John Turner

Barrie Axford

Ben Rosamond

Richard Huggins

Gary K. Browning

This textbook has been carefully designed to meet the needs of students taking introductory courses in Politics. It is accessible and exciting, and by taking the widest possible definition of what is political it offers unrivalled coverage of the subject. Specially designed as an interactive text, it includes think points, exercises and extracts as well as a range of illustrative material to stimulate responses from the reader. The authors emphasise the role of the individual in politics, and the interplay between the personal, the national and the global. They introduce topical issues and examples to bring the subject to life. Features and benefits of Politics: An Introduction: * Comprehensive: includes chapters on political sociology, political institutions, the state, political parties and associations, political thought and a whole section on international and global politics * User-friendly : includes marginal comments, key words and definitions, extensive cross-referencing and a glossary * Clearly written: by a team who are all actively involved in teaching undergraduates and whose enthusiasm for teaching and engaging with students and issues is manifest * Encourages further study : through imaginative and annotated further reading sections at the ends of chapters and a consolidated bibliography.

Politics: An Introduction

Didem Buhari-Gulmez

Seckin Baris Gulmez

Over the last decade, anti-government demonstrations worldwide have brought together individuals and groups that were often assumed unlikely to unite for a common cause due to differences in ideological tendencies. They have particularly highlighted the role of youth, women, social media, and football clubs in establishing unusual alliances between far left and far right groups and/or secular and religious segments of the society. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors question to what extent political ideologies have lost their explanatory power in contemporary politics and society. This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debates about the relationship between ideology and public protests by introducing the global context that allows the comparison of societies in different parts of the world in order to reveal the general patterns underlying the global era. Tackling a highly topical issue, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of international relations, social movements and globalization.

Bridging Divides

Rethinking Ideology in the Age of Global Discontent

Theories of Globalization offers students and scholars a comprehensive and critical introduction to the concept of globalization. Barrie Axford expertly guides readers through the full range of perspectives on the topic, from international political economy to geography, global anthropology to cultural and communication studies. In so doing he draws out the common threads between competing theories, as well as pinpointing the problems that challenge our understanding of globalization. Key terms such as 'globalism' and 'globality' are carefully explained and central themes like capitalism, governance, culture and history explored in full. In assessing the contribution made by globalization theory, Axford's account also sheds new light on several crucial current issues. These range from the changing shape of democracy and citizen engagement with governance, to issues surrounding 'just war' and humane intervention, and problems relating to empire and post-colonialism. This wide-ranging and detailed new book will be essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, sociology and any area where the concept of globalization is discussed and disputed.

Theories of Globalization

This book explores the ways in which study of culture as the realm of meaning and identity can inform current debates about globalization and thus afford greater understanding of emergent globalities. By drawing on a range of disciplinary and sub-disciplinary expertise from across the social sciences and also promoting areas of cross-disciplinary research, the book contributes to the development of theory on globalization and also provides some significant illustrations of (cultural) globalization in practice through attention to novel empirical sites and issues. These include eminently cultural realms such as music, film and architecture and those that are invested with a strong cultural component, such as migration and education. Contributions emphasise the soft features of globalization and globality and most look to marry theoretical abstraction with everyday aspects of global processes, focusing on those routine and sometimes conscious connections and accommodations that make up daily life in a globalized world. In doing so, the book itself can be seen as a contribution to critical and multidimensional studies of globalization and as engaging in a form of global practice.

Cultures and / of Globalization

Populism and globalization are shorthand for the temper of our times. Populism is usually cast as globalization’s nemesis, a backlash against worldwide connectivity, while globalization is often said to be in retreat or even demise. This book takes issue with both interpretations, claiming instead that while populism of all shades tends to be anti-globalist, the globalism it is pitted against has changed dramatically in recent years and is increasingly decentred, destabilized, contingent, multipolar, and multidirectional. Axford paints a picture of this new globalization and dissects the strains of postmodern populism that both contest it and are its expression. Attention to the current surge of populism also affords purchase on an axial feature of our turbulent and globalized world—the imbrication or antithesis of local and global, of difference and sameness. This is an interdisciplinary examination of populism as a factor in global change, drawing on international politics, sociology, and global studies.

Populism Versus the New Globalization

Sandra Halperin

Alistair Brisbourne

Claudia Lueders

This book offers transdisciplinary scholarship which challenges the agendas of and markers around traditional social scientific fields. It builds on the belief that the study of major issues in the global cultural and political economies benefit from a perspective that rejects the limitations imposed by established boundaries, whether disciplinary, conceptual, symbolic or material. Established and early career academics explore and embrace contemporary political sociology following the ‘global’ and ‘cultural’ turns of recent decades. Categories such as state, civil society, family, migration, citizenship and identity are interrogated and sometimes found to be ill-suited to the task of analyzing global complexities. The limits of global theory, the challenges of global citizenship, and the relationship between globalisation and situated and mobile subjects and objects are all referenced in this book. The book will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Geography, Area studies and European studies.

Essays on Borders, Cosmopolitanism, and Globalization

Political Sociologies of the Cultural Encounter

Global Theory from Within and Without is a critical examination of the concept of globalization. There are in sociological theory many definitions of globalization. Sociological theory constructs a new theory of globalization starting from the structural changes of social systems at the beginning of the 21th century. The research subject is the ongoing connection of global studies and the research program of multiple modernities. The structural change is initiated by growing pace and different intensities of social exchange of the subsystems of societal communication in contemporary societies. The studies of global scholarship show that the structural change is not an indicator of any unified constitution of social systems.

Barrie Axford

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