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Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context
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What do struggles over pipelines in Canada, housing estates in France, and shantytowns in Martinique have in common? In Urban Revolutions, Stefan Kipfer shows how these struggles force us to understand the (neo-)colonial aspects of capitalist urbanization in a comparatively and historically nuanced fashion. In so doing, he demonstrates that urban research can offer a rich, if uneven, terrain upon which to develop the relationship between Marxist and anti-colonial intellectual traditions. After a detailed dialogue between Henri Lefebvre and Frantz Fanon, Kipfer engages creole literature in the French Antilles, Indigenous radicalism in North America and political anti-racism in mainland France.
In The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste, John Asimakopoulos analyzes the political economy of the society of the spectacle, a philosophical concept developed by Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Using the analytical tools of social science, while historicizing, Asimakopoulos reveals that all societies in every epoch have been and continue to be caste systems legitimized by various ideologies. He concludes there is no such thing as capitalism (or socialism)—only a caste system hidden behind capitalist ideology. Key features of the book include its broad interdisciplinary-nonsectarian approach with quantitative and qualitative data. The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste is well written and clear, making it accessible to the general public.
Our world has become inundated with images of a reality in which ‘evil’ thrives, and ‘good’ seems to be a naïve, utopian fantasy. ‘Good’ is reserved for superheroes and children’s stories, while the ‘real world’ is driven by greed, violence, and hatred. If we are so consumed with evil, then is there any point to writing about it? Perhaps the more important question is ‘why should we ever stop writing about it?’. Towards that end, this volume is intended to act as a catalyst to an ongoing destabilization of mental (philosophical) and social (political, historical) regimes of ‘evil’ in thought and practice. It is compiled with the intention of saying something new about a very old topic, as a reminder that this is an unfinished conversation which stretches back millennia and has a deeply tangible impact on the worlds within which we live today. Contributors are Peter Brian Barry, Lima Bhuiyan, Diedra L. Clay, Zachary J. Goldberg, Sophia Kanaouti, Stefanie Schnitzer Mills, Rallie Murray, Asli Tekinay and Claudio Vescia Zanini.
The Public Role of Self-Help Coaches in Germany and China
In Life Advice from Below, Eric C. Hendriks offers the first systematic, comparative study of the globalization of American-style self-help culture and the cultural conflicts this creates in different national contexts. The self-help guru is an archetypical American figure associated with individualism, materialism and the American Dream. Nonetheless, the self-help industry is spreading globally, thriving in China and other seemingly unlikely places. Controversy follows in its wake, as the self-help industry, operating outside of formal education and state institutions, outflanks philosophical, religious and political elites who have their own visions of the Good Life. Through a comparison of Germany and China, Hendriks analyzes how the competition between self-help gurus and institutional authorities unfolds under radically different politico-cultural regimes.

“This witty book charms its way through a very serious sociology of the seriously quirky field of self-help books. Read it for its fascinating pop-culture insights and you’ll come away with a deep understanding of contemporary sociological theory. Highly recommended.” - Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney

“Hendriks’ finding that Germany rather than China is more resistant to self-help gurus offers a powerful corrective to the assumption in much of the globalization literature that the greatest cultural divide is between the Anglo-Western European sphere and the rest of the globe.” - Rodney Benson, New York University
The “Global” and the “Local” in Early Modern and Modern East Asia presents a unique set of historical perspectives by scholars from two
important universities in the East Asian region—The University of Tokyo (Tōdai) and Fudan University, along with East Asian Studies scholars from Princeton University. Two of the essays address the international leanings in the histories of their respective departments in Todai and Fudan. The rest of the essays showcase how such thinking about the global and local histories have borne fruit, as the scholars of the three institutions contributed essays, arguing about the philosophies, methodologies, and/or perspectives of global history and how it relates to local stories. Authors include Benjamin Elman, Haneda Masashi, and Ge Zhaoguang.
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Debates about labour markets and the identity of those who, in an economic sense, circulate within them, together with the controversies such issues generate, have in the past been confined by development studies to the Third World. Now these same concerns have shifted, as the study of development has turned its attention to how these same phenomena affect metropolitan capitalist nations. For this reason, the book does not restrict the analysis of issues such as the free/unfree labour distinction and non-class identity to Third World contexts. The reviews, review essays and essays collected here also examine similar issues now evident in metropolitan capitalism, together with their political and ideological effects and implications.
In Hinge Epistemology, eminent epistemologists investigate Wittgenstein's concept of basic certainty or 'hinge certainty'. The volume begins by examining the salient features of 'hinges': Are they propositions that enjoy a special kind of non-evidential justification? Are they objects of knowledge or ways of acting mistaken for known propositions? Various attempts are then made to integrate hinges in the development of a viable epistemology: Can they shed light on the conditions of satisfaction for knowledge and justification? Do they offer a solution to scepticism? Finally, the application of hinges is explored in such areas as common knowledge and intellectual loyalty. The volume attests to the importance of hinge certainty and Wittgenstein's On Certainty for mainstream epistemology.
Idealization XIV: Models in Science offers a detailed ontological, epistemological and historical account of the role of models in scientific practice. The volume contains contributions of different international scholars who developed many aspects of the use of idealizations and models both in the natural and the social sciences. This volume is particularly relevant because it offers original contributions concerning one of the main topic in philosophy of science: the role of models in such branches of the sciences and the humanities like comparative historical sociology, economics, history, linguistics and political philosophy.

Contributors are: Giacomo Borbone, Krzysztof Brzechczyn, Mieszko Ciesielski, Adam Czerniak, Xavier de Donato Rodríguez, José L. Falguera, Adolfo García de la Sienra, Lidia Godek, Igor Hanzel, Łukasz Hardt, Krzysztof Kiedrowski, Barbara Konat, Zenonas Norkus, Piotr Przybysz, Piotr Szwochert
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016.

It is significant that Time Magazine, in the wake of the Arab Spring, named The Protester the person of the year of 2011. Since then revolts, social unrest and demands for systemic change have continued to spread, from the anti-austerity street marches in Europe and the progressive ‘No Borders’ global movement, to protests against neoconservative and xenophobic populist movements. The histories that are currently being (re)written, not only in the West but also in North Africa and the Middle East, and more recently in places like Ukraine and Thailand, show us that the immanence and promise of large scale political revolutions is as present as ever across the world. The solidity and stability that nations and economic systems strive for is continuously being challenged by different forces, with shifting means, for various reasons.
As the goals and aspirations of protesters across the world are becoming more heterogonous and less programmatic it becomes increasingly hard to say what ‘the protester’ wants and where ‘the revolution’ will take us. This book makes no attempts to answer that question. On the contrary it embraces the ambiguity and heterogeneity of contemporary protest movements, pointing to how the potentials of revolutionary acts reside behind seemingly irrelevant, disorganized outbursts of apparently aimless acts. Giving meaning to the sign carried by one of the protesters at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Zucotti Park, saying: ‘We’re here; we’re unclear; get used to it’