Product Description: The prevailing Western paradigm is modernity: a model focused on individual liberty, secularism, and the scientific control of nature. This worldview emerged from the break with the medieval and classical past and advanced a philosophy in which the solitary mind opposes the rest of the world...read more

Product Description: In addition to war, terrorism, and unchecked military violence, modernity is also subject to less visible but no less venomous conflicts. Global in nature, these "culture wars" exacerbate the tensions between tradition and innovation, virtue and freedom...read more

Product Description: Civilizations and World Order: Geopolitics and Cultural Difference examines the role of civilizations in the context of the existing and possible world order(s) from a cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary perspective. Contributions seek to clarify the meaning of such complex and contested notions as “civilization,” “order,” and “world order”; they do so by taking into account political, economic, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of social life...read more

A new ethical concept of democracy as the cultivation and practice of civic virtues in a pluralistic setting is presented in this thoughtful and wide-ranging study. Drawing upon such figures as Aristotle, Montesquieu, Hegel, Dewey, Heidegger, Arendt, and Lefort, Fred Dallmayr emphasizes the need for civic education and practical-ethical engagement in all societies aspiring to be democratic. With reference to Middle Eastern societies and especially Iran, Dallmayr explores the possible compatibility between democracy and Islamic faith. In a similar vein, he discusses the strengths of Gandhian and Confucian democracy as possible correctives to current versions of minimalist democracy and the cult of laissez-faire liberalism and neoliberalism. Addressing how to instill a democratic ethos in societies where corporations and elites exercise a great deal of power, The Promise of Democracy presents an inspired vision of democracy as popular self-rule in which ethical cultivation and self-transformation make possible a nondomineering kind of political agency. Against this background, Dallmayr casts democracy as a promise, making room for the unlimited horizons opened up by a new understanding of liberty and equality."

Product Description: Civilizational Dialogue and Political Thought collects the ideas of Islamic and Western scholars who believe that the need is strong for a peaceful global agenda of 'dialogue among civilizations,' as has been proposed by Mohammed Khatami, former president of Iran.

Product Description: In this intriguing new book, Indian social theorist Ananta Kumar Giri issues a stirring call for scholars of contemporary social theory and practice to grapple with late modernity's most pressing social and political issues. Giri counterposes Western thought with Indian social theory in a work that ranges across an array of Indian texts and ideas, hitherto ignored by Western scholarship...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: An AltaMira Press Book The process of modernization poses a profound challenge to societies. Nowhere is this more true than in India where cultural memories have been severely tested by colonial domination but have been loyally preserved nonetheless...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)