Theory for a Global Age - Böcker

This book thinks through modernity and its representations by exploring critical considerations of time and space. Drawing on anthropology, history and social theory, it investigates the oppositions and enchantments, the contradictions and contentions, and the identities and ambivalences spawned under modernity. Crucially, it understands these antinomies not as errors, but as constitutive elements of modern worlds.The book questions routine portrayals of homogeneous time and antinomian blueprints of cultural space, while acknowledging the production of time and space by social subjects. Instead of assuming a straightforward, singular trajectory for the phenomena, it views modernity as involving checkered, contingent and contended processes of meaning and power, which have found heterogeneous historical elaborations over the past five centuries. Bringing together past and present, theory and narrative, it sows the historical, ethnographic and methodological deep into its critical procedures, offering an innovative understanding of cultural identities and imaginatively exploring the relationship between history and anthropology.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This book argues that the Caribbean frontier, usually assumed to have been eclipsed after colonial conquest, remains a powerful but unrecognised element of Caribbean island culture. Combining analytical and creative genres of writing, it explores historical and contemporary patterns of frontier change through a case study of the little-known Eastern Caribbean multi-island state of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Modern frontier traits are located in the wandering woodcutter, the squatter on government land and the mountainside ganja grower. But the frontier is also identified as part of global production that has shaped island tourism, the financial sector and patterns of migration.

This book argues that the Caribbean frontier, usually assumed to have been eclipsed after colonial conquest, remains a powerful but unrecognised element of Caribbean island culture. Combining analytical and creative genres of writing, it explores historical and contemporary patterns of frontier change through a case study of the little-known Eastern Caribbean multi-island state of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Modern frontier traits are located in the wandering woodcutter, the squatter on government land and the mountainside ganja grower. But the frontier is also identified as part of global production that has shaped island tourism, the financial sector and patterns of migration.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This is the first book to situate the territories and collective identities of former Yugoslavia within the politics of race – not just ethnicity – and the history of how ideas of racialised difference have been translated globally. The book connects critical race scholarship, global historical sociologies of ‘race in translation’ and south-east European cultural critique to show that the Yugoslav region is deeply embedded in global formations of race. In doing this, it considers the everyday geopolitical imagination of popular culture; the history of ethnicity, nationhood and migration; transnational formations of race before and during state socialism, including the Non-Aligned Movement; and post-Yugoslav discourses of security, migration, terrorism and international intervention, including the War on Terror and the present refugee crisis.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This is the first book to situate the territories and collective identities of former Yugoslavia within the politics of race – not just ethnicity – and the history of how ideas of racialised difference have been translated globally. The book connects critical race scholarship, global historical sociologies of ‘race in translation’ and south-east European cultural critique to show that the Yugoslav region is deeply embedded in global formations of race. In doing this, it considers the everyday geopolitical imagination of popular culture; the history of ethnicity, nationhood and migration; transnational formations of race before and during state socialism, including the Non-Aligned Movement; and post-Yugoslav discourses of security, migration, terrorism and international intervention, including the War on Terror and the present refugee crisis.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This innovative study engages critically with existing conceptualisations of diaspora, arguing that if diaspora is to have analytical purchase, it should illuminate a specific angle of migration or migrancy. To reveal the much-needed transformative potential of the concept, the book looks specifically at how diasporas undertake translation and decolonisation. It offers various conceptual tools for investigating diaspora, with a specific focus on diasporas in the Global North and a detailed empirical study of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The book also considers the backlash diasporas of colour have faced in the Global North.

This book thinks through modernity and its representations by exploring critical considerations of time and space. Drawing on anthropology, history and social theory, it investigates the oppositions and enchantments, the contradictions and contentions, and the identities and ambivalences spawned under modernity. Crucially, it understands these antinomies not as errors, but as constitutive elements of modern worlds.The book questions routine portrayals of homogeneous time and antinomian blueprints of cultural space, while acknowledging the production of time and space by social subjects. Instead of assuming a straightforward, singular trajectory for the phenomena, it views modernity as involving checkered, contingent and contended processes of meaning and power, which have found heterogeneous historical elaborations over the past five centuries. Bringing together past and present, theory and narrative, it sows the historical, ethnographic and methodological deep into its critical procedures, offering an innovative understanding of cultural identities and imaginatively exploring the relationship between history and anthropology.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This book argues that John Dewey should be read not as a 'local' American thinker but rather as a philosopher of globalisation. Although his work is rooted in late-nineteenth and early twentieth century America, its principal concern is with the role of the United States in a globalised world. Tracing Dewey’s emergence as a global democrat through an examination of his work from The Public and Its Problems (1927) onward, the book shows how he sets out an evolutionary form of global and national democracy, one that has not been fully appreciated even by contemporary scholars of pragmatism. In returning to and recovering this neglected dimension of Dewey's political philosophy, the book highlights how his insights about globalisation and democracy can inform present theoretical debates.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This book presents a socio-legal enquiry into the civic marginalisation of Roma in Europe. Instead of looking only at Roma’s position as migrants, an ethnic minority or a socio-economically disadvantage group, it considers them as European citizens, questioning why they are typically used to describe exceptionalities of citizenship in developed liberal democracies rather than as evidence for how problematic the conceptualisation of citizenship is at its core. Developing novel theoretical concepts, the book investigates a variety of topics including migration and free movement, statelessness and school segregation. It argues that while Roma are unique as a minority, the treatment that marginalises them is not. This is demonstrated by comparing their position to that of other marginalised minorities around the globe.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

Bordering intimacy explores the interconnected role of borders and dominant forms of family intimacy in the governance of postcolonial states. Combining a historical investigation with postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the book reveals how the border policies of the British and other European empires have been reinvented for the twenty-first century through appeals to protect and sustain ‘family life’ – appeals that serve to justify and obfuscate the continued organisation of racialised violence. The book examines the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government, including family visa regimes, the policing of ‘sham marriages’, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics and integration policy.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

This book documents the political and cosmological processes through which the idea of ‘total territorial rule’ came into being in the context of early- to mid-nineteenth-century Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Analysing ideas at the core of the modern international system, Pluriversal sovereignty and the state develops a decolonial theoretical framework informed by a ‘pluriverse’ of multiple ontologies of sovereignty to argue that the territorial state itself is an outcome of imperial globalisation.Anti-colonialism up to the middle of the nineteenth century was grounded in genealogies and practices of sovereignty that developed in many localities. By the second half of the century, however, the global state system and the states within it were forming through colonising and anti-colonising vectors. By focusing on the ontological conflicts that shaped the state and empire, we can rethink the birth of the British Raj and locate it in Ceylon some 50 years earlier than in India. In this way, the book makes a theoretical contribution to postcolonial and decolonial studies in globalisation and international relations by considering the ontological significance of ‘total territorial rule’ as it emerged historically in Ceylon.Through emphasising one important manifestation of modernity and coloniality — the territorial state — the book contributes to studies in the politics of ontological pluralism in sovereignty, postcolonial and decolonial international studies, and globalisation through colonial encounters.

De-centering queer theory seeks to reorient queer theory to a different conception of bodies and sexuality derived from Eastern European Marxism. The book articulates a contrast between the concept of the productive body, which draws its epistemology from Soviet and avant-garde theorists, and Cold War gender, which is defined as the social construction of the body. The first part of the book concentrates on the theoretical and visual production of Eastern European Marxism, which proposed an alternative version of sexuality to that of western liberalism. In doing so it offers a historical angle to understand the emergence not only of an alternative epistemology, but also of queer theory’s vocabulary. The second part of the book provides a Marxist, anti-capitalist archive for queer studies, which often neglects to engage critically with its liberal and Cold War underpinnings.

Bordering intimacy explores the interconnected role of borders and dominant forms of family intimacy in the governance of postcolonial states. Combining a historical investigation with postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the book reveals how the border policies of the British and other European empires have been reinvented for the twenty-first century through appeals to protect and sustain ‘family life’ – appeals that serve to justify and obfuscate the continued organisation of racialised violence. The book examines the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government, including family visa regimes, the policing of ‘sham marriages’, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics and integration policy.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

The book outlines the sociological arguments and political activities of the US pragmatist sociologist, Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875-1951). Miller was part of the milieu of Chicago sociology and involved in its studies of race and immigration. He took a distinctly more radical approach and developed a novel political sociology of domination in which he set out a critique of empires, the plight of subject minorities and the risks associated with the inevitable nationalist responses. Where others have identified with the ‘internationalisation’ of nationalism, Miller sought to make the nation ‘international’. He was actively involved in movements for racial justice, Czechoslovakian independence, the formation of the Mid-European Union of subject peoples, as well as support for Korean and Indian independence. He was dismissed by Ohio State University for his activism in 1932.

This book presents a socio-legal enquiry into the civic marginalisation of Roma in Europe. Instead of looking only at Roma’s position as migrants, an ethnic minority or a socio-economically disadvantage group, it considers them as European citizens, questioning why they are typically used to describe exceptionalities of citizenship in developed liberal democracies rather than as evidence for how problematic the conceptualisation of citizenship is at its core. Developing novel theoretical concepts, the book investigates a variety of topics including migration and free movement, statelessness and school segregation. It argues that while Roma are unique as a minority, the treatment that marginalises them is not. This is demonstrated by comparing their position to that of other marginalised minorities around the globe.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

De-centering queer theory seeks to reorient queer theory to a different conception of bodies and sexuality derived from Eastern European Marxism. The book articulates a contrast between the concept of the productive body, which draws its epistemology from Soviet and avant-garde theorists, and Cold War gender, which is defined as the social construction of the body. The first part of the book concentrates on the theoretical and visual production of Eastern European Marxism, which proposed an alternative version of sexuality to that of western liberalism. In doing so it offers a historical angle to understand the emergence not only of an alternative epistemology, but also of queer theory’s vocabulary. The second part of the book provides a Marxist, anti-capitalist archive for queer studies, which often neglects to engage critically with its liberal and Cold War underpinnings.

This innovative study engages critically with existing conceptualisations of diaspora, arguing that if diaspora is to have analytical purchase, it should illuminate a specific angle of migration or migrancy. To reveal the much-needed transformative potential of the concept, the book looks specifically at how diasporas undertake translation and decolonisation. It offers various conceptual tools for investigating diaspora, with a specific focus on diasporas in the Global North and a detailed empirical study of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The book also considers the backlash diasporas of colour have faced in the Global North.

This book documents the political and cosmological processes through which the idea of ‘total territorial rule’ came into being in the context of early- to mid-nineteenth-century Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Analysing ideas at the core of the modern international system, Pluriversal sovereignty and the state develops a decolonial theoretical framework informed by a ‘pluriverse’ of multiple ontologies of sovereignty to argue that the territorial state itself is an outcome of imperial globalisation.Anti-colonialism up to the middle of the nineteenth century was grounded in genealogies and practices of sovereignty that developed in many localities. By the second half of the century, however, the global state system and the states within it were forming through colonising and anti-colonising vectors. By focusing on the ontological conflicts that shaped the state and empire, we can rethink the birth of the British Raj and locate it in Ceylon some 50 years earlier than in India. In this way, the book makes a theoretical contribution to postcolonial and decolonial studies in globalisation and international relations by considering the ontological significance of ‘total territorial rule’ as it emerged historically in Ceylon.Through emphasising one important manifestation of modernity and coloniality — the territorial state — the book contributes to studies in the politics of ontological pluralism in sovereignty, postcolonial and decolonial international studies, and globalisation through colonial encounters.

Romani women at the edge of neoliberal Europe explores how Romani women navigate racialized poverty, gendered inequality, and neoliberal restructuring across Europe. Based on long-term ethnographic research, it argues that EU inclusion frameworks – despite promises of emancipation – often reproduce structural violence, limiting political, social, and economic possibilities. Through case studies from Hungary and beyond, the book examines paradoxes of activism, strategies of survival, and the emotional and political labor required in hostile institutional landscapes. It highlights how women transform marginality into resistance and solidarity, calling for a reimagined vision of inclusion grounded in justice and lived realities.

This book argues that John Dewey should be read not as a 'local' American thinker but rather as a philosopher of globalisation. Although his work is rooted in late-nineteenth and early twentieth century America, its principal concern is with the role of the United States in a globalised world. Tracing Dewey’s emergence as a global democrat through an examination of his work from The Public and Its Problems (1927) onward, the book shows how he sets out an evolutionary form of global and national democracy, one that has not been fully appreciated even by contemporary scholars of pragmatism. In returning to and recovering this neglected dimension of Dewey's political philosophy, the book highlights how his insights about globalisation and democracy can inform present theoretical debates.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

Debt as power is a timely and innovative contribution to our understanding of one of the most prescient issues of our time: the explosion of debt across the global economy and related requirement of political leaders to pursue exponential growth to meet the demands of creditors and investors. The book is distinctive in offering a historically sensitive and comprehensive analysis of debt as an interconnected and global phenomenon.An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.