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This book asks why, from some moment onwards, ‘Europe’ and ‘the rest of the world’ entered into a particular relationship. This relationship was not merely one of domination but one that was conceived as a kind of superiority; more specifically, as an ‘advance’ in historical time. Toward this end, the book first analyses the emergence of this Atlantic modernity, then proceeds to compare aspects of contemporary Southern modernity, focusing on Brazil, Chile and South Africa. Finally, it explores the dynamics of contemporary modernity worldwide, looking at the relationship between past oppression and injustice and expectations for future freedom and justice. The book firmly links the history of Europe to world history, situating European modernity in its global context.

Citizenship is widely understood in binary statist terms: inclusion/exclusion, past/present, particularism/universalism, with the emphasis on how globalisation brings such binaries into sharp focus and exacerbates them. This book highlights the limitations of this position and of current debate, and explores the possibility that citizenship is being reconfigured in contemporary political life beyond binary state-oriented categories. Aoileann Ní Mhurchú uses critical resources found in poststructural, psychoanalytic and postcolonial thought to think in new ways about citizenship-subjectivity in a globalized world, drawing on a range of thinkers including Julia Kristeva, Homi Bhabha and Michel Foucault. Using the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum as a lens and focusing on experiences of intergenerational migrants (the children born to migrants), she highlights the necessity of a more sophisticated understanding of citizenship which takes into account how some people get caught between state-sovereign categories, and provides a robust theoretical discussion about how citizenship increasingly involves overlapping, ambiguous traces of us and them, inclusion and exclusion, particularism and universalism which confound easy categorisation. In doing so it raises questions about how citizenship is understood in time and space. In this way Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration contributes to the growing and dynamic interdisciplinary field of critical citizenship studies (CCS), which explores new forms of political identity and belonging in a globalising world.

The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have focused on liberal and fascist rationalities of biopolitics, the case of Stalinism exemplifies an alternative mode of biopolitics, oriented less towards protecting life than towards transforming it in accordance with a transcendent ideal of communism. The book reconstructs this rationality in the early Stalinist project of the Great Break (1928-1932) and its subsequent modifications during the High Stalinist period. It then addresses the question of biopolitics on the level of the subject, tracing the way how the ‘new Soviet person’ was to be constructed in governmental practices and the role violence and terror played in this construction. On the basis of this reconstruction of the Stalinist rationality of biopolitics, this book also contributes to the theoretical debate on affirmative biopolitics, advancing a new interpretation of the relation between ideas and lives in political practice. Bringing the fields of biopolitics and Soviet studies together, this book will be of interest to a wide readership in political theory, history, sociology and cultural studies.

This sympathetic restatement of C. B. Macpherson's ideas provides an overview of Macpherson's theory of possessive individualism and critique of liberal democracy. The book suggests that criticism of Macpherson has been misplaced and asks whether his theories should now be given more prominence by political theorists. This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the issues surrounding Macpherson's work; previous studies have used him as a point of departure rather than the focus of detailed analysis, and none have included an overall assessment of his thought.

This book seeks to analyse the impact of globalisation, European integration, mass migration, changing patterns of political participation and welfare state provision upon citizenship in Europe. Uniting theory with empirical examples, the central theme of the book is that how we view such changes is dependent upon how we view citizenship theoretically. The authors analyse the three main theoretical approaches to citizenship: [1] classical positions (liberal, communitarian, and republican), primarily concerned with questions of rights and responsibilities; [2] multiculturalist and feminist theories, concerned with the question of difference; and [3] postnational or cosmopolitan theories which emphasise how citizen rights and behaviours are increasingly located beyond the nation state. Using these theoretical perspectives, the second section of the book assesses four key social, economic and political developments which pose challenges for citizenship in Europe: migration, political participation, the welfare state and European integration. These, it is argued, represent the most significant challenges to and for citizenship in contemporary Europe.

This is the first edited volume to provide a comprehensive introduction and a critical exploration of the constructivist turn in political representation. Divided into three thematic parts, the 13 newly commissioned essays presented here develop constructivist turn as a central concept advancing the insight that there can be no democratic politics without representation because constituencies, or groups, exist as agents of democratic politics only insofar as they are represented. Complete with an original English translation of ‘Democracy and Representation’ by the French philosopher Claude Lefort, this volume delivers a rich critical intervention in democratic theory.

This book is a reflection upon a contemporary world in which people's identities are increasingly invoked in support of political claims which often lead to acrimony and violence. It asks what cultural identity is and questions its political significance. Tracing the idea back to Herder and the now discredited notion of national character, the book argues that collective cultural identity is not a deep feature of individual psychology, as it is taken to be by Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor and others; nor, indeed, is it a uniform phenomenon. Instead, the book claims, various distinct types of cultural identity emerge in response to the different circumstances that people face and draw them together. Such identities are marked by merely surface features of appearance and behaviour, as in the female dress codes of Islam; and these have a principally aesthetic appeal to bearers of the culture, an appeal which is illustrated by reference to the literature and music of Ireland. In consequence, it is argued, cultural identities cannot provide the ethical support for political claims attributed to them, and their invocation is in many ways politically pernicious.

Contemporary studies of biopolitics tend to assume that the rise of biopolitical governance entails the eclipse of democracy. The abstract egalitarianism of democratic government appears to be incompatible with the concrete, particularist and individualizing operations of biopower. The revival of democracy is then only conceivable as the overcoming of biopolitics. Democratic Biopolitics challenges this interpretation and argues for the possibility of a positive synthesis of biopolitics and democracy, in which both rationalities can positively transform each other. The book identifies the sources of the impasse of the current critique of biopolitics in its broadly Rousseauan orientation that conceives of democratic subject as subtracted from all particular identities, interests or forms of life. In contrast, we argue that democracy is practicable from within particular forms of life as long as their contingency is affirmed and manifested. Drawing on a wide range of authors both belonging to and outside the biopolitics canon, Prozorov develops a vision of democratic biopolitics that consists in the coexistence of diverse and incommensurable forms of life on the basis of their reciprocal recognition as free, equal and in common. He demonstrates the realizability of this vision by addressing its correlates in our lived experience and argues for its sustainability by elucidating the pleasure involved in the freeform, experimental way of living that democracy makes possible.

What role should the idea of evil have in contemporary moral and social thought? The concept of ‘evil’ has long been a key idea in moral discourse. Now, the contributors to this book make a start on the important task of systematically exploring evil in the context of political theory. Intuitively, we know what evil means. Yet once we begin to think about its meaning, we quickly uncover competing definitions. In recent years, political theorists have generally set the concept aside as outdated or inappropriate. Yet the idea that some things are wrong beyond toleration still has significant currency. If ‘evil’ can capture that significance, it merits a closer look. The book presents a broad-ranging exploration of the idea of evil in contemporary theory; offers a philosophical analysis of the role of evil in ethics; and analyses the idea of evil in classic arguments.

Gillian Rose draws on idiosyncratic readings of thinkers such as Hegel, Adorno and Kierkegaard to underpin her philosophy, negotiating the ‘broken middle’ between particular and universal. While of the left, she is sharply critical of much left-wing thought, insisting that it shirks the work of coming to know and of taking political risk in pursuit of a ‘good enough justice’.In this book Kate Schick presents the core themes of Rose's work and locates her ideas within central debates in contemporary social theory (trauma, memory and mourning; exclusion and difference; tragedy and messianic utopia), engaging with the works of Benjamin, Honig, Žižek and Butler. She shows how Rose's speculative perspective brings a different gaze to bear on debates, eschewing well-worn liberal, critical theoretic and post-structural positions. Her difficult project advocates a rehabilitation of reason and critique with Hegelian recognition at its core.

This book explores Kant's cosmopolitanism and the normative requirements consistent with a Kantian-based cosmopolitan constitution. Topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice are explored and defended. Contrary to many contemporary interpretations, the book considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands versus the extreme condition of establishing a world state. Viewing Kant's cosmopolitan theory as a minimal form of global jurisprudence allows it to satisfy communitarian, realist and pluralist concerns without surrendering cosmopolitan principles of human worth and cosmopolitan law. In this regard, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of Kantian cosmopolitanism and what normative implications this vision has for contemporary international political theory.

Hannah Arendt's work has been noted for its unorthodox and eclectic style. This book aims to show that her unusual approach in fact reflects a consistent and distinctive conception of, and way of doing, political theory. This is established through close readings of her most influential works. In light of these readings, the book argues that Arendt's work is of continuing relevance in offering an important and challenging alternative to the more orthodox methods that are characteristic of modern political theory in both its analytical and post-analytical forms. The book discusses Arendt's key works — The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and On Revolution — alongside her less-well-known and posthumously published writing; shows how Arendt framed problems with respect to specific concerns in the modern polity and democratic culture; and considers Arendt's views on totalitarianism, political theory, the concept of action, revolutions, political ethics and the role of the thinker.

This book challenges the use of the terms 'history' and 'event' to register the shift from historical necessity in Marxism to contingent events in contemporary philosophy. It argues both classical Marxism and a strand of French theory after Louis Althusser understand history and event not as binary opposites but as a complementary pair. For Marxism, the fusion is accomplished by Hegelian dialectics and the idea of quantity to quality leaps. After Althusser, epistemological breaks in science provide the model for thinking revolutions as discontinuous with the status quo. Through critical readings of Hegel, Marx and Lenin, the first part of the book interrogates the politics of Marxist philosophy. While defending Marx from charges of 'historicism', the inability of Hegel's ‘leaps’ to think epistemological breaks is shown to support political gradualism and technological determinism. The book's second part, on Althusser, Badiou and Meillassoux, argues that although their philosophies think discontinuity more successfully, they tend towards a self-referential rationalism that shores up the authority of theorists. The final part of the book suggests that a way forward can be found in complexity theory and 'weak' notions of emergence.

How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world to improve their lives in ways that matter to them? This book investigates work of the NGO Tostan as a working model of human development. The study is grounded in the ethnographic study of the actual change that happened in one West African village. The result is a powerful mix of theory and practice that questions existing approaches to development and that speaks to both development scholars and practitioners. Divided into three parts, the book firstly assesses why top-down approaches to education and development are unhelpful and offers a theoretical understanding of what constitutes helpful development. Part two examines Tostan's community-based participatory approach as an example of a helpful development intervention, and offers qualitative evidence of its effectiveness. Part three builds a model of how community-led development works, why it is helpful, and what practitioners can do to help people at the grassroots level lead their own human development.

Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake. Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.

Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many problems. Chief among these is that the ideal has been understood in ways that give rise to powerful objections that make it seem less attractive than ideals of equality. This book offers a new characterization of sufficiency as a demand of justice called shift-sufficientarianism. The book argues that shift-sufficientarianism is an attractive ideal that is indispensable to sound assessments of societies. In particular, the author argues that securing enough education, enough autonomy and a good enough upbringing are important requirements of any just society. This author also goes on to argue that this understanding of sufficiency sheds important light on what we may owe to non-compatriots as a matter of global justice.

Despite the millennial hopes for peace harboured by so many, the opening years of the twenty-first century have seen the morality of war remain urgently central to political argument around the world. The just war tradition has provided one of the most beguiling frameworks for the question of when it is right to go to war, and how war ought to be conducted. However, criticisms of it are as old as the tradition itself and many now claim that the nature of contemporary warfare has made it redundant. This book addresses the criticisms and explores new angles to just war thinking, analysing its practical adequacy in the face of modern-day realities. It is written with the aim of stimulating debate and recasting or revivifying critical reservations, and also powerfully to demonstrate how just war theory cannot be ignored if we take seriously the moral questions that warfare and its justification forces upon us.

This book is designed to remove Peter Kropotkin from the framework of classical anarchism. By focusing attention on his theory of mutual aid, it argues that the classical framing distorts Kropotkin's political theory by associating it with a narrowly positivistic conception of science, a naively optimistic idea of human nature and a millenarian idea of revolution. Kropotkin's abiding concern with Russian revolutionary politics is the lens for this analysis. The argument is that his engagement with nihilism shaped his conception of science and that his expeditions in Siberia underpinned an approach to social analysis that was rooted in geography. Looking at Kropotkin's relationship with Elisée Reclus and Erico Malatesta and examining his critical appreciation of P-J. Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner, the study shows how he understood anarchist traditions and reveals the special character of his anarchist communism. His idea of the state as a colonising process and his contention that exploitation and oppression operate in global contexts is a key feature of this. Kropotkin's views about the role of theory in revolutionary practice show how he developed this critique of the state and capitalism to advance an idea of political change that combined the building of non-state alternatives through direct action and wilful disobedience. Against critics who argue that Kropotkin betrayed these principles in 1914, the book suggests that this controversial decision was consistent with his anarchism and that it reflected his judgment about the prospects of anarchistic revolution in Russia.

In recent years psychoanalysis – especially Lacanian theory – has been gradually acknowledged as a vital resource in the ongoing re-orientation of contemporary political theory and analysis. Of particular note is that the work of Jacques Lacan is increasingly being used by major political philosophers associated with the Left. This indicates the dynamic emergence of a new theoretico-political horizon: that of the ‘Lacanian Left’. The Lacanian Left systematically follows and discusses this emergence and draws its implications for concrete political analysis.It offers: An accessible mapping of its main contours. A detailed examination of the points of convergence and divergence between the major figures active within or at the periphery of this terrain, including Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau, Alain Badiou and Cornelius Castoriadis. A critical evaluation of their respective arguments on social construction and the political, affectivity and discourse, ethics and social change, negativity and positivity.Engaging with the role of affect and emotion in political life through the central Lacanian notion of ‘enjoyment’, The Lacanian Left puts forward innovative analyses of political power and authority, nationalism, European identity, consumerism and advertising culture, de-democratisation and post-democracy. It is of value to everyone interested in exploring the potential of psychoanalysis to reinvigorate political theory, critical political analysis and democratic politics.

How far does our responsibility for one another's well-being extend? At what point, if ever, is each person be responsible for success or failure in running their own life? How should we decide which inequalities between people are justified, and which are unjustified? One answer is that such inequalities are only justified where there is a corresponding variation in responsible action or choice on the part of the persons concerned. This view, which has become known as ‘luck egalitarianism’, has come to occupy a central place in recent debates about distributive justice. This book is a full-length treatment of this development in contemporary political philosophy, providing a critical survey of debates about responsibility, equality and justice. Each of its three parts addresses a key question concerning the theory. Which version of luck egalitarian comes closest to realizing luck egalitarian objectives? Does luck egalitarianism succeed as a view of egalitarian justice? Is it sound as an account of distributive justice in general? The book provides a distinctive answer to each of these questions, engaging along the way with the leading theorists identified in the literature as luck egalitarians, such as Richard Arneson, G. A. Cohen and Ronald Dworkin, as well as the most influential critics, including Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, Samuel Scheffler and Jonathan Wolff.