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This is a revisionist history of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. Assessing the geopolitical and strategic reasons for its creation and dismemberment, it is an important corrective to much contemporary theorising about the destruction of the Yugoslav state.*BR**BR*Kate Hudson draws attention to the role of foreign states whose involvement in Yugoslavia did much to destabilise the region, and explains how and why this happened. *BR**BR*Tracing the state's origins from 1918 through war and the Tito years, she explains the distortion of the socialist economy resulting from Yugoslavia's unusual position between the two Cold War blocs, and the economic collapse of the 1980s as part of the US's drive for a free market. She also investigates the true causes and effects of the recent wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and brings the book up-to-date with an analysis of Milosevic's downfall, and events in Macedonia and Montenegro.

Organised crime makes good copy. Gangsters, shoot-outs and mob meetings are a staple of TV shows and media reports tend to glamorise the criminal underworld. The 'threat' from organised crime has been a high-profile concern in Western Europe and the US since the 1930s. *BR**BR*This being the case, the recent emergence of Russian and Eastern European organised crime has led to high-profile efforts to combat the new 'threat', with little understanding of what it entails. Patricia Rawlinson argues that burgeoning crime rates result not only from the failures of communism, but also from the problems of free market economies.*BR**BR*Drawing on interviews with members of the Russian criminal underworld, she argues that organised crime provides us with a barometer of economic well-being, both for Russia and for any neoliberal market economy.

Anthropology, the study of societies and cultures different to our own, is based on the humanist assumption that difference does not mean otherness and inferiority. In this book, Vassos Argyrou puts forward a powerful critique of both modern and postmodern anthropology that reveals the self centred logic of anthropological humanism, offering the controversial conclusion that the anthropological project is forever doomed to failure. *BR**BR*At the heart of the book is the idea that anthropologists are driven to produce knowledge not by a desire for power, as it is often assumed, but a by desire for meaning. Interpretation of Othered societies and cultures allows them to construct an image of a symbolically unified, ethically ordered and hence meaningful world. *BR**BR*Vassos Argyrou shows this assumption to be untenable because differentiation and distinction are in the nature of human being. He further argues that, paradoxically, by trying to uphold Sameness, anthropologists reproduce, inadvertently but inevitably, its contrary.

For the first time in history, the world's population is ageing. For rich countries in the west, economies rely on youthful populations to provide for those who have retired. We face a profound economic and social crisis - how do we care for the elderly when pensions and social security systems are under threat, housing is short and fewer young people are entering the workplace? *BR**BR*Yet this is only half the story. Populations in the poorer countries of the South are also ageing. Life-expectancy has increased due the availability of lifesaving medicine. Child mortality has decreased, so people are having smaller families. India will soon have one of the largest populations of over-sixties. The one-child policy in China will similarly lead to a severe imbalance in the age-profile of the people. *BR**BR*In A World Grown Old, Jeremy Seabrook examines the real implications of the ageing phenomenon and challenges our preconceptions about how it should be tackled. Arguing that the accumulated skills of the elderly should be employed to enrich society, rather than being perceived as a 'burden', he calls for a radical rethinking of our attitude to population issues, migration, social structures and employment policy.

Millions of people around the world live in countries torn apart by war, where violence and suffering are part of everyday life. Yet in all those countries there are groups of people working for peace in the midst of war, standing up for human rights and decency. What difference can they make? What can be done to support them, and to help dialogue to happen in the midst of hostility and violence?*BR**BR*This book examines these questions, focusing on the roles that ordinary people can play as peace builders in societies where violence and antagonism have become the norm, where inter-communal relationships are fractured or where institutions and the rule of law have collapsed. *BR**BR*It examines the theory and practice of conflict transformation and its relevance for different cultures and contexts. Using extensive case studies taken from practical workshops - the most frequently used form of conflict intervention - in the Balkans and around the world, it shows both the power and the complexity of such encounters.

Since the 1970s, Turkey has faced some of the most serious crises since the Republic was established in 1923. This book analyses the political and socio-economic problems faced by Turkey in recent decades and the country's gradual integration into the global economy. *BR**BR*Social unrest, political and ethnic violence, paralysis of the state bureaucracy and other institutions, increasing foreign debt, decreasing economic growth, vast inflation and increasing unemployment have all been part of everyday life in Turkey's recent history. Zulkuf Aydin argues that this state of affairs is symptomatic of a deeper, more enduring crisis arising from the way in which Turkey has been integrated into the global economy. Looking at democracy, repression, the military, the Kurdish question and regional inequalities, civil society, human rights and Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey, he shows how Turkey has become reliant on foreign investment and international financial institutions, offering a broader critique of globalisation in this light.

A look at the networks of the hidden lives of the internally displaced

Reveals that much of the work attributed to Bakhtin was actually written in collaboration with the Bakhtin Circle

The Business of America examines the complex linking of business and nationhood in post-war United States literature against the backdrop of changing concepts of the nation in the field of American Studies. *BR**BR*The first part of the book examines how white male literary culture has been largely hostile to business during this period and how it has represented transnational shifts in the nature of business as threats to supposedly American values like the individual, the family, or freedom. The book charts the way that such an uneasiness towards business relies upon a discourse about America, business and empire that is increasingly untenable in the post-war world. *BR**BR*By way of comparison, The Business of America looks at how literature by women and by writers from different racial, ethnic and sexual groups often deals with business from the more localised angle of work. Graham Thompson shows how this attention to work provides a less abstract and more oppositional approach to the connection between business and America.

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory

A guide to the catch-all phrases of modern politics

A guide to the catch-all phrases of modern politics

Youth and the State in Hungary takes as its focus the nature of Hungary's youth movements over the last seventy years. In a detailed ethnographic study, Laszlo Kurti examines the lives of youth workers in the Csepel district of Budapest in the context of the wider political and economic transformations witnessed during the twentieth century.*BR**BR*Kurti follows State-Youth relations from the inter-war capitalism that made peasants into workers, through the post war state socialism - 'Stalinism' and after - to the reintroduction of capitalism in 1990. This time frame allows an exploration of the transformations and dilemmas of youth, class, gender and ethnicity as they develop across time. *BR**BR*In the course of this study two main themes emerge: the reproduction of class in youth culture across shifting socio-economic conditions; and the mobilisation of youth movements in resistance to the state. Youth and the State in Hungary challenges the orthodox equation of youth and resistance by arguing that youth mobilisation has, in fact, served the interests of the state. Nevertheless there remains a genuine space for resistance and contestation in the reproduction of youth culture.

Anthony Giddens is one of the most famous and influential sociologists of recent decades. Largely credited with the concept of the 'Third Way', he continues to be a key advisor to Tony Blair, and is generally presented as an exponent of liberalism and socialism.*BR**BR*This book provides a controversial introduction to Giddens' work, covering the wide range of his writing from theory to self-reflexivity, modernity and politics, placing them all within the illuminating framework of a historical context.*BR**BR*Giddens' writing has always embodied a political and ethical position, one that has changed considerably over the years and is best understood through the social context in which it was written. His work in the 1970s attempted to marry liberalism and socialism, but, following the collapse of Communism in the 1990 East-European revolutions, his world view became liberal rather than socialist, and his later work on reflexivity and the 'Third Way' embodies this. *BR**BR*Loyal explores how this world-view accounts for many tensions and failures in Giddens' theory and that, overall, his work is fundamentally flawed.*BR*

A collection of Surrealists texts from across Europe.

'Buy it. Read it. Act on it. Your world will never be the same again.' Charles Secrett, Director, Friends of the Earth

Examines the significance of Caribbean musics in diaspora politics

Investigates ideologies of race and mixed race, and the way they are constructed through social institutions and scientific texts

A study of the creolisation process which has shaped the Caribbean

A critique of consumer culture that analyses the role it plays in our lives, assessing the work of leading cultural critics

Corporate capitalism is usually examined from a sociological or economic viewpoint, and this book breaks new ground in providing a thorough account of the mechanisms which define it from a philosophical perspective, revealing how these processes determine the way we live today.*BR**BR*Marxist and other left-oriented political philosophies had ideological roots that were based, sometimes incongruously, on particular economic and sociological readings of the capitalist process. Political philosophies associated with conservatism and neoliberalism have either been assimilated within capitalist discourses, or they have been designed to justify corporate capitalist processes. *BR**BR*This book re-examines these issues with an unusually dispassionate approach, providing a systematic view of contemporary corporate capitalism in all its complexity, without expecting the reader to have a specialist knowledge of sociology or economics. It clarifies the scope of political philosophy by reflecting on its own methodology and practice, and offers a controversial conclusion that within contemporary corporate capitalist modes of organisation there is actually no space left for political philosophy at all, as corporate capitalism systematically denies all political agents an ability to exercise their political will.

In an age of email lists and discussion groups, e-zines and weblogs, bringing together users, consumers, workers and activists from around the globe, what kinds of political subjectivity are emerging? What kinds of politics become possible in a time of information overload and media saturation? What structures of power and control operate over a self-organising system like the internet?*BR*In this highly original new work, Tiziana Terranova investigates the political dimension of the network culture in which we now live, and explores what the new forms of communication and organisation might mean for our understanding of power and politics. Terranova engages with key concepts and debates in cultural theory and cultural politics, using examples from media culture, computing, network dynamics, and internet activism within the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements. *BR*Network Culture concludes that the nonlinear network dynamics that link different modes of communication at different levels (from local radio to satellite television, from the national press to the internet, from broadcasting to rumours and conspiracy theories) provide the conditions within which another politics can emerge. This other politics, the book suggests, does not entail the production of a new political discourse or ideology, but the invention of micropolitical tactics able to stand up to new forms of social control.

Can fine art survive in an age of mass media? If so, in what forms and to what purpose? And can radical art still play a critical role in today's divided world? *BR**BR*These are the questions addressed in the Art in the Age of Mass Media, as John Walker examines the fascinating relationship between art and mass media, and the myriad interactions between high and low culture in a postmodern, culturally pluralistic world. *BR**BR*Using a range of historic and contemporary works of art, Walker explores the variety of ways in which artists have responded to the arrival of new, mass media. He ranges from the socialist paintings of Courbet to the anti-Nazi photomontages of Heartfield, from community murals and Keith Haring's use of graffiti to the kitsch self-promotion associated with Jeff Koons. The new edition describes what happened during the 1990s, including Toscani's adverts for Benetton, the simulations of Leeds 13, art and cinema, Damien Hirst, and the cyberart currently being produced for the internet.

During the media frenzy over the Millennium celebrations, there was hardly any mention of the fact that, for the majority of the world, there was no Millennium at all. This linear understanding of time is a specifically Western - and Christian - concept. *BR**BR*This is just one of many examples that Vinay Lal uses to demonstrate that nearly every idea which we take for granted in the west is part of a politics of ideas. Oppression is usually associated with class struggle and other forms of economic monopoly. Lal looks beyond this, deconstructing the cultural assumptions that have emerged alongside capitalism to offer a devastating critique of the politics of knowledge at the heart of all powerbroking.*BR**BR*Other topics examined are the concept of 'development', which has provided a mandate for surreptitious colonisation; and the idea of the 'nation state', something we have lived with for no more than two centuries, yet is accepted without question. Linking this to the emergence of 'international governance' through the United Nations, the US, and imperial economic bodies (such as the IMF and WTO), Lal explains how such universalism came to dominate the trajectory of Western thought.

Thematically arranged and clearly structured, this book explores the seminal themes in Heaney's writing: aesthetics, politics, language, identity and myth, ethics and notions of Irishness.*BR**BR*A central strand of this study is an exploration of Heaney's ethical and political project with respect to issues of Irish identity as outlined in his writings. This work suggests that there are analogies between Heaney's political and ethical thought, and that of Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas.*BR**BR*Each chapter concentrates on a single theme: his sense of the aesthetic, and its role in terms of politics and ethics; his relationship with politics as a contemporary situation; his notion of place, both as a given, and as something that could be reimagined; his enunciation of a sense of visceral identity; his concept of ethics in terms of a relationship between selfhood and alterity; his notion of the many threads which combine to produce a sense of Irishness. *BR**BR*Finally, the Nobel lectures of Yeats and Heaney are examined in order to trace the complex relationship between these two writers.

A study of how Western-style democracy has been imposed upon Africa

Critical account of the cultural studies field, with interviews from some of the world's leading cultural theorists

Ivan Molloy analyses the de-facto foreign policy strategy of Low Intensity Conflict as propagated by the United States. He recounts how LIC emerged during the Reagan Administration as a way of counteracting the legacy left by the Vietnam War, which constrained America from getting involved in direct military intervention. Part covert, part overt, LIC was developed as a low-cost and low-risk method of dealing with revolutionary movements and post-revolutionary governments (usually Marxist) considered threatening to national interests. As such, this secretive strategy was an integral component of the Iran-Contra affair, and at the heart of the Reagan Doctrine.*BR**BR*Molloy argues that LIC was a means of civilianising and privatising America's foreign policy. He reveals that LIC was always more of a political, rather than military, tool. The United States used LIC selectively in the 1980s to combat guerrilla movements and undermine targeted regimes to achieve its foreign policy objectives. The author uses Nicaragua and the Philippines as major case studies to analyse the profile of this multi-dimensional strategy as it emerged in the 1980s. He also demonstrates - using such examples as Cuba, Yugoslavia and East Timor - that this complex strategy is still evident today and even pursued by other states.

Contributors explore the interconnectedness of culture and creativity in an increasingly hybrid world

The Izhavas are an ex-untouchable community in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Politically and economically weak, stigmatised as 'toddy tappers' and 'devil dancers', and considered unapproachable by clean caste Hindus, a century ago Izhavas were associated with other manual-labouring untouchable castes. In recent decades they have sought to improve their position by accumulating economic, symbolic and cultural capital through employment, religion, politics, migration, marriage, education and have tried to assert their right to mobility, often in the face of opposition from their high status Christian and Nayar neighbours. *BR**BR*This study examines how Izhavas, through repudiation of their nineteenth-century identity and search for mobility, have come into complex relationships with modernity, colonialism and globalisation. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella highlight the complexities and contradictions of modern identity, both locally and globally. The authors' approach builds upon and goes beyond a south Asian focus, showing how the Izhavas represent the rise of formerly stigmatised groups who remain at the same time trapped by stereotype and material disadvantage. Absolute mobility, they argue, has not led to relative mobility within a society which remains stratified and prone to new forms of social exclusion.