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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2026

        Arctic state identity

        by Ingrid A. Medby

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2024

        Critical theory and Independent Living

        by Teodor Mladenov

        Critical theory and Independent Living explores intersections between contemporary critical theory and disabled people's struggle for self-determination. The book highlights the affinities between the Independent Living movement and studies of epistemic injustice, biopower, and psychopower. It discusses in depth the activists' critical engagement with welfare-state paternalism, neoliberal marketisation, and familialism. This helps develop a pioneering comparison between various welfare regimes grounded in Independent Living advocacy. The book draws on the activism of disabled people from the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) by developing case studies of the ENIL's campaigning for deinstitutionalisation and personal assistance. It is argued that this work helps rethink independence as a form of interdependence, and that this reframing is pivotal for critical theorising in the twenty-first century.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Critical security in the Asia-Pacific

        by Anthony Burke, Matt McDonald

        In the wake of 9/11, the Asian crisis and the 2004 tsunami, traditional analytical frameworks are increasingly unable to explain how individuals and communities are rendered insecure, or advance individual, global or environmental security. In the Asia-Pacific, the accepted wisdom of realism has meant that analyses rarely move beyond the statist, militarist and exclusionary assumptions that underpin traditional realpolitik. This innovative new book challenges these limitations and addresses the missing problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It also turns a critical eye on traditional interstate strategic dynamics. Critical security in the Asia-Pacific applies both a critical theoretical approach that interrogates the deeper assumptions underpinning security discourses, and a human-centred policy approach that focuses on the security, welfare and emancipation of individuals and communities. Leading Asia-Pacific researchers combine to apply these frameworks to the most pressing issues in the region, from the Korean peninsula to environmental change, Indonesian conflict, the 'war on terror' and the plight of refugees. The result is a sophisticated and accessible account of often-neglected realities of marginalization in the region, and a compelling argument for the empowerment and security of the most vulnerable.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2026

        Critical theory and the political

        by Anastasia Marinopoulou

        The book addresses what is political in critical theory and which aspects, arguments or notions of critical theory maintain political significance for the 20th and the 21st centuries. The collection of essays comprises itself of a series of clear and critical perspectives that analyze the extent to which critical theory relates political argument to modern societies and, thereby, exerts a critique of the multiple social and political phenomena of late modernity. The contributors focus on a multiplicity of universal phenomena such as globalization, multiple crises, late capitalism and the social role of the sciences, and posit some novel criticism of the contemporary social sphere, as it is situated within the wider system of global capitalism. They also present a plurivalent critique that links arguments in Marxism and Freud to all three generations of critical theory.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        April 2026

        The art of decolonisation

        Dakar-Paris, 1950-70

        by Maureen Murphy

        The art of decolonisation examines how artists challenged colonial legacies and reconfigured power through transnational networks of art and diplomacy. Adopting a global and transhistorical perspective, it explores artistic, political, and institutional relations between France and Senegal during decolonisation and the Cold War. From the emergence of a national modern art in Senegal to contested cultural policies and high-profile exhibitions-such as those featuring Picasso and Soulages in Dakar, or contemporary Senegalese art in Paris-this book traces the circulation of artworks, ideas, and influence across borders. It reveals how visual artists and filmmakers shaped a new artistic geopolitics between 1950 and 1970. Reconsidering the accepted chronology of the 'global turn', The art of decolonisation shows that the roots of global art discourse run deeper than the 1990s, and were already forming during the era of independence struggles.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2021

        Critical theory and feeling

        The affective politics of the early Frankfurt School

        by Simon Mussell

        This book offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent 'affective turn' within the arts and humanities. Resisting the overly rationalist tendencies of political philosophy, it argues that critical theory actively cultivates a powerful connection between thinking and feeling, and rediscovers a range of often neglected concepts that were of vital importance to the first generation of critical theorists, including melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, objects and mimesis. In doing so, it brings the dynamic work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer into conversation with more recent debates around politics and affect. An important intervention in the fields of affect studies and social and political thought, Critical theory and feeling shows that sensuous experience is at the heart of the Frankfurt School's affective politics.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2021

        Critical theory and demagogic populism

        by Paul K. Jones

        Populism is a powerful force today, but its full scope has eluded the analytical tools of both orthodox and heterodox 'populism studies'. This book provides a valuable alternative perspective. It reconstructs in detail for the first time the sociological analyses of US demagogues by members of the Frankfurt School and compares these with contemporary approaches. Modern demagogy emerges as a key under-researched feature of populism, since populist movements, whether 'left' or 'right', are highly susceptible to 'demagogic capture'. The book also details the culture industry's populist contradictions - including its role as an incubator of modern demagogues - from the 1930s through to today's social media and 'Trumpian psychotechnics'. Featuring a previously unpublished text by Adorno on modern demagogy as an appendix, it will be of interest to researchers and students in critical theory, sociology, politics, German studies, philosophy and history of ideas, as well as all those concerned about the rise of demagogic populism today.

      • Trusted Partner
        2024

        Reading Clinical Studies Critically

        Clinical trials, reviews, guidelines

        by Dr. Iris Hinneburg

        Make or break? Advertisements repeatedly praise „plant-based“ products or promise new mobility through ointments and dietary supplements. The tools of evidence-based pharmacy help to answer the question „Does this really help?“ This practical guide offers tips and explanations on how to be confident of finding the relevant scientific literature, critically evaluate clinical studies, and interpret therapeutic results. The book provides guidance on how to classify the quality of reviews and meta-analyses and assess the reliability of guidelines in everyday healthcare practice. Practical examples help to avoid pitfalls in evaluation and to understand the statistical details. An extensive appendix with technical terms, checklists, important institutions of evidence-based medicine and further sources completes the book.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2025

        Passage works

        Ruth Beckermann’s art

        by Patricia Allmer, John Sears

        Passage Works is the first book-length English language critical analysis of the transdisciplinary work of the Austrian film-maker, writer, and artist Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952, Vienna). Beckermann's works interrogate identity and geography as formations of the intersections between the past and the contemporary. Taking as her central topics Austria and its history and politics, her own identity as a Jewish woman, and the contemporary global geopolitics of migration and displacement, Beckermann develops wider meditations in film, art, and writing on the persistence of European memory, and the meanings of Europe itself; on borders, migrations, and identities; on memories, traumas, and traditions; on the image as marker of presence and absence, repository of the traces of historical violence; and on the passage as metaphor for a range of physical, psychological, and ideological movements defining the complexities of contemporary cosmopolitan identities.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2026

        Diplomatic training

        Histories, geographies, politics

        by Ruth Craggs, Jonathan Harris, Fiona McConnell

        Despite the essential role diplomatic training plays in the everyday workings of international relations, international law and in the various multilateral organisations, this practice has received little critical attention in the humanities, social and political sciences. Bringing together detailed accounts of the histories, development and contemporary practices of diplomatic training with insights from key practitioners, this edited collection places training centrally within our understanding of international relations. It argues that diplomatic training both reflects and reproduces hegemonic power relations, whilst at the same time offering opportunities to contest them, and imagine alternative futures. The book includes a substantive introduction, nine full-length chapters from a range of disciplinary and regional perspectives drawing on archival research, oral history, interviews, and ethnographic methods, and four 'interventions': reflection pieces from trainers and directors of training programmes. It offers a globe-spanning, interdisciplinary account of the politics of diplomatic training and appeals to both scholarly and practitioner audiences.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Critical theory and sociological theory

        by Darrow Schecter

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2009

        Air empire

        British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Air empire

        British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice.

      • Trusted Partner
        Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge
        June 2017

        Critical theory and epistemology

        The politics of modern thought and science

        by Anastasia Marinopoulou. Series edited by Darrow Schecter

        This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann's systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault's writings and the dialectics of systems theory. This unique work takes a comparative look at structuralism and post-structuralism's epistemological theory with special reference to scientific reason. It also investigates Luhmann's works in epistemology. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2021

        Critical design in Japan

        Material culture, luxury, and the avant-garde

        by Ory Bartal

        This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today. The practice communicates a form of visual and material protest drawing on the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s, notably feminism, body politics, the politics of identity, and ecological, anti-consumerist and anti-institutional critiques, as well as the concept of otherness. It also presents an encounter between two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde. The book challenges the definition of design as the production of unnecessary decorative and conceptual objects, and the characterisation of Japanese design in particular as beautiful, sublime or a product of 'Japanese culture'. In doing so it reveals the ways in which material and visual culture serve to voice protest and formulate a social critique.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        June 2025

        Foundations of social ecological economics

        The fight for revolutionary change in economic thought

        by Clive L Spash

        This book explores radical dissent from orthodox mainstream economics, and sets out a theoretically grounded vision for the emerging paradigm of social ecological economics. At the heart of this paradigmatic shift lies an acknowledgement of the inextricable embeddedness of economies in biophysical reality and social structure. The struggle for this transformative vision unfolds through a critical examination of mainstream environmental thought, followed by a nuanced evaluation of contributions from Marxists, socialists, critical institutionalists, feminists and Post-Keynesians grappling with the urgent environmental crisis. Synthesising insights from these diverse and heterodox schools, the book navigates the philosophical underpinnings of science, embracing a critical realist approach that challenges not only mainstream economic thought but also eclectic pluralism, relativism and strong constructionism. The question of what constitutes revolutionary science is explored in light of works by Kuhn, Schumpeter and Neurath, emphasising the pivotal role of values and ideology in works from Marx to Gramsci. Building on these radical and philosophical foundations, the book articulates a preanalytic vision of social ecological economics, dismantling entrenched notions of growth and efficiency in favour of a framework centered on social provisioning and needs embedded in ethics. In a thought-provoking conclusion, the book applies its analytical lens to the multiple crises of modernity within industrialised capital-accumulating economies. An agenda for social ecological transformation toward diverse alternative economies emerges, providing a compelling call to action in the face of contemporary challenges.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        February 2025

        The political economy of Turkey’s integration to Europe

        Uneven development and hegemony

        by Elif Uzgören

        This book examines Turkey's integration with Europe within structural dynamics of globalisation from a critical political economy perspective. Critical approaches have been sidelined within European Studies. Turkish enlargement is not an exemption. The analyses are based on original data generated by 109 interviews conducted in 2010, 2017 and 2023 with five categories of actors: representatives of capital and labour, political parties, state officials, and struggles around ecology, patriarchy and migration. It argues that the pro-membership was hegemonic in the 2000s which was contested by two rival class strategies, Ha-vet and neo-mercantilism. In the 2010s, pro-membership is no longer hegemonic within rising critical tone of social forces supporting rival class strategies. Unevenness of Turkey's trajectory of integration to Europe is likely to be consolidated through market integration and management of migration through transactional approach.

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