What does The Dark Knight have to do with political economy or Lord of the Flies with capitalism? A great deal, argues Ronnie D. Lipschutz in this entertaining and enlightening guide to basic concepts and practices in capitalism, neoclassical economics, and political economy. As he convincingly illustrates, film and fiction occupy a dual role in today's economy. They are the products of the economy, designed and presented as commodities to be sold in great quantities even as they serve to reproduce social beliefs and practices (e.g., torture comes to be seen as a routine and necessary means of extracting intelligence from suspects). Drawing on film and fiction from the past sixty years, Lipschutz describes and analyzes their essential role in the production and reproduction of contemporary society. His thoughtful and imaginative critique will bring to life the concepts and practices of economics and political economy for all readers.

What would international relations look like if our theories and analyses began with individuals, families, and communities instead of executives, nation-states, and militaries? After all, it is people who make up cities, states, and corporations, and it is their beliefs and behaviors that explain why some parts of the world seem so peaceful while others appear so violent, why some societies are so rich while others are so poor. This unique look at contemporary global politics begins with people, treating them as "social individuals" with free will and human agency even as they are limited and disciplined by rules and rulers. Offering a fresh approach to global politics, this dynamic author team trades perspectives with each other and with such eminent social theorists as Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt to develop their resonant theme. Using practical examples as well as theory, the authors show students how they can take charge of their lives and the politics that affect them, even in the context of a vast global economy and impersonal international forces that sometimes seem out of control. Filled with idealism, yet firmly grounded in current realities, Global Politics as if People Mattered is a fresh take on the proper place and potential of individuals in world politics—front and center, actively engaged in a way of life that is as politically personal as it is politically powerful. Helping students and others to carve out their own political space in the contemporary global order is a major aim of this unusual text.

The title of this book is a play upon several important concepts and forces in the ongoing debate about American empire. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration and its counsels in the U.S. Department of Justice have been both constituting an empire of American hegemony and, in so doing, violating the spirit and the law of the American Constitution at home and abroad. The U.S. Constitution has been doing work in the "nonsovereign" spaces of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad, and CIA black detention sites around the world. The reach of this constitution is becoming visible in National Security Agency surveillance and data mining of electronic communications between the United States and the rest of the world and in a myriad of other regulatory and legal demands made by the United States both of its citizens and of those living in and traveling among other countries. And, in testing the limits of its wished-for powers, the Bush administration seeks to constitute an imperium that, by its own definition, would be nowhere subject to the long-assumed checks of either the U.S. Constitution, Congress, the courts, or international law, for it operates outside of the boundaries of American sovereignty in defiance of the international community and the United Nations, and in violation of the law of nations. This book is the latest and perhaps sharpest entry in the burgeoning literature of American empire since Hardt and Negri. Its focus on the legal and institutional aspects of empire sets it apart from the literature on this subject.

Product Description: Globalization is moving fast, impacting on the life of all nations with accelerating force. In this new study Ronnie Lipschutz shows how it is being handled by specific groups seeking positive outcomes for the people and causes they represent...read more

Product Description: As memories of the Cold War recede, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what it was about and why it evoked such feelings of intensity and fatalism. Fortunately, we have a gold mine of movies and novels to help us recall why an entire generation of Americans grew up ducking under school desks in air raid drills and stocking the family bomb shelter...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

After Authority offers an overview of the evolving international political "revolution," a historical perspective based on Lipschutz's writings over the years. It also examines the prospects for war and peace in the twenty-first century. During earlier "industrial revolutions," long-standing and apparently stable patterns of social behavior, economic exchange, and political authority came under challenge. Today, post World War Two institutions that were formed to create a peaceful, economically-prosperous world, are under severe challenge by globalization, liberalization, and social innovation. Old hierarchies of power and wealth have been undermined as people take advantage of new economic and political opportunities, and the resulting disruption of expectations leads to fear, uncertainty, instability, and violence. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In the last decade, discourses of economic and political liberalization and globalization have swept the world. Yet during this same period and all across the globe, many states are fragmenting and more than 30 ethnic and sectarian conflicts have displaced or killed millions of people--and far more civilians than soldiers...read more

Product Description: “The topic is a live one, important both in itself and for what it adds to contemporary thought. Rereading Merleau-Ponty in the light of the post-structural writings since his death suggests that he has something in common with them but that he also has something more which might add significantly to their views...read more

Product Description: Attempting to find answers and to come to grips with some of the dilemmas confronting security in the wake of the Cold War, this text represents a wide range of views on changing concepts of security at the turn of the millennium.

Product Description: The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics examines how the difficult issues of social, political, and economic relations will complicate the efforts initiated at the June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The contributors argue that national governments must begin to acknowledge the role of new actors in their environmental policies...read more

Evaluates various methods of disposing of radioactive waste, explains how such materials are produced, and considers their political and health consequences