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How Corrupt Is Britain?
How Corrupt Is Britain?
by David Whyte, published in 2015
Banks accused of rate-fixing. Members of parliament cooking the books. Major defense contractors investigated over suspect arms deals. Police accused of being paid off by tabloids. The headlines are unrelenting these days. Perhaps itโs high time we ask: Just exactly how corrupt is Britain? David Whyte brings together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, offering a series of troubling answers. Unflinchingly facing the corruption in British public life, they show that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business. These powerful, punchy essays aim to shine a light on the corruption fundamentally embedded in UK politics, police, and finance.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy
The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy
by Paul Corner, published in 2012
Contradicts the current orthodoxy that there was a generalised popular consensus for the fascist regime and for Mussolini's rule, at least until the disasters of the Second World War. Demonstrates that there was widespread and mounting hostility to the regime among large sections of the population, even in the 1930s.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World
Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World
by Quinn Mecham, published in 2014
Since 2000, more than twenty countries around the world have held elections in which parties that espouse a political agenda based on an Islamic worldview have competed for legislative seats. Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World examines the impact these parties have had on the political process in two different areas of the world with large Muslim populations: the Middle East and Asia. The book's contributors examine major cases of Islamist party evolution and participation in democratic and semidemocratic systems in Turkey, Morocco, Yemen, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. Collectively they articulate a theoretical framework to understand the strategic behavior of Islamist parties, including the characteristics that distinguish them from other types of political parties, how they relate to other parties as potential competitors or collaborators, how ties to broader Islamist movements may affect party behavior in elections, and how participation in an electoral system can affect the behavior and ideology of an Islamist party over time. Through this framework, the contributors observe a general tendency in Islamist politics. Although Islamist parties represent diverse interests and behaviors that are tied to their particular domestic contexts, through repeated elections they often come to operate less as antiestablishment parties and more in line with the political norms of the regimes in which they compete. While a few parties have deliberately chosen to remain on the fringes of their political system, most have found significant political rewards in changing their messages and behavior to attract more centrist voters. As the impact of the Arab Spring continues to be felt, Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World offers a nuanced and timely perspective of Islamist politics in broader global context. Contributors: Wenling Chan, Julie Chernov Hwang, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Driss Maghraoui, Quinn Mecham, Ali Riaz, Murat Somer, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Saloua Zerhouni.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Contagion and War
Contagion and War
by John A. Vasquez, published in 2018
John A. Vasquez explains the processes that cause the spread of interstate war by looking at how contagion worked to bring countries into the First World War. Analysing all the key states that declared war, the book is comprised of three parts. Part I lays out six models of contagion: alliances, contiguity, territorial rivalry, opportunity, 'brute force', economic dependence. Part II then analyses in detail the decision making of every state that entered the war from Austria-Hungary in 1914 to the United States and Greece in 1917. Part III has two chapters - the first considers the neutral countries, and the second concludes the book with an overarching theoretical analysis, including major lessons of the war and new hypotheses about contagion. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, conflict studies and international history, especially those interested in the spread of conflict, or the First World War.
๐ History
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Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy
Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy
by Robin Markwica, published in 2018
Why do states often refuse to yield to military threats from a more powerful actor, such as the United States? Why do they frequently prefer war to compliance? International Relations scholars generally employ the rational choice logic of consequences or the constructivist logic of appropriateness to explain this puzzling behavior. Max Weber, however, suggested a third logic of choice in his magnum opus Economy and Society: human decision making can also be motivated by emotions. Drawing on Weber and more recent scholarship in sociology and psychology, Robin Markwica introduces the logic of affect, or emotional choice theory, into the field of International Relations. The logic of affect posits that actors' behavior is shaped by the dynamic interplay among their norms, identities, and five key emotions: fear, anger, hope, pride, and humiliation. Markwica puts forward a series of propositions that specify the affective conditions under which leaders are likely to accept or reject a coercer's demands. To infer emotions and to examine their influence on decision making, he develops a methodological strategy combining sentiment analysis and an interpretive form of process tracing. He then applies the logic of affect to Nikita Khrushchev's behavior during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and Saddam Hussein's decision making in the Gulf conflict in 1990-1 offering a novel explanation for why U.S. coercive diplomacy succeeded in one case but not in the other.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Pakistan's Political Parties: Surviving between Dictatorship and Democracy
Pakistan's Political Parties: Surviving between Dictatorship and Democracy
by Mariam Mufti, published in 2020
Pakistanโs 2018 general elections marked the second successful transfer of power from one elected civilian government to anotherโa remarkable achievement considering the countryโs history of dictatorial rule. Pakistanโs Political Parties examines how the civilian side of the stateโs current regime has survived the transition to democracy, providing critical insight into the evolution of political parties in Pakistan and their role in developing democracies in general. Pakistanโs numerous political parties span the ideological spectrum, as well as represent diverse regional, ethnic, and religious constituencies. The essays in this volume explore the way in which these parties both contend and work with Pakistanโs military-bureaucratic establishment to assert and expand their power. Researchers use interviews, surveys, data, and ethnography to illuminate the internal dynamics and motivations of these groups and the mechanisms through which they create policy and influence state and society. Pakistanโs Political Parties is a one-of-a-kind resource for diplomats, policymakers, journalists, and scholars searching for a comprehensive overview of Pakistanโs party system and its unlikely survival against an interventionist military, with insights that extend far beyond the region.
๐ History
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Enemy on the Euphrates: The Battle for Iraq, 1914 - 1921
Enemy on the Euphrates: The Battle for Iraq, 1914 - 1921
by Ian Rutledge, published in 2015
In 1920 an Arab revolt came perilously close to inflicting a shattering defeat upon the British Empire's forces occupying Iraq after the Great War. A huge peasant army besieged British garrisons and bombarded them with captured artillery. British columns and armoured trains were ambushed and destroyed, and gunboats were captured or sunk. Britain's quest for oil was one of the principal reasons for its continuing occupation of Iraq. However, with around 131,000 Arabs in arms at the height of the conflict, the British were very nearly driven out. Only a massive infusion of Indian troops prevented a humiliating rout. Enemy on the Euphrates is the definitive account of the most serious armed uprising against British rule in the twentieth century. Bringing central players such as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell vividly to life, Ian Rutledge's masterful account is a powerful reminder of how Britain's imperial objectives sowed the seeds of Iraq's tragic history.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War
British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War
by Dennis Deletant, published in 2016
British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War is the first monograph to examine the activity throughout the entire war of SOE and MI6. It was generally believed in Britain's War Office, after Hitler's occupation of Austria in March 1938, that Germany would seek to impose its will on South-East Europe before turning its attention towards Western Europe. Given Romania's geographical position, there was little Britain could offer her. The brutal fact of British-Romanian relations was that Germany was inconveniently in the way: opportunity, proximity of manufacture and the logistics of supply all told in favour of the Third Reich. This held, of course, for military as well as economic matters. In these circumstances the British concluded that their only weapon against German ambitions in countries which fell into Hitler's orbit were military subversive operations and a concomitant attempt to draw Romania out of her alliance with Germany.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Activating Human Rights
Activating Human Rights
by Elisabeth J. Porter, published in 2006
Papers originally presented at an international conference held in Australia, 2003.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Fundamental British Values in Education: Radicalisation, National Identity and Britishness
Fundamental British Values in Education: Radicalisation, National Identity and Britishness
by Lynn Revell, published in 2018
This timely book provides a critical analysis of the statutory requirements to promote Fundamental British Values in educational settings in the UK. It explores British values as they appear in contemporary policy and legislation as well as how Britishness as a concept has evolved in relation to education in the post-war period.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
by David G. Blanchflower, published in 2019
A candid assessment of why the job market is not as healthy as we think Don't trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fineโit isn't. Not Working is about those who canโt find full-time work at a decent wageโthe underemployedโand how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism. In this revelatory and outspoken book, David Blanchflower draws on his acclaimed work in the economics of labor and well-being to explain why today's postrecession economy is vastly different from what came before. He calls out our leaders and policymakers for failing to see the Great Recession coming, and for their continued failure to address one of the most unacknowledged social catastrophes of our time. Blanchflower shows how many workers are underemployed or have simply given up trying to find a well-paying job, how wage growth has not returned to prerecession levels despite rosy employment indicators, and how general prosperity has not returned since the crash of 2008. Standard economic measures are often blind to these forgotten workers, which is why Blanchflower practices the "economics of walking about"โseeing for himself how ordinary people are faring under the recovery, and taking seriously what they say and do. Not Working is his candid report on how the young and the less skilled are among the worst casualties of underemployment, how immigrants are taking the blame, and how the epidemic of unhappiness and self-destruction will continue to spread unless we deal with it.
๐ History
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After Civil War: Division, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Europe
After Civil War: Division, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Europe
by Bill Kissane, published in 2014
Civil war inevitably causes shifts in state boundaries, demographics, systems of rule, and the bases of legitimate authorityโmany of the markers of national identity. Yet a shared sense of nationhood is as important to political reconciliation as the reconstruction of state institutions and economic security. After Civil War compares reconstruction projects in Bosnia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, and Turkey in order to explore how former combatants and their supporters learn to coexist as one nation in the aftermath of ethnopolitical or ideological violence. After Civil War synthesizes research on civil wars, reconstruction, and nationalism to show how national identity is reconstructed over time in different cultural and socioeconomic contexts, in strong nation-states as well as those with a high level of international intervention. Chapters written by anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists examine the relationships between reconstruction and reconciliation, the development of new party systems after war, and how globalization affects the processes of peacebuilding. After Civil War thus provides a comprehensive, comparative perspective to a wide span of recent political history, showing postconflict articulations of national identity can emerge in the long run within conducive institutional contexts. Contributors: Risto Alapuro, Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Chares Demetriou, James Hughes, Joost Jongerden, Bill Kissane, Denisa Kostovicova, Michael Richards, Ruth Seifert, Riki van Boeschoten.
๐ Development
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SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
by Mary Beard, published in 2015
Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller Shortlisted for a British Book Industry Book of the Year Award 2016 The new series Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit is on BBC2 now Ancient Rome matters. Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today. SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome. SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class
Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class
by Nathan Connolly, published in 2017
In 21st century Britain, what does it mean to be working class? This book asks 24 working class writers to examine the issue as it relates to them. Examining representation, literature, sexuality, gender, art, employment, poverty, childhood, culture and politics, this book is a broad and first hand account of what it means to be drawn from the bottom of Britain's archaic, but persistent, class structure. --
๐ Art, Lit and Film
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The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
by Mehrsa Baradaran, published in 2017
Forty acres or a savings bank -- Capitalism without capital -- The rise of black banking -- The new deal for white America -- Civil rights dreams, economic nightmares -- The decoy of black capitalism -- The free market confronts black poverty -- The color of money matters
๐ Economics
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Zone of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran
Zone of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran
by Amin Saikal, published in 2014
The West Asian states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran have over the last few decades represented an arc of crisis. Characterized by fractured and dysfunctional political elites, fraught economic policies, and ideological struggles between the forces of authoritarianism and democratization, neo-fundamentalism and pluralism, they embody a mosaic of ethnicities. Amin Saikal, a distinguished Afghan-born scholar of international affairs, provides a sweeping new understanding of the complex contemporary political and social instability encompassing the region. Critically comparing democratization and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and examining both recent Western intervention and the history of foreign influence in the region, Saikal looks at how US entanglement has affected Pakistani and Iranian domestic politics and foreign affairs. How has this influenced the success or failure of the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq? What solutions can be taken to ensure regional security? An informed and balanced overview on a troubled region, this book will fascinate general readers and prove essential reading for specialists.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics
Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics
by Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, published in 2016
In the midst of the space race and nuclear age, Soviet Realist artists were producing figurative oil paintings. Why? How was art produced to control and co-opt the peripheries of the Soviet Union, particularly Central Asia? Presenting the 'untold story' of Soviet Orientalism, Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen re-evaluates the imperial project of the Soviet state, placing the Orientalist undercurrent found within art and propaganda production in the USSR alongside the creation of new art forms in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. From the turmoil of the 1930s through to the post-Stalinist era, the author draws on meticulous new research and rich illustrations to examine the political and social structures in the Soviet Union - and particularly Soviet Central Asia - to establish vital connections between Socialist Realist visual art, the creation of Soviet identity and later nationalist sentiments.
๐ Art, Lit and Film
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Charlemagne
Charlemagne
by Johannes Fried, published in 2016
When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
by Zachary D. Carter, published in 2020
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER โข An โoutstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and witโ (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas โA timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.โโThe Wall Street Journal NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ECONOMIST At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-lawโs motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history. Swept away from his placid home at Cambridge University by the currents of the conflict, Keynes found himself thrust into the halls of European treasuries to arrange emergency loans and packed off to America to negotiate the terms of economic combat. The terror and anxiety unleashed by the war would transform him from a comfortable obscurity into the most influential and controversial intellectual of his dayโa man whose ideas still retain the power to shock in our own time. Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the twentieth century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. As a moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes led an extraordinary life that took him from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in Londonโs riotous Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, from stock market crashes on two continents to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire to wartime ballet openings at Londonโs extravagant Covent Garden. Along the way, Keynes reinvented Enlightenment liberalism to meet the harrowing crises of the twentieth century. In the United States, his ideas became the foundation of a burgeoning economics profession, but they also became a flash point in the broader political struggle of the Cold War, as Keynesian acolytes faced off against conservatives in an intellectual battle for the future of the countryโand the world. Though many Keynesian ideas survived the struggle, much of the project to which he devoted his life was lost. In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of historyโs most fascinating minds. The Price of Peace revives a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for todayโs debates over inequality and the power politics that shape the global order.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era
The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era
by T.V. Paul, published in 2018
As the aspirations of the two rising Asian powers collide, the China-India rivalry is likely to shape twenty-first-century international politics in the region and far beyond. This volume by T.V. Paul and an international group of leading scholars examines whether the rivalry between the two countries that began in the 1950s will intensify or dissipate in the twenty-first century. The China-India relationship is important to analyze because past experience has shown that when two rising great powers share a border, the relationship is volatile and potentially dangerous. India and Chinaโs relationship faces a number of challenges, including multiple border disputes that periodically flare up, division over the status of Tibet and the Dalai Lama, the strategic challenge to India posed by China's close relationship with Pakistan, the Chinese navy's greater presence in the Indian Ocean, and the two statesโ competition for natural resources. Despite these irritants, however, both countries agree on issues such as global financial reforms and climate change and have much to gain from increasing trade and investment, so there are reasons for optimism as well as pessimism. The contributors to this volume answer the following questions: What explains the peculiar contours of this rivalry? What influence does accelerated globalization, especially increased trade and investment, have on this rivalry? What impact do US-China competition and Chinaโs expanding navy have on this rivalry? Under what conditions will it escalate or end? The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers concerned with Indian and Chinese foreign policy and Asian security.
๐ Asia
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Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania
Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania
by Blendi Fevziu, published in 2016
Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of the Communist experience, came to an end in most of Europe with the death of Stalin in 1953. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from 1944 until his death in 1985 was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state and Albania became isolated from the rest of the world and utterly inward-looking. Three decades after his death, the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country, yet many people - inside and outside Albania - know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Hoxha available in English. Using unseen documents and first-hand interviews, journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of a tyrannical ruler in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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New Mana: Transformations of a Classic Concept in Pacific Languages and Cultures
New Mana: Transformations of a Classic Concept in Pacific Languages and Cultures
by Matt Tomlinson, published in 2016
โManaโ, a term denoting spiritual power, is found in many Pacific Islands languages. In recent decades, the term has been taken up in New Age movements and online fantasy gaming. In this book, 16 contributors examine mana through ethnographic, linguistic, and historical lenses to understand its transformations in past and present. The authors consider a range of contexts including Indigenous sovereignty movements, Christian missions and Bible translations, the commodification of cultural heritage, and the dynamics of diaspora. Their investigations move across diverse island groupsโPapua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Hawaiโi, and French Polynesiaโand into Australia, North America and even cyberspace. A key insight that the volume develops is that mana can be analysed most productively by paying close attention to its ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Since the late nineteenth century, mana has been an object of intense scholarly interest. Writers in many fields including anthropology, linguistics, history, religion, philosophy, and missiology have long debated how the term should best be understood. The authors in this volume review manaโs complex intellectual history but also describe the remarkable transformations going on in the present day as scholars, activists, church leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs take up mana in new ways.
๐ History
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Unconventional Warfare in South Asia: Shadow Warriors and Counterinsurgency
Unconventional Warfare in South Asia: Shadow Warriors and Counterinsurgency
by Dr Kaushik Roy, published in 2014
India is the world's tenth largest economy and possesses the world's fourth largest military. The subcontinent houses about one-fifth of the world's population and its inhabitants are divided into various tribes, clans and ethnic groups following four great religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. Framing the debate using case studies from across the region as well as China, Afghanistan and Burma and using a wealth of primary and secondary sources this incisive volume takes a closer look at the organization and doctrines of the 'shadow armies' and the government forces which fight the former. Arranged in a thematic manner, each chapter critically asks; Why stateless marginal groups rebel? How do states attempt to suppress them? What are the consequences in the aftermath of the conflict especially in relation to conflict resolution and peace building? Unconventional Warfare in South Asia is a welcomed addition to the growing field of interest on civil wars and insurgencies in South Asia. An indispensable read which will allow us to better understand whether South Asia is witnessing a 'New War' and whether the twenty-first century belongs to the insurgents.
๐ History
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Conspiracy Theories: A Primer
Conspiracy Theories: A Primer
by Joseph E. Uscinski, published in 2020
Conspiracy theories are a part of the human condition. Everyone believes at least one, but given the number of conspiracy theories, it is more likely that everyone believes a few. Some people have a worldview defined by them. Conspiracy theories are just another reminder that people disagree about many things, including truth. These disagreements have always existed and always will. We have to live with conspiracy theories and with the people who believe them. The only way to do this is have compassion and tolerance for others, and to hold our own beliefs to high standards. This book introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, it addresses the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing Uscinski rigorously analyzes the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.
๐ History
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Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide
Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide
by Marzio Barbagli, published in 2015
What drives a person to take his or her own life? Why would an individual be willing to strap a bomb to himself and walk into a crowded marketplace, blowing himself up at the same time as he kills and maims the people around him? Does suicide or โvoluntary deathโ have the same meaning today as it had in earlier centuries, and does it have the same significance in China, India and the Middle East as it has in the West? How should we understand this distressing, often puzzling phenomenon and how can we explain its patterns and variations over time? In this wide-ranging comparative study, Barbagli examines suicide as a socio-cultural, religious and political phenomenon, exploring the reasons that underlie it and the meanings it has acquired in different cultures throughout the world. Drawing on a vast body of research carried out by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and psychologists, Barbagli shows that a satisfactory theory of suicide cannot limit itself to considering the two causes that were highlighted by the great French sociologist รmile Durkheim โ namely, social integration and regulation. Barbagli proposes a new account of suicide that links the motives for and significance attributed to individual actions with the people for whom and against whom individuals take their lives. This new study of suicide sheds fresh light on the cultural differences between East and West and greatly increases our understanding of an often-misunderstood act. It will be the definitive history of suicide for many years to come.
๐ Asia
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The Holocaust: A New History
The Holocaust: A New History
by Laurence Rees, published in 2017
n June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration and death camp. After a cursory look from an SS doctor, Freda's life was spared and her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Freda only survived because the Allies won the war--the Nazis ultimately wanted every Jew to die. Her mother was one of millions who lost their lives because of a racist regime that believed that some human beings simply did not deserve to live--not because of what they had done, but because of who they were. Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well. He also reveals that there was no single overarching blueprint for the Holocaust. Instead, a series of escalations compounded into the horror. Though Hitler was most responsible for what happened, the blame is widespread, Rees reminds us, and the effects are enduring. The Holocaust: A New History is an accessible yet authoritative account of this terrible crime. A chronological, intensely readable narrative, this is a compelling exposition of humanity's darkest moment.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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Bioethics in Historical Perspective
Bioethics in Historical Perspective
by Sarah Ferber, published in 2013
How influential has the Nazi analogy been in recent medical debates on euthanasia? Is the history of eugenics being revived in modern genetic technologies? And what does the tragic history of thalidomide and its recent reintroduction for new medical treatments tell us about how governments solve ethical dilemmas? Bioethics in Historical Perspective shows how our understanding of medical history still plays a part in clinical medicine and medical research today. With clear and balanced explanations of complex issues, this extensively documented set of case studies in biomedical ethics explores the important role played by history in thinking about modern medical practice and policy. This book provides student readers with up-to-date information about issues in bioethics, as well as a guide to the most influential ethical standpoints. New twists added to well-known stories will engage those more familiar with the challenging field of contemporary bioethics.
๐ Health
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Deconstructing Dirty Dancing
Deconstructing Dirty Dancing
by Stephen Lee Naish, published in 2017
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert said Dirty Dancing "might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything." In this broadly researched and accessible text, Stephen Lee Naish sets out to deconstruct and unlock a film that has haunted him for decades, and argues that Dirty Dancing, the 1987 sleeper hit about a young middle-class girl who falls for a handsome working-class dance instructor, is actually about everything. The film is a union of history, politics, sixties and eighties culture, era-defining music, class, gender, and race, and of course features one of the best love stories set to film. Using scene-by-scene analyses, personal interpretation, and comparative study, it's time to take Dirty Dancing out of the corner and place it under the microscope.
๐ Art, Lit and Film
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Anatomies of Revolution
Anatomies of Revolution
by George Lawson, published in 2019
A comprehensive account of how revolutions begin, unfold and end, featuring a wide range of cases from across modern world history. Drawing on international relations, sociology, and global history, Lawson outlines the benefits of a 'global historical sociology' of revolutionary change, in which international processes take centre stage.
๐ History
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Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America
Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America
by Michael Stamm, published in 2018
For those seeking to understand the travails of the contemporary newspaper business, Dead Tree Media is essential reading.
๐ History
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A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce
A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce
by James Copnall, published in 2014
What happened after Africa's biggest country split in two? When South Sudan ran up its flag in July 2011, two new nations came into being. In South Sudan a former rebel movement faces colossal challenges in building a new country. At independence it was one of the least developed places on earth, after decades of conflict and neglect. The '"rump state'", Sudan, has been debilitated by devastating civil wars, including in Darfur, and lost a significant part of its territory, and most of its oil wealth, after the divorce from the South. In the years after separation, the two Sudans dealt with crippling economic challenges, struggled with new and old rebellions, and fought each other along their disputed border. Benefiting from unsurpassed access to the politicians, rebels, thinkers and events that are shaping the Sudans, Copnall draws a compelling portrait of two misunderstood countries. A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts argues that Sudan and South Sudan remain deeply interdependent, despite their separation. It also diagnoses the political failings that threaten the future of both countries. The author puts the turmoil of the years after separation into a broader context, reflecting the voices, hopes and experiences of Sudanese and South Sudanese from all walks of life.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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The Butcher's Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World's Most Successful Manhunt
The Butcher's Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World's Most Successful Manhunt
by Julian Borger, published in 2016
The gripping, untold story of The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and how the perpetrators of Balkan war crimes were captured by the most successful manhunt in history Written with a thrilling narrative pull, The Butcherโs Trail chronicles the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Borger recounts how Radovan Karadลพiฤ and Ratko Mladiฤโboth now on trial in The Hagueโwere finally tracked down, and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international tribunal for crimes perpetrated in a time of war. Based on interviews with former special forces soldiers, intelligence officials, and investigators from a dozen countriesโmost speaking about their involvement for the first timeโthis book reconstructs a fourteen-year manhunt carried out almost entirely in secret. Indicting the worst war criminals that Europe had known since the Nazi era, the ICTY ultimately accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The British Far Right Since 1967
Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The British Far Right Since 1967
by Nigel Copsey, published in 2017
This book traces the varied development of the far right in Britain from the formation of the National Front in 1967 to the present day. Experts draw on a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives to provide a rich and detailed account of the evolution of the various strands of the contemporary far right over the course of the last fifty years. The book examines a broad range of subjects, including Holocaust denial, neo-Nazi groupuscularity, transnational activities, ideology, cultural engagement, homosexuality, gender and activist mobilisation. It also includes a detailed literature review. This book is essential reading for students of fascism, racism and contemporary British cultural and political history.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Humankind: THE MOST UPLIFTING SUMMER READ OF 2020
Humankind: THE MOST UPLIFTING SUMMER READ OF 2020
by Rutger Bregman, published in 2020
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A GUARDIAN, TIMES AND FT SUMMER READ 'How to win friends and save humanity' Literary Review 'This is the book we need right now' Daily Telegraph 'Put aside your newspaper for a little while and read this book' Barry Schwartz It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis going right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think โ and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
by Yuri Slezkine, published in 2017
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossmanโs Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsynโs The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkineโs gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalinโs purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their childrenโs loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the buildingโs residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India
Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India
by Vinay Sitapati, published in 2016
When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift, violent insurgencies, and economic crisis. Despite being unloved by his people, mistrusted by his party, and ruling under the shadow of 10 Janpath, Rao transformed the economy and ushered India into the global arena. With exclusive access to Raoโs never-before-seen personal papers and diaries, this definitive biography provides new revelations on the Indian economy, nuclear programme, foreign policy and the Babri Masjid. Tracing his early life from a small town in Telangana through his years in power, and finally, his humiliation in retirement, it never loses sight of the inner man, his difficult childhood, his corruption and love affairs, and his lingering loneliness. Meticulously researched and brutally honest, this landmark political biography is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing about the man responsible for transforming India.
๐ Asia
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A Life in Education and Architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd
A Life in Education and Architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd
by Dr Catherine Burke, published in 2013
This book provides a detailed exploration of the relationships between individual architects, educators, artists and designers that laid the foundation and shaped the approach to designing new school buildings in post-war Britain. It explores the life and work of Mary Medd (nรฉe Crowley) (1907-2005) who was alongside her husband and professional partner, David Medd, one of the most important modernist architects of the 20th century. Mary Medd devoted the major part of her career to the design of school buildings and was pioneering in this respect, drawing much inspiration from Scandinavian architecture, arts and design. More than a biography, the book draws attention to the significance of relationships and networks of friendships built up over these years among individuals with a common view of the child in educational settings.
๐ Higher Ed
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The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny
The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny
by Ian Davidson, published in 2016
The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 has become the commemorative symbol of the French Revolution. But this violent and random act was unrepresentative of the real work of the early revolution, which was taking place ten miles west of Paris, in Versailles. There, the nobles, clergy and commoners of France had just declared themselves a republic, toppling a rotten system of aristocratic privilege and altering the course of history forever. The Revolution was led not by angry mobs, but by the best and brightest of France's growing bourgeoisie: young, educated, ambitious. Their aim was not to destroy, but to build a better state. In just three months they drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was to become the archetype of all subsequent Declarations worldwide, and they instituted a system of locally elected administration for France which still survives today. They were determined to create an entirely new system of government, based on rights, equality and the rule of law. In the first three years of the Revolution they went a long way toward doing so. Then came Robespierre, the Terror and unspeakable acts of barbarism. In a clear, dispassionate and fast-moving narrative, Ian Davidson shows how and why the Revolutionaries, in just five years, spiralled from the best of the Enlightenment to tyranny and the Terror. The book reminds us that the Revolution was both an inspiration of the finest principles of a new democracy and an awful warning of what can happen when idealism goes wrong.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian War-torn Communities
Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian War-torn Communities
by Hariz Halilovich, published in 2013
For displaced persons, memory and identity is performed, (re)constructed and (re)negotiated daily. Forced displacement radically reshapes identity, with results ranging from successful hybridization to feelings of permanent misplacement. This compelling and intimate description of places of pain and (be)longing that were lost during the 1992โ95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of survivors' places of resettlement in Australia, Europe and North America, serves as a powerful illustration of the complex interplay between place, memory and identity. It is even more the case when those places have been vandalized, divided up, brutalized and scarred. However, as the author shows, these places of humiliation and suffering are also places of desire, with displaced survivors emulating their former homes in the far corners of the globe where they have resettled.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn
Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn
by Leo Panitch, published in 2020
A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn's rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn's roots in the Bennite Labour new left's long struggle to transcend the limits of "parliamentary socialism" and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party. Offering a lucid and gripping history of the Labour new left from its origins in the inter-party struggles of the 1960s until today, Panitch and Leys show how the defeat of that project paved the way for the embrace of neoliberalism under New Labour, but also how new political forces came to coalesce for a renewed socialist political mobilisation in the 21st Century.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics
Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics
by James Muldoon, published in 2018
The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-First World War era, were the most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workersโ councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy. This collection brings together democratic theorists, socialists and labour historians on the question of the relevance of council democracy for contemporary democratic practices. Historical reflection on the councils opens our political imagination to an expanded scope of the possibilities for political transformation by drawing from debates and events at an important historical juncture before the dominance of current forms of liberal democracy. It offers a critical perspective on the limits of current democratic regimes for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. This timely read provides students and scholars with innovative analyses of the councils on the 100th anniversary of their development. It offers new analytic frameworks for conceptualising the relationship between politics and the economy and contributes to emerging debates within political theory on workplace, economic and council democracy.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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Made in Britain: Nation and Emigration in Nineteenth-Century America
Made in Britain: Nation and Emigration in Nineteenth-Century America
by Stephen Tuffnell, published in 2020
The United States was made in Britain. For over a hundred years following independence, a diverse and lively crowd of emigrant Americans left the United States for Britain. From Liverpool and London, they produced Atlantic capitalism and managed transfers of goods, culture, and capital that were integral to US nation-building. In British social clubs, emigrants forged relationships with elite Britons that were essential not only to tranquil transatlantic connections, but also to fighting southern slavery. As the United States descended into Civil War, emigrant Americans decisively shaped the Atlantic-wide battle for public opinion. Equally revered as informal ambassadors and feared as anti-republican contagions, these emigrants raised troubling questions about the relationship between nationhood, nationality, and foreign connection. Blending the histories of foreign relations, capitalism, nation-formation, and transnational connection, Stephen Tuffnell compellingly demonstrates that the United States' struggle toward independent nationhood was entangled at every step with the world's most powerful empire of the time. With deep research and vivid detail, Made in Britain uncovers this hidden story and presents a bold new perspective on nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic relations.
๐ Economics
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Tyrant: Shakespeare On Power
Tyrant: Shakespeare On Power
by Stephen Greenblatt, published in 2018
'Brilliant' Sunday Times How does a truly disastrous leader โ a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant โ come to power? This vivid and accessible analysis of Shakespeareโs most enduring works sheds light on one of our most urgent contemporary dilemmas. As an ageing, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social and psychological roots and the twisted consequences of tyranny. What he discovered in his characters remains remarkably relevant today. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues and imagined how they might be stopped. In Tyrant, Stephen Greenblatt examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeareโs most famous plays -- from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale. Tyrant is a highly relevant exploration of Shakespeareโs work that sheds new light on the workings of power.
๐ Art, Lit and Film
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The History of Ancient Chinese Economic Thought
The History of Ancient Chinese Economic Thought
by Cheng Lin, published in 2014
This volume comprises twelve papers written by Chinese scholars on various aspects of the history of ancient Chinese economic thought. The contributions are preceded by an introduction which gives an overview of the development of the subject of history of economic thought in China, and which also provides an historical context to the individuals who constitute the major "schools" of ancient Chinese economic thought. The authors of the papers are leading scholars who have dominated this research area since the founding of New China in 1949, while the broad range of topics covered by the contributions includes questions of methodology, detailed and sometimes controversial interpretations of texts and "schools", and the international influence and modern relevance of ancient Chinese thought. A recurrent theme is that ancient Chinese thought has at least as much to offer to the historian as ancient Western thought. As the first such volume of papers to be translated into English, this collection provides a unique opportunity for non-Chinese readers to sample the way in which Chinese historians of economics have attempted to understand their own intellectual heritage. This book will be relevant to scholars interested in the history of economic thought, economic history and Chinese studies.
๐ Asia
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Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs
Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs
by Bob Brier, published in 2013
The world has always been fascinated with ancient Egypt. When the Romans conquered Egypt, it was really Egypt that conquered the Romans. Cleopatra captivated both Caesar and Marc Antony and soon Roman ladies were worshipping Isis and wearing vials of Nile water around their necks. What is it about ancient Egypt that breeds such obsession and imitation? Egyptomania explores the burning fascination with all things Egyptian and the events that fanned the flames--from ancient times, to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, to the Discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in the 1920s. For forty years, Bob Brier, one of the world's foremost Egyptologists, has been amassing one of the largest collections of Egyptian memorabilia and seeking to understand the pull of ancient Egypt on our world today. In this original and groundbreaking book, with twenty-four pages of color photos from the author's collection, he explores our three-thousand-year-old fixation with recovering Egyptian culture and its meaning. He traces our enthrallment with the mummies that seem to have cheated death and the pyramids that seem as if they will last forever. Drawing on his personal collection โ from Napoleon's twenty-volume Egypt encyclopedia to Howard Carter's letters written from the Valley of the Kings as he was excavating โ this is an inventive and mesmerizing tour of how an ancient civilization endures in ours today.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI
Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI
by Jessica R. Pliley, published in 2014
Jessica Pliley links the crusade against sex trafficking to the FBIโs growth into a formidable law agency that cooperated with states and municipalities in pursuit of offenders. The Bureau intervened in squabbles on behalf of men intent on monitoring their wives and daughters and imprisoned prostitutes while seldom prosecuting their male clients.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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Memories of the Spanish Civil War: Conflict and Community in Rural Spain
Memories of the Spanish Civil War: Conflict and Community in Rural Spain
by Ruth Sanz Sabido, published in 2016
A critical analysis of social memories of the Spanish Civil War, with specific reference to the rural context of the conflict. Based on a mixture of archival research and interviews with the inhabitants of one village in Huelva the book focuses on the forgotten history of the conflict.
๐ Europe and Neighbourhoods
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Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point
Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point
by Gyan Prakash, published in 2021
The gripping story of an explosive turning point in the history of modern India On the night of June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids across the country. In the twenty-one harrowing months that followed, her regime unleashed a brutal campaign of coercion and intimidation, arresting and torturing people by the tens of thousands, razing slums, and imposing compulsory sterilization on the poor. Emergency Chronicles provides the first comprehensive account of this understudied episode in Indiaโs modern history. Gyan Prakash strips away the comfortable myth that the Emergency was an isolated event brought on solely by Gandhiโs desire to cling to power, arguing that it was as much the product of Indian democracyโs troubled relationship with popular politics. Drawing on archival records, private papers and letters, published sources, film and literary materials, and interviews with victims and perpetrators, Prakash traces the Emergencyโs origins to the moment of Indiaโs independence in 1947, revealing how the unfulfilled promise of democratic transformation upset the fine balance between state power and civil rights. He vividly depicts the unfolding of a political crisis that culminated in widespread popular unrest, which Gandhi sought to crush by paradoxically using the law to suspend lawful rights. Her failure to preserve the existing political order had lasting and unforeseen repercussions, opening the door for caste politics and Hindu nationalism. Placing the Emergency within the broader global history of democracy, this gripping book offers invaluable lessons for us today as the world once again confronts the dangers of rising authoritarianism and populist nationalism.
๐ Asia
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Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins
Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins
by Louise Tillin, published in 2013
There is a widespread consensus today that the constitutional flexibility to alter state boundaries has bolstered the stability of Indiaโs democracy. Yet debates persist about whether the creation of more states is desirable. Political parties, regional movements and local activists continue to demand new states in different parts of the country as part of their attempts to reshape political and economic arenas. Remapping India looks at the most recent episode of state creation in 2000, when the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand came into being in some of the poorest, yet resource-rich, regions of Hindi-speaking north and central India. Their creation represented a new turn in the history of the countryโs territorial organisation. This book explains the politics that lay behind this episode of โpost-linguisticโ state reorganisation and what it means for the future design of Indiaโs federal system.
๐ Asia
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The Silence of the Archive:
The Silence of the Archive:
by David Thomas, published in 2017
Foreword by Anne J Gilliland, University of California Evaluating archives in a post-truth society. In recent years big data initiatives, not to mention Hollywood, the video game industry and countless other popular media, have reinforced and even glamorized the public image of the archive as the ultimate repository of facts and the hope of future generations for uncovering โwhat actually happenedโ. The reality is, however, that for all sorts of reasons the record may not have been preserved or survived in the archive. In fact, the record may never have even existed โ its creation being as imagined as is its contents. And even if it does exist, it may be silent on the salient facts, or it may obfuscate, mislead or flat out lie. The Silence of the Archive is written by three expert and knowledgeable archivists and draws attention to the many limitations of archives and the inevitability of their having parameters. Silences or gaps in archives range from details of individualsโ lives to records of state oppression or of intelligence operations. The book brings together ideas from a wide range of fields, including contemporary history, family history research and Shakespearian studies. It describes why these silences exist, what the impact of them is, how researchers have responded to them, and what the silence of the archive means for researchers in the digital age. It will help provide a framework and context to their activities and enable them to better evaluate archives in a post-truth society. This book includes discussion of: enforced silencesexpectations and when silence means silencedigital preservation, authenticity and the futuredealing with the silencepossible solutions; challenging silence and acceptancethe meaning of the silences: are things getting better or worse?user satisfaction and audience development. This book will make compelling reading for professional archivists, records managers and records creators, postgraduate and undergraduate students of history, archives, librarianship and information studies, as well as academics and other users of archives.
๐ Higher Ed
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Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking
Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking
by Lucy Mayblin, published in 2017
This book critiques existing literature on the response of Western states to asylum seeking โothersโ and outlines an alternative perspective to acknowledge the colonial histories that have shaped the contemporary response of states to movements of refugees.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Karl Marxโs Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary
Karl Marxโs Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary
by Shaibal Gupta, published in 2019
Since the latest crisis of capitalism broke out in 2008, Marx has been back in fashion, and sometimes it seems that his ideas have never been as topical, or as commanding of respect and interest, as they are today. This edited collection arises from one of the largest international conferences dedicated to the bicentenary of Marxโs birth. The volume contains 16 chapters authored by globally renowned scholars and is divided into two parts: I) On the Critique of Politics; II) On the Critique of Political Economy. These contributions, from multiple academic disciplines, offer diverse perspectives on why Marx is still so relevant for our times and make this book a source of great appeal for both expert scholars of Marx as well as students and general readers who are approaching his theories for the first time.
๐ History
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Progress Or Collapse: The Crises of Market Greed
Progress Or Collapse: The Crises of Market Greed
by Roberto De Vogli, published in 2013
Human progress is heading toward collapse. There are converging ecological crises looming on the horizon: climate change, peak oil, water shortages, fish depletion and food scarcities. The world is on a collision course against the limits of the ecosystem. Modern societies are consuming, polluting and growing as if there is no tomorrow. Indeed, there may not be one. In Progress or Collapse, Roberto De Vogli guides us through the multiple converging global crises of economic progress. He explores the connections between the environmental crisis and the psychological, social, cultural, political and economic emergencies affecting modern societies. It is not a coincidence, the author argues, that global ecological destruction is occurring in tandem with other crises: rising mental disorders, mindless consumerism, rampant conformism, status competition, civic disengagement, startling social inequalities, global financial instability, and widespread political impasse. In this hard-hitting analysis, Roberto De Vogli identifies the root cause of all these symptoms of societal breakdown: neoliberalism, defined as market greed. He argues that in recent decades, modern societies have been dominated by a suicidal economic doctrine based on two articles of faith: the greed creed and the market God. The greed creed states that people are nothing but selfish profiteers in a perpetual search for status and wealth. The market God is the belief that all societal and human affairs are best regulated as market exchanges. What is to be done? Can we stop progress toward collapse? Given the current distribution of power and wealth, and the state of psychological and political inertia in which we are trapped, our chances of redefining progress around alternative values and embracing a new philosophy of life are slim. Yet, the history of human emancipation has often been shaped by giant leaps forward. In the past, civic struggles have overcome "the limits of the possible". Whether this will happen again in the future is the central question of our time. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ecology, psychology, public health, epidemiology, human development, political philosophy, economics, sociology and politics.
๐ Economics
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Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics
Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics
by Ed Balls, published in 2016
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A life in and out of politics โ from the despatch box to the stage on Strictly โ by one of Britainโs most influential and well-loved political figures. 'Full of anecdote, insight and authenticityโ Evening Standard BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Witty, reflective and engaging' Nick Robinson 'Honest and revealing' Michael Palin 'Fascinating, heartfelt' Kay Burley 'Insightful, funny, unexpectedly moving' Jonathan Freedland On the night of 7 May 2015, Ed Balls thought there was a chance he would wake up the next morning as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, he woke up without a job. Twenty-one years earlier he had left a promising career in journalism to work for Labour in opposition. Moving through the ranks, from adviser to Cabinet minister and on to Shadow Chancellor, he occupied a central and influential position in and out of power during a pivotal period in British history. Speaking Out is a record of a life in politics, but also much more. It is about how power can be used for good, and the lessons to be learned when things go wrong. It is about the mechanics of Westminster, and of government. It is about facing up to your fears and misgivings, and tackling your limitations โ on stages public and private. It is about the mistakes made, change delivered and personalities encountered over the course of two decades at the frontline of British politics. It is a unique window into a rarely seen world. Most importantly, it sets out what politics is about, and why it matters.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics
Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics
by Kalle Lasn, published in 2013
From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a more ecological model. Meme Wars aims to accelerate the shift into this new paradigm that takes into account psychonomics, bionomics, and other aspects of our physical and mental environment that are often left out in discussions of economics. Like Adbusters, the book will be image heavy and full-color throughout. Lasn calls it "a textbook for the future" that provides the building blocks, in texts and visuals, for a new way of looking at and changing our world. Through an examination of alternative economies, Lasn hopes to spur students to become "barefoot economists" and to see that a humanization of economics is possible. Meme Wars will include contributions from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Samuelson, George Akerlof, Lourdes Benerรญa, Julie Matthaei, Manfred Max-Neef, David Orrell, Paul Gilding, Mathis Wackernagel and the father of ecological economics Herman Daly, among others. Based on ideas that were presented in a special issue of Adbusters entitled "Thought Control in Economics: Beyond the Growth Paradigm / An Activist Toolkit," Meme Wars will help move forward the Occupy Wall Street movement.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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The Rise and Decline of the Post-Cold War International Order
The Rise and Decline of the Post-Cold War International Order
by Hanns W. Maull, published in 2018
This book takes a bird's-eye view of what has been happening with the international order over the last quarter century. Looking at a number of its components, such as the regional orders of Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, and international regimes dealing with nuclear weapons, climate change, and world trade, it maps the rise and decline of what is called the liberal international order, identifies causes of progress and failure, and draws thiscomparative analysis together in a comprehensive assessment and evaluation of the state and prospects of international order. Two chapters each are dedicated to analysing the two most important 'orderingpowers', the United States and the People's Republic of China, offering two different perspectives on the policies and strategies Washington and Beijing have pursued in the international order.
๐ Development
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Global Algorithmic Capital Markets: High Frequency Trading, Dark Pools, and Regulatory Challenges
Global Algorithmic Capital Markets: High Frequency Trading, Dark Pools, and Regulatory Challenges
by Walter Mattli, published in 2019
Global capital markets have undergone fundamental transformations in recent years and, as a result, have become extraordinarily complex and opaque. Trading space is no longer measured in minutes or seconds but in time units beyond human perception: milliseconds, microseconds, and even nanoseconds. Technological advances have thus scaled up imperceptible and previously irrelevant time differences into operationally manageable and enormously profitable business opportunities for those with the proper high-tech trading tools. These tools include the fastest private communication and trading lines, the most powerful computers and sophisticated algorithms capable of speedily analysing incoming news and trading data and determining optimal trading strategies in microseconds, as well as the possession of gigantic collections of historic and real-time market data. Fragmented capital markets are also becoming a rapidly growing reality in Europe and Asia, and are an established feature of U.S. trading. This raises urgent market governance issues that have largely been overlooked. Global Algorithmic Capital Markets seeks to understand how recent market transformations are affecting core public policy objectives such as investor protection and reduction of systemic risk, as well as fairness, efficiency, and transparency. The operation and health of capital markets affect all of us and have profound implications for equality and justice in society. This unique set of chapters by leading scholars, industry insiders, and regulators discusses ways to strengthen market governance for the benefit of society at whole.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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US-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century: A Question of Trust
US-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century: A Question of Trust
by Michael Tai, published in 2015
The relationship between the United States and China will be of critical importance to the world throughout the twenty-first century. In the West Chinaโs rise is often portrayed as a threat and China seen in negative terms. This book explores the dynamics of this crucial relationship. It looks in particular at what causes an international relationship to be perceived negatively, and considers what can be done to reverse this, arguing that trust is a key factor. It goes on to discuss US and Chinese rhetoric and behaviour in three key areas โ climate change, finance, and international security. The book contends that, contrary to much US rhetoric, Chinaโs actions in these areas is often much more flexible and accommodating than the US position, and that the Chinese are much more knowledgeable about, and understanding and appreciative of, the United States than vice versa.
๐ Asia
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Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It
Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It
by Heather Boushey, published in 2019
Many fear that efforts to address inequality will undermine the economy as a whole. But the opposite is true: rising inequality has become a drag on growth and an impediment to market competition. Heather Boushey breaks down the problem and argues that we can preserve our nation's economic traditions while promoting shared economic growth.
๐ Economics
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Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
by Paul Zarembka, published in 2011
Amidst a capitalist crisis that has upturned mainstream orthodoxies, this title underscores the importance of historical and materialist understandings of capitalist economies. It exposes the limitations of neoclassical economics' endogenous growth theory and how it, in fact, gropes for understandings well established within Marxism.
๐ Economics
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Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia
Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia
by Alexander A. Cooley, published in 2017
A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asiaโs international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asiaโs supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.
๐ Asia
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India in the Era of Chinaโs Belt and Road Initiative: How Modi Responds to Xi
India in the Era of Chinaโs Belt and Road Initiative: How Modi Responds to Xi
by Anil Sigdel, published in 2020
Anil Sigdel dives into some of the most interesting trends in international relations, such as the rising influence of China and the instruments it uses to advance its interests worldwide, chiefly among them the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI) and the interplay between China and India, and what means New Delhi employs to come after China in the wider world. To this end, Sigdel takes both a geographic view by analyzing Chinaโs and Indiaโs relations with key regions โ South East to Central Asia, Indian Ocean Region and Africa - and a functional view scrutinizing issues of relevance to the main topic โ from cultural ties to infrastructure investment and maritime security. In his incisive analysis, Sigdel provides rich details on how Indiaโs partnership is shaping with the major stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific region such US, Japan and France, and how India is balancing these partnerships vis-ร -vis the one with Russia. The conclusions point to interesting prospects for the future โ China challenge has, in a way, helped India further advance its own ambition of becoming a separate pole or leading power, therefore, India is likely to pursue that status by aligning issue-wise with all the powers.
๐ Asia
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The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
by Martin Sandbu, published in 2020
A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society today Fueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up after 1945. Political debates have turned into violent clashes between those who want to โtake their country backโ and those viewed as defending an elitist, broken, and unpatriotic social contract. There seems to be an increasing polarization of values. The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far. Rather, technological change and flawed but avoidable domestic policies have eroded the foundations of an economy in which everyone can participateโand would have done so even with a much less globalized economy. Sandbu contends that we have to double down on economic openness while pursuing dramatic reforms involving productivity, regional development, support for small- and medium-sized businesses, and increased worker representation. He discusses how a more active macroeconomic policy, education for all, universal basic income, and better taxation of capital could work together for societyโs benefit. Offering real answers, not invective, for facing our most serious political issues, The Economics of Belonging shows how a better economic system can work for all.
๐ Development
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Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science
Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science
by Marc Flandreau, published in 2016
Beginning with the discovery of a curious plot wherein science became the handmaiden of white-collar crime, "Anthropology and the Stock Exchange "by economic historian Marc Flandreau tracks a group of Victorian gentlemen-swindlers as they shuffled between the corridors of the London Stock Exchange and the meeting rooms of learned societies. It explores how the commodification of scientific truth became every bit as integral as financial engineering to the profitability of foreign investment and speculation in foreign government debt. Flandreau underscores the crucial role of finance (what he calls the Stock Exchange Modality ) in shaping the contours of human knowledge and vice versa in an age of mercantile expansion. He further argues that a new brand of imperialism, born under Benjamin Disraeli s first term as British Premier, built on the multiple covert links between the birth of social sciences and novel mechanisms of financial revenue creation and extraction. As anthropologists advocated the study of Miskito Indians or stated their views on a Jamaican Rebellion or Abyssinian Expedition, for example, they responded and catered to the impulses of the Stock Exchange. The marriage between anthropological science and finance, Flandreau asserts, formed the foundational structures of late 19th century British Imperialism, which in turn produced essential technologies of globalization."
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Fractured Identities: Changing Patterns of Inequality
Fractured Identities: Changing Patterns of Inequality
by Harriet Bradley, published in 2015
The gap between rich and poor, included and excluded, advantaged and disadvantaged is steadily growing as inequality becomes one of the most pressing issues of our times. The new edition of this popular text explores current patterns of inequality in the context of increasing globalization, world recession and neoliberal policies of austerity. Within a framework of intersectionality, Bradley discusses various theories and concepts for understanding inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity and age, while an entirely new chapter touches on the social divisions arising from disabilities, non-heterosexual orientations and religious affiliation. Bradley argues that processes of fracturing, which complicate the way we as individuals identify and locate ourselves in relation to the rest of society, exist alongside a tendency to social polarization: at one end of the social hierarchy are the super-rich; at the other end, long-term unemployment and job insecurity are the fate of many, especially the young. In the reordering of the social hierarchy, members of certain ethnic minority groups, disabled people and particular segments of the working class suffer disproportionately, while prevailing economic conditions threaten to offset the gains made by women in past decades. Fractured Identities shows how only by understanding and challenging these developments can we hope to build a fairer and more socially inclusive society.
๐ Economics
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Photography After Capitalism
Photography After Capitalism
by Ben Burbridge, published in 2020
A polemical analysis of the politics and economics of today's vernacular photographic cultures. In Photography After Capitalism, Benedict Burbridge makes the case for a radically expanded conception of photography, encompassing the types of labor too often obscured by black-boxed technologies, slick platform interfaces, and the compulsion to display lives to others. His lively and polemical analysis of today's vernacular photographic cultures shines new light on the hidden work of smartphone assembly teams, digital content moderators, Street View car drivers, Google "Scan-Ops,"low-paid gallery interns, homeless participant photographers, and the photo-sharing masses. Bringing together cultural criticism, social history, and political philosophy, Burbridge examines how representations of our photographic lives--in advertising, journalism, scholarship and, particularly, contemporary art--shape a sense of what photography is and the social relations that comprise it. More precisely, he focuses on how different critical and creative strategies--from the appropriation of social media imagery to performative traversals of the network, from documentaries about secretive manual labor to science fiction fantasies of future sabotage--affect our understanding of photography's interactions with political and economic systems. Drawing insight and inspiration from recent analyses of digital labour, community economies and post-capitalism, Burbridge harnesses the ubiquity of photography to cognitively map contemporary capitalism in search of its weak spots and levers, sites of resistance, and opportunities to build better worlds.
๐ Economics
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Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles
Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles
by Ruchir Sharma, published in 2012
'The old rule of forecasting was to make as many forecasts as possible and publicise the ones you got right. The new rule is to forecast so far in the future, no one will know you got it wrong.' Ruchir Sharma does neither. In Breakout Nations he shows why the economic 'mania' of the twenty-first century, with its unshakeable faith in the power of emerging markets - especially China - to continue growing at the astoundingly rapid and uniform pace of the last decade, is wrong. The next economic success stories will not be where we think they are. In this provocative new book, Sharma analyses why the basic laws of economic gravity (such as the law of large numbers, which says that the richer you are the harder it is to grow your wealth at a rapid pace) are already pulling China, Russia, Brazil and other vast emerging markets back to earth. To understand which nations will thrive and which will falter in a world reshaped by slower growth, it is time to start looking at the emerging markets as individual cases. Sharma argues that we must abandon our current obsession with global macro trends and the fad for all-embracing theories. He offers instead a more discerning, nuanced view, identifying specific factors - economic, political, social - which will make for slow or fast growth. Spending much of his professional life travelling in these countries as Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley, Sharma is uniquely placed to present a first-hand insider's account of these new markets and the changes they are undergoing. As the years of unbelievably swift growth draw to their close, this book shows us how it is time for both investors and economists to halt their blind thrust towards an impossible future.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
by Martin Sandbu, published in 2020
A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society today Fueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up after 1945. Political debates have turned into violent clashes between those who want to โtake their country backโ and those viewed as defending an elitist, broken, and unpatriotic social contract. There seems to be an increasing polarization of values. The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far. Rather, technological change and flawed but avoidable domestic policies have eroded the foundations of an economy in which everyone can participateโand would have done so even with a much less globalized economy. Sandbu contends that we have to double down on economic openness while pursuing dramatic reforms involving productivity, regional development, support for small- and medium-sized businesses, and increased worker representation. He discusses how a more active macroeconomic policy, education for all, universal basic income, and better taxation of capital could work together for societyโs benefit. Offering real answers, not invective, for facing our most serious political issues, The Economics of Belonging shows how a better economic system can work for all.
๐ Economics
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Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity
Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity
by Amanda Hammar, published in 2014
Large-scale displacement - whether caused by war, state-related political or development projects, different forms of political violence, structural crisis, or even natural disasters - evokes many stereotyped assumptions about those forcibly displaced or emplaced. At the same time there is a problematic lack of attention paid to the diversity of actors, strategies and practices that reshape the world in the face (and chronic aftermath) of dramatic moments of violent dislocation. In this highly original volume, based on empirical case studies from across sub-Saharan Africa, the authors reveal the paradoxical effects, both intended and unexpected, that displacement produces, and that manifest themselves in displacement economies. An important contribution to a topic of growing scholarly and policy interest.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia
The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia
by Natalie Koch, published in 2018
"Develops a geographic approach to the politics of spectacle and its unspectacular Others through examining recent spectacular capital city development projects in seven authoritarian, resource-rich states of Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Asia"--
๐ Asia
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Adapting to Win: How Insurgents Fight and Defeat Foreign States in War
Adapting to Win: How Insurgents Fight and Defeat Foreign States in War
by Noriyuki Katagiri, published in 2014
When insurgent groups challenge powerful states, defeat is not always inevitable. Increasingly, guerrilla forces have overcome enormous disadvantages and succeeded in extending the period of violent conflict, raising the costs of war, and occasionally winning. Noriyuki Katagiri investigates the circumstances and tactics that allow some insurgencies to succeed in wars against foreign governments while others fail. Adapting to Win examines almost 150 instances of violent insurgencies pitted against state powers, including in-depth case studies of the war in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq war. By applying sequencing theory, Katagiri provides insights into guerrilla operations ranging from Somalia to Benin and Indochina, demonstrating how some insurgents learn and change in response to shifting circumstances. Ultimately, his research shows that successful insurgent groups have evolved into mature armed forces, and then demonstrates what evolutionary paths are likely to be successful or unsuccessful for those organizations. Adapting to Win will interest scholars of international relations, security studies, and third world politics and contains implications for government officials, military officers, and strategic thinkers around the globe as they grapple with how to cope with tenacious and violent insurgent organizations.
๐ Asia
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Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
by Paul Zarembka, published in 2011
Amidst a capitalist crisis that has upturned mainstream orthodoxies, this title underscores the importance of historical and materialist understandings of capitalist economies. It exposes the limitations of neoclassical economics' endogenous growth theory and how it, in fact, gropes for understandings well established within Marxism.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas
Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas
by Laura Empson, published in 2017
Professional organizations - such as accounting and consulting firms, law firms, and investment banks - are fundamental to the functioning of the global economy. Yet many of the most powerful are notoriously private. This book uncovers the complex, messy, and surprisingly emotional challenges of leading professional organizations - revealing the realities that lies beneath the 'professional' surface which these organizations present to the outside world. Individual professionals - highly educated, highly intelligent, and highly opinionated - are generally reluctant to see themselves as followers and may be equally reluctant to put themselves forward as leaders. They value their autonomy and confer authority on their leaders on a highly contingent basis. How does a professional come to be seen as a leader within a professional organization? How do leaders maintain their position once they have reached the top of their organization? How do they navigate the complex power relationships among their professional colleagues and actually get things done? Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations. It is based on Laura Empson's scholarly research into the world's leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in 16 countries. It draws on the latest organizational and leadership theory to analyse in detail exactly how professionals come together to create 'leadership'. It identifies how change happens within professional organizations and explains why their leaders so often fail.
๐ Asia
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Intelligence in an Insecure World
Intelligence in an Insecure World
by Peter Gill, published in 2013
Over a decade on from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, intelligence continues to be of central importance to the contemporary world. Today there is a growing awareness of the importance of intelligence, and an increasing investment in it, as individuals, groups, organizations and states all seek timely and actionable information in order to increase their sense of security. But what exactly is intelligence? Who seeks to develop it and how? What happens to intelligence once it is produced, and what dilemmas does this generate? How can liberal democracies seek to mitigate problems of intelligence, and what do we mean by โintelligence failure?โโ In a fully revised and expanded new edition of their classic guide to the field, Peter Gill and Mark Phythian explore these and other questions. Together they set out a comprehensive framework for the study of intelligence, discussing how โintelligenceโ can best be understood, how it is collected, analysed, disseminated and acted upon, how it raises ethical problems, and how and why it fails. Drawing on a range of contemporary examples, Intelligence in an Insecure World is an authoritative and accessible guide to a rapidly expanding area of enquiry - one which everyone has an interest in understanding.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Reaganism in Literary Theory: Negative Moralism and Hermeneutic Suspicion
Reaganism in Literary Theory: Negative Moralism and Hermeneutic Suspicion
by Jeremiah Bowen, published in 2020
Largely erased from disciplinary memory, Paul de Man's replacement of canon with literariness as the object of literary studies preserved a discourse of devotion and disqualification homologous with Reaganism. This negative moralism shelters professional privilege and competition from scrutiny, supported by misrecognitions like hermeneutic suspicion, materiality, and identity politics.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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The Politics of Immigration: Contradictions of the Liberal State
The Politics of Immigration: Contradictions of the Liberal State
by James Hampshire, published in 2014
Immigration is one of the most contested issues on the political agenda of liberal states across Europe and North America. While these states can be open and inclusive to newcomers, they are also often restrictive and exclusionary. The Politics of Immigration examines the sources of these apparently contradictory stances, locating answers in the nature of the liberal state itself. The book shows how four defining facets of the liberal state - representative democracy, constitutionalism, capitalism, and nationhood - generate conflicting imperatives for immigration policymaking, which in turn gives rise to paradoxical, even contradictory, policies. The first few chapters of the book outline this framework, setting out the various actors, institutions and ideas associated with each facet. Subsequent chapters consider its implications for different elements of the immigration policy field, including policies towards economic and humanitarian immigration, as well as citizenship and integration. Throughout, the argument is illustrated with data and examples from the major immigrant-receiving countries of Europe and North America. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in migration studies, politics and international relations, and all those interested in understanding why immigration remains one of the most controversial and intractable policy issues in the Western world.
๐ Australasia and Pacific
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Social Advantage and Disadvantage
Social Advantage and Disadvantage
by Lucinda Platt, published in 2016
Through the overarching lens of the concepts of social advantage and disadvantage, this new and original edited volume - with contributions by 14 distinguished authors - provides an overview of a variety of conceptual frameworks and a spectrum of social inequalities, processes and divisions. It discusses poverty, social exclusion, capability deprivation, rights violations, social immobility, and human or social capital deficiency. From a global, European and UKperspective, it addresses the origins and effects of advantage and disadvantage in relation to family and childhood, education, work, and old age and the implications of divisions based on gender,'race', ethnicity, migration, religion, neighbourhood, and the experience of crime.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Law and the Economy in Colonial India
Law and the Economy in Colonial India
by Tirthankar Roy, published in 2016
By accessibly recounting and analyzing the unique experience of institutions in colonial Indiawhich were influenced heavily by both British Common Law and indigenous Indian practices and traditionsLaw and the Economy in Colonial India sheds new light on what exactly fosters the types of institutions that have been key to economic development throughout world history more generally. The culmination and years of research, the book goes through a range of examples, including textiles, opium, tea, indigo, tenancy, credit, and land mortgage, to show how economic laws in colonial India were shaped neither by imported European ideas about how colonies should be ruled nor indigenous institutions, but by the practice of producing and trading. The book is an essential addition to Indian history and to some of the most fundamental questions in economic history."
๐ Asia
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Rules Without Rights: Land, Labor, and Private Authority in the Global Economy
Rules Without Rights: Land, Labor, and Private Authority in the Global Economy
by TIM. BARTLEY, published in 2018
Activists have exposed startling forms of labor exploitation and environmental degradation in global industries, leading many large retailers and brands to adopt standards for fairness and sustainability. This book is about the idea that transnational corporations can push these standards through their global supply chains, and in effect, pull factories, forests, and farms out of their local contexts and up to global best practices. For many scholars and practitioners, this kind of private regulation and global standard-setting can provide an alternative to regulation by territorially-bound, gridlocked, or incapacitated nation states, potentially improving environments and working conditions around the world and protecting the rights of exploited workers, impoverished farmers, and marginalized communities. But can private, voluntary standards actually create meaningful forms of regulation? Are forests and factories around the world actually being made into sustainable ecosystems and decent workplaces? Can global norms remake local orders? This book provides striking new answers by comparing the private regulation of land and labor in democratic and authoritarian settings. Case studies of sustainable forestry and fair labour standards in Indonesia and China show not only how transnational standards are implemented 'on the ground' but also how they are constrained and reconfigured by domestic governance. Combining rich multi-method analyses, a powerful comparative approach, and a new theory of private regulation, Rules without Rights reveals the contours and contradictions of transnational governance. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.
๐ Development
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Industrial Teesside, Lives and Legacies: A post-industrial geography
Industrial Teesside, Lives and Legacies: A post-industrial geography
by Jonathan Warren, published in 2017
This book evaluates the consequences of economic, social, environmental and cultural change on people living and working within Teesside in the North-East of England. It assesses the lived experiences, working lives, health and cultural perspectives of residents and key stakeholders in the wake of serious de-industralisation in the region. The narrative is embedded within the long-term industrial history of Stockton: an area once dominated by steel, coal and chemical industries. This past still continues to shape its future and influences the ways in which that future is conceived and envisioned. The author explores a โbiography of placeโ analytical framework to offer a holistic view of the area, which considers the interaction between the social, economic, cultural, visual and environmental legacy of the community, which is firmly grounded in the past, present and future prospects of those who live and work there.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, contestation and craft
The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, contestation and craft
by Derek Wall, published in 2014
Elinor Ostromโs Nobel Prize-winning work on common pool property rights has implications for some of the most pressing sustainability issues of the twenty-first century โ from tackling climate change to maintaining cyberspace. In this book, Derek Wall critically examines Ostromโs work, while also exploring the following questions: is it possible to combine insights rooted in methodological individualism with a theory that stresses collectivist solutions? Is Ostromโs emphasis on largely local solutions to climate change relevant to a crisis propelled by global factors? This volume situates her ideas in terms of the constitutional analysis of her partner Vincent Ostrom and wider institutional economics. It outlines her key concerns, including a radical research methodology, commitment to indigenous people and the concept of social-ecological systems. Ostrom is recognised for producing a body of work which demonstrates how people can construct rules that allow them to exploit the environment in an ecologically sustainable way, without the need for governmental regulation, and this book argues that in a world where ecological realities increasingly threaten material prosperity, such scholarship provides a way of thinking about how humanity can create truly sustainable development. Given the inter-disciplinary nature of Ostromโs work, this book will be relevant to those working in the areas of environmental economics, political economy, political science and ecology.
๐ Economics
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The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism
The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism
by Samir Amin, published in 2013
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๐ Economics
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Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination
Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination
by Tito Boeri, published in 2015
A volume on discrimination in the labour market. Part One addresses career paths, schooling choice, and the gender wage gap. Part Two addresses unexplored dimensions of discrimination with particular attention to physical appearance, obesity, religion, and sexual orientation.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual
Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual
by Ha-Joon Chang, published in 2014
There is no alternative to neoliberal economics - or so it appeared when Reclaiming Development was published in 2004. Many of the same driving assumptions - monetarism and globalization - remain within the international development policy establishment. Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel confront this neoliberal development model head-on by combining devastating economic critique with an array of innovative policies and an in-depth analysis of the experiences of leading Western and East Asian economies. Still, much has changed since 2004 - the relative success of some developing countries in weathering the global financial crisis has exposed the latent contradictions of the neoliberal model. The resulting situation of increasingly open policy innovation in the global South means that Reclaiming Development is even more relevant today than when it was first published. History is being made.
๐ Development
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Email and the Everyday: Stories of Disclosure, Trust, and Digital Labor
Email and the Everyday: Stories of Disclosure, Trust, and Digital Labor
by Esther Milne, published in 2021
An exploration of how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning our everyday domestic and work lives. Despite its many obituaries, email is not dead. As a global mode of business and personal communication, email outstrips newer technologies of online interaction; it is deeply embedded in our everyday lives. And yet--perhaps because the ubiquity of email has obscured its study--this is the first scholarly book devoted to email as a key historical, social, and commercial site of digital communication in our everyday lives. In Email and the Everyday, Esther Milne examines how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning the domestic and institutional spaces of daily life.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy
Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy
by Amy Larkin, published in 2013
An award-winning environmental activist and social entrepreneur exposes the link between our financial and environmental crises For decades, politicians and business leaders alike told the American public that today's challenge was growing the economy, and that environmental protection could be left to future generations. Now in the wake of billions of dollars in costs associated with coastal devastation from Hurricane Sandy, rampant wildfires across the West, and groundwater contamination from reckless drilling, it's becoming increasingly clear that yesterday's carefree attitude about the environment has morphed into a fiscal crisis of epic proportions. Amy Larkin has been at the forefront of the fight for the environment for years, and in Environmental Debt she argues that the costs of global warming, extreme weather, pollution and other forms of "environmental debt" are wreaking havoc on the economy. Synthesizing complex ideas, she pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cultural touchstones of the environmental debate, revealing how, for instance, despite coal's relative fame as a "cheap" energy source, ordinary Americans pay $350 billion a year for coal's damage in business related expenses, polluted watersheds, and in healthcare costs. And the problem stretches far beyond our borders: deforestation from twenty years ago in Thailand caused catastrophic flooding in 2011, and cost Toyota 3.4 percent of its annual production while causing tens of thousands of workers to lose jobs in three different countries. To combat these trends, Larkin proposes a new framework for 21st century commerce, based on three principles: 1) Pollution can no longer be free; 2) All business decision making and accounting must incorporate the long view; and 3) Government must play a vital role in catalyzing clean technology and growth while preventing environmental destruction. As companies and nations struggle to strategize in the face of global financial debt, many businesses have begun to recognize the causal relationship between a degraded environment and a degraded bottom line. Profiling the multinational corporations that are transforming their operations with downright radical initiatives, Larkin presents smart policy choices that would actually unleash these business solutions to many global financial and environmental problems. Provocative and hard-hitting, Environmental Debt sweeps aside the false choices of today's environmental debate, and shows how to revitalize the economy through nature's bounty.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy
An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy
by George Hoare, published in 2015
This is a concise introduction to the life and work of the Italian militant and political thinker, Antonio Gramsci. As head of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s, Gramsci was arrested and condemned to 20 years' imprisonment by Mussolini's fascist regime. It was during this imprisonment that Gramsci wrote his famous Prison Notebooks โ over 2,000 pages of profound and influential reflections on history, culture, politics, philosophy and revolution. An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci retraces the trajectory of Gramsci's life, before examining his conceptions of culture, politics and philosophy. Gramsci's writings are then interpreted through the lens of his most famous concept, that of 'hegemony'; Gramsci's thought is then extended and applied to 'think through' contemporary problems to illustrate his distinctive historical methodology. The book concludes with a valuable examination of Gramsci's legacy today and useful tips for further reading. George Hoare and Nathan Sperber make Gramsci accessible for students of history, politics and philosophy keen to understand this seminal figure in 20th-century intellectual history.
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Reaching for the New Jerusalem: A Biblical and Theological Framework for the City
Reaching for the New Jerusalem: A Biblical and Theological Framework for the City
by Seong Hyun Park, published in 2013
The task of this book is to examine the biblical and theological meaning of the city and our mission within it. It starts with the premise that the garden is lost, and we are headed toward the New Jerusalem, the city of God. In the meanwhile, we dwell in earthly cities that need to be adjusted to God's city: "[T]he fall has conditioned us to fear the city . . . though, historically, God intended it to provide safety, even refuge. . . . We have to band together and act to take back our communities if we are to help God in the divine task of reconciling the world to Godself by assisting God in adjusting our communities to God's New Jerusalem, rebuilding our own cities of Enoch on the blueprints of Christ . . . to go into all the world and share his good news, building the Christian community along the lines of the New Jerusalem, a city of light in which God is revealed." (from the Introduction by William David Spencer) Toward achieving this goal, this single, accessible volume brings together the biblical, the systematic, and the practical aspects of urban ministry by various contributors who are urban practitioners and theologians themselves, and have taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Boston Campus.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Platform Capitalism
Platform Capitalism
by Nick Srnicek, published in 2017
What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy."
๐ Contributions from LSE Alumni
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Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909
Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909
by Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, published in 2018
An innovative study of labor relations, particularly the interactions of recruitment agents and migrant workers, in the mining concessions of Wassa, Gold Coast Colony, 1879 to 1909.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Managing Risk and Opportunity: The Governance of Strategic Risk-Taking
Managing Risk and Opportunity: The Governance of Strategic Risk-Taking
by Torben Juul Andersen, published in 2014
This book looks at the critical demands imposed on directors and leaders when faced with corporate risks in turbulent global markets. It shows show why successful risk management outcomes require ethical governance principles and organizational structures that enhance effective risk-taking practices by all actors.
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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Cross-border Banking in Europe: Implications for Financial Stability and Macroeconomic Policies
Cross-border Banking in Europe: Implications for Financial Stability and Macroeconomic Policies
by Franklin Allen, published in 2011
This report argues that policy reforms in micro- and macro-prudential regulation and macroeconomic policies are needed for Europe to reap the important diversification and efficiency benefits from cross-border banking, while reducing the risks stemming from large cross-border banks.Available online as pdf at: http: //www.cepr.org/pubs/books/CEPR/cross-border_banking.pd
๐ Contributions from LSE Staff and Students
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The Dictionary of Conservative Quotations
The Dictionary of Conservative Quotations
by Iain Dale, published in 2013
You'll need this thoughtful and entertaining assembly of conservative quotations if you're at all keen on politics. With more than 2,000 key quotes, this authoritative collection contains all the best conservatives and their sayings, whether they were standing up for what's right or standing up to the left, showing off their wit or showing that their foes were witless. It's got all the big names: everyone from Aquinas to Bagehot, Churchill to Cameron, Shakespeare to Thatcher. In The Dictionary of Conservative Quotations you'll find humour (Quayle) and inspiration (Burke), political punches (Hague) and ancient wisdom (Aristotle), all wrapped up into one slick, easy-to-use compendium. This book makes a vital reference source for anyone who cares for politics or the Conservatives and is a must-have for everyone with an interest in conservative thought.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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Is China Buying the World?
Is China Buying the World?
by Peter Nolan, published in 2013
China has become the world's second biggest economy and its largest exporter. It possesses the world's largest foreign exchange reserves and has 29 companies in the FT 500 list of the world's largest companies. โChina's Rise' preoccupies the global media, which regularly carry articles suggesting that it is using its financial resources to โbuy the world'. Is there any truth to this idea? Or is this just scaremongering by Western commentators who have little interest in a balanced presentation of China's role in the global political economy? In this short book Peter Nolan - one of the leading international experts on China and the global economy - probes behind the media rhetoric and shows that the idea that China is buying the world is a myth. Since the 1970s the global business revolution has resulted in an unprecedented degree of industrial concentration. Giant firms from high income countries with leading technologies and brands have greatly increased their investments in developing countries, with China at the forefront. Multinational companies account for over two-thirds of China's high technology output and over ninety percent of its high technology exports. Global firms are deep inside the Chinese business system and are pressing China hard to be permitted to increase their presence without restraints. By contrast, Chinese firms have a negligible presence in the high-income countries - in other words, we are โinside them' but they are not yet โinside us'. China's 70-odd โnational champion' firms are protected by the government through state ownership and other support measures. They are in industries such as banking, metals, mining, oil, power, construction, transport, and telecommunications, which tend to make use of high technology products rather than produce these products themselves. Their growth has been based on the rapidly growing home market. China has been unsuccessful so far in its efforts to nurture a group of globally competitive firms with leading global technologies and brands. Whether it will be successful in the future is an open question. This balanced analysis replaces rhetoric with evidence and argument. It provides a much-needed perspective on current debates about China's growing power and it will contribute to a constructive dialogue between China and the West.
๐ Asia
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The Killing Fields of Inequality
The Killing Fields of Inequality
by Gรถran Therborn, published in 2014
Inequality is not just about the size of our wallets. It is a socio-cultural order which, for most of us, reduces our capabilities to function as human beings, our health, our dignity, our sense of self, as well as our resources to act and participate in the world. This book shows that inequality is literally a killing field, with millions of people dying premature deaths because of it. These lethal effects of inequality operate not only in the poor world, but also, and increasingly, in rich countries, as Therborn demonstrates with data ranging from the US, the UK, Finland and elsewhere. Even when they survive inequality, millions of human lives are stunted by the humiliations and degradations of inequality linked to gender, race and ethnicity, and class. But this book is about experiences of equalization too, highlighting moments and processes of equalization in different parts of the world - from India and other parts of Asia, from the Americas, as well as from Europe. South Africa illustrates the toughest challenges. The killing fields of inequality can be avoided: this book shows how. Clear, succinct, wide-ranging in scope and empirical in its approach, this timely book by one of the worldโs leading social scientists will appeal to a wide readership.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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A Sharing Economy: How Social Wealth Funds Can Reduce Inequality and Help Balance the Books
A Sharing Economy: How Social Wealth Funds Can Reduce Inequality and Help Balance the Books
by Stewart Lansley, published in 2016
A Sharing Economy proposes radical new ways to close the UKโs growing income gap and spread social opportunities. A new social wealth fund would boost economic and social investment and simultaneously strengthen the public finances and offer a powerful antidote to austerity.
๐ Economics
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Currency Politics: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy
Currency Politics: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy
by Jeffry A. Frieden, published in 2016
The politics surrounding exchange rate policies in the global economy The exchange rate is the most important price in any economy, since it affects all other prices. Exchange rates are set, either directly or indirectly, by government policy. Exchange rates are also central to the global economy, for they profoundly influence all international economic activity. Despite the critical role of exchange rate policy, there are few definitive explanations of why governments choose the currency policies they do. Filled with in-depth cases and examples, Currency Politics presents a comprehensive analysis of the politics surrounding exchange rates. Identifying the motivations for currency policy preferences on the part of industries seeking to influence politicians, Jeffry Frieden shows how each industry's characteristicsโincluding its exposure to currency risk and the price effects of exchange rate movementsโdetermine those preferences. Frieden evaluates the accuracy of his theoretical arguments in a variety of historical and geographical settings: he looks at the politics of the gold standard, particularly in the United States, and he examines the political economy of European monetary integration. He also analyzes the politics of Latin American currency policy over the past forty years, and focuses on the daunting currency crises that have frequently debilitated Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. With an ambitious mix of narrative and statistical investigation, Currency Politics clarifies the political and economic determinants of exchange rate policies.
๐ Economics
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Our common wealth: The return of public ownership in the United States
Our common wealth: The return of public ownership in the United States
by Thomas M. Hanna, published in 2018
Public ownership is more widespread and popular in the United States than is commonly understood. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the scope and scale of U.S. public ownership, debunking frequent misconceptions about the alleged inefficiency and underperformance of public ownership and arguing that it offers powerful, flexible solutions to current problems of inequality, instability, and unsustainabilityโ explaining why after decades of privatization it is making a comeback, including in the agenda of Jeremy Corbynโs Labour Party in Britain. Hanna offers a vision of deploying new forms of democratized public ownership broadly, across multiple sectors, as a key ingredient of any next system beyond corporate capitalism. This book is a valuable, extensively researched resource that sets out the past record and future possibilities of public ownership at a time when ever more people are searching for answers.
๐ Britain and Ireland
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After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath
After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath
by James G. Carrier, published in 2016
After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath offers a thought-provoking examination of the state of contemporary anthropology, identifying key issues that have confronted the discipline in recent years and linking them to neoliberalism, and suggesting how we might do things differently in the future. The first part of the volume considers how anthropology has come to resemble, as a result of the rise of postmodern and poststructural approaches in the field, key elements of neoliberalism and neoclassical economics by rejecting the idea of system in favour of individuals. It also investigates the effect of the economic crisis on funding and support for higher education and addresses the sense that anthropology has โlost its wayโ, with uncertainty over the purpose and future of the discipline. The second part of the book explores how the discipline can overcome its difficulties and place itself on a firmer foundation, suggesting ways that we can productively combine the debates of the late twentieth century with a renewed sense that people live their lives not as individuals, but as enmeshed in webs of relationship and obligation.
๐ Economics
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Chinese Urban Design: The Typomorphological Approach
Chinese Urban Design: The Typomorphological Approach
by Fei Chen, published in 2018
The traditional Chinese city is undergoing an identity crisis. With the rapid development taking place, there is growing conflict between this new building and the existing urban heritage. An appropriate approach, both in design and in legislation, is urgently needed to deal with this problem. Furthermore, although Chinese cities have a remarkably long history, existing methods of urban form study in China are either descriptive or loosely structured, whereas a comprehensive methodology is necessary to 'read' Chinese urban forms in a consistent way, and thus inform designers and policy-makers. Chinese Urban Design targets these problems and offers an analytic and conceptual framework for both urban investigation and consequent design. Firstly summarising traditional urban design principles and how Chinese cities have transformed over time, it then introduces and offers a theoretic ground and scientific methodology for understanding the evolution of urban forms, initially developed in western countries. It demonstrates the theoretic model via real cases - from the city of Nanjing - and establishes a direct link between understanding of urban forms and design development. By providing a cross-cultural investigation on the theories and methods of urban typology and morphology, this book aims to suggest best future practice for urban design in China. It explores how urban designers and local policy-makers can produce culturally responsive designs and how they might better understand the formation and transformation of the built environment in which their creations sit. It also looks at how local residents' lifestyle, culture and demands might be reflected and respected in design process.
๐ Africa and the Middle East
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Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State
Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State
by Samuel Stein, published in 2019
โThis superbly succinct and incisive book couldnโt be more timely or urgent.โ โMichael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the worldโthe president of the United Statesโmade his name as a landlord and developer. Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life.
๐ Economics
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