Ronnie D. Lipschutz - Böcker

As memories of the Cold War recede, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what it was about and why it evoked such feelings of intensity and fatalism. Fortunately, we have a gold mine of movies and novels to help us recall why an entire generation of Americans grew up ducking under school desks in air raid drills and stocking the family bomb shelter. Cold War Fantasies retrieves those times, based on the idea that a nation's history, self-concept, and collective anxiety are reflected in popular culture. In Cold War Fantasies, Ronnie Lipschutz combines an historical account of foreign and domestic politics from 1945 to 1995 with summaries and analyses of thirty novels and films contemporaneously published and produced. Lipschutz rejects the standard line on the Cold War and critically examines the impacts and effects of language and images on politics. Viewing those films and reading those novels enables the reader to come away with a clearer sense of how people felt during the Cold War period—about themselves, about 'the enemy,' and about the world while living in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

What does The Dark Knight have to do with political economy or Lord of the Flies with capitalism? A great deal, argues Ronnie D. Lipschutz in this entertaining and enlightening guide to basic concepts and practices in capitalism, neoclassical economics, and political economy. As he convincingly illustrates, film and fiction occupy a dual role in today's economy. They are the products of the economy, designed and presented as commodities to be sold in great quantities even as they serve to reproduce social beliefs and practices (e.g., torture comes to be seen as a routine and necessary means of extracting intelligence from suspects). Drawing on film and fiction from the past sixty years, Lipschutz describes and analyzes their essential role in the production and reproduction of contemporary society. His thoughtful and imaginative critique will bring to life the concepts and practices of economics and political economy for all readers.

What does The Dark Knight have to do with political economy or Lord of the Flies with capitalism? A great deal, argues Ronnie D. Lipschutz in this entertaining and enlightening guide to basic concepts and practices in capitalism, neoclassical economics, and political economy. As he convincingly illustrates, film and fiction occupy a dual role in today's economy. They are the products of the economy, designed and presented as commodities to be sold in great quantities even as they serve to reproduce social beliefs and practices (e.g., torture comes to be seen as a routine and necessary means of extracting intelligence from suspects). Drawing on film and fiction from the past sixty years, Lipschutz describes and analyzes their essential role in the production and reproduction of contemporary society. His thoughtful and imaginative critique will bring to life the concepts and practices of economics and political economy for all readers.

This volume offers an historical and comparative overview of the literature, theory, practices and critiques of what has been variously labelled 'global' or 'transnational' civil society, which includes a broad range of non-state actors, political, social and economic. The volume includes an introductory essay that historicizes and problematizes the relationship of society to state and market and contextualizes the pieces in the volume, while locating the literature in relationship to international relations, political science and sociology.

Explores the growing role of global civil society and local environmental activism in the management and protection of the environment worldwide.What will it take to protect the global environment? In this book, Ronnie D. Lipschutz argues that neither world government nor green economics can do the job. Governmental regulations often are resisted by those whose behavior they are intended to change, and markets-even green ones-look to profits more than to protection. What will be needed, Lipschutz believes, is not global management but political action through community- and place-based organizations and projects. People acting together locally can have a cumulative impact on environmental quality that is significant, long lasting, and widespread.The comparative case studies of environmental activism in Northern California, Hungary, and Indonesia (the latter written by Judith Mayer) illustrate one of the central premises of this book: that local action is linked increasingly to globe-spanning networks of knowledge and practice, in what Lipschutz calls global civil society. The result is a system of governance that is both local and global, to which states and international organizations are turning increasingly for help and advice.

Examines the troubled modern nation–state and reflects on the "end" of authority, sovereignty, and national security, and the implications of that end in the coming decades.After Authority offers an overview of the evolving international political "revolution," a historical perspective based on Lipschutz's writings over the years. It also examines the prospects for war and peace in the twenty-first century. During earlier "industrial revolutions," long-standing and apparently stable patterns of social behavior, economic exchange, and political authority came under challenge. Today, post World War Two institutions that were formed to create a peaceful, economically-prosperous world, are under severe challenge by globalization, liberalization, and social innovation. Old hierarchies of power and wealth have been undermined as people take advantage of new economic and political opportunities, and the resulting disruption of expectations leads to fear, uncertainty, instability, and violence.

This book argues that environmental problems are, first and foremost, political and, therefore, about power. Using a framework of political economy and political ecology, the authors deconstruct current environmental problems to identify root causes and address those problems through mobilization of collective action and social power. The second edition also offers:•Updated examples and stories of political struggles and the actors involved•Explicit attention to various forms of power in environmental politics, including structural and social power•Local politics and collective action as related to global environmental politics•Discussion of emerging issues such as synthetic biology; commodification and financialization of nature, including carbon markets; and geoengineering

This book argues that environmental problems are, first and foremost, political and, therefore, about power. Using a framework of political economy and political ecology, the authors deconstruct current environmental problems to identify root causes and address those problems through mobilization of collective action and social power. The second edition also offers:•Updated examples and stories of political struggles and the actors involved•Explicit attention to various forms of power in environmental politics, including structural and social power•Local politics and collective action as related to global environmental politics•Discussion of emerging issues such as synthetic biology; commodification and financialization of nature, including carbon markets; and geoengineering

Traditional views of global environmental politics take the structures and relations of international politics as a given. Solutions to environmental problems, then, must be products of concession, negotiation, and inevitable compromise—a world of top-down planetary management. Lipschutz challenges students to question these conventional approaches. He argues that much light can be shed on global environmental degradation if we look beyond the politics of conflict and cooperation and explore environmental problems from their very "roots."

Using a framework that accounts for the ontologies, material conditions, and power relations that structure global environmental problems, Lipschutz is able to more effectively question attempts to clean up the globe and sustain the world's natural resources. Throughout the text, the author uses compelling cases to illustrate the effects of globalization and capitalism, yet is careful to make the link between the local and the global to show how we, as individuals, are both consumers of goods and producers of pollution.

A powerful new approach

How is the financing of a water system in Bolivia linked to long-standing forestation practices in India?Taking nothing for granted, the root causes of major global environmental problems are exposed and subjected to rigorous analysis. Lipschutz shows, for instance, how privatization operates in different global contexts with strikingly similar consequences.In what ways are liberalism and realism actually two sides of the same coin?Both make self-interest—of the individual and of the state—key operating terms. In a revealing comparison, Lipschutz explores the limits of these dominant political models to effectively frame and solve environmental problems.What kinds of political, social, and environmental practices bring about meaningful change?By emphasizing the global impacts of local actions, the text shows how attempts to control environmental problems may actually reproduce the very systems they are meant to ameliorate.

Combined with practical pedagogy

Rich historical background helps contextualize contemporary issues.Extensive suggested reading lists at the end of each chapter guide students to further research, while tables and figures elegantly show data and concepts.The emphasis on assessing the root causes of global environmental problems and models encourages critical thinking. Students are also encouraged to rethink their own role in the global environmental system and to get involved in effective forms of social change.

The title of this book is a play upon several important concepts and forces in the ongoing debate about American empire. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration and its counsels in the U.S. Department of Justice have been both constituting an empire of American hegemony and, in so doing, violating the spirit and the law of the American Constitution at home and abroad. The U.S. Constitution has been doing work in the "nonsovereign" spaces of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad, and CIA black detention sites around the world. The reach of this constitution is becoming visible in National Security Agency surveillance and data mining of electronic communications between the United States and the rest of the world and in a myriad of other regulatory and legal demands made by the United States both of its citizens and of those living in and traveling among other countries. And, in testing the limits of its wished-for powers, the Bush administration seeks to constitute an imperium that, by its own definition, would be nowhere subject to the long-assumed checks of either the U.S. Constitution, Congress, the courts, or international law, for it operates outside of the boundaries of American sovereignty in defiance of the international community and the United Nations, and in violation of the law of nations. This book is the latest and perhaps sharpest entry in the burgeoning literature of American empire since Hardt and Negri. Its focus on the legal and institutional aspects of empire sets it apart from the literature on this subject.