Political Evil in a Global Age

Political Evil in a Global Age
Author: Patrick Hayden
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2009-01-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134057938

This volume uses elements of Arendt’s theory to engage with four distinctive political problems connected with contemporary globalization: genocide, global poverty, refugees and the domination of the public realm by neoliberal economic globalization.

Political Evil

Political Evil
Author: Alan Wolfe
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307271854

A leading political scientist identifies "political evil" as wrongdoing perpetrated by individuals with specific political goals, cites specific examples throughout the world and explains that important changes can be initiated through adjustments in how political evil is treated.

The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age

The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age
Author: Daniel Levy
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781592132768

Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider examine the forms that collective memory take in the age of globalisation. They explore how the Holocaust has been remembered in Germany, Israel and the US over the past 50 years and demonstrate how this event has become detached from its precise context.

Marking Evil

Marking Evil
Author: Amos Goldberg
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782386203

Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.

The Lesser Evil

The Lesser Evil
Author: Michael Ignatieff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2005-09-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691123934

Must we fight terrorism with terror, match assassination with assassination, and torture with torture? Must we sacrifice civil liberty to protect public safety? In the age of terrorism, the temptations of ruthlessness can be overwhelming. But we are pulled in the other direction too by the anxiety that a violent response to violence makes us morally indistinguishable from our enemies. There is perhaps no greater political challenge today than trying to win the war against terror without losing our democratic souls. Michael Ignatieff confronts this challenge head-on, with the combination of hard-headed idealism, historical sensitivity, and political judgment that has made him one of the most influential voices in international affairs today. Ignatieff argues that we must not shrink from the use of violence--that far from undermining liberal democracy, force can be necessary for its survival. But its use must be measured, not a program of torture and revenge. And we must not fool ourselves that whatever we do in the name of freedom and democracy is good. We may need to kill to fight the greater evil of terrorism, but we must never pretend that doing so is anything better than a lesser evil. In making this case, Ignatieff traces the modern history of terrorism and counter-terrorism, from the nihilists of Czarist Russia and the militias of Weimar Germany to the IRA and the unprecedented menace of Al Qaeda, with its suicidal agents bent on mass destruction. He shows how the most potent response to terror has been force, decisive and direct, but--just as important--restrained. The public scrutiny and political ethics that motivate restraint also give democracy its strongest weapon: the moral power to endure when the furies of vengeance and hatred are spent. The book is based on the Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2003.

Age of Anger

Age of Anger
Author: Pankaj Mishra
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2017-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374715823

A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 • Named a Best Book of the Year by Slate and NPR • Longlisted for the Orwell Prize One of our most important public intellectuals reveals the hidden history of our current global crisis How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world—from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century before leading us to the present. He shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises—of freedom, stability, and prosperity—were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world—or were left, or pushed, behind—reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: with intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose—angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally. Today, just as then, the wide embrace of mass politics and technology and the pursuit of wealth and individualism have cast many more billions adrift in a demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity—with the same terrible results. Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.

International Origins of Social and Political Theory

International Origins of Social and Political Theory
Author: Tarak Barkawi
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2017-04-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178714724X

This special issue is animated by the necessary entanglement of theory and history, the cortical relationship between theory and practice, and the transboundary relations that help to constitute systems of thought and practice.

Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2011-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745652948

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most original and influential social thinkers of our time. This new book focuses on social inequality.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Theory, Modern Power, World Politics

The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Theory, Modern Power, World Politics
Author: Nevzat Soguk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2016-04-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131719585X

Deliberately eschewing disciplinary and temporal boundaries, this volume makes a major contribution to the de-traditionalization of political thinking within the discourses of international relations. Collecting the works of twenty-five theorists, this Ashgate Research Companion engages some of the most pressing aspects of political thinking in world politics today. The authors explore theoretical constitutions, critiques, and affirmations of uniquely modern forms of power, past and present. Among the themes and dynamics examined are textual appropriation and representation, materiality and capital formation, geopolitical dimensions of ecological crises, connections between representations of violence and securitization, subjectivity and genderization, counter-globalization politics, constructivism, biopolitics, post-colonial politics and theory, as well as the political prospects of emerging civic and cosmopolitan orders in a time of national, religious, and secular polarization. Radically different in their approaches, the authors critically assess the discourses of IR as interpretive frames that are indebted to the historical formation of concepts, and to particular negotiations of power that inform the main methodological practices usually granted primacy in the field. Students as well as seasoned scholars seeking to challenge accepted theoretical frameworks will find in these chapters fresh insights into contemporary world-political problems and new resources for their critical interrogation.