Bücher der Reihe Critical Interventions: A Forum for Social Analysis

The very institution of the state is widely conceived of as inseparable from war. If it constitutes peace within the borders or order of its sovereignty, this very peace may be the condition for its potential for war with those other states and social formation outside it.

This collected volume brings together leading anthropologists and cultural analysts to offer a concise look at the narratives, symbolic, and metaphoric fields related to extremism, systemitizing an approach to contemporary extremism by placing these idealogies into historical, political, and geo-systemic contexts.

Who's Cashing In? explores how different modes of cashlessness impact, transform and challenge the everyday lives and livelihoods of local communities in multiple regional contexts.

The January 2015 shooting at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris sparked an enormous discussion among citizens & intellectuals worldwide. By analyzing the effects the attacks have had in various spheres of social life, this collection aims to serve as a contribution and a critical response to that discussion.

The events of the Arab Spring presented a dramatic reconstitution of politics and the public sphere through their aesthetic and performative uses of public space. Mass demonstrations have become a new global political form, grounded in the localization of globalizing processes, institutions, and relationships. This volume delves beneath the seemingly chaotic nature of events to explore the structural dynamics underpinning popular resistance and their support or suppression. It moves beyond what has usually been defined as Arab Spring nations to include critical views on Bahrain, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey. The research and analysis presented explores not just the immediate protests, but also the historical realization, appropriation, and even institutionalization of these critical voices, as well as the role of international criminal law and legal exceptionalism in authorizing humanitarian interventions. Above all, it questions whether the revolutions have since been hijacked and the broad popular uprisings already overrun, suppressed, or usurped by the upper classes.

A collection of essays that assess the situations of selected commons in a variety of diagnostic sites where they exist, the ways in which they are being transformed by the incursions of capital and state, and the ways in which they are becoming the locus of struggle for those who depend on them to survive.

Indonesia is one of the world's newest democracies. Yet little is known to outsiders about this country, the home of the world's largest Muslim community. This book provides appraisals of the leading issues facing Indonesians as they seek to build a democratic nation that is tolerant of multicultural diversity and free from imperial domination.

Places the practices of racism at the center of analysis of so-called post-racist or multi-cultural nation-states. This volume treats racism and its related concepts of race, identity, culture, and naturalizing symbols of blood to highlight the manner in which governing institutions use nationalist precepts to create "races."

Presents essays that take a variety of positions on the matter of the retreat of the social. This book aims to demonstrate that if anthropology and other social sciences are to fulfill the task of a critical understanding of the diverse realities in which we all must live, it will find it impossible to do without a strong concept of the social.

The configurations of global, imperial, and state power relate to formations of oligarchic control. The nation-state, as the essays in this forum show, gives way to a political-economic formation that has multiple state-like effects, and is able to act in ways systemic with deterritorializing global processes.

A development in anthropological theory, characterized as the 'moral turn', is gaining popularity and should be carefully considered. In examining the context, arguments, and discourse that surrounds this trend, this volume aims to reconceptualise the discipline of anthropology in a radically critical way.

The professionalization of anthropology through practical engagement is a major force underpinning the reformulations of the nature of the anthropological project. It is therefore imperative that anthropologists critically explore the conditions of their practices, to determine the difficulties and limitations to their ethical practice.

When the Enron filed the biggest bankruptcy petition in the history of the United States, if not the world, the immediate response by most politicians and financiers was that this scandal was a failure of regulatory institutionsA" that can be corrected and may possibly even be a purely North American problem.

The effects of globalization have led to accentuated social inequality in most first-world countries, above all the U.S. and U.K. International trade and capital flows have tended to redistribute income in ways that aggravate inequality in advanced industrialized nations where relative income levels of the salaried middle class and the working class are being eroded, resulting in a downward mobility of these classes. At the same time, unwaged forms of labor, including forced labor and slavery, in poorer regions more and more replace wage labor in developed countries. Informed by an anthropological, humanistic perspective, the contributors in this provocative volume offer critical analyses and alternative visions.

Numerous humanly caused destructions of just the last hundred years dwarf the World Trade Center disaster, and the attention still addressed to it may over the next few years appear disproportionate. But the significance of events is always determined by the social, political, and cultural forces that are articulated through a particular event.

The relationship between migration and development is becoming an important field of study, yet the fundamentals - analytical tools, conceptual framework, political stance - are not being called into question or dialogue. This volume provides a valuable alternative perspective to the current literature...

Since 9/11 ideas of security have focused in part on the development of ungovernable spaces. Important debates are now being had over the nature, impacts, and outcomes of the numerous policy statements made by northern governments, NGOs, and international institutions that view the merging of security with development as both unproblematic...

Technologies of the allied warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as remote-controlled drones and night vision goggles, allow the user to "virtualize" human targets. This coincides with increased civilian casualties and a perpetuation of the very insecurity these technologies are meant to combat.

Austerity and structural adjustment programs are just the latest forms of neoliberal policy to have a profoundly damaging impact on the targeted populations.