Written in dialogue format, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon's Pragmatic Nonviolence argues that nonviolence is the best hope for a better world. Human violence in all its forms-physical, psychological and systemic-cultural-is perhaps the greatest obstacle to well-being in personal and community life. Nonviolence as "a practice that, whenever possible, seeks the well-being of the Other, by refusing to use violence to solve problems, and by acting according to loving kindness" is the best antidote to human violence. By drawing on the philosophy of nonviolence, the American pragmatist tradition and recent empirical research, Pragmatic Nonviolence demonstrates that, rather than being merely theoretical, nonviolence is a truly practical approach toward personal and community well-being.

Responding to the call of the Second Vatican Council, this introduction to moral theology shows how virtue ethics and a global perspective shape the call to faithful discipleship today.

In Constructing Civility, Richard Park bridges Christian and Islamic political theologies on the basis of an Aristotelian ethics. He argues that modern secularism entails ideological commitments that can work against the promotion of public civility in pluralistic societies. A corrective outlook on public life and the public sphere is necessary, an outlook that aligns with and recovers the notion of the human good. Park develops a framework for a universally applicable public civility in multifaith and multicultural contexts by engaging the central concepts of the "image of God" (imago Dei) and "human nature" (fitra) in Roman Catholicism and Islam. The study begins with a critique of the social fragmentation and decline of public life found in modernity. Park's central contention is that the construction of public civility within Christian and Islamic political theologies is more promising and sustainable if it is reframed in terms of the human good rather than the common good. The book offers an illustration of the proposed framework of public civility in Mindanao, Philippines, an area that represents one of the longest-standing conflicts between Christian and Muslim communities. Park's sophisticated treatment brings together theology, philosophy, religious studies, intellectual history, and political theory, and will appeal to scholars in all of those fields.

The Philosophy of Matter is a journey in thinking through the material fate of the earth itself; its surfaces and undercurrrents, ecologies, environments and irreparable cracks. With figures such as Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres as philosophical guides and writings on New Materialism, Posthumanism and Affect Theory as intellectual context, Rick Dolphijn proposes a radical rethinking of some of the basic themes of philosophy: subjectivity, materiality, body (both human and otherwise) and the act of living. This rethink is a work of imagination and meditation in order to conceive of "another earth for another people". It is a homage to courageous thinking that dares to question the religious, capitalist and humanist realities of the day. A poetic philosophy of how to live in troubling times when even the earth beneath us feels unstable, Dolphijn offers a way to think about the world with depth, honesty and glimpses of hope.

In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gomez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world's fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation? Through detailed empirical analyses of several key trade disputes between the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil, Gomez-Mera proposes an explanation that emphasizes the tension between and interplay of two sets of factors: power asymmetries within and beyond the region, and domestic-level politics. Member states share a common interest in preserving MERCOSUR as a vehicle for increasing the region's leverage in external negotiations. Gomez-Mera argues that while external vulnerability and overlapping power asymmetries have provided strong and consistent incentives for regional cooperation in the Southern Cone, the impact of these systemic forces on regional outcomes also has been crucially mediated by domestic political dynamics in the bloc's two main partners, Argentina and Brazil. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the unequal distribution of power within the bloc has had a positive effect on the sustainability of cooperation. Despite Brazil's reluctance to adopt a more active leadership role in the process of integration, its offensive strategic interests in the region have contributed to the durability of institutionalized collaboration. However, as Gomez-Mera demonstrates, the tension between Brazil's global and regional power aspirations has also added significantly to the bloc's ineffectiveness.