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This comprehensive foundation for the study of realism will introduce students in disciplines as varied as philosophy, international relations, and strategic studies to the majestic breadth of the realist tradition that unifies them all. The Realist Tradition in International Relations: The Foundations of Western Order introduces the principal theorists who have shaped and defined the realist tradition. This once-dominant theory of international politics has reemerged to provide a shared foundation for understanding political theory, international relations theory, and strategic studies. The work is comprised of four volumes, each focusing upon a distinct period and the pivotal contributors ...
Political practices, agencies and institutions around the world promote the need for humans, individually and collectively, to develop capacities of resilience. We must accept and adapt to the ‘realities’ of an endemic condition of global insecurity and to the practice of so-called sustainable development. But in spite of claims that resilience make us more adept and capable, does the discourse of resilience undermine our ability to make our own decisions as to how we wish to live? This book draws out the theoretical assumptions behind the drive for resilience and its implications for issues of political subjectivity. It establishes a critical framework from which discourses of resilienc...
What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or an ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political issue, fundamental to the new doctrine of ‘resilience’ that is becoming a key term of art for governing planetary life in the 21st Century. No longer should we think in terms of evading the possibility of traumatic experiences. Catastrophic events, we are told, are not just inevitable but learning experiences from which we have to grow and prosper, collectively and individually. Vulnerability to threat, injury and loss has to be accepted as a reality of human existence. In this original and compelling text, Brad Evan...
In/Visible War addresses a paradox of twenty-first century American warfare. The contemporary visual American experience of war is ubiquitous, and yet war is simultaneously invisible or absent; we lack a lived sense that “America” is at war. This paradox of in/visibility concerns the gap between the experiences of war zones and the visual, mediated experience of war in public, popular culture, which absents and renders invisible the former. Large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance. For these citizens, war seems abstract, or may even seem to have disappeared altogether due to a relative absence of visual images of casualties. Perhaps even more significantly, wars can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority of Americans. Yet, the normalization of twenty-first century war also renders it highly visible. War is made visible through popular, commercial, mediated culture. The spectacle of war occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of celebrations at athletic events and in films, video games, and other media, coming together as MIME, the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network.
War and Literary Studies poses two main questions: First, how has war shaped the field of literary studies? And second, when scholars today study the literature of war what are the key concepts in play? Seeking to complement the extant scholarship, this volume adopts a wider and more systematic approach as it directs our attention to the relation between warfare and literary studies as a field of knowledge. What are the key characteristics of the language of war? Of gender in war? Which questions are central to the way we engage with war and trauma or war and sensation? In which ways were prominent 20th century theories such as critical theory, French postwar theory, postcolonial theory shaped by war? How might emergent concepts such as 'revolution,' 'the anthropocene' or 'capitalism' inflect the study of war and literature?
This book approaches the challenges the Arctic has faced and is facing through a lens of opportunity. Through pinpointed examples from and dealing with the Circumpolar North, the Arctic is depicted as a region where people and peoples have managed to endure despite significant challenges at hand. This book treats the ‘Arctic of disasters’ as an innovated narrative and asks how the ‘disaster pieces’ of Arctic discourse interact with the ability of Arctic peoples, communities and regions to counter disaster, adversity, and doom. While not neglecting the scientifically established challenges associated with climate change and other (potentially) disastrous processes in the north, this book calls for a paradigm shift from perceiving the ‘Arctic of disasters’ to an ‘Arctic of triumph’. Particular attention is therefore given to selected Arctic achievements that underline ‘triumphant’ developments in the north, even when Arctic triumph and disaster intersect.
Endangering Science Fiction Film explores the ways in which science fiction film is a dangerous and endangering genre. The collection argues that science fiction's cinematic power rests in its ability to imagine ‘Other’ worlds that challenge and disturb the lived conditions of the ‘real’ world, as it is presently known to us. From classic films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris to modern blockbusters including World War Z and Gravity, and directors from David Cronenberg to Alfonso Cuarón, contributors comment on the way science fiction film engages with dangerous encounters, liminal experiences, sublime aesthetics, and untethers space and time to question the very nature of human existence. With the analysis of a diverse range of films from Europe, Asia, North and South America, Endangering Science Fiction Film offers a uniquely interdisciplinary view of the evolving and dangerous sentiments and sensibility of this genre.