A status-obsessed senior unexpectedly falls for a freshman because of his Danny Zuko audition in their high school's production of Grease in this outrageously funny epistolary novel set in 1991."Matt Boren brilliantly captures the voices of students way back in 1992 with humor and wit and a unique ability to shift from freshman to senior, boy to girl, cheerleader to theater geek. In this hilarious novel, Boren adeptly proves that the more things change, th...

This book provides the first systematic examination of the relationship of hegemony and power. Nine essays delve into the diverse analytical aspects of the two concepts, and an introduction and conclusion by the editors, respectively, forge a synthesis of their theoretical coherence. Hegemony has long existed as a term in political science, international relations, and social theory, but its meaning varies across these fields. While each has developed its own 'local' language games for tre...

Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women's liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism's subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of neoliberalism. Now, foreseeing a revival in the movement, Fraser argues for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism able to address the global economic crisis.

Ideology is one of the most controversial terms in the political vocabulary, exciting both revulsion and inspiration. This book examines the reasons for those views, and explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major form of political thinking. It investigates the centrality of ideology both as a political phenomenon and as an organizing framework of political thought and action. It explores the changing understandings of ideology as a concept, and the arguments of the main ideologies....

This book gives a clear and readable overview of the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas, the most influential German philosopher alive today, who has commented widely on subjects such as Marxism, the importance and effectiveness of communication, the reunification of Germany, and the European Union. Gordon Finlayson provides readers with a clear and readable overview of Habermas's forbiddingly complex philosophy using concrete examples and accessible language. He then goes on to analyse...

Political conflict in our society is inevitable, and the results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture?In Agonistics, Mouffe develops her philosophy, taking particular interest in international relations, strategies for radical politics and the politics of artistic practices. In a series of coruscating essays, she engages with cosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernit...

This volume develops a novel approach to state theory. It offers a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the state and sets a new agenda for state research.Four central themes define the scope of the book: an account of the bases of the operational autonomy of the state; the need to develop state theory as part of a more general social theory; the possibilities of explaining 'capitalist societalization' without assuming that the economy is the ultimate determinant of s...

Liberty and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action. Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice, idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead to violence and repression, u...

Contemporary theory is replete with metaphors of travel—displacement, diaspora, borders, exile, migration, nomadism, homelessness, and tourism to name a few. In Questions of Travel, Caren Kaplan explores the various metaphoric uses of travel and displacement in literary and feminist theory, traces the political implications of this “traveling theory,” and shows how various discourses of displacement link, rather than separate, modernism and postmodernism.Addressing a wide r...

Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society.Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams’ classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art refe...

Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the cr...

We live in a modern age, but what does ‘modern’ mean and how can a reflection on ‘modernity’ help us to understand the world today? These are the questions that Peter Wagner sets out to answer in this concise and accessible book.Wagner begins by returning to the question of modernity's Western origins and its claims to open up a new and better era in the history of humanity. Modernity's claims and expectations have become more prevalent and widely shared, but in the course of their...