This highly original book suggests that the practices of Taliban and the American far right, two very significant and poorly understood groups, share common features. This commonality can be found in the philosophical basis of their ideological beliefs, in their comparative worldviews, and in their political practices. As Raja argues, the Taliban are much less the product of an irrational fundamentalism, and the radical right in America is much more the result of such a mindset, than Americans recognize. After providing a detailed explanation of his theoretical concepts and specialized vocabulary, the author develops a discussion of the subject in this brief but penetrating book. This is a book that should attract a wide readership among both academics and the general public.

This book tackles unanswered questions on British Muslims and political participation: What makes religion a salient 'political' identity for young Muslims (over any other identity)? How do young British Muslims identify themselves and how does it relate to their political engagement? A fascinating insight into the lives of young British Muslims.

This resource, by a professor of ecology and environmental science, features the latest information on the global environmental crisis in the 20th century. Ideal for student research, it examines the main causes of environmental concern and the key players who raised the environmental consciousness of the public. Following a timeline of key events and a historical overview of the environmental crisis, topical essays examine each of the major areas of enviromental concern: our vanishing wilderness, pollution, overpopulation, and the long-term problem of how we can coexist with our environment without destroying it. Ready-reference features include biographical sketches, the text of key primary documents, a glossary, over 40 tables, charts and illustrations, and an annotated bibliography.

Clear explanations of the various aspects of the environmental crisis are accompanied by tables, charts, diagrams, and photographs to illustrate the scope and complexity of the problems. Biographical sketches of key environmentalists are useful for ready reference. The text of key primary documents include excerpts from important environmental legislation and treaties and declarations from environmental groups. No other work on this topic offers both analysis of a broad spectrum of environmental concerns and ready-reference materials suitable for high school and college student research.

War in the post-9/11 world is far different from what we expected it be. Counterinsurgency and protracted guerrilla warfare, not shock and awe, are the order of the day. David Kilcullen is the world's foremost expert on this way of war, and in The Accidental Guerrilla, the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq surveys war as it is actually fought in the contemporary world. Colouring his account with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the jungles and highlands of South and Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East and the horn of Africa, The Accidental Guerrilla will, quite simply, change the way we think about war. While conventional warfare has obvious limits, Kilcullen also stresses that neither counterterrorism nor traditional counterinsurgency is the appropriate framework to fight the enemy we now face. Certainly, traditional counterinsurgency is more effective than counterterrorism when it comes to entities like Al Qaeda, but as Kilcullen contends, our current focus is far too narrow, for it tends to emphasize one geographical region and one state. The current war presents a much different situation: stateless insurgents and terrorists operating across large number of countries and only loosely affiliated with each other.

Patrick Pearse was not only leader of the 1916 Easter Rising but also one of the main ideologues of the IRA. Based on new material on his childhood and underground activities, this book places him in a European context and provides an intimate account of the development of his ideas on cultural regeneration, education, patriotism and militarism.

This book is a study of local grassroots activism in two major political areas, the peace and environmental movements, over a period of five years. Interviews with leaders of 166 different groups in five states (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, California, and Oregon), supplemented by personal observation and participation in several of those groups are the foundations of this analysis. The major concerns are the components of group and movement successes, both short-run and long-run, and activist group adaptations to change in the larger social and political world in light of political upheaval in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and several environmental crises that occurred during the period in question. Finally, Zisk focuses on the growing convergence (and barriers to convergence) of the movements. After examining short run accomplishments, Zisk concludes that most of the groups in both movements are faring poorly: few of their concrete goals are achieved, media attention is poor, and membership growth is problematic. For both movements, the transformational wings (those that press for basic changes, use consensus decision making, have few paid staff members) are not doing so well as the incremental wings (those seeking limited goals, using traditional decision techniques, employing larger staffs). This book should be of interest to students and teachers of political science and sociology.

The political landscapes of Bolivia and Peru have been impacted by the emergence of cocaleros as political actors. The experiences of these cocaleros have been strikingly different in the two countries: their paths, empowerment, and impact have varied significantly in scope and intensity. In Bolivia, cocaleros formed a social movement, launched a political party, and brought together a broad coalition that led to the election of their main leader as Bolivia's first indigenous president. In Peru, cocaleros formed a social movement in spite of serious obstacles, but then failed to articulate and act upon a unified political agenda. This book examines the different experiences of the Bolivian and Peruvian cocaleros, who became empowered through contentious action that originated in the defense of coca--an issue that is both de-legitimizing and divisive. In doing so, it illustrates how coca, an internationally criminalized good, affected the path and outcome of cocalero empowerment in each case.

While Mexico's spiritual history after the 1910 Revolution is often essentialized as a church-state power struggle, this book reveals the complexity of interactions between revolution and religion. Looking at anticlericalism, indigenous cults and Catholic pilgrimage, these authors reveal that the Revolution was a period of genuine religious change, as well as social upheaval.

This book is an original application of rhetoric and moral-emotions theory to the sociology of social movements. It promotes a new interdisciplinary vision of what social movements are, why they exist, and how they succeed in attaining momentum over time. Deepening the affective dimension of cultural sociology, this work draws upon the social psychology of human emotion and interpersonal communication. Specifically, the book revolves around the topic of anger as a unique moral emotion that can be made to play crucial motivational and generative functions in protest. The chapters develop a new theory of the emotional power of protest rhetoric, including how abolitionist performances of heterodoxic racial and gender status imaginaries contributed to the escalation of the 'sectional conflict' over American slavery.

International labour migration can be characterized in three ways - as human aspiration, tradition, and necessity. For some people, working overseas is a dream. For others, international labour mobility is a tradition. For a great number of people however, international labour migration is an economic necessity. It is the only viable solution to realize their basic human right to a decent life. GMS worker movements to Thailand typify all three characterizations of international labour mobility. While this book focuses on the economic dimensions of international labour emigration, principally from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to Thailand, it recognizes at the very outset the equal standing of non-economic motivations for migration.

Strategy promises to turn the use of force into an instrument of policy. This book explores how military operations undertaken by European armed forces are intended to deliver political effects. Drawing on the work of Carl von Clausewitz it argues that strategy is the product of an iterative politico-military dialogue. While strategic-level planning endows operations with a rational intent, friction between political leaders and military commanders risks derailing the promise of strategy. Three case studies - the EU in Chad, the UN in Lebanon and NATO in Afghanistan - illustrate that the strategic template for European crisis response operations relies on deterrence and local capacity building. Building on over 120 interviews with diplomatic officials, military planners and operation commanders, this book sheds light on the instrumental nature of military force, the health of civil-military relations in Europe and the difficulty of making effective strategy in a multinational environment.

This book analyses the relationship between youth and participation, looking specifically at those repertories of involvement that are commonly clustered under the concept of "unconventional political participation". The author focuses on the connections between youth practices of participation and youth conditions in contemporary society. Drawing from the analysis of three ethnographic case studies conducted on experiences of youth participation in Italy and Sweden, the circumstances and the reasons leading young people to express their political ideas through forms of engagement located outside the realm of "formal politics" are explored. The book seeks to bring back the specificities of contemporary youth at the centre of the analysis of youth practices of participation, highlighting their often overlooked socio-historical and generational 'situatedness'. Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement will be of interest students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including youth studies, political science, and sociology.

In British India, the years during and following World War I saw imperial unity deteriorate into a bitter dispute over "native" effeminacy and India's postwar fitness for self-rule. This study demonstrates that increasingly ferocious dispute culminated in the actual physical violence of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919.

This volume explores how international organizations became involved in the making of global development policy, and looks at the driving forces and dynamics behind that process, critically assessing the consequences their policies have had around the world.

Israelis and Palestinians have been caught in what seems a "forever war" with routine terror in the promised land for more than 100 years. This book is the first to bring together commentary and anguished personal insights from people on both sides of the battle. Readers get a personal look at--and a clearer, more nuanced understanding of--the psychological trauma that is common for men, women and children there. Psychologists in the regions, as well as scholars from across disciplines, tell their personal stories, interwoven with academic reflections on important issues fueling the conflict such as humiliation, revenge, hate, and the need for a homeland and identity. Readers are brought face-to-face with controversial issues, like the psychological impact of Israel's Separation Wall, and unique perspectives, including the stories of eight Palestinian female martyrs, the insights of a young student helping to save blasted bodies after the bombing of a bus, the compassion of a Jewish doctor treating suicide bombers, the thinking of a Jidhadist woman raised to hate Jews but now working for peace with Israelis, and a doctor bringing together Palestinians and Israelis using meditation to find peace.

The al-Qaeda Franchise asks why al-Qaeda adopted a branching-out strategy, introducing seven franchises spread over the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. After all, transnational terrorist organizations can expand through other organizational strategies. Forming franchises was not an inevitable outgrowth of al-Qaeda's ideology or its U.S.-focused strategy. The efforts to create local franchises have also undermined one of al-Qaeda's primary achievements: the creation of a transnational entity based on religious, not national, affiliation. The book argues that al-Qaeda's branching out strategy was not a sign of strength, but instead a response to its decline in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Franchising reflected an escalation of al-Qaeda's commitments in response to earlier strategic mistakes, leaders' hubris, and its diminished capabilities. Although the introduction of new branches helped al-Qaeda create a frightening image far beyond its actual capabilities, ultimately this strategy neither increased the al-Qaeda threat, nor enhanced the organization's political objectives. In fact, the rise of ISIS from an al-Qaeda branch to the dominant actor in the jihadi camp demonstrates how expansion actually incurred heavy costs for al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda Franchise goes beyond explaining the adoption of a branching out strategy, also exploring particular expansion choices. Through nine case studies, it analyzes why al-Qaeda formed branches in some arenas but not others, and why its expansion in some locations, such as Yemen, took the form of in-house franchising (with branches run by al-Qaeda's own fighters), while other locations, such as Iraq and Somalia, involved merging with groups already operating in the target arena. It ends with an assessment of al-Qaeda's future in light of the turmoil in the Middle East, the ascendance of ISIS, and US foreign policy.

Will the 21st century see terrorist fingers on the nuclear trigger? How likely is it terrorists will obtain weapons of mass destruction? What factors would determine their decision to use them? In this text the author assesses the causes for, and implications of, the escalating lethality of terrorism. The growing opportunities for nuclear proliferation, primarily arising from the collapse of the Soviet Union are explained. The book concludes that the organizational and psychological pressures within terrorist groups and the changing nature of political violence combined with the heightened danger of nuclear micro proliferation have made mass destructive terrorism the greatest non traditional threat to international security in the world today.

Torn by ongoing civil and military violence, Africa presents a challenge to scholars interested in the root causes of conflict. Each conflict is unique, but overall they exhibit common patterns. The contributors of this book employ an eclectic array of current explanations of civil strife and how to resolve it. The first half of the book provides the relevant theoretical background. Theories of conflict and conflict resolution, the larger context of African strife in Africa, and patterns and trends of conflict are discussed. Shifting from the general to the particular, the remaining chapters of this volume gauge the accuracy and usefulness of the current thinking on conflicts by grounding it in case studies drawn from the Great Lakes Region, Liberia, Nigeria, and Zambia.

This book provides the reader with a broad overview of the current debate on the evaluation of transnational NGOs, combining the academic with the practitioners perspectives. The contributions to this edited volume deal with the key concepts of legitimacy, accountability and representation, covering a variety of issue areas and NGOs.

In 1998 the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities entered into force. This study evaluates how the standards of the Framework Convention function in reality and whether the interests of minorities are best served by this form of protection by the international community. The author assesses the use of international principles on rights for minorities in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, three states with a difficult socio-economic situation and large minority populations. Two specific principles embodied in the Framework Convention are focused upon. The first, the principle of non-discrimination, is discussed with regard to the Roma minority in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, the Muslim minority in Bulgaria, and in relation to the Benes Decrees affecting the Hungarians and German minority in Slovakia. The second principle, protection of linguistic rights, is discussed in relation to the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and Romania and to the Roma minorities. Specific to this book: * Provides a detailed examination of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which entered into force in 1998 * Looks specifically at the minorities of Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria * Of particular interest in light of the recent accession of other Eastern European countries to the European Union

What is terrorism? Can it ever be the right thing to do? Who is really responsible for terrorism? Should governments never negotiate with terrorists? And how can terrorism be stopped? Terrorism: A Philosophical Analysis is a unique book on terrorism that openly, rationally and passionately delves into what underlies terrorism, what in some cases justifies it on ethical grounds, and how terrorism might be dealt with successfully. Rather than assuming from the start a particular point of view about terrorism, this book uniquely engages the reader in a series of critical discussions that unveil the ethical problems underlying terrorism. A must-read for everyone interested in understanding the depths of terrorism.

An important contribution to the reference literature on China, this historical dictionary covers the entire revolutionary period in China. Although existing biographical dictionaries focus on the twentieth century, the Chinese revolutionary movements began in the early nineteenth century. China's defeat in the Opium War (1839-1842) set the conditions for the rise of revolutionary movements, the first being the Taiping Christian Revolution of 1851-1864. Sun Yat-sen's Republican Revolution began in the late nineteenth century and was followed by the Communist Revolution during the second half of the twentieth century. With the Socialist transformation under Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese entered another revolutionary stage. The death of Mao and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 conclude the time period covered in this dictionary.

The entries in this volume provide concise accounts and profiles of the people, events, ideas, and other factors that played a role throughout the revolutionary period including sources of additional information. The Dictionary also includes a general bibliography and chronology that provides an overview of the period covered. Cross-references and a full subject index provide access to the material.