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.

Product Description: Women, States and Nationalism counters this attitude and examines the many and contradictory ways in which women negotiate their places in 'the nation'. The volume includes theoretical essays that explore the multiple ways in which the very concept of 'nation' is based upon notions of family, sexuality and gender power which are often overlooked of downplayed by 'male-stream' scholarship...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Conscious Acts and the Politics of Social Change counters the notion, widely propagated by antifeminist forces, that feminists represent a group of socially deviant outsiders. In fifteen essays that explore feminist projects to advance human freedom, the contributors find feminists to be typical members of society who promote social movements for nonviolent change in law-abiding ways...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The authors of this book examine issues regarding the growth of regionalism. They ask how politics shapes the construction of regional agreements, to what extent these agreements incorporate or limit economic liberalization, and how various concerns affect the evolution of regional groupings...read more

Product Description: Economic and strategic power is not the exclusive province of powerful, developed countries. Kuwait has used its main resource, oil, to integrate itself into the world economy as an autonomous actor rather than as a dependent commodity exporter...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)