Samuel Chambers – författare

William E. Connolly’s writings have pushed the leading edge of political theory, first in North America and then in Europe as well, for more than two decades now. This book draws on his numerous influential books and articles to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of his significant contribution to the field of political theory.

The book focuses in particular on three key areas of his thinking:

William E. Connolly’s writings have pushed the leading edge of political theory, first in North America and then in Europe as well, for more than two decades now. This book draws on his numerous influential books and articles to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of his significant contribution to the field of political theory.

The book focuses in particular on three key areas of his thinking:

Over the past twenty-five years the work of Judith Butler has had an extraordinary impact on numerous disciplines and interdisciplinary projects across the humanities and social sciences. This original study is the first to take a thematic approach to Butler as a political thinker. Starting with an explanation of her terms of analysis, Judith Butler and Political Theory develops Butler’s theory of the political through an exploration of her politics of troubling given categories and approaches. By developing concepts such as normative violence and subversion and by elaborating her critique of heteronormativity, this book moves deftly between Butler’s earliest and most famous writings on gender and her more recent interventions in post-9/11 politics.

This book, along with its companion volume, Judith Butler''s Precarious Politics, marks an intellectual event for political theory, with major implications for feminism, women’s studies, gender studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, queer theory and anyone with a critical interest in contemporary American ‘great power’ politics.

Over the past twenty-five years the work of Judith Butler has had an extraordinary impact on numerous disciplines and interdisciplinary projects across the humanities and social sciences. This original study is the first to take a thematic approach to Butler as a political thinker. Starting with an explanation of her terms of analysis, Judith Butler and Political Theory develops Butler’s theory of the political through an exploration of her politics of troubling given categories and approaches. By developing concepts such as normative violence and subversion and by elaborating her critique of heteronormativity, this book moves deftly between Butler’s earliest and most famous writings on gender and her more recent interventions in post-9/11 politics.

This book, along with its companion volume, Judith Butler''s Precarious Politics, marks an intellectual event for political theory, with major implications for feminism, women’s studies, gender studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, queer theory and anyone with a critical interest in contemporary American ‘great power’ politics.

Michael J. Shapiro’s writings have been innovatory with respect to the phenomena he has taken to be political, and the concomitant array of methods that he has brilliantly mastered. This book draws from his vast output of articles, chapters and books to provide a thematic yet integrated account of his boundary-crossing innovations in political theory and masterly contributions to our understanding of methods in the social sciences. The editors have focused on work in three key areas:

Discourse

Shapiro was one of the first theorists to demonstrate convincingly, and in a manner that has had a long-standing impact on the field, that language is not epiphenomenal to politics. Indeed, he shows that language is constitutive of politics. From his frequently-cited article on metaphor from the early 1980s to recent work on discourse and globalization, Shapiro has shown that politics happens not only with and through the use of language, but within discourse as a material practice.

Culture

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s (1963) famous work on ‘The Civic Culture’ established a long-held but ultimately counterproductive relationship between culture and politics, one in which culture is an independent variable that has effects on politics. Samuel Huntington’s (1998) (in)famous polemic, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, only pushes this relationship to its breaking point. Shapiro’s rich and numerous writings on culture provide a powerful and important antidote to this approach, as Shapiro consistently shows (across wide-ranging contexts) that politics is in culture and culture is in politics, and no politically salient approach to culture can afford to turn either term into a causal variable.

Violence

While violence is surely not a theme foreign to political studies, no one has done more or better work in contemporary political theory to bring violence into play as a central term of political thought and to expand our understanding of violence. By reconceptualizing and reinterpreting this term, Shapiro’s work has helped us to rethink the very boundaries between political theory and international relations as putatively separate subfields of political science. And it explains why both political theorists interested in International Relations and International Relations scholars concerned with a broader understanding of international politics must both start with Shapiro’s work as required reading.

Michael J. Shapiro’s writings have been innovatory with respect to the phenomena he has taken to be political, and the concomitant array of methods that he has brilliantly mastered. This book draws from his vast output of articles, chapters and books to provide a thematic yet integrated account of his boundary-crossing innovations in political theory and masterly contributions to our understanding of methods in the social sciences. The editors have focused on work in three key areas:

Discourse

Shapiro was one of the first theorists to demonstrate convincingly, and in a manner that has had a long-standing impact on the field, that language is not epiphenomenal to politics. Indeed, he shows that language is constitutive of politics. From his frequently-cited article on metaphor from the early 1980s to recent work on discourse and globalization, Shapiro has shown that politics happens not only with and through the use of language, but within discourse as a material practice.

Culture

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s (1963) famous work on ‘The Civic Culture’ established a long-held but ultimately counterproductive relationship between culture and politics, one in which culture is an independent variable that has effects on politics. Samuel Huntington’s (1998) (in)famous polemic, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, only pushes this relationship to its breaking point. Shapiro’s rich and numerous writings on culture provide a powerful and important antidote to this approach, as Shapiro consistently shows (across wide-ranging contexts) that politics is in culture and culture is in politics, and no politically salient approach to culture can afford to turn either term into a causal variable.

Violence

While violence is surely not a theme foreign to political studies, no one has done more or better work in contemporary political theory to bring violence into play as a central term of political thought and to expand our understanding of violence. By reconceptualizing and reinterpreting this term, Shapiro’s work has helped us to rethink the very boundaries between political theory and international relations as putatively separate subfields of political science. And it explains why both political theorists interested in International Relations and International Relations scholars concerned with a broader understanding of international politics must both start with Shapiro’s work as required reading.

Carole Pateman’s writings have been innovatory precisely for their qualities of engagement, pursued at the height of intellectual rigour. This book draws from her vast output of articles, chapters, books and speeches to provide a thematic yet integrated account of her innovations in political theory and contributions to the politics of policy-making. The editors have focused on work in three key areas:

Democracy

Pateman’s perspective is rooted in a practical perspective, enquiring into and speculating about forms of participation over and above the ‘traditional’ exclusions through which representative systems have been variously constructed over time. Her work pushes hard on theorists and politicians who make easy assumptions about apathy and public opinion, who bracket off the workplace and the home, and who see politics only in partisan activity, voter behaviour and governmental policy.

Women

Pateman’s innovatory and still-cited work on participation antedates the feminist revolution in political theory and many of the practical struggles that developed through the later 1970s. While woman-centred, her concerns were always worked through larger conceptions of social class, economic advantage, power differentials, ‘liberal’ individualism and contracts including marriage. Her feminism was innovative in political theory, and within feminism itself. As a feminist Pateman defies categorization, and her concepts of ‘the sexual contract’ and ‘Wollstonecraft’s dilemma’ are canonical.

Welfare

Pateman’s innovation here is an integration of welfare issues – in particular the proposals for a ‘basic income’ or for a ‘capital stake’ – into her broad but always rigorous conception of democracy. This is argued through in terms of citizenship, taken as the result of a social contract. In that way Pateman puts liberalism itself through an imminent critique, drawing in the practicalities and risks of life in late capitalist societies. Her theory as always is political, taking in neo-liberal attacks on ‘welfare states’ and the stark realities of international inequalities. Pateman’s career achievements in democratic and feminist theory are brought productively to bear on debates that would otherwise occur in more limited, and less provocative, academic and political contexts.