The eagerly awaited third edition of this highly respected and user-friendly text for introductory courses has been thoroughly updated to reflect the world today. Politics: An Introduction provides stimulating coverage of topics essential to the understanding of contemporary politics. It offers students necessary guidance on ways of studying and understanding politics, and illustration of the many different sites at which politics is construed and conducted. Ideal for students taking combined degrees at introductory level in politics and the social sciences, it emphasises the individual and social dimension of politics and covers theories and concepts in an accessible way. Fundamentally, it helps students see the political, and its relevance, in their lives. Key features include: a revised introduction considering 'what is politics' and how we understand and approach its study clear and well-organised coverage of political theory, political behaviour, institutions and the policy process carefully crafted in-text chapter features such as 'consider this' thought-provoking scenarios, 'think points', keyword definitions, chapter summaries, and exercises designed to enliven and extend the learning experience stimulating, up-to-date examples and case studies from across the globe, such as 'fake news', online activism, the rise of populism, culture wars, 'fertility tourism' in India, hydropower in Cambodia, free speech in France, and personality politics in Turkmenistan detailed consideration of democratisation, authoritarian regimes, direct democracy, gender critical perspectives, minority rights, global capitalism, social movements, radical political change, post-secularism, and challenges and changes brought by social media. Politics: An Introduction is a broad-ranging, accessible, and essential guide for all students studying, or beginning to study, politics.

The eagerly awaited third edition of this highly respected and user-friendly text for introductory courses has been thoroughly updated to reflect the world today. Politics: An Introduction provides stimulating coverage of topics essential to the understanding of contemporary politics. It offers students necessary guidance on ways of studying and understanding politics, and illustration of the many different sites at which politics is construed and conducted. Ideal for students taking combined degrees at introductory level in politics and the social sciences, it emphasises the individual and social dimension of politics and covers theories and concepts in an accessible way. Fundamentally, it helps students see the political, and its relevance, in their lives. Key features include: a revised introduction considering 'what is politics' and how we understand and approach its study clear and well-organised coverage of political theory, political behaviour, institutions and the policy process carefully crafted in-text chapter features such as 'consider this' thought-provoking scenarios, 'think points', keyword definitions, chapter summaries, and exercises designed to enliven and extend the learning experience stimulating, up-to-date examples and case studies from across the globe, such as 'fake news', online activism, the rise of populism, culture wars, 'fertility tourism' in India, hydropower in Cambodia, free speech in France, and personality politics in Turkmenistan detailed consideration of democratisation, authoritarian regimes, direct democracy, gender critical perspectives, minority rights, global capitalism, social movements, radical political change, post-secularism, and challenges and changes brought by social media. Politics: An Introduction is a broad-ranging, accessible, and essential guide for all students studying, or beginning to study, politics.

This book explores the ways in which study of culture as the realm of meaning and identity can inform current debates about globalization and thus afford greater understanding of emergent globalities. By drawing on a range of disciplinary and sub-disciplinary expertise from across the social sciences and also promoting areas of cross-disciplinary research, the book contributes to the development of theory on globalization and also provides some significant illustrations of (cultural) globalization in practice through attention to novel empirical sites and issues. These include eminently cultural realms such as music, film and architecture and those that are invested with a strong cultural component, such as migration and education. Contributions emphasise the soft features of globalization and globality and most look to marry theoretical abstraction with everyday aspects of global processes, focusing on those routine and sometimes conscious connections and accommodations that make up daily life in a globalized world. In doing so, the book itself can be seen as a contribution to critical and multidimensional studies of globalization and as engaging in a form of global practice.

Exploring the theme of the putative transformation of political modernity under the impact of "new" media, this book adopts a questioning approach to the ways in which cultural and technological factors are affecting the temper of political life, and reflects the variety of normative thinking about and empirical research on the changing character of politics in mediatized cultures.