Politics at Continuum

Coming up at Continuum

We have some exciting new politics titles coming up in February 2012, including:

Governance in Pacific Asia: Political Economy and Development from Japan to Burma
by Peter Ferdinand

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Guide for the Perplexed
by Ian Bickerton

Embassies in Armed Conflict (Key Studies in Diplomacy Series)
by G. R. Berridge 

Identity as Reasoned Choice: A South Asian Perspective on The Reach and Resources of Public and Practical Reason in Shaping Individual Identities
by Jonardon Ganeri

New Dynamics in East Asian Politics: Security, Political Economy, and Society
edited by Zhiqun Zhu

Nuclear Weapons in the Information Age
by Stephen J. Cimbala 

 

New Title: Achieving Democracy

Achieving Democracy, a new textbook edited by Mary Fran T. Malone, analyzes why some nations become democratic while others remain authoritarian by looking at issues of democratization from a cross-national and historical perspective.

"Achieving Democracy provides undergraduate students with all the elements needed to think about the various aspects of democratization around the world. The volume explores processes of democratization in the first, second and third waves as well as current debates on democracy promotion. This book challenges students to test theories of democratization, thus asking them to take a proactive role vis-a-vis one of the most important topics of our times. Strongly recommended."- Ariel C. Armony, Director, Center for Latin American Studies and Weeks Professor in Latin American Studies Professor of International Studies, University of Miami, USA.

New Politics Titles For July 2011

The following titles will be available from Continuum in July:

Achieving Democracy: Democratization in Theory and Practice
edited by Mary Fran T. Malone

"Achieving Democracy provides undergraduate students with all the elements needed to think about the various aspects of democratization around the world. The volume explores processes of democratization in the first, second and third waves as well as current debates on democracy promotion. This book challenges students to test theories of democratization, thus asking them to take a proactive role vis-a-vis one of the most important topics of our times. Strongly recommended."- Ariel C. Armony, Director, Center for Latin American Studies and Weeks Professor in Latin American Studies Professor of International Studies, University of Miami, USA.

Citizen Islam The Future of Muslim Integration in the West
by Zeyno Baran

"This book is very informative and helps both Muslims and non Muslims understand the ideologies, historical trends and current events in Muslim communities.  It is an especially valuable resource for western countries because it aptly explains how some Muslim societies are evolving and resolving issues of religion and state.  It is also important for Muslims to see how they are being perceived by others. I recommend it highly for those who need to better understand the many facets of Islamic doctrine and beliefs. " - Shaykh Hisham M Kabbani, Chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America

IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn Arrested.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Socialist leader and French Presidential hopeful was arrested in New York last Saturday on charges of sexual assault.

Political scandals are numerous and recurrent, and one of the hardest questions to answer is, simply, why do they do it? Why would a respected politician risk career and reputation? Continuum's upcoming Sex Scandals in American Politics (Sept. 11), edited by Alison Dagnes, seek to address this question, looking at the construction, disgrace, and consequences of political sex scandals.

Political sex scandals are examined from different academic angles, including the politics of place, human communication, political psychology, media, sociology, feminism, and criminology. The essays delve into the role of culture and geography on the political outcome of a scandal, the rhetoric of apologia, the psychology of risk, trends and patterns in media coverage, the impact on different organized interests, legal ramifications, and how different countries view political sex scandal.

For more details click here.

New Politics Titles

Check out our great new politics titles! You can download our mini-catalog by clicking on this link: Download Politics catalog February 2011

Most of these books will be featured at ISA in Montreal, March 15-19. Be sure to drop by our booth (#7)!

 

Diplomacy

U.S. Diplomacy is in the news today with the release by Wikileaks of secret diplomatic cables. This brings to the forefront the question of the role of diplomats and embassies today.

This is one question Continuum is exploring through the volumes of its upcoming new series Key Studies in Diplomacy. Edited by Lorna Lloyd from Keele University, this unique series offers practical guides to the practice of diplomacy today.

There are two volumes in the works:

Embassies in Armed Conflict by G.R. Berridge, which examines how embassies work and cope during wartime, with a focus on the experiences of the British, American, and Indian embassies.

21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner's Guide by Kishan S. Rana, which focuses on the contemporary practice of diplomacy, looking at how states deal with each other and analyzing elements of change. 

 

 

What's going on?

"What's going on with the politics list?" might you ask. Well, much actually. First, we are thrilled to announce our newest series:

- Key Studies in Diplomacy, edited by Lorna Lloyd with a volume by G. R. Berridge in the works.
- Critical Theory and Contemporary Society, edited by Darrow Schecter, with an upcoming volume by William Outhwaite
- Contemporary Anarchist Studies, edited by Alex Prichard, Laurence Davis, Nathan Jun, and Uri Gordon

Second, we had a great time at APSA last month, where we enjoyed showcasing our newest titles and meeting with scholars from across the fields of political science (and from across the continents).

Third, we have just published the following:

- Pakistan's Quagmire: Security, Strategy, and the Future of the Islamic-Nuclear Nation, edited by Usama Butt and N. Elahi
- Energy and Climate Wars, by Michael Economides and Peter Glover
- Recast All Under Heaven: Revolution, War, Diplomacy, and Frontier China in the 20th Century by Xiaoyuan Liu

Lastly, we will publish in October:

- Rethinking US Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009, edited by Daniel Walkowitz and Donna Haverty-Stacke
- Orwell, Politics and Power by Craig Carr
- Terrorism, Civil War and Revolution by Peter Calvert

If you'd like to know more about our publications or are considering publishing with us, please contact me, Marie-Claire Antoine, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Politics & IR at mantoine@continuum-books.com

 

Coming soon...

Here are some upcoming politics titles at Continuum:

- Pakistan's Quagmire: Security, Strategy, and the Future of the Islamic-nuclear Nation
edited by Usama Butt and N. Elahi

“Pakistan’s Quagmire encapsulates Pakistan’s current problems and their genesis. It offers a detailed read on issues that occupy considerable space even outside Pakistan such as the army’s omni-present role, the Islamists, the existential threat at the hands of al Qaeda and Tehrike Taliban Pakistan, and also puts fears of an Islamist or military re-takeover in a realistic perspective. It is a useful guide and analysis on the present day Pakistan for those interested in this turbulent region.” --Imtiaz Gul, author of The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier

- Struggling for Recognition: The Psychological Impetus for Democratic Progress
by Doron Shultziner

“Shultziner has in my view done a very sophisticated job in drawing on this literature to enrich our understanding of familiar political phenomena like democratic transitions.” –Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC 

Terrorism, Civil War and Revolution: Revolution and International Politics, 3rd Edition
by Peter Calvert

"Words are prostitutes. Any terminology useful to the powerful or ambitious will be garbled and reinterpreted, often to counter its original meaning. Terms relating to conflict, or the use of violence and fear, are particularly vulnerable to such abuse. Thus Peter Calvert’s latest book should be a must read not only for scholars and policy makers but also for all who are lost in the bewildering cacophony that passes these days for public discourse. Drawing upon extraordinarily broad and deep familiarity with the history of social change and its concomitant social struggle, Calvert salvages the integrity of abused concepts and sorts out fact from fiction, And he offers guidance that we must hope will lead to sounder analysis and policy decisions." --Jan Knippers Black, Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies and author of The Politics of Human Rights Protection (2010)

New Series: Contemporary Anarchist Studies

Continuum is pleased to launch a new exciting series that will focus on anarchist studies today.

Contemporary Anarchist Studies promotes the study of anarchism as a framework for understanding and acting on the most pressing problems of our times. The series publishes cutting edge, socially-engaged scholarship from around the world - bridging theory and practice, academic rigor and the insights of contemporary activism.

Series Editor:

Dr Alex Prichard
Fellow in International Political Theory, London School of Economics and Political Science

Dr Laurence Davis
Lecturer
Department of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth

Dr Nathan Jun
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy, Midwestern State University, USA

Dr Uri Gordon
Lecturer
Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Ketura, Israel

Just Published: Permanent Alliance? by Stanley Sloan

Permanent Alliance? NATO and the Transatlantic Bargain from Truman to Obama suggests the United States and its NATO allies have little choice but to sustain their alliance, in spite of its shortcomings and the difficult experience in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal's interview in Rolling Stone

You can read General McChrystal's full interview on the Rolling Stone Magazine website at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236#

 And for more on civil-military relations, be sure to check Continuum's upcoming book: US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11 by Mackubin Thomas Owens when it publishes in December 2010.

Politics titles to publish this summer

We have many titles in the pipeline. This July we will be publishing:

Sociocultural Intelligence: A New Discipline in Intelligence Studies
by Kerry Patton   

“Kerry Patton provides an in-depth, much needed, and fully analyzed proposal for a newly instituted intelligence discipline known as SOCINT. After operating and living with local Afghans, his supporting evidence matches that which Major General Michael Flynn recently described in his works Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. With billions of dollars expended and lives of America’s finest continuously endangered, there is no better time to incorporate a “Sociocultural Intelligence” discipline in defeating asymmetrical threats. MUST READ!” --Thomas G. McInerney, Lt. Gen. USAF (Ret)

Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt
by Michael Marder

"Michael Marder's brilliant explication of the philosophical content of Carl Schmitt's political theory is, at the same time, a profound exploration of the very possibility of political philosophy in the wake of phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction. No one has written more lucidly or insightfully on Schmitt's philosophical standing and on the fundamental problems of the political. Groundless Existence is  the new gold standard in Schmitt scholarship and an indispensable point of reference in political philosophy."
--Russell Berman, Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

Permanent Alliance? NATO and the Transatlantic Bargain from Truman to Obama
by Stanley Sloan

"Stanley Sloan has for many years been one of the most influential and authoritative analysts of the NATO Alliance.  In his new book “Permanent Alliance” he demonstrates once again his in-depth knowledge of NATO issues and his sound, balanced judgements of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Alliance as it strives to adapt to the 21st century security challenges.  This book should be at the top of the list for anyone who wants to understand today’s NATO."  --Jamie Shea, Director, Policy Planning, Private Office of the Secretary General,NATO

New: Left in the Past by Alastair Bonnett

Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia re-assesses the place of nostalgia within radical politics and, in doing so, provides a new introduction to the history and politics of the left. 

For more information, click here or on the preview below:

"Alastair Bonnett persuades us that the left can come to terms with nostalgia, because nostalgia-if the left did but realize it-is both a fact and an underutilized quality of leftist thought, and to prove it, Left in the Past conspires an unexpected rendezvous between early socialism, post-colonialism, and situationism. Unforeseen too is how this examination of nostalgia sheds new light on its opponent, modernity, placing the two rivals for the hearts and minds of the left in a truly welcome exchange. The book's novel readings of renowned cultural theories on the one hand, and exposés of arcane psycogeography on the other, will intrigue scholars, activists and students alike in virtually any area of politics, the arts, the humanities and social sciences. Bonnett writes with the humanity of someone who has thought through the contradictions he has felt within himself and which he wants now to share with others. And in a delicious irony, his findings are presented clearly and unsentimentally."  --Simon Sadler, Professor of Architectural and Urban History, University of California, Davis

Just Published: Who Speaks for Roma?

Who Speaks for Roma? by Aidan McGarry looks at the political participation and representation of the Romani community.

You can preview some chapters by clicking the link on the side:

"Aidan McGarry does not claim to speak for Roma, but his book is a thoughtful and well-informed reflection on those who do. The importance of the subject can hardly be overestimated. Many Roma in Europe face tremendous problems of poverty, discrimination and social exclusion. Issues of political mobilization, participation and representation are a key part of that puzzle. The analysis on offer here is a welcome contribution to an emerging body of research that examines activism for the Roma against the background of broader theoretical and political debates about diversity, social equality, and minority rights." --Peter Vermeersch (University of Leuven) is the author of The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe.

Deviant Globalization - Video

Next year, we will publish a new reader titled, Deviant Globalization. Edited by Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Stephen Weber, this unique collection of essays introduces one of the most pressing, yet least understood, global phenomena today: the thriving illicit industries and activities within the global economy whose growth challenges traditional notions of wealth, power, and progress.

You can view a video of Nils Gilman giving a talk on the subject by clicking here.

Coming Soon: The Poetics of Fear

The Poetics of Fear: A Human Response to Human Security by Chris Erickson will be published next month.

"Subtlety of analysis and fearlessness in the face of complexity characterize Erickson’s work: he reads poetically, seeing not just models for thought (and hence action), but also ways in which the very texts he reads complicate the matter. Erickson has a salutary awareness of metaphor, the reverberations of literary context, and the imaginative attitudes encouraged by various texts and methodologies. 
We rarely find in political thought such sensitivity to the deeper and more unsettling aspects of poetics, but here Erickson rejects the oversimplifications of ‘realism’ and shows how the cultural allies from the past that are enlisted on its side can themselves qualify, question, make problematic, or undermine the positions they are enlisted to support.

This book compares favorably to the best of those that use Ancient Greek and Roman texts to think with and think through, in company with, e.g., the psychologist Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, or the legal scholar James Boyd White’s Heracles’ Bow: Essays in the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law.

In the end Erickson does come out with a clear position, but it is a position that is complex and flexible : we are often seduced by the simplicity of Realpolitik, but we can escape its unfit logic by resisting flattening and ham-fisted readings that use Classical texts to support political ‘realism.’ Erickson uses the ways in which the Shield of Achilles in the Iliad can encourage us to think of representation and mediation, in terms of a negotiated engagement with versions of the world.  Erickson uses this as a springboard for careful interpretations not just of passages from the Iliad, but also Sophocles, Thucydides, Plato, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Baudrillard, culminating in the use the Homeric Shield of Achilles to shape an analysis of a pair of speeches, one by George W. Bush, one by Barack Obama.

Such intellectually fruitful use of poetics to understand politics is as impressive as it is rare."

--Dr. Andrew S. Becker, Associate Professor of Latin & Ancient Greek Languages, Literatures, & Cultures; Co-Director, Spring Semester Liberal Arts Program,Center for European Studies & Architecture,Riva San Vitale, Switzerland; Associate Chair, Dept of Foreign Languages & Literatures, Virginia Tech, USA.

International Relations titles

Continuum is developing its line of books on foreign policy. These are texts for upper level undergraduate and graduate students. Just published are:

The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa
by Ian Taylor

International Conflict Resolution, 3rd Ed.
by Charles Hauss, Alliance for Peace Building

Also in the works:
Permanent Alliance? NATO and the Transatlantic Bargain from Truman to Obama
by Stanley Sloan, Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, Middlebury College

International Relations of the Gulf Cooperation Council States
by Christian Koch, Director of International Studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, UAE

Security Challenges and Military Politics in East Asia
by Jongseok Woo, University of West Florida

China's Energy Relations with the Developing Nations
by Manochehr Dorraj and Carrie Liu Currier, Texas Christian University

The Dragon’s Will: The Exercise and Limitation of China’s Power from Pyongyang to Khartoum
by Jing-dong Yuan, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Faith and Foreign Policy: The Beliefs, Attitudes, and Influence of U.S. Christians
by Stephen R. Roch, Vassar College

Just Published: International Conflict Resolution

International Conflict Resolution, 2nd Edition by Charles Hauss is part of our International Relations in the Twenty-First Century series.

Click on the links above (preview) to access sample chapters.

New in March: Reconciling Community and Subjective Life

We are pleased to announce the upcoming publication in March of:

Reconciling Community and Subjective Life: Trauma Testimony as Political Theorizing in the Work of Jean Améry and Imre Kertész

by Magdalena Zolkos, University of Western Sydney

"Reconciling Community and Subjective Life offers a careful and profound investigation of the testimonial address by Jean Améry and Imre Kertész. Zolkos' book is not an easy read, but if we live, as it has been suggested, in the era of the witness, it is indispensable and deeply thought-provoking. It offers a much needed and highly qualified corrective to current debates on trauma and subjectivity, resentment and reconciliation.
--Thomas Brudholm, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen. Author of Resentment's Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive.

"Magdalena Zolkos’s absorbing study of Améry and Kertész delivers a long-awaited challenge to established paradigms of reading Holocaust testimonials. Bringing the discourse of testimony under the scrutiny of poststructuralist thought, psychoanalytic theory and trauma studies, this masterful and rigorous analysis reveals not only the ethical but also the political significance of testimonial literature in “post-catastrophic” times." -- Dorota Glowacka, University of King's College, London

"Magdalena Zolkos’ Reconciling Community and Subjective Life crucially adds to the current scholarship on Jean Améry’s and Imre Kertész’s writings in particular and Shoah testimony more generally by amplifying the specifically dialogic character of the affective legacies that irreversibly striate the imaginaries survivors convene in response to catastrophe.  As her reading of Améry suggests, the resentment that permeates memories of persecution and torture may engender fantasies of reconciliation that formally exaggerate and ironically expose their own fundamental impossibility.  Haunted by the shame of living on  “in place of another,” Kertész’s work, in Zolkos’ interpretation, illuminates an implacable sense of proximity with those who did not survive the Holocaust that marks out the ethical and political space of what she calls a “thanatic community.”  Zolkos contends that a potentially unavowable longing for community traverses Améry’s and Kertész’s testaments to the irremediable wounds left behind by large-scale betrayals of vulnerability.  Anyone who has been immersed in the literature of extreme trauma over the past fifteen years will doubtless find Zolkos’ rich analysis intellectually challenging and even startling in the best sense." -- Karyn Ball, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada

New Series: Critical Theory and Contemporary Society

Continuum is launching a new series titled, Critical Theory and Contemporary Society. Edited by Darrow Schecter, from the University of Sussex, UK, the series will be a unique collection of monographs.

The volumes in the series will explore the relation between contemporary society as a complex and highly differentiated phenomenon on the one hand, and critical theory as a correspondingly sophisticated methodology for studying and understanding it on the other. Volumes highlight why critical theory offers appropriate concepts for understanding political movements, socio-economic conflicts, and state-institutions in an ever more global world, and why critical theory needs updating to keep pace with the realities of the twenty-first century.

Works will cover a wide range of topics, including contemporary Europe, feminism, post-colonialism, cosmopolitanism, terrorism, film, literature, and more.

If you are interested in this new scholarly venture, please contact Marie-Claire Antoine, the Continuum politics editor at mantoine@continuum-books.com.