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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Human geography > Political geography
When are borders justified? Who has a right to control them? Where should they be drawn? Today people think of borders as an island's shores. Just as beaches delimit a castaway's realm, so borders define the edges of a territory, occupied by a unified people, to whom the land legitimately belongs. Hence a territory is legitimate only if it belongs to a people unified by a civic identity. Sadly, this Desert Island Model of territorial politics forces us to choose. If we want territories, then we can either have democratic legitimacy, or inclusion of different civic identities-but not both. The resulting politics creates mass xenophobia, migrant-bashing, hoarding of natural resources, and border walls. To escape all this, On Borders presents an alternative model. Drawing on an intellectual tradition concerned with how land and climate shape institutions, it argues that we should not see territories as pieces of property owned by identity groups. Instead, we should see them as watersheds: as interconnected systems where institutions, people, the biota, and the land together create overlapping civic duties and relations, what the book calls place-specific duties. This Watershed Model argues that borders are justified when they allow us to fulfill those duties; that border-control rights spring from internationally-agreed conventions-not from internal legitimacy; that borders should be governed cooperatively by the neighboring states and the states system; and that border redrawing should be done with environmental conservation in mind. The book explores how this model undoes the exclusionary politics of desert islands.
During the cold war, the US government sought to establish an overseas military presence in the Indian Ocean. This graphic novel is a shocking account of British complicity in the forced exodus of the Chagos Islanders from their homeland to make that plan possible. Between 1965 and 1973 the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago were forcibly removed from their homeland and dumped in Mauritius and Seychelles. Diego Garcia, the largest island in the group, was leased to the USA by the United Kingdom to accommodate the largest US military air base outside the US mainland. The agreement continues until 2036. Florian Grosset's searing account of the eviction, and the harsh life faced by the Chagossians after their displacement, looks back to the first generation of slaves who arrived on the archipelago and the lives of their descendants. It charts the present-day diaspora of Chagossians, their fight for the right to return through protests and court cases, and the different strategies still being used to keep them away from their land. Although, in 2016, the British government denied the right of the Chagossians to return to the islands, the islanders continue to fight for the right to return, many of them now to a homeland they never knew. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that the UK decolonisation process of the Chagos islands was unlawful, and that the UK should end its control of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which includes a US military base.
This Element argues that after twenty years of democratization, Indonesia has performed admirably. This is especially so when the country's accomplishments are placed in comparative perspective. However, as we analytically focus more closely to inspect Indonesia's political regime, political economy, and how identity-based mobilizations have emerged, it is clear that Indonesia still has many challenges to overcome, some so pressing that they could potentially erode or reverse many of the democratic gains the country has achieved since its former authoritarian ruler, Soeharto, was forced to resign in 1998.
Scholarship on the right to water has proliferated in interesting and unexpected ways in recent years. This book broadens existing discussions on the right to water in order to shed critical light on the pathways, pitfalls, prospects, and constraints that exist in achieving global goals, as well as advancing debates around water governance and water justice. The book shows how both discourses and struggles around the right to water have opened new perspectives, and possibilities in water governance, fostering new collective and moral claims for water justice, while effecting changes in laws and policies around the world. In light of the 2010 UN ratification on the human right to water and sanitation, shifts have taken place in policy, legal frameworks, local implementation, as well as in national dialogues. Chapters in the book illustrate the novel ways in which the right to water has been taken up in locations drawn globally, highlighting the material politics that are enabled and negotiated through this framework in order to address ongoing water insecurities. This book reflects the urgent need to take stock of debates in light of new concerns around post-neoliberal political developments, the challenges of the Anthropocene and climate change, the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the mobilizations around the right to water in the global North. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of water governance, environmental policy, politics, geography, and law. It will be of great interest to policymakers and practitioners working in water governance, as well as the human right to water and sanitation.
Global Geopolitics: A Critical Introduction provides a detailed overview of contemporary political developments such as terror-networks, environmental degradation, media-military relations, anti-globalisation and north-south relations. By using a theoretically informed framework alongside numerous case studies, this text seeks to inform and engage students in global geopolitical ideas and issues. It investigates how and why events and processes such as the September 11th attacks on the United States challenge and even consolidate the contemporary international political system. Each chapter seeks to provide detailed coverage at the same as suggesting avenues of further inquiry. Main features A thematic structure which is informed by case studies not restricted to the Euro-American world Up to date coverage of global affairs including 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq by US-UK forces A range of pedagogic feature such as key issues summary, boxed material, further questions at the end of each chapter, glossary and web-based learning support. To explore the online resources, please go to the dedicated companion website at www booksites.net/doddsGlobal Geopolitics: A Critical Introduc
Understanding the foreign policy agenda and behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a critical challenge for the world. But where do the principal Iranian regime actors come from in terms of political background, experiences and interests? Which types of ambitions or policy conflicts have dominated and shaped foreign policy debates since 1979? This book explains the internal policy process in Tehran by following two regime personalities, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who before his death in January 2017 held some of the most powerful political positions in Iran. No two men have been more influential in dictating the regime's decision-making processes since 1979. Yet little is known about how their competing worldviews and interests, their key moments of dispute - both personal or policy-based - or their personal ambitions have informed the trajectory of Iranian politics. The book analyzes Khamenei and Rafsanjani's own words and writings - and accounts of them given by others - to reveal how the domestic policy contest has shaped Tehran's actions on the regional and international stage. Comprising primary and secondary Iranian sources - including untapped memoirs, newspaper reports, and Iranian electronic media and personal interviews - the book highlights the principal rivalries over the lifespan of the Islamic Republic and offers new insights into the present and future of Iranian foreign policy.
In a novel approach to the field of Islamic politics, this provocative new study compares the evolution of Islamic populism in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, to the Middle East. Utilising approaches from historical sociology and political economy, Vedi R. Hadiz argues that competing strands of Islamic politics can be understood as the product of contemporary struggles over power, material resources and the result of conflict across a variety of social and historical contexts. Drawing from detailed case studies across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the book engages with broader theoretical questions about political change in the context of socio-economic transformations and presents an innovative, comparative framework to shed new light on the diverse trajectories of Islamic politics in the modern world.
During the 1950s, John Glubb and the Arab Legion became the 'cornerstone' of Britain's imperial presence in the Middle East. Based on unprecedented access to the unofficial archive of the Arab Legion, including a major accession of Glubb's private papers, Graham Jevon examines and revises Britain's post-1945 retreat from empire in the Middle East. Jevon details how Glubb's command of the Arab Legion secured British and Jordanian interests during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, answering questions that have dogged historians of this conflict for decades. He reveals how the Arab Legion was transformed, by Cold War concerns, from an internal Jordanian security force to a quasi-division within the British Army. Jevon also sheds new light on the succession crisis following King Abdullah's assassination, and uses previously unseen documents to challenge accepted contentions concerning King Hussein's dismissal of Glubb, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the nature of Britain's imperial decline.
There have been significant developments in the state of psychological, neuroscientific and behavioural scientific knowledge relating to the human mind, brain, action and decision-making over the past two decades. These developments have influenced public policy making and popular culture in the UK and elsewhere - through policies and emerging social practices focussed on behavioural change, happiness, wellbeing, therapy, resilience and character. Yet little attention has been paid to examining the wider political and ethical significance of the widespread use of psychological governance techniques. There is a pressing and recognised need to address the behaviour change agenda in relation to how our cultural ideas about the brain, mind, behaviour and self are changing. This book provides a critical account of existing forms of psychological governance in relation to public policy. It asks whether we can speak of a co-ordinated and novel shift in governance or, rather, whether these trends are more simply pragmatic policy tools based on advances in scientific evidence. With contributions from leading scholars across the social sciences from the UK, the USA and Canada, chapters identify practical, political and research challenges posed by the current policy enthusiasm for particular branches of affective neuroscience, behavioural economics, positive psychology and happiness economics. The core focus of this book is to investigate the ways in which knowledge about the mind, brain and behaviour has informed the methods and techniques of governance and to explore the implications of this for shaping citizen identity and social practice. This groundbreaking book will be of interest to students, scholars and policy-makers interested and working within geography, economics, sociology, psychology, politics and cultural studies.
BIMSTEC has evolved as an important multilateral institution around the geography of Bay of Bengal. Its significance has been spurred by regional governments who are proactively engaging to make BIMSTEC a vibrant institution. This book argues for promoting we-ness in the region and foster cooperation for regional integration.
This text traces the evolution of sustainable development and climate change from the time it emerged in international consultations and agreements. The three sections of the book, focusing on the framework, climate change and sustainable development, seek to cover the essentials of the politics of natural resource usage at the global level. The book explores the evolution of sustainable development and climate change within the framework of the United Nations, and the way the concept has been defined through intergovernmental meetings, agreements and consensus within the multilateral system. It also explores the best ways of reducing the risk to the planet while enabling societies to pursue sustainable development paths. The challenges call for a transformation of social systems to facilitate a broadly acceptable change. The book also explores the adoption of low-carbon models different from the high-carbon socio-technical systems and related social practices.
One Korea or two?The persistence of North and South Korea since 1948 has been a source of one war and fears of new wars. Although they share centuries of common culture, society and politics, the two nations differ on fundamentals today: capitalist democracy in the south and totalitarian communism in the north. Dynamics of the Korean State provides a unique overview of how humans treasure their individual lives and how these dynamics intertwine with Korean history and state evolution.The book examines the development of the Korean state from ancient times and sees its roots in the Stone Age struggle for survival. The persistent theme has been to Prolong Life - Postpone Death. Hence, the origins of every state can be found in man's Will-to-Live, and this is demonstrated in the Will/action framework offered by the author. Human Will, not material determinism or divine plan, creates the state. This primary Will generates five other Wills, which motivate actions to culminate in the state and give it a fluidity over time. The six Wills/actions are as follows: Will-to-Live/production; Will-to-Freedom/innovation; Will-to-Power/organization; Will-to-Comply/enforcement; Will-to-Transcend/political vision & religion; and Will-to-Redirect/reform, usurpation, rebellion, revolution. These in combination influence and partially determine state configuration and fluidity, creating order, disorder, war, prosperity, and poverty along the way. This book reveals the undercurrents of Korean society, politics and history from a fresh perspective. Neither pure history nor descriptive politics, it is a significant contribution to a philosophical anthropology paradigm.
An Introduction to Political Geography continues to provide a broad-based introduction to contemporary political geography for students following undergraduate degree courses in geography and related subjects. The text explores the full breadth of contemporary political geography, covering not only traditional concerns such as the state, geopolitics, electoral geography and nationalism; but also increasing important areas at the cutting-edge of political geography research including globalization, the geographies of regulation and governance, geographies of policy formulation and delivery, and themes at the intersection of political and cultural geography, including the politics of place consumption, landscapes of power, citizenship, identity politics and geographies of mobilization and resistance. This second edition builds on the strengths of the first. The main changes and enhancements are:
As with the first edition, extensive use is made of case study examples, illustrations, explanatory boxes, guides to further reading and a glossary of key terms to present the material in an easily accessible manner. Through employment of these techniques this book introduces students to contributions from a range of social and political theories in the context of empirical case study examples. By providing a basic introduction to such concepts and pointing to pathways into more specialist material, this book serves, both as a core text for first- and second- year courses in political geography, and as a resource alongside supplementary textbooks for more specialist third year courses.
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present. Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an "anti-state state" that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place. Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.
We are living in a unique "geo" age, where geography is appreciated again. The 21st century encompasses political and economic games where the multi-polar world, a new world order, and a new value system combine to develop new actors and new Industries. Business leaders are focusing more and more on global social issues, putting pressure on international political decisions such as the Space Race, global warming and migration. The 21st century is the era of knowledge & creativity (technology + knowledge + geography = "techknowledgeography" or Geofusion) where education and innovation are the most important investment. Knowledge is the currency of the future. When drawn with knowledge, the map of 21st century can be utilized to discover and conform to this new world! This book helps to explain how `Geofusion' provides the opportunities, which can give lasting value to the world.
Most global citizens are well aware of the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. Indeed, China has famously become the "workshop of the world." Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country's internal dynamics-China's politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development-few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world. In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book that the world has been waiting for-a sweeping account of China's growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China's role in global affairs beyond its immediate East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. As Shambaugh charts, though, China's expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere-from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China's global ambitions: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or "soft power," its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions. But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China's global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power-what he terms a "partial power." He draws on his decades of China-watching and his deep knowledge of the subject, and exploits a wide variety of previously untapped sources, to shed valuable light on China's current and future roles in world affairs.
It is increasingly accepted that "institutions matter" for economic
organization and outcomes. The last decade has seen significant
expansion in research examining how institutional contexts affect
the nature and behavior of firms, the operation of markets, and
economic outcomes. Yet "institutions" conceal a multitude of issues
and perspectives. Much of this research has been comparative, and
followed different models such as "varieties of capitalism,"
"national business systems," and "social systems of production."
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY BOOK AWARDS 'Thought-provoking and well worth reading' Times Literary Supplement After decades of peace and prosperity, the international order put in place after World War II is rapidly coming to an end. Disastrous foreign wars, global recession, the meteoric rise of China and India and the COVID pandemic have undermined the power of the West's international institutions and unleashed the forces of nationalism and protectionism. In this lucid and groundbreaking analysis, one of Britain's most experienced senior diplomats highlights the key dilemmas Britain faces, from trade to security, arguing that international co-operation and solidarity are the surest ways to prosper in a world more dangerous than ever.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, the rich were getting richer; power was concentrated within huge corporations; vast tracts of the earth were being laid waste: three-quarters of the world's population had no control of its destiny and no claim to basic rights. There was nothing new in this. What was new was the virtual absence of any political will to do anything about it. Spaces of Hope takes issue with this. David Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse; globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late twentieth-century capitalism , and the working body in relation to this new geography of production and consumption, he finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight. In order to make much needed changes, he maintains, we need to become the architects of a different living and working environment and learn to bridge the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of global political economy. Utopian movements have for centuries tried to construct a just society. David Harvey looks at their history to ask why they failed and what the ideas behind them might still have to offer. His devastating description of the existing urban environment (Baltimore is his case study) fuels his argument that we can and must use the force of utopian imagining against all who say 'there is no alternative'. He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, which he calls 'dialectical utopianism' and refocuses our attention on possible designs for a more equitable world of work and living with nature. If any political ideology or plan is to work, he argues, it must take account of our human qualities, the capacities and powers inherent in nature, and the dynamics of change. Finally, Harvey dares to sketch a very personal utopian vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt about his own geography of hope.
What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing the connection between architecture and political regimes; examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture, and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms, practices, imaginaries, and discourses.
People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism and what difference does it make that neo-conservatives rather than neo-liberals are now in power? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. Closely argued but clearly written, 'The New Imperialism' builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a 'new imperialism' are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see. This new paperback edition contains an Afterword written to coincide with the result of the 2004 American presidental election.
Since the 1960s the per capita incomes of the resource-poor countries have grown significantly faster than those of the resource-abundant countries. In fact, in recent years economic growth has been inversely proportional to the share of natural resource rents in GDP, so that the small mineral-driven economies have performed least well and the oil-driven economies worst of all. Yet the mineral-driven resource-rich economies have high growth potential because the mineral exports boost their capacity to invest and to import. "Resource Abundance and Economic Development" explains the disappointing performance of resource-abundant countries by extending the growth accounting framework to include natural and social capital. The resulting synthesis identifies two contrasting development trajectories: the competitive industrialization of the resource-poor countries and the staple trap of many resource-abundant countries. The resource-poor countries are less prone to policy failure than the resource-abundant countries because social pressures force the political state to align its interests with the majority poor and follow relatively prudent policies. Resource-abundant countries are more likely to engender political states in which vested interests vie to capture resource surpluses (rents) at the expense of policy coherence. A longer dependence on primary product exports also delays industrialization, heightens income inequality, and retards skill accumulation. Fears of 'Dutch disease' encourage efforts to force industrialization through trade policy to protect infant industry. The resulting slow-maturing manufacturing sector demands transfers from the primary sector that outstrip the natural resource rents and sap the competitiveness of the economy. The chapters in this collection draw upon historical analysis and models to show that a growth collapse is not the inevitable outcome of resource abundance and that policy counts. Malaysia, a rare example of successful resource-abundant development, is contrasted with Ghana, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Argentina, which all experienced a growth collapse. The book also explores policies for reviving collapsed economies with reference to Costa Rica, South Africa, Russia and Central Asia. It demonstrates the importance of initial conditions to successful economic reform.
Oxford Textual Perspectives is a series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures, and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. The Aesthetics of Island Space discusses islands as central figures in the modern experience of space. It examines the spatial poetics of islands in literary texts, from Shakespeare's The Tempest to Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, in the journals of explorers and scientists such as James Cook and Charles Darwin, and in Hollywood cinema. It traces the ways in which literary and cinematic islands have functioned as malleable spatial figures that offer vivid perceptual experiences as well as a geopoetic oscillation between the material energies of words and images and the energies of the physical world. The chapters focus on America's island gateways (Roanoke and Ellis Island), visions of tropical islands (Tahiti and imagined South Sea islands), the islands of the US-Canadian border region in the Pacific Northwest, and the imaginative appeal of mutable islands. It argues that modern voyages of discovery posed considerable perceptual and cognitive challenges to the experience of space, and that these challenges were negotiated in complex and contradictory ways via poetic engagement with islands. Discussions of island narratives in postcolonial theory have broadened understanding of how islands have been imagined as geometrical abstractions, bounded spaces easily subjected to the colonial gaze. There is, however, a second story of islands in the Western imagination which runs parallel to this colonial story. In this alternative account, the modern experience of islands in the age of discovery went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of understanding global space. Drawing on and rethinking (post-)phenomenological, geocritical, and geopoetic theories, The Aesthetics of Island Space argues that the modern experience of islands as mobile and shifting territories implied a dispersal, fragmentation, and diversification of spatial experience, and it explores how this disruption is registered and negotiated by both non-fictional and fictional responses.
World events demonstrate that equality for women isn't only a women's issue: when women fulfil their potential, everyone benefits. Completely updated and redesigned, this new edition of Joni Seager's award-winning classic illustrates how women live across continents and cultures, and charts the status of women worldwide - the advances they have made and the distances still to be travelled. With vivid graphics and pithy text, it is a comprehensive and accessible analysis of up-to-the-minute global data on the key issues facing women today.; Topics include:; Gender equality * Literacy and information technology * Feminism * Beauty * Work and the global economy * Changing households * Domestic violence * Refugees * LGBTQ rights * Government and power * Motherhood |
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