James Goodman – författare

The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies provides diverse and cutting-edge perspectives on this fast-changing field. For 30 years the world has been caught in a long ‘global interregnum,’ plunging from one crisis to the next and witnessing the emergence of new, vibrant, multiple, and sometimes contradictory forms of popular resistance and politics.

This global ‘interregnum’ – or a period of uncertainty where the old hegemony is fading and the new ones have not yet been fully realized – necessitates critical self-reflection, brave intellectual speculation and (un)learning of perceived wisdoms, and greater transdisciplinary collaboration across theories, localities, and subjects. This Handbook takes up this challenge by developing fresh perspectives on globalization, development, neoliberalism, capitalism, and their progressive alternatives, addressing issues of democracy, power, inequality, insecurity, precarity, wellbeing, education, displacement, social movements, violence and war, and climate change. Throughout, it emphasizes the dynamics for system change, including bringing post-capitalist, feminist, (de)colonial, and other critical perspectives to support transformative global praxis.

This volume brings together a mixture of fresh and established scholars from across disciplines and from a range of both Northern and Southern contexts. Researchers and students from around the world and across the fields of politics, sociology, international development, international relations, geography, economics, area studies, and philosophy will find this an invaluable and fresh guide to global studies in the 21st century.

The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies provides diverse and cutting-edge perspectives on this fast-changing field. For 30 years the world has been caught in a long ‘global interregnum,’ plunging from one crisis to the next and witnessing the emergence of new, vibrant, multiple, and sometimes contradictory forms of popular resistance and politics.

This global ‘interregnum’ – or a period of uncertainty where the old hegemony is fading and the new ones have not yet been fully realized – necessitates critical self-reflection, brave intellectual speculation and (un)learning of perceived wisdoms, and greater transdisciplinary collaboration across theories, localities, and subjects. This Handbook takes up this challenge by developing fresh perspectives on globalization, development, neoliberalism, capitalism, and their progressive alternatives, addressing issues of democracy, power, inequality, insecurity, precarity, wellbeing, education, displacement, social movements, violence and war, and climate change. Throughout, it emphasizes the dynamics for system change, including bringing post-capitalist, feminist, (de)colonial, and other critical perspectives to support transformative global praxis.

This volume brings together a mixture of fresh and established scholars from across disciplines and from a range of both Northern and Southern contexts. Researchers and students from around the world and across the fields of politics, sociology, international development, international relations, geography, economics, area studies, and philosophy will find this an invaluable and fresh guide to global studies in the 21st century.

“I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say, whoa, hold on, wait a minute. We made a deal, remember, the land, the blessing, the nation, the descendants as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.” So begins James Goodman’s original and urgent encounter with one of the most compelling and resonant stories ever told—God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A mere nineteen lines in the book of Genesis, it rests at the heart of the history, literature, theology, and sacred rituals of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For more than two millennia, people throughout the world have grappled with the troubling questions about sacrifice, authority, obedience, and faith to which the story gives rise. Writing from the vantage of “a reader, a son, a Jew, a father, a skeptic, a historian, a lover of stories, and a writer,” Goodman gives us an enthralling narrative history that moves from its biblical origins to its place in the cultures and faiths of our time. He introduces us to the commentary of Second Temple sages, rabbis and priests of the late antiquity, and early Islamic exegetes (some of whom imagined that Ishmael was the nearly sacrificed son). He examines Syriac hymns (in which Sarah stars), Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade (in which Isaac often dies), and medieval English mystery plays. He looks at the art of Europe’s golden age, the philosophy of Kant and Kierkegaard, and the panoply of twentieth-century interpretation, sacred and profane, including the work of Bob Dylan, Elie Wiesel, and A. B. Yehoshua. In illuminating how so many others have understood this story, Goodman tells a gripping and provocative story of his own.

What are the democratic requirements for effective climate action? how can ‘climate democracy’ be conceptualised?

Liberal democracies emerged on the back of fossil fuels, creating what Tim Mitchell called ‘carbon democracy’. Three decades of climate policy have affirmed the controlling influence of fossil fuel interests. Runaway climate change now threatens the very foundations of social life. Today we face a very clear democratic question, of whether the fossil fuel sector has the right to determine the planet’s climate future. Achieving global energy transformation at the scope and scale needed requires a democratic transformation, to overcome the stranglehold. This book examines these requirements. It debates the political constituencies, agendas and institutions that are emerging from climate crisis, comparing evidence of emergent themes. New claims are emerging, for ‘green deals’, ‘climate justice’, ‘energy justice’, ‘energy democracy’ and ‘de-growth’, reflecting a new intensity of contestation as climate change impacts deepen.

This book will be of great relevance to students, researchers and policymakers with an interest in comparative politics, democracy studies, climate change and environmental policies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

What are the democratic requirements for effective climate action? how can ‘climate democracy’ be conceptualised?

Liberal democracies emerged on the back of fossil fuels, creating what Tim Mitchell called ‘carbon democracy’. Three decades of climate policy have affirmed the controlling influence of fossil fuel interests. Runaway climate change now threatens the very foundations of social life. Today we face a very clear democratic question, of whether the fossil fuel sector has the right to determine the planet’s climate future. Achieving global energy transformation at the scope and scale needed requires a democratic transformation, to overcome the stranglehold. This book examines these requirements. It debates the political constituencies, agendas and institutions that are emerging from climate crisis, comparing evidence of emergent themes. New claims are emerging, for ‘green deals’, ‘climate justice’, ‘energy justice’, ‘energy democracy’ and ‘de-growth’, reflecting a new intensity of contestation as climate change impacts deepen.

This book will be of great relevance to students, researchers and policymakers with an interest in comparative politics, democracy studies, climate change and environmental policies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Even in the face of neoliberal globalization, nationalism remains a significant political force. The leading contributors to this new volume explore the extent to which nationalism can be a foundation for alternative solidarities. Against the axiom that with globalization ‘all that is solid melts into air,’ this anthology debates the extent to which different forms of solidarity remain viable - from the solidarities of local political groups to the solidarities of nationalism, internationalism and alternative globalisms.

Organized into three sections, the book addresses the relationship between the contemporary formations of nationalism, globalism and solidarity movements:

Offering the first detailed study of the relationship between globalization and nationalism, Nationalism and Global Solidarities will be of strong interest to students and scholars of politics, sociology and international political economy.

Even in the face of neoliberal globalization, nationalism remains a significant political force. The leading contributors to this new volume explore the extent to which nationalism can be a foundation for alternative solidarities. Against the axiom that with globalization ‘all that is solid melts into air,’ this anthology debates the extent to which different forms of solidarity remain viable - from the solidarities of local political groups to the solidarities of nationalism, internationalism and alternative globalisms.

Organized into three sections, the book addresses the relationship between the contemporary formations of nationalism, globalism and solidarity movements:

Offering the first detailed study of the relationship between globalization and nationalism, Nationalism and Global Solidarities will be of strong interest to students and scholars of politics, sociology and international political economy.

Globalised neo-liberalism has produced multiple crises – social, ecological, political. In the past, crises of global order have generated large-scale social transformations, and the current crises likewise hold a transformative promise. Social movements become a crucial barometer, in signalling both the demise and rise of political formations and programs. Elite strategies, framed as crisis management, create their own disordering side-effects. Experiments in movement strategy gain greater significance, as do contending elite efforts at repressing, managing or displacing the fall-out. In this book we investigate both movements and management in the face of crisis, taking crisis and unanticipated consequences as a normal state-of-play. The book enquires into the winners and losers from crisis, and investigates the movement-management nexus as it unfolds in particular localities as well as in broader contexts.

The book deals with some of the most pressing conflicts of our time, and produces a range of theoretical insights: the ubiquity of crisis is seen as not only a hallmark of social life, but a way into a different kind of social analysis.

This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Globalised neo-liberalism has produced multiple crises – social, ecological, political. In the past, crises of global order have generated large-scale social transformations, and the current crises likewise hold a transformative promise. Social movements become a crucial barometer, in signalling both the demise and rise of political formations and programs. Elite strategies, framed as crisis management, create their own disordering side-effects. Experiments in movement strategy gain greater significance, as do contending elite efforts at repressing, managing or displacing the fall-out. In this book we investigate both movements and management in the face of crisis, taking crisis and unanticipated consequences as a normal state-of-play. The book enquires into the winners and losers from crisis, and investigates the movement-management nexus as it unfolds in particular localities as well as in broader contexts.

The book deals with some of the most pressing conflicts of our time, and produces a range of theoretical insights: the ubiquity of crisis is seen as not only a hallmark of social life, but a way into a different kind of social analysis.

This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

In the late 2000s climate action became a defining feature of the international political agenda. Evidence of global warming and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions created a new sense of urgency and, despite consensus on the need for action, the growing failure of international climate policy engendered new political space for social movements. By 2007 a ‘climate justice’ movement was surfacing and developing a strong critique of existing official climate policies and engaging in new forms of direct action to assert the need for reduced extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Climate Action Upsurge offers an insight into this important period in climate movement politics, drawing on the perspectives of activists who were directly engaged in the mobilisation process. Through the interpretation of these perspectives the book illustrates important lessons for the climate movement today. In developing its examination of the climate action upsurge, the book focuses on individual activists involved in direct action ‘Climate Camps’ in Australia, while drawing comparisons and highlighting links with climate campaigns in other locales.

The book should be of interest to scholars and researchers in climate change, environmental sociology, politics, policy and activism.

In the late 2000s climate action became a defining feature of the international political agenda. Evidence of global warming and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions created a new sense of urgency and, despite consensus on the need for action, the growing failure of international climate policy engendered new political space for social movements. By 2007 a ‘climate justice’ movement was surfacing and developing a strong critique of existing official climate policies and engaging in new forms of direct action to assert the need for reduced extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Climate Action Upsurge offers an insight into this important period in climate movement politics, drawing on the perspectives of activists who were directly engaged in the mobilisation process. Through the interpretation of these perspectives the book illustrates important lessons for the climate movement today. In developing its examination of the climate action upsurge, the book focuses on individual activists involved in direct action ‘Climate Camps’ in Australia, while drawing comparisons and highlighting links with climate campaigns in other locales.

The book should be of interest to scholars and researchers in climate change, environmental sociology, politics, policy and activism.