Bøker utgitt av Pluto Press

In the last twenty years, the legacy of Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci has soared to new heights. His work has become one of the most cited sources on power and hegemony. He is often used by anthropologists working on issues of culture and power. *BR**BR*This book explores Gramsci's understanding of culture and the links between culture and power in relation to anthropology. Extensive use is made of Gramsci's own writings, including his pre-prison journalism and prison letters as well as the prison notebooks. *BR**BR*The book also provides an account of the intellectual and political contexts within which he was writing. The challenge Grasmci's approach presents to some common anthropological assumptions about the nature of 'culture' is examined as is the potential usefulness of Gramsci's writings for contemporary anthropologists.

The debate about globalisation and its discontents

The difficulties that have dogged the Northern Ireland peace process and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement are rarely out of the headlines. This book gives an insight into one of the issues at stake for the people of Northern Ireland - the long-term impact of political violence on the civil population.*BR**BR*The result of extensive research among local communities, and drawing on survey and interview evidence, Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement sets this issue within the context of past conflict and the continuing sectarian violence of the present. In particular it presents the views of ordinary people about their personal experiences of political violence and the impact it has had upon their lives. *BR**BR*Moreover, it shows how the Troubles have affected the young people of the region, and looks at the problems facing a society coming out of a protracted period of low-intensity conflict.

In this study of prostitution, Lorraine Nencel interrogates the ways in which sexuality, gender and illicit behaviour have been constructed (and deconstructed) over the years. *BR**BR*This is a richly detailed ethnographic account that interweaves narrative with theory. Nencel deals with issues such as AIDS, machismo and the regulation of the sex trade. She analyses the question of whether sex workers are victims or agents of control. In challenging conventional approaches to the study of sex workers and prostitution, Nencel has produced an original and provocative new study that is likely to provoke further discussion and debate.

This is a gripping account of what it is like to live as a Palestinian - as a refugee in your own homeland. Born in Jerusalem, Muna Hamzeh is a journalist who has been writing about Palestinian affairs since 1985. She first worked as a journalist in Washington DC, but moved back to Palestine in 1989 to cover the first Palestine Intifada - the war of stones. She then settled in Dheisheh, near Bethlehem - one of 59 Palestinian refugee camps that are considered the oldest refugee camps in the world.*BR**BR*The book consists of a diary which Hamzeh wrote between October 4th and December 4th 2000, telling the story of the second Intifada. Facing the tanks and armed guards of one of the best-equipped armies in the world, the Palestinians have nothing. They fight back with stones. The anguish and terror that Muna and her friends face on daily basis is tangible. Who will be the next to die? Whose house will be the next to burn down? This deeply moving personal account brings to life the harsh realities of the Palestinian struggle. *BR**BR*Refugees in Our Own Land is a look into the hearts and minds of Palestinian refugees. It is a tribute to the bravery of the Palestinian people, and a wake-up call to the world that has ignored so much of their struggle and their suffering.

The book shows how wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a transnational elite while ever increasing numbers of people are being marginalised. Institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund are intent upon exercising a new hegemony over individuals as the role of the traditional nation state is transformed. At the centre of this power shift is a group of high-tech robber barons who dominate the Information Age and exploit the technologies of globalisation for their own narrow interests. *BR**BR*Roger Burbach explores the rise of the new grass roots oppositional movements around the world. Manifest in such diverse struggles as the uprising of the Zapatistas in Mexico and the battle of Seattle against the World Trade Organisation, this new postmodern politics is 'de-centred' and has little interest in the old ideologies that dominated much of the twentieth century. *BR**BR*The final section of the book contextualises postmodern politics by drawing on contemporary examples. The authors discuss the demise of socialist and protosocialist experiments in Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua and Cuba and the emergence of postmodern movements in Latin America. The final two chapters take a specific look at the Zapatista movement and its significance for revolutionary struggles around the world.

What went wrong in Africa?

What went wrong in Africa?

Presents Baudrillard's key concepts and examines his contribution to postmodernism, feminism, technology, art, war, time and politics

The dialogue between large elements of the Western and the Soviet/Russian left has all too often been one of negation rather than affirmation. The Dialogue of Negation pursues this argument and examines the conceptual and strategic richness of hegemony, providing an overview of the key debates which have shaped its historical development. *BR**BR*Jeremy Lester situates the modern evolution of hegemony within an East-West dimension and focuses in particular on the deep-seated difficulties and incompatibilities of much of this interaction. Lester offers a defence of Gramsci's understanding of hegemony as a key element of the revolutionary class struggle. He acknowledges Gramsci's own disputes within the Marxist domain, and celebrates the theoretical and practical legacy he bequeathed to those who continue the struggle to replace capitalism with socialism. Lester provides a critical defence of modernity against the challenge of postmodernity, arguing that it is only within the parameters of modernity that a meaningful form of socialism can succeed. He seeks to highlight the inconsistencies and illogicalities of those theorists who see the transition to some kind of postmodern condition as offering new possibilities for the transcendence of capitalism.

How Islamist thinking and practice relates to the latest global political and economic trends

How Islamist thinking and practice relates to the latest global political and economic trends

This book is a history of Israel's expansionist policies, focusing on the period from the June War of 1967 to the present day. He demonstrates that imperialist tendencies in Israel run the political gamut, from Left to Right.*BR**BR*Masalha argues that the heart of the conflict between Zionist immigrants/settlers and the native Palestinians has always been about land, territory, demography and water. He documents how Israeli policy has made it a priority to expel the Palestinians, either by war or peaceful measures. But these imperialist tendencies are not restricted to extremist zealots. The author uncovers the expansionist policies found in Labour Zionism and Kookist ideology. *BR**BR*Chapters cover the Whole Land of Israel Movement, Zionist Revisionism and the Likud Party, Gush Emunim and the religious fundamentalists, parties and movements of the far right and the evolution of Israeli Jewish public attitudes since 1967.

This book is an exploration of women's writing that focuses on the close links between literary texts and the theories that construct those texts as 'women's writing'. Each chapter deals with one of the issues or concepts that have engaged both authors and theorists - rhetoric, work, consciousness, nature, class and race. A detailed analysis shows how each concept has been used by feminists to construct a specific text in such a way that it is received as a work of 'women's writing', particularly in American literature.*BR**BR*Using canonical texts, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman through Kate Chopin and Willa Cather to Alice Walker and Ann Beattie, Madsen engages with the major debates within feminist studies. Moving on from Showalter's groundbreaking work to broaden the trajectory of feminist concern, this book is an accessible account of the varieties of feminist thought within the context of the key American texts.

In the 1990s, the former states of the Soviet Union underwent dramatic and revolutionary changes. As a result of enforced, neoliberal reforms the fledgling republics were exposed to the familiar effects of globalised capital. Focusing on Kazakhstan, where violence and corruption are now facts of everyday life, Joma Nazpary examines the impact of the new capitalism on the people of Central Asia.*BR**BR*Nazpary explores the responses of the dispossessed to their dispossession. He uncovers the construction of 'imagined communities', grounded in Soviet nostalgia, which serve to resist the economic order, as well as the more practical survival strategies, especially of women, often forced into prostitution where they are subject to violence and stigma. By revealing the extent to which Kazakh society has disintegrated and the cultural responses to it, Nazpary argues that dispossession has been a stronger unifying force than even ethnicity or religion. *BR**BR*Comparing the effects of neoliberal reforms in Kazakhstan with those in other regions, he concludes that causes, forms and consequences of dispossession in Kazakhstan are particular instances of a much wider global trend.

Evaluates the term 'classic', discussing a wide range of films and texts including Jane Eyre, The Tempest and Alice in Wonderland

*Shortlisted for the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book Prize, 2016**BR**BR*The wide-ranging and brilliant ideas of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) have had a major influence on modern thought. His 'followers' are loyal and legion. Yet his ideas are complex and densely conveyed. Lacan's detractors have accused him of obscurantism, pretentiousness and even incoherence, his psychoanalytic practice and his personal life were complicated - he was famous and contentious in equal measure. *BR**BR*Martin Murray provides a lucid account of Lacan's key concepts, including the mirror stage, and his relationship to Freud's ideas, amongst many others. Tracing their origins in his diverse interests: art, psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Murray also investigates Lacan's professional life, personal life and institutional influence in an attempt to understand the charismatic and controversial person he became.

This is a guide to the life and work of the French intellectual Georges Bataille, best known as the author of the celebrated erotic novel, The Story of the Eye. Benjamin Noys introduces Bataille as a writer out of step with the dominant intellectual trends of his day - surrealism and existentialism - and shows that it was his very marginality that accounted in large part for his subsequent importance for the post-structuralists and the counterculture, in Europe and in the United States.*BR**BR*Treating Bataille's work as a whole rather than focusing, as other studies have done, on aspects of his work (i.e. as social theory or philosophy), Noys' study is intended to be sensitive to the needs of students new to Bataille's work while at the same time drawing on the latest research on Bataille to offer new interpretations of Bataille's oeuvre for more experienced readers. This is the first clear, introductory reading of Bataille in English - challenging current reductive readings, and stressing the range of disciplines affected by Bataille's work, at a time when interest in Bataille is growing.

Everybody analyses films. Ordinary viewers, chatting on the way home afterwards. Reviewers, telling us just enough to tempt or put off. Critics, 'situating' films for us. Moralists, hunting for the (harmful) message. So what exactly is it that film academics do that's different?*BR**BR*Martin Barker and Thomas Austin provide a jargon-free, accessible and student-friendly introduction to film analysis. They begin with a discussion about audience and a detailed case-study on four conflicting analyses of Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. The authors examine a range of popular Hollywood films in a variety of genres, including Titanic, Deep Impact, Sleepless in Seattle, The Lion King, Starship Troopers and The Usual Suspects, and provide vivid demonstrations of what can and can't be achieved with close textual analysis. The book ends by proposing a list of measures for assessing the adequacy of film analyses: measures intended to lay the basis of a way of doing film analysis which goes beyond theoretically predetermined and often obscurantist assertions.*BR**BR*Explicitly rejecting much of the theoretical baggage that dogs contemporary film analysis, Barker and Austin strip the subject down to its bare essentials. The result is a provocative and timely re-examination of many of the basic tenets in film theory and analysis.

A reader of the key works of the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on decolonisation

White, middle-class Americans are one of the most understudied groups in the anthropology of the United States - perhaps because of their hegemonic presence in society. This book offers the first ethnography of 'white middle-class America' from a non-native perspective. *BR**BR*Yasushi Watanabe, a Japanese anthropologist, examines two social groups in the Boston area to reveal an intimate portrait of the 'American' family. These two groups are at opposite ends of the social spectrum in terms of religious, ethnic and class backgrounds, and in terms of cultural tastes and lifestyles. The first group is upper-middle class, Anglo Saxon, Protestant, mostly Unitarian or Episcopalian - often identified as archetypical middle-class America. This is a wealthy group that includes descendants of the 'Boston Brahmins', one of America's oldest aristocratic families, closely related to Democratic hopeful John Kerry. The second group is working-class or lower middle-class, Irish Catholic, often referred to as 'Boston Irish'. *BR**BR*Informed by a wide range of social theory, The American Family is a fascinating study of family dynamics in modern America that explores how Americans construct their social realities and cultural histories, and how modern society shapes their lived experience.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a publicly funded, multi-billion dollar experiment in global resource management. It was set up in 1991 by the World Bank to fund international conventions on climate change and biodiversity. *BR**BR*Investigating the workings of this little known aid fund, Zoe Young takes a critical look at the conflicts involved, focusing on how the GEF's agenda relates to questions of globalisation, knowledge and accountability in the United States and the World Bank.*BR**BR*As our landscapes, fertility, cultures and ecosystems are being destroyed every day, Zoe Young gives a disturbing account of the complex issues that must be addressed before the world's environment can be managed more democratically - and effectively.

This is the global culture of sci-fi

This book details the deplorable conditions that exist in a minority sector of international shipping operating mainly, although not exclusively, under flags of convenience. In a horrific account of human rights abuses that would be little tolerated in the countries of the ship owners, the authors demonstrate that governments often pay little attention to cases of robbery, abandonment, deprivation and even death perpetrated by these ship owners or on vessels bearing their national flag. The financial and shipping institutions that support substandard ship owners are also prepared to ignore the plight of the individual seafarer serving on the ships under their tenure.*BR**BR*The authors draw on case studies to illustrate the issues, including a perspective on Adriatic Tanker Company of Greece and examples of incompetent management and the reckless finance provisions in merchant shipping. The authors also examine the plight of seafarers' families, who are particularly vulnerable, and the legal rights of abused and abandoned seafarers. They conclude by arguing for a global governance of shipping.

This is the global culture of sci-fi

From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history. *BR**BR*In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Cruel and Unusual offers an exploration of the history of punishment as mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault's influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment. *BR**BR*This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.

With the advent of devolution, it is clear that the British Constitution is currently undergoing a period of dynamic transformation. England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were slowly united by conquest and treaty over the last 300 years, a unity which was only broken by the 1922 agreement that split Ireland in two. The last 50 years have seen the collapse of empire, and while the pull of local nationalism within the United Kingdom continues to strengthen, integrative narratives of Britishness weaken. *BR**BR*In this insightful book, Arthur Aughey outlines the changing character of the United Kingdom polity, and examines the developing debate about the meaning of the Union in the context of New Labour/New Britain. *BR**BR*In a systematic survey of historical, theoretical and political reflection on the nature of Britishness, he questions what the Union once was, what it means now and what it might become, taking into account the challenge posed by internal divisions along with the problems posed by European integration and globalisation.

Explains the development of cultural history and its impact on teaching

Think of Latin America and what do you see? Escape? Adventure? Chaos? Oblivion? Lost Worlds explores how these stereotypes came into being and what they tells us about ourselves.*BR**BR*Examining a range of texts, from Southey's epics to Naipaul's essays, from Conan Doyle's gentlemen adventurers to Kerouac's restless hipsters, this book reveals the role that Latin America has played in British, US and Australian endeavours in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. *BR**BR*Over the last 200 years, Latin America has served the West as an imaginary realm where its highest hopes and deepest anxieties might be realised.