Polity Press

Europe has often been the target of criticism: Europe has lost touch with its core values, its leaders are indecisive and its citizens are confused, unsure whether they should be proud of their past or embarrassed by it – the litany of accusations is long, and the writers of obituaries have never been at a loss for words to describe the death of the Old Continent. Many of these criticisms are exaggerated and misguided but, nevertheless, the time has come to rethink post-imperial Europe, assigning proper place to the burdens of its mixed history, including its colonial past, but also recalling its civilization-defining advances such as its singular culture of learning and inventiveness, its permanent revolution of the critical spirit, its management of pluralism, its ever-evolving organization of general welfare, its dissolution of hierarchies of social origin, and its promotion of dignified living conditions for all. In this extraordinarily wide-ranging and erudite work, Sloterdijk opens up a few bookmarks in the Book of Europe. If Europe too often is a book rarely read by those whom it concerns, Sloterdijk's bookmarks help orient readers – teaching Europeans from the script that they themselves have written about where they stand with themselves and about their role within the whole. In Sloterdijk's view, the true Europe can be found wherever creative passions have overtaken those of resentment, and it will survive as long as creativity keeps resentment in check.

Until very recently, the climate crisis was considered the most serious and urgent challenge facing contemporary societies. There was widespread agreement that a comprehensive green transformation is necessary to address the planetary emergency, secure the survival of humanity and facilitate a good life for all. Yet, suddenly, ecological issues have slipped down the political agenda. Conservatives welcome 'the end of the green hegemony', the far-right rallies against eco-emancipatory policies, and an authoritarian turn that once again champions fossil fuels is gaining momentum across the world. This book examines the causes of this dramatic change of course. It reminds us that in environmental politics, social norms and cultural values ?are as important as biophysical facts. Even if the scientific evidence on climate change and the collapse of biophysical systems is clear, the supposedly categorical imperatives presented by ecologists ultimately express a particular worldview. Ingolfur Blühdorn argues that the emancipatory logic itself is a key driver of the current collapse of the green project. He shows how this counter-cultural project was fraught with inherent contradictions. Eco-emancipatory movements themselves contributed to mainstreaming values, lifestyles and notions of self-determination that ultimately blocked the green transformation and propelled a postliberal turn. To many, eco-political ideals today appear more like a threat than a promise. A renaissance of fossil fuels, autocratic leadership, and strict policies of exclusion seem to offer a better future, beyond eco-emancipatory values and the scenarios of ecological collapse. But the transition to a postliberal modernity will benefit very few and make life brutish, nasty and short for many.

As expansionist empires, socialist superpowers and authoritarian regimes, China and Russia have much in common. While many in the West fear the formation of an authoritarian alliance between these two great powers, and while Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping call themselves 'good friends', the geopolitical interests of Beijing and Moscow are often at odds with each other. They may be comrades, but they don't always march to the same beat. In order to gain a clear understanding of China–Russia relations in the twenty-first century, we need first to understand the long history that brought them to this point. In Entangled Empires, Sören Urbansky and Martin Wagner offer an introduction to the 400-year history of these two distant neighbours: from their first official contact in 1618 and the falling out of the two communist regimes under Khrushchev and Mao, through to China's response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This expertly researched history of the relationship between these two nations will be essential reading for all students and scholars of Chinese and Russian history and politics, and for anyone interested in the changing balance of power in the world today.

In this book, Hugo Micheron retraces the history of European jihadism from the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s to the present day. Over a period of some thirty years, jihadist ideas spread to the main cities of Europe, where they were disseminated by thousands of Islamic activists. These ideas were also embedded in online media which connect Islamic communities across the world. Micheron argues that the development of Jihadism has not been linear, but has followed a wave-like pattern of ebbs and flows. At high tide, the movement is visible and its sympathizers give priority to armed jihad. They seek to mediatize their operations in order to galvanize sympathizers, draw in new recruits and intimidate adversaries. These periods of high tide are the times when they most often employ terrorism. At low tide, jihadism seems to have been defeated. Organizations are dismantled and they no longer have the operational capacity to conduct large-scale attacks. To the external observer, armed jihad seems to have disappeared, and its threat is correspondingly weakened. But jihadism has not disappeared: it has merely mutated. Armed struggle has been replaced by ideological struggle. This wave-like movement of jihadism is poorly understood in the West. Observers tend to measure the threat only in terms of overt terrorist attacks and they ignore the mutations that occur during the periods of low tide, and hence they fail to appreciate the reconfigurations of jihadism that take place over the long term. Based on archival research as well as numerous interviews, Micheron provides the first full history of European jihadism. He shows that jihadism has ebbed and flowed in Europe with astonishing regularity, at a rate of one complete cycle per decade. It originated in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, put down roots in Europe in the 1990s, spread throughout the continent after September 11, 2001, and expanded to new horizons with the emergence of Islamic State in Iraq and then Syria, where it changed scale. In the post-IS period, it underwent new phases of mutation, in prisons and within European societies, which makes it all the more urgent to understand this broad movement today. Unrivaled in the breadth and depth of its coverage, this book will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the threats faced by Western democracies today, as well as students and scholars of political science, IR, terrorism and extremism.

Black nationalist ideas have been debated over centuries, and have shaped black religious, cultural, economic, and intellectual thought. But how is black nationalism popularly understood? And how should we reckon with the unique position of black people in the United States, where black nationalism has been fundamentally shaped by the white nationalism expressed before the Civil Wa? n this illuminating new book, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar sheds much-needed light on black community, unity, and identity. The story of black nationalism is not limited to "back-to-Africa" Garveyites or to the religious nationalism of the Nation of Islam. By retelling the story of Malcolm X, Ogbar reveals how black nationalist thought has shaped ideas centered on internationalism, self-determination, self-defense, and electoral empowerment. More than "racial solidarity" or racial pride, black nationalism seeks territorial and political sovereignty – and the (often transnational) efforts to achieve nationhood have brought disparate communities together under the single banner of nationalism. Offering both a panoramic and meticulous history, this lively book is essential reading for anyone who has been curious about the extraordinary impact of black nationalism in contemporary America.

Engineers across the globe are building our future and, by extension, our world. But how can these engineers – whose educations have often encoded historical gendered, raced, competitive, and capitalist norms – responsibly engage in worldbuilding, which is both an art and a science? How can we better prepare the next generation to build a world that is more inclusive and intersectiona? n this concise and accessible book, writer and engineer Jenn Stroud Rossmann argues that we need to upgrade the "engineering imagination". By interrogating engineering's history and storytelling traditions, she reveals how we could better understand and anticipate the impacts and implications of new technology and so better envision alternative futures. Far from being a merely technical science, engineering has been shaped – and can be revolutionized – by sociocultural factors and products, the ways that we talk about the history of technology, and the ways that we pass on knowledge through education. Drawing upon sources as varied as literature, poetry, visual art, and film as well as history, philosophy, and the technicalities of science, Worldbuilding is a guide to thoughtful technological citizenship for makers and users alike.

Over the last 500 years, capitalism has produced a world that is highly interdependent and at the same time highly asymmetrical. These asymmetries were often established by violent means and are in many cases vigorously defended to this day. In his ambitious global history of capitalism, Friedrich Lenger charts the course of these developments, which have left no one unaffected – from the indigenous people of America to the silk weavers of Bengal. This is a story of flagrant wealth and extreme poverty, of violence and oppression, and of the relentless exploitation both of labour and of our planet, for which we are now paying the price. Among the global inequalities produced by capitalism are the unequal consumption of fossil fuels and the environmental degradation that affects different parts of the world in different ways and to different extents. The indifference capitalists display towards the natural world resembles their past indifference to human suffering. The millions of slaves forced to work on American plantations until well into the nineteenth century is just one example of how oppressive labour and a capitalist economy go hand in hand. This brilliant and wide-ranging book tells the story of the rise and triumph of capitalism from the fifteenth century to the present day and lays bare its fundamental dynamic: capitalism will never place limits on itself, underlining the fact that any restrictions have to be imposed from outside. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the modern world, the fundamental problems we face today, and the economic solutions upon which our survival as a species will depend.

Behind the headlines, a struggle between two opposing philosophical visions has shaped the course of international efforts to save the planet from global warming. The liberal cosmopolitanism of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant has been up against the darker vision of an authoritarian global order of great power rivals developed by Carl Schmitt, 'Crown Jurist of the Third Reich'. Clive Hamilton shows how the influence of Schmitt's once-taboo ideas has recently spread around the world – in Trump's America, in Xi Jinping's China, and in Europe with the rise of right-wing populism. His book maps how the actions of these three great powers have defined the course of global climate negotiations. The Kantian vision, best represented by the European Union, has common sense on its side – a threat to everyone that can be solved by collective responses. In practice, however, UN agreements have triggered resistance from surging anti-globalist forces influenced by the Nazi jurist's ideas, a world defined by friends and enemies and where weaker states submit to powerful ones. As the Earth hurtles towards a hot and perilous future, which of these worldviews prevails, Kant's or Schmitt's, could determine humanity's fate.

Behind the headlines, a struggle between two opposing philosophical visions has shaped the course of international efforts to save the planet from global warming. The liberal cosmopolitanism of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant has been up against the darker vision of an authoritarian global order of great power rivals developed by Carl Schmitt, 'Crown Jurist of the Third Reich'. Clive Hamilton shows how the influence of Schmitt's once-taboo ideas has recently spread around the world – in Trump's America, in Xi Jinping's China, and in Europe with the rise of right-wing populism. His book maps how the actions of these three great powers have defined the course of global climate negotiations. The Kantian vision, best represented by the European Union, has common sense on its side – a threat to everyone that can be solved by collective responses. In practice, however, UN agreements have triggered resistance from surging anti-globalist forces influenced by the Nazi jurist's ideas, a world defined by friends and enemies and where weaker states submit to powerful ones. As the Earth hurtles towards a hot and perilous future, which of these worldviews prevails, Kant's or Schmitt's, could determine humanity's fate.

At the dawn of the Cold War, the US administration pushed reluctant Europeans to create a federation of democratic states. In doing so, they gave birth to an American Europe – a new political order protected by the US military and buoyed by transatlantic trade. Europe now faces a stark reality. The Trump Administration dislikes NATO, considers the EU's trade policies "worse than China['s]," and attacks the banning of nationalist parties. Many in the MAGA movement are similarly hostile to Europe, which they see as an overregulated museum, a US dependency, powerless on the world-stage. This book explains why American Europe fell from favor. It weighs the prospects of alternative European political orders, including a National-Sovereigntist Europe, a Global Europe, and a European Europe. It argues that Europe needs to rethink its alliances, and Britain must decide where it belongs.

During the colonization of Africa, European colonists set about creating game reserves in Africa, convinced that they would find in Africa a nature that no longer existed in Europe. After independence, and with the help of UNESCO and the WWF, African leaders continued to 'protect' the same nature, a nature that the whole world wanted to be pristine, wild and without humans – a timeless Garden of Eden. The consequences of this story are well known: millions of Africans were expelled from the land on which they had lived for generations. But how did this happen? Who organized this continuity between the colonial era and the era of independence? Guillaume Blanc answers these questions by immersing himself at the heart of a strange global ecological mission, launched in 1961: the 'African Special Project'. He tells the story of this project by bringing to life four worlds: the world of gentleman experts who saw Africa as the world's last natural refuge; the world of East African colonists who were retraining as international experts; the world of African leaders who sought to control their peoples while satisfying the demands of their Western partners; and finally, the world of local farmers and their families living on the land who were forced to adapt or abandon their homes. These men do not speak of the same nature, but step by step, their worlds draw closer together until they meet – and this is where violence erupts. This impressive book lays bare the violence inherent in the creation of African game reserves and national parks and documents a hidden dimension of colonialism and its legacies.

Language is a major part of what makes us human. We effortlessly attach meaning to sounds and marks, in themselves meaningless, to convey to one another our beliefs, desires, intentions, and other states of mind. How is this amazing feat possibl? laudine Verheggen introduces readers to the fascinating study of language from a philosophical perspective. She sheds light on the nature of linguistic meaning by investigating two broad categories of questions: one concerns the relation between meaning and the extra-linguistic reality language users talk about, the other concerns the relation between meaning and facts about language users themselves. Verheggen explores the views of prominent philosophers and lays the foundations that help us to address questions in an array of other subdisciplines to which philosophy of language is relevant, from psychology to political theory. Throughout, she pays special attention to the many different ways in which words are used, asking whether language is fundamentally a social phenomenon and whether conventions are essential to it. Lively and accessible, built on a strong narrative structure, What is Philosophy of Language? is a key resource for any philosophy student or philosophically minded person with a passion for language.

Raising feminist concerns about the struggles of African women amid debates surrounding the socio-cultural, economic and political future of Africa remains an immense challenge. Fatou Sow, the renowned Senegalese feminist activist and academic, illustrates here her own journey through a continuously developing global discourse. Her fundamental aim is to demonstrate the emergence and development of women's and feminist studies in Africa, highlighting its achievements, failures and, most importantly, its complexity. She argues that it is crucial to examine the influence of the patriarchy in light of Africa's historical matriarchal systems, which form the basis of the continent's social structures. Feminist research must also evaluate how gender intersects with age, class, ethnicity, caste, race and religious disparities, among other inequalities prevalent on the continent. As an African feminist, rooted in her African context and cultures, Sow is compelled to analyze conflicting realities, transformations and contradictions, as well as the complex contributions that are specific to different times and places. African cultures are not just relics of struggles against a colonial West, a West defined by domination. These cultures are primarily memories and living spaces that are deconstructed and reinvented daily, at every moment, with each generation, marked by triumphs and defeats.

'Populist' is now most commonly used as a term of abuse. Populists, we are repeatedly told, are xenophobic ignoramuses offering irrational, emotive solutions to complex problems. But is this tru? rank Furedi argues that this is a self-serving narrative that owes more to the desire of elites to protect their own power and interests than it does to the truth. The widespread disdain expressed towards populism in the media and by many academics is in fact poorly concealed contempt towards the idea of popular sovereignty and democratic decision-making. Populism is not equivalent to any specific ideology, as populist politicians vary greatly in their substantive views, but it is rather a broad disposition towards public life that stresses the value of giving the ordinary citizen a genuine voice in political decision-making. Attacks on 'populism' most commonly reveal the desire of those who run our institutions to keep real authority in the hands of unaccountable elites who veil their power under the guise of 'expertise'. This bracing defence of basic democratic values by one of our most fearless polemicists should be read by anyone who mistakes the complacent assurances of our elite for the wisdom of our betters.

In the nineteenth century, France embarked on the colonization of whole swathes of Africa and Asia. What drove this policy, and what methods did it use to establish and enforce French domination? What disruptive effects did this have on the colonized societies, and what did it mean for their economic and social development? Today, can we say they have been completely decolonized? Empire on the Cheap offers new answers to these ever-controversial questions. Drawing on extensive archival work and statistical analysis, Denis Cogneau offers a richly detailed description of the colonial states and how they functioned, with a particular focus on issues of taxation, military recruitment, capital flows and inequalities. He shows that the Empire cost France little until the wars of independence following World War II, and that capital from France did not trickle down to the colonies. The French Republic proclaimed its 'civilizing mission', but its rule did not lead to the development of the occupied countries, and instead established violent colonial regimes with ambiguous and sometimes conflicting goals. Such regimes mainly benefited a small minority of French colonists and capitalists. Yet, even after winning independence, nationalist elites in the former colonies most often maintained an authoritarian and deeply unequal state order. Examining both the evolution of the colonized societies and what has become of them after independence, Cogneau makes a major contribution to our understanding of imperialism, past and present.

In this book based on his 2024 Adorno Lectures, Loic Wacquant combines social theory, comparative history and structural ethnography to probe criminal punishment as a core function of the state. Extending Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of bureaucratic field and symbolic power, he captures the constitutive duality of punishment, at once material and symbolic, an instrument of class control and a means of communicating values, endlessly oscillating between rehabilitation and retribution. Ranging from the birth of the workhouse prison in sixteenth-century Europe to the deployment of punishment in the colonies to the workaday world of prosecutors in a California criminal court, Wacquant reveals how the penal state curates crime, manages urban marginality, signals sovereignty, and manufactures legitimacy in the eyes of the population by restoring control over bodies out of order. But the penal Leviathan is a bifurcated state which captures nearly exclusively dispossessed and dishonored categories by targeting their neighborhoods: it is everywhere a class-splitting and a race-forging institution based on the stubborn differentiation of "paper penality" and "street penality."Getting inside the machinery of criminal justice shows that punishment must be placed at the epicenter of the political sociology of statecraft, group-making and place-making in the metropolis as well as brought to the forefront of civic debate to articulate a radical penal minimalism suited to reconciling punishment and democratic ideals.