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After an introduction by the editor this book presents fifteen studies from across Europe, including the eastern part, many of them comparative across countries. The chapters are arranged in four parts. The first focuses particularly on local and national elections, and the second part on broader questions of political integration, especially among women and youth. Part three looks out how institutions, Muslim and local or national, can facilitate and contribute to directing the particular ways in which political integration can be channelled or hindered. Finally, the fourth part investigates two examples of political activism which challenge accumulated political practices.

This book examines how the Institute of the Black World (IBW), led by historian, theologian, and political activist Vincent Harding, mobilized Black intellectuals in identifying strategy to continue the Black Freedom Struggle in the 1970s. Harding and colleagues founded the IBW in Atlanta, Georgia in 1969. Under Harding's leadership, it became an activist think tank that evaluated Black Studies for emerging programs, developed a Black political agenda for the 1970s with Black elected officials and grassroots activists, and mediated ideological conflicts among Black activists. Relying on the input from an array of activist-intellectuals, the IBW eschewed ideological rigidity, whether in the form of liberalism, Marxism, or Black Nationalism, for a synthetic and pragmatic analytic framework forged through debate and designed to generate the largest amount of political and activist support. It used its network of intellectuals and activists to emphasize structural racism and a racialized political economy, each of which was designed to foster broad consensus in the Black activist community on difficult issues in the 1970s.

This book explores the ways in which Islam and European colonialism shaped modernity in the Indo-Malay world. Focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, it looks at how European colonial and Islamic modernising powers operated in the common and parallel domains of organization, government and politics, law and education in the first half of the twentieth century. Through its critical approach to the interplay of Islamic religious rfrom and dynamics of both British and Dutch colonialisms, this work of comparative history illuminates perspective on the rather different shapes that Islam and Muslim societies have taken in the neighboring nation-states of modern Malaysia and Indonesia. It shows that colonialisation was able to co-exist with Islamisation, arguing that Islamic movements were not necessarily antithetical to modernisation, nor that Western modernity was always anathema to Islamic and local custom. Rather, in distinguishing religious from worldly affairs, they were able to adopt and adapt modern ideas and practices that were useful or relevant while maintaining the Islamic faith and ritual that they believed to be essential. Moving beyond binaries such as Orientalist versus Islamic and modernity versus Islam, it offers historical evidence and theoretical engagement with Islamic religious reform and European colonial modernisation in particular, and with religion, modernity, and tradition in general. In developing an understanding of the common ways in which Islam was defined and treated in Indonesia and Malaysia, we can gain a new insight to Muslim politics and culture in Southeast Asia.

The content derives from the British Academy’s public lecture programme which presents specialist research in an accessible manner. The papers range in subject matter over music, psychology, history, economics and linguistics, demonstrating the depth and breadth of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that the British Academy champions.

This book explores a contradiction at the heart of modern thought about what it is to be human: the belief that human beings cannot commit a radically evil act purely for its own sake, and the evidence that radically evil acts are committed, not by ‘monsters’, but by ordinary human beings. This contradiction can be seen most clearly when we consider the most extreme forms of evil – war crimes, serial killers, sex offenders, children who kill. This book shows that the traditional position – that evil is an active force creating monsters in human shape – is still at work, both in the popular imagination, cultivated in fiction and film, and in real form in politics and the media, most recently in relation to migrants and ‘terrorists’. Drawing on philosophical ideas as well as on theological perspectives, psychological theories and fictional representations, this book asks us to reconsider our understanding of human nature. It reaches the radical conclusion that the discourse of evil is mythological, such that describing any agent as evil is to make them a mythical figure, lying beyond the human realm. The only protection against such figures is their complete destruction. This mythic discourse of evil has played its role in some of the most terrible events in human history, encouraging people to the most extremely vindictive and violence acts against those who have been identified as the ‘evil enemy.’

What is the character of secularism in countries that were not pervaded by Christianity, such as China, India, and the nations of the Middle East? To what extent is the secular an imposition of colonial rule? How does secularism comport with local religious cultures in Africa, and how does it work with local forms of power and governance in Latin America? Has modern secularism evolved organically, or is it even necessary, and has it always meant progress? A vital extension of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, in which he exhaustively chronicled the emergence of secularism in Latin Christendom, this anthology applies Taylor’s findings to secularism’s global migration. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Sudipta Kaviraj, Claudio Lomnitz, Alfred Stepan, Charles Taylor, and Peter van der Veer each explore the transformation of Western secularism beyond Europe, and the collection closes with Taylor’s response to each essay. What began as a modern reaction to—as well as a stubborn extension of—Latin Christendom has become a complex export shaped by the world’s religious and political systems. Brilliantly alternating between intellectual and methodological approaches, this volume fosters a greater engagement with the phenomenon across disciplines.

Politics of the Gift stages a series of dialogues between major 20th-century figures to show how the concept of the gift serves as a driving thematic and problematic of recent French thought. Through readings of work by Marcel Mauss, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, amongst others, it also and moreover shows the concept of the gift to be a nexus through which rival discourses of phenomenology, anthropology, politics and psychoanalysis coalesce into the broadly consensual paradigm of what has become poststructuralism. Moore traces the ‘inheritance’ or the ‘becoming’ of the gift as a concept, from its heterogeneous origins in philosophy and the nascent social sciences right up to the role it plays in deconstruction. The book locates the origins of French poststructuralism in a ‘crisis in philosophy’, an increasingly ‘antiphilosophical’ mood that results from the perceived failure of philosophers via-à-vis the politics of liberal modernity. Disillusioned with the Marxian critique of political economy, but no less enamoured with the humanism of ‘Anthropology’, and facing constant accusations – exemplified by the so-called ‘Heidegger Affair’ – of dangerous indifference toward the institutions of democracy, we see how two generations of thinkers were forced to renegotiate the traditionally hierarchical relationship between philosophy and politics, so as to stave off the threat of being eclipsed by changes in the intellectual landscape. French poststructuralism emerges from this as the sustained attempt to think politics beyond the horizons of both political economy and phenomenology, in terms of an impossible exchange.

This book aims to rehabilitate a thinking of negativity within and against the usual forms of contemporary Continental Theory. It identifies and presents an analysis of the dominant tone of ‘affirmationism’ in contemporary theory: the insistence on starting from the affirmation of metaphysical ontologies, the inventive potential of the subject, the necessity for the production of novelty, and a concomitant suspicion of the negative and negativity. Despite all the conflicts and ‘wars’ of contemporary theory, this tone remains an unstated point of unification. Although it was often developed to resist the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, this work argues that affirmationism remains bound to its ideological coordinates in its emphasis on production, creativity, and invention. Critically reconstructing this ‘affirmationism’ through the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, the book also recovers from their work a disavowed thinking of negativity. Dependent on negativity, despite their claims to affirmation, this dependence allows a critique of the reliance on affirmation. Also, this negativity is turned against this affirmative tone to develop a more sharply-focused political analysis of theory, and to suggest the possible politics emerging from a relational thinking of negativity.

Although regarded as a single community of Islamists, Islamic political movements utilise vastly different means to pursue their goals. This book examines why some Islamic movements facing the same socio-political structures pursue different political paths, while their counterparts in diverse contexts make similar political choices. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving personal interviews with Islamic politicians, journalists, and ideologues – conducted both before and after the Arab Spring – this study draws close comparisons between six Islamic movements in Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. It analyses how some Islamic movements decide to form a political party to run in elections, while their counterparts in the same country reject doing so and instead engage in political activism as a social movement through informal channels. More broadly, this study demonstrates the role of internal factors, ideological priorities and organisational needs in explaining differentiation within Islamic political movements, and discusses its effects on democratisation. In Morocco, this book examines the Movement for Unity and Reform that formed the Party for Justice and Development, and the Justice and Spirituality Movement that eschewed party politics. In Turkey, it examines the National Outlook Movement that is the mother-movement to various Islamic political parties, and the Gülen Movement that has a complicated relationship with incumbent parties. In Jordan, this book examines the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing the Islamic Action Front Party, and the Quietist Salafis rejecting institutional politics.

Rank and file soldiers were not ‘the scum of the earth’. They included a cross section of working-class men who retained their former civilian culture. While they often exhibited pride in regiment and nation, soldiers could also demonstrate a growing class consciousness and support for political radicalism. The book challenges assumptions that the British army was politically neutral, if privately conservative, by uncovering a rich vein of liberal and radical political thinking among some soldiers, officers and political commentators. This ranges from the Whig ‘militia’ tradition, through radical theories on tactics and army reform, to attempted ultra-radical subversion amongst troops and the involvement of soldiers in riots and risings. Case studies are given of individual 'military radicals', soldiers or ex-soldiers who were reforming and later socialist activists. Popular anti-French feeling of the Napoleonic Wars is examined, alongside examples of rank and file bravery which fostered widespread loyalty and patriotism. This contributed to soldiers being used successfully in strike breaking, and deployed against rioters or Chartist revolts. By the late Victorian period, popular imperialism was an important part of working-class support for Conservatism. The book explores what impact this had on rank and file soldiers, whilst outlining minority support for socialism.

This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes the case that Guédiguian’s work represents one of the most discretely original but radical projects of contemporary French cinema: to make politically committed films with friends, predominately in a local space, over a long period of time. The book starts with a consideration of the philosophy of friendship and its relation to politics, relation, difference, time, and space. It concentrates on Guédiguian’s early life in the Estaque neighbourhood of Marseilles, where he became politically active and developed the friendships that would continue in his filmmaking, as well as Guédiguian’s disillusionment with the Communist Party. It then examines the political pessimism of the 1980s through Guédiguian’s four early films. The book examines the turn toward local activism and utopianism in the 1990s, and follows Guédiguian’s work as it spreads into diverse experimentation with genres and registers in more recent work. It emphasises Guédiguian’s political assessments and his frequent meditations on history, violence, and utopia. But it returns consistently to the underlying themes of friendship, and thus intervenes at the crossroads of affect, politics, philosophy, and art.

Mexico today is one of the most dangerous places in the world to report the news, and Mexicans have taken to the street to defend freedom of expression. As Benjamin T. Smith demonstrates in this history of the press and civil society, the cycle of violent repression and protest over journalism is nothing new. He traces it back to the growth in newspaper production and reading publics between 1940 and 1976, when a national thirst for tabloids, crime sheets, and magazines reached far beyond the middle class. As Mexicans began to view local and national events through the prism of journalism, everyday politics changed radically. Even while lauding the liberty of the press, the state developed an arsenal of methods to control what was printed, including sophisticated spin and misdirection techniques, covert financial payments, and campaigns of threats, imprisonment, beatings, and even murder. The press was also pressured by media monopolists tacking between government demands and public expectations to maximize profits, and by coalitions of ordinary citizens demanding that local newspapers publicize stories of corruption, incompetence, and state violence. Since the Cold War, both in Mexico City and in the provinces, a robust radical journalism has posed challenges to government forces.

The book provides a critical and systematic analyses of the role of queens, eunuchs and concubines in medieval Islamic history. Spanning over six centuries. It explores gender and sexual politics and power from the time of the Prophet Muhammad through the Umayyad and Abbasid empires to the Mamluks in the 15^th century. Based on primary sources, documents, the study looks at the role of women, mothers, wives, concubines, and their close political relationship with eunuchs and atabegs to secure their interests. The book examine in details how, despite the male dominated society, women managed to come to power under the Abbasids and their impacts. The creation of the eunuch institution, and its transformation from a body associated with the –Harem- to eunuch rulers under the Abbasids. The book unravel the military-political power of eunuchs and their relations with women under the Abbasids and the appearance of the first sovereign eunuch ruler and army commander. Also the gradual rise of female power under the Fatimids, and the appearance of the first queen in Islamic history. The book also examines the power of the Turkmen women in politics and how and why they introduced the unique post of atabeg. Examines the role of the first Sunni queen in Islam, Dayfa of Aleppo and how she paved the way for another queen, Shajar al-Durr in Egypt in mid 13^th century. This book is the first comprehensive study of sexual politics in medieval Islam. It challenges the traditional Muslim institutions spread in vast area in the Muslim world, which think of women as children of a lesser God according to their patriarchal readings of Islamic laws, and exposes the misogynist doctrine of organizations such as IS, Qaida, Buko Haram.

Arab New York is an ethnographic exploration of how everyday life and politics intersect in the diverse and complex Arab communities of New York City. The book argues that politics and contention move into everyday social spaces in order to circumvent many of the most challenging barriers to Arab American political participation. To show this, it studies Arab communities in practice, places where Arab Americans identify together as Arab and engage in collective work: in particular, community organizations providing services to newly immigrated Arabs and social movement organizations advocating on behalf of freedom and justice in their countries of origin. The book covers issues of forming community in diaspora, young women’s political engagement, differences between different approaches to pro-Palestine activism, and the challenges and possibilities of organizing on behalf of the Arab spring revolutions. Through detailed portraits of community organizations and activist groups, Arab New York helps explain why politics is everywhere for Arab Americans, and how their experiences of contestation, exclusion and acceptance shape their lives.