Society & Politics

'I've lived through ten iOS upgrades on my Mac - and that's just something I use to muck about on Twitter. Surely capitalism is due (read more)

'I've lived through ten iOS upgrades on my Mac - and that's just something I use to muck about on Twitter. Surely capitalism is due an upgrade or two?' When Caitlin Moran sat down to choose her favourite pieces for her new book she realised that they all seemed to join up. Turns out, it's the same old problems and the same old ass-hats.

Then she thought of the word 'Moranifesto', and she knew what she had to do...This is Caitlin's engaging and amusing rallying call for our times. Combining the best of her recent columns with lots of new writing unique to this book, Caitlin deals with topics as pressing and diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits, boarding schools, and why the internet is like a drunken toddler. And whilst never afraid to address the big issues of the day - such as Benedict Cumberbatch and duffel coats - Caitlin also makes a passionate effort to understand our 21st century society and presents us with her 'Moranifesto' for making the world a better place.

The polite revolution starts here! Please. (hide)

Government, business, the lives we lead, the food we eat, the way our children are brought up, the way we relate to the natural world (read more)

Government, business, the lives we lead, the food we eat, the way our children are brought up, the way we relate to the natural world around us - it's all become too big and distant and industrialised. Inhuman. It's time to do something about it.

It's time to put people first. It's time to make the world more human. Steve Hilton, visiting professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, believes that the frustrations people have with government, politics, their economic circumstances and their daily lives are caused by deep structural problems in the systems that dominate our modern world - systems that are broken because they've grown too far from the human scale. (hide)

Music and Coexistence: A Journey across the World in Search of Musicians Making a Difference is both study and travelogue, as author (read more)

Music and Coexistence: A Journey across the World in Search of Musicians Making a Difference is both study and travelogue, as author Osseily Hanna explores the courageous work of musicians who compose and perform with their ostensible enemies or in extraordinary social situations. He documents the political and economic constraints faced by musicians, from the wall that encloses a refugee camp in Jerusalem, to the tensions among KFOR and Carabinieri peacekeepers who keep Serbs and Kosovar Albanians apart, to the cultural and linguistic suppression that afflicts minority communities in Turkey. A multilingual musician, Hanna examines the lives of the individuals and groups at the forefront of the effort to bridge ethnic, cultural, and religious divisions. (hide)

Reveals the important role of Muslim Americans in American politics Since the 1950s, and especially in the post-9/11 era, Muslim (read more)

Reveals the important role of Muslim Americans in American politics Since the 1950s, and especially in the post-9/11 era, Muslim Americans have played outsized roles in US politics, sometimes as political dissidents and sometimes as political insiders. However, more than at any other moment in history, Muslim Americans now stand at the symbolic center of US politics and public life. This volume argues that the future of American democracy depends on whether Muslim Americans are able to exercise their political rights as citizens and whether they can find acceptance as social equals. (hide)

Drawing on the Muslim Brotherhood's Arabic and English writings and on archival research in London and Washington, Martyn Frampton (read more)

Drawing on the Muslim Brotherhood's Arabic and English writings and on archival research in London and Washington, Martyn Frampton provides the first comprehensive history of the charged relationship between the world's largest Islamist movement and the Western powers that have dominated the Middle East for a century: Britain and the United States.
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A lavishly illustrated, envelope-pushing life bible from Sophia Amoruso, bestselling author of #GIRLBOSS and founder of NastyGal. (read more)

A lavishly illustrated, envelope-pushing life bible from Sophia Amoruso, bestselling author of #GIRLBOSS and founder of NastyGal. Nasty Galaxy is part scrapbook, part inspo-journey - and 100% #GIRLBOSS. Filled with illustrations, photos and short essays that embody the style and spirit of the NastyGal brand, it is both a vivid visual compendium of Sophia Amoruso's influences and the perfect life bible for girlbosses everywhere.

Featuring a foreword by Courtney Love, and with unique insights and inspiration from the baddest bitches across the globe, Nasty Galaxy approaches style, philosophy and advice in the same way #GIRLBOSS approached business: by turning it on its head. Warning: this is not a style book. It's not about how to mix prints - it's about how to leave yours on everything you touch. (hide)

Nation and Migration provides a way to understand recent migration events in Europe that have attracted the world's attention. The (read more)

Nation and Migration provides a way to understand recent migration events in Europe that have attracted the world's attention. The emergence of the nations in the West promised homogenization, but instead the imagined national communities have everywhere become places of heterogeneity, and modern nation states have been haunted by the specter of minorities. This study analyses experiences relating to migration in 23 European countries.

It is based on data from the International Social Survey Programme, a global cross-national collaborative exercise, with surveys made in 1995, 2003, and 2013. In the authors' view, a critical test for Europe will be its ability to find adequate responses to the challenges of globalization. The book provides a detailed overview of how citizens in Europe are coping with a xenophobia fueled by their own sense of insecurity.

Published:30 Jan 2021 (hide)

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine (read more)

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities. In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe-from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan-the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.

The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe's nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. (hide)

In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and (read more)

In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and liberalism, Turkey is at the epicentre. And at the heart of Turkey is its right-wing populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. Since 2002, Erdo?an has consolidated his hold on domestic politics while using military and diplomatic means to solidify Turkey as a regional power.

His crackdown has been brutal and consistent - scores of journalists arrested, academics officially banned from leaving the country, university deans fired and many of the highest-ranking military officers arrested. In some senses, the nefarious and failed 2016 coup has given Erdo?an the licence to make good on his repeated promise to bring order and stability under a 'strongman'. Here, leading Turkish expert Soner Cagaptay will look at Erdo?an's roots in Turkish history, what he believes in and how he has cemented his rule, as well as what this means for the world. (hide)

This book explores significant aspects of the New Urban Agenda in the Asia-Pacific region, and presents, from different contexts (read more)

This book explores significant aspects of the New Urban Agenda in the Asia-Pacific region, and presents, from different contexts and perspectives, innovative interventions afoot for transforming the governance of 21st-century cities in two key areas: (i) urban planning and policy; and (ii) service delivery and social inclusion. Representing institutions across a wide geography, academic researchers and development practitioners from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America have authored the chapters that lend the volume its distinctly diverse topical foci.

Published: 25 Jun 2019 (hide)