Books published by Stanford University Press

Talks about jurisprudence - or legal philosophy. This book attempts not only a jurisprudential reading of popular culture, but a popular rereading of jurisprudence, removing it from the legal experts in order to restore it to the public at large: a lex populi by and for the people.

Stuart Kirsch is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has consulted widely on environmental issues and land rights in the Pacific, and was actively involved in the political campaign and legal case against the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea.

A Poverty of Rights examines the history of poor people's citizenship in Rio from the 1920s through the 1960s, the 20th-century period that most critically shaped urban development, social inequality, and the meaning of law and rights in modern Brazil.

This book is a study of everyday life in rural north China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century told through the story of one man's life.

In the 1950s Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the main language and replace with it with Sihala and Tamil was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language. This work looks at the subsequent outcome this had.

These hard-to-find writings afford an inside look at the emergence of Girard's scapegoat theory from his pioneering analysis of rivalry and desire. Girard unbinds the Oedipal triangle from its Freudian moorings, replacing desire for the mother with desire for anyone-or anything-a rival desires.

Desire and Distance constitutes an important new departure in contemporary phenomenological thought - a rethinking and critique of basic philosophical positions concerning the concept of perception presented by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty - though it departs in significant and original ways from their work.

This vanguard collection of original and in-depth essays seeks to explore the intricate interplay of the aesthetic and psychological domains during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to consider the reasons why a common Modernist project took shape when and in the circumstances it did.

Using immigrants' own words, Bashi shows how immigrants organize social networks that offer mutual financial and emotional support and help an entire ethnic group navigate systems of socioeconomic stratification.

The most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of corruption and change in the Chinese Communist Party, Cadres and Corruption reveals the long history of the party's inability to maintain a corps of committed and disciplined cadres.

This work studies the nature of Venetian rule over the Slavs of Dalmatia during the 18th century, focusing on the cultural elaboration of an ideology of empire that was based on a civilizing mission toward the Slavs.

This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual system by Germany's leading social theorist of the late 20th century. It combines three decades of research in the social sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and information theory with an intimate knowledge of art history, literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory.

This work offers a mapping of the cultural landscape of China in the late 20th century. By focusing on Chinese cultural formations and critical discourses of the last decade of the century, the book dissects the intellectual, economic, and political contradictions of a turbulent era.

This book provides a detailed analytic history of direct legislation-the initiative and referendum-in California from the late 19th century to the present day. It studies this important political device in terms of voter interest and behavior, its role in public issues, how it has affected the state's politics and government, and its influence on the politics of other states.

Language and culture are often seen as unique characteristics of human beings. This work examines the neurological evolution of our emotional repertoire and implications for current social behaviour and argues that our ability to use a wide array of emotions evolved long before spoken language.

This book consists of transcripts from two lecture courses on ethical relation Levinas delivered at the Sorbonne. In seeking to explain his thought to students, he utilizes a clarity and an intensity altogether different from his other writings.

This book analyzes the principal legal institutions that have emerged in China and considers implications for U.S. policy of the limits on China's ability to develop meaningful legal institutions.

This ambitious and pioneering work rewrites German cinematic history queerly. It shows how, since the Weimar era, German cinema has played a leading role in the innovation of gay and lesbian cinema, with the tantalizing sexual illegibility and gender instability of German films of the 1920s anticipating the queer sensibilities of the 1990s.

Anxious Wealth analyzes practices of network building and deal-making among wealthy businessmen and government officials in urban China, documenting the changing values, lifestyles, gender relations, and consumption habits of China's new rich and new middle classes.

An up-to-date, clear, and comprehensive introduction to the complexities and depth of Ronald Dworkin's entire philosophical work, including a discussion of Dworkin's monumental work Justice for Hedgehogs.

Captives and Corsairs uncovers the forgotten story of Muslim corsair raids on French ships and shores and the resulting captivity of tens of thousands of French subjects and citizens in North Africa from around 1550 to 1830.

This book examines under what conditions peacebuilding can bring not only peace but also democracy to war-torn countries.

This book, itself by a major Italian philosopher, explores the distinctive traits of Italian theory and philosophy, reflecting on why it has been growing in popularity and why people have turned to it for answers to real-world issues and problems.

Making Multiracials explains how a social movement emerged around mixed race identity in the 1990s and how it made "multiracial" a recognizable racial category in the United States.

Time in the Shadows examines the counterinsurgencies of our time, tracing their ancestry, to offer a critical reading of the mechanisms by which today's counterinsurgents-foremost the United States and Israel-reproduce illiberal regimes of domination while noisily declaring their liberal intent to liberate and improve.

In the Self's Place is a phenomenological reading of Augustine that engages with modern and postmodern analyses of Augustinian philosophy.

Great Minds revisits key social thinkers that have made significant, distinctive, and controversial contributions to the development of modern social theory.

This book examines the impact of the internet on pornography's social and political effects and provides a new theory of sex, speech, and power in light of today's drive toward self-exposure.

This single book brings together for the first time all nine volumes that make up Giorgio Agamben's groundbreaking magnum opus.