continuous negotiations about EU enlargement to the Western Balkans, answering questions such as When and how are decisions typically reached in the European Union? What is this 'culture of consensus' that pervades negotiations in the Council of Ministers? And why are some member states more successful than others in making their voices heard? Using the metaphor of the Caucus race from Alice in Wonderland, Smeets' book offers a fresh perspective on the decision-making realities in Brussels' European Quarter. By providing unique empirical insight into behind-closed-doors debates, it explains the faltering accession process of the countries of former Yugoslavia. But most of all, it reveals the mechanism by which national interests are accommodated, so that deals can be reached between the member states. Much work has been done in individual disciplines on the phenomenon of tax competition that lies at the heart of this crisis. Yet, the combination of issues of democratic legitimacy, social justice, economic efficiency, and national sovereignty that tax competition raises clearly requires an interdisciplinary analysis. This book offers a rare example of this kind of work, bringing together experts from political science, philosophy, law, and economics whose contributions combine empirical analysis with normative and institutional proposals. It makes an important contribution to reforming international taxation.

This book offers a rare example of this kind of work, bringing together experts from political science, philosophy, law, and economics whose contributions combine empirical analysis with normative and institutional proposals.

An in-depth analysis of the memories and experiences of the British second generation of refugees from Nazism before the Holocaust. This oral history project investigates the impact of their parents' trauma, dislocation and pattern of silence on ordinary members of this second generation in this unique geographical context.

Killingsworth's book presents three broad arguments, all of which reject the way civil society has been applied in the analysis of opposition and dissent in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland.

Seek new approaches to empirical studies on the relationship between citizens and their chosen representatives, this book focuses on the way in which representatives and citizens interact during mandate periods between elections.

What sort of ethos does democratic politics demand? While many political thinkers argue that democratic ethics should shape political judgments, the concept of ethos remains underdeveloped.Appearances of Ethos responds to this gap in three ways. It begins by identifying the contours of the concept as it has appeared in political thought. Then drawing on ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus and Protagoras, and contemporary thinkers such as Heidegger, it makes the case for a world-affirming ethos that can animate individual and collective political action. The book then develops an original interpretation of the ancient concept of metis the skill and craft of practical political reasoning showing how this is a vital part of contemporary democratic political action. Such resourcefulness, the book argues, is essential for anyone who faced by contemporary political, social, and environmental challenges seeks to create possibilities for action in the name of a more just and equitable life.

What is the work of art? How does art work as art? Andrew Benjamin contends that the only way to address these questions is by developing a radically new materialist philosophy of art, and by rethinking the history of art from within that perspective. A materialist philosophy of art starts with the contention that meaning is only ever the after effect of the way in which materials work. Starting with the relation between history, materials and work (art's work), this book opens up a highly original reconfiguration of the philosophy of art. Benjamin undertakes a major project that seeks to develop a set of complex interarticulations between art history and an approach to art's work that emphasizes art's material presence. A philosophy of art emerges from the limitations of aesthetics.

Explores the experiences of intervention in Mozambique to examine the efficacy of colonial approaches to post-crisis statebuilding.

The first comprehensive account of the booming phenomenon of deliberative mini-publics, this book offers a systematic review of their variety, discusses their weaknesses, and recommends ways to make them a viable component of democracy.

This volume sets out an impressive historical, theoretical and institutional framework for a comprehensive, comparative and empirical analysis of the forms, patterns, trends and determinants of citizen participation in two of Europe's largest democracies.

A compilation of Adrian Favell's innovative and agenda-setting essays which, since the late 1990s, have charted the emergence of new migration patterns and politics in Europe.

Its re-publication makes this classic piece of spatial (political) science available to contemporary audiences, for whom it is as relevant as when the book first appeared in 1979.

This book is the story of what happens to parties, governments and voters when the fundamental features that conditioned party formation and voter alignments undergo rapid change. It is this that makes the Finnish case interesting and, as far as possible, this book examines Finland in a comparative perspective. Karvonen's study is based on a wealth of new primary evidence. It demonstrates that Finland is indeed a special case in certain respects, especially when it comes to the attenuation of ideological rivalry and the recurrent waves of populist protest.

Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting.

By bringing Hannah Arendt's politics into dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas' ethics, this book develops an approach to the political that is relational, inclusive, and empowering.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ';postnational' or ';cosmopolitan' politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ';cosmopolitan point of view.' Drawing on Kant';s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas';s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ';commercium' of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.