In July 2009, the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) began publishing book reviews by an individual writing as Barbara Celarent, professor of particularity at the University of Atlantis. Mysterious in origin, Celarent’s essays taken together provide a broad introduction to social thinking. Through the close reading of important texts, Celarent’s short, informative, and analytic essays engaged with long traditions of social thought across the globe—from India, Brazil, and China to...

Where are we today and what is to be done? Slavoj Zizek ponders these questions in this unique and timely book. Based on live interviews, the book captures Zizek at his irrepressible best, elucidating such topics as the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the global financial crisis, populism in Latin America, the rise of China and even the riddle of North Korea. Zizek dazzles readers with his analyses of Hollywood films, Venezuelan police reports, Swedish crime fiction and much else. Wherever t...

In Trouble in Paradise, Slavoj Žižek, one of our most famous, most combative philosophers, explains how by drawing on the ideas of communism, we can find a way out of the crisis of capitalism.There is obviously trouble in the global capitalist paradise. But why do we find it so difficult to imagine a way out of the crisis we're in? It is as if the trouble feeds on itself: the march of capitalism has become inexorable, the only game in town.Setting out to diagnose t...

On the premise that words have the power to make worlds, each essay in this book follows a word as it travels around the globe and across time. Scholars from five disciplines address thirteen societies to highlight the social and political life of words in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The approach is consciously experimental, in that rigorously tracking specific words in specific settings frequently leads in unexpected directions and al...

During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, coloniality emerged as a new structure of power as Europeans colonized the Americas and built on the ideas of Western civilization and modernity as the endpoints of historical time and Europe as the center of the world. Walter D. Mignolo argues that coloniality is the darker side of Western modernity, a complex matrix of power that has been created and controlled by Western men and institutions from the Renaissance, when it was driven by Christ...

In this book, Guillaume Faye, the firebrand of the French New Right, confronts the phenomenon of mass immigration head-on. Rather than talking about ‘immigration’, Faye insists that we must speak of a massive colonisation settlement of the West by peoples from the Global South. This, together with declining birthrates, means that Europeans will soon become a minority in Europe, and their ancient and unique heritage will disappear. He furthermore demonstrates that the Islamic world is carry...

For the majority of cultures around the world, religion permeates and informs everyday rituals of survival and hope. But religion also has served as the foundation for national differences, racial conflicts, class exploitation, and gender discrimination. Indeed, religious spirituality, having been transformed by contemporary economic and political events, remains both empowering and controversial. Religions/Globalizations examines the extent to which globalization and religion are...

World Literature in Theory provides a definitive exploration of the pressing questions facing those studying world literature today.Coverage is split into four parts which examine the origins and seminal formulations of world literature, world literature in the age of globalization, contemporary debates on world literature, and localized versions of world literatureContains more than 30 important theoretical essays by the most influential scholars, includin...

Why do revolutions happen? Decades of social science research have brought us little closer to understanding where, when and amongst whom they occur.In this groundbreaking book, Eric Selbin argues that we need to look beyond the economic, political and social structural conditions to the thoughts and feelings of the people who make revolutions. In particular, he argues, we need to understand the stories people relay and rework of past injustices and struggles as they struggle in th...

The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, first published in 2004, offers a lucid introduction and overview of one of the most important strands in recent literary theory and cultural studies. The volume aims to introduce readers to key concepts, methods, theories, thematic concerns, and contemporary debates in the field. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, contributors explain the impact of history, sociology and philosophy on the study of postcolonial literatures and ...

Multiculturalism—the belief that no culture is better or worse than any other; it is merely different—has come to dominate Western intellectual thought and to serve as a guide to domestic and foreign policy and development aid. But what if multiculturalism itself is flawed? What if some cultures are more prone to progress than others and more successful at creating the cultural capital that encourages democratic governance, social justice for all, and the elimination of poverty? In Jews, C...

GENDER IN HISTORYPraise for the first edition:“Wiesner-Hanks ... accomplishes a near-impossible feat - a review of what is known about the construction of gender and the character of women’s lives in all known cultures over the course of human history …. Theoretically sophisticated and doing justice to the historical and cross-cultural record, yet assimilable by students.”Choice