Using the historical-materialist method to unravel the promise and limits of critical practice since the Revolutionary Age, John E. O'Brien investigates the problems and prospects of cultural criticism for the 21st century through absorbing studies of the contested perspectives of Voltaire, Friedrich Schiller, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Terry Eagleton and Hayden White.
In spite of recurrent crises due to a flawed Western political-economy, why is there so much critical intellectual activity with so little effect? Framing his study with the early work by Max Horkheimer, Luc...

Why do empires build walls and fences? Are they for defensive purposes only, to keep the 'barbarians' at the gate; or do they also function as complex offensive military structures to subjugate and control the colonized? Are the colonized subjects also capable of erecting barriers to shield themselves from colonial onslaughts?
In Empires and Walls Mohammad A. Chaichian meticulously examines the rise and fall of the walls that are no longer around; as well as impending fate of 'neo-liberal' barriers that imperial and colonial powers have erected in the new Millennium. Based on four...

Recent changes in the global economy, which include a growing demand for energy and natural resources such as industrial minerals and agro-food products, have brought about a massive devastating pillage of resources in the developing world by multinational corporations as well as states with energy and food security concerns--and concerns about a system (global capitalism) in the throes of a global crisis. These developments have also brought about a major change in the form taken by imperialism (actions taken by the state to advance the interests of the dominant capitalist class). This book...

In this insightful new book, Tine Destrooper analyzes the political projects of feminist activists in light of their experience as former revolutionaries. She compares the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan experience to underline the importance of ethnicity for women's activism during and after the civil conflict.
The first part of the book traces the influence of armed conflict on contemporary women's activism, by combining an analysis of women's personal histories with an analysis of structural and contextual factors. This critical analysis forms the basis of the second part of the book, which...

Using examples from different historical contexts, this book examines the relationship between class, nationalism, modernity and the agrarian myth.
Essentializing rural identity, traditional culture and quotidian resistance, both aristocratic/plebeian and pastoral/Darwinian forms of agrarian myth discourse inform struggles waged 'from above' and 'from below', surfacing in peasant movements, film and travel writing. Film depictions of royalty, landowner and colonizer as disempowered, 'ordinary' or well-disposed towards 'those below', whose interests they share, underwrite populism and...

Collaborative projects: ? An Interdisciplinary Study presents research in disciplines ranging from Education, Psychotherapy and Social Work to Literacy and anti-poverty Project Management to Social Movement studies and Political Science. All the contributions are unified by use of the concept of 'project'. 'Project' is 'leading activity' for Child Development, while 'life project' may play a crucial role in personal development and Psychotherapy; the social fabric of a community can be understood as woven from projects which may be sustained by NGOs, or develop from social movements to...

The Dialectics of the Religious and the Secular: Studies on the Future of Religion contains the work of fifteen international scholars who have wrestled with the question of the relevancy, meaning, and future of religion within the context of the increasing antagonisms between the religious and secular realms of modern civil society and its globalization. Through their chosen topics in analyzing these issues in the 20th and 21st centuries, each author also indicates the possibility of mitigating if not preventing the continuation of this antagonism by historically moving toward a more...

In 1936, director John Ford claimed to be making movies for a new kind of public that wanted more honest pictures. In this insightful and stimulating book Cassano argues that this new kind of public was forged in the fires of class struggle and economic calamity. Those struggles appeared in Hollywood productions, as the movies themselves tried to explain the causes and consequence of the Great Depression. Using the tools of critical Marxism and cultural theory, Cassano surveys Hollywood s political economic explanations and finds a field of symbolic struggle in which radical visions of...

In this wide-ranging collection, leading scholars from different disciplines critically examine the new extractive imperialism bearing down on the Americas.
Recent changes in the global economy, particularly the growing demand for energy and natural resources, have produced a massive and devastating pillage of resources in the developing world by multinational corporations and States. These developments have also brought about a major change in the form taken by imperialism, and a renewed focus on the Americas as a source of plunder. Extractive Imperialism explores the changing face of US...