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41. FROM SELF-FULFILMENT TO SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present

Author:
Ewa Mazierska
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DušanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.
Topic:
Cold War, Mass Media, Socialism/Marxism, Film, and Neoliberalism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe

42. Entangled Entertainers

Author:
Klaus Hödl
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century was the product of the city’s Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike. While these two communities interacted in a variety of ways to their mutual benefit, Jewish culture was also inevitably shaped by the city’s persistent bouts of antisemitism. This fascinating study explores how Jewish artists, performers, and impresarios reacted to prejudice, showing how they articulated identity through performative engagement rather than anchoring it in origin and descent. In this way, they attempted to transcend a racialized identity even as they indelibly inscribed their Jewish existence into the cultural history of the era.
Topic:
Religion, Culture, Film, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Austria, Vienna, and Central Europe

43. Breaking the Ice Curtain? Russia, Canada, and Arctic Security in a Changing Circumpolar World

Author:
P. Whitney Lackenbauer, Suzanne Lalonde, Viatcheslav Gavrilov, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, Alexander Sergunin, Troy Bouffard, Andrea Charron, Jim Fergusson, Robert Huebert, and Suzanne Lalonde
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
Canada and Russia are the geographical giants, spanning most of the circumpolar world. Accordingly, the Arctic is a natural area of focus for the two countries. The region plays strongly into their identity politics, with leaders often invoking sovereignty and security frames to drum up support for investments in this “frontier of destiny.”1 The purported need to protect sovereign territory and resources from foreign encroachment or outright theft, backed by explicit appeals to nationalism, can produce a siege mentality that encourages a narrow, inward-looking view. Although the end of the Cold War seemed to portend a new era of deep cooperation between these two Arctic countries, lingering wariness about geopolitical motives and a mutual lack of knowledge about the other’s slice of the circumpolar world are conspiring to pit Canada and the Russian Federation as Arctic adversaries. Are Russian and Canadian Arctic policies moving in confrontational direction? Can efforts at circumpolar cooperation survive the current crisis in Russian-Western relations, or does an era of growing global competition point inherently to heightened Arctic conflict?
Topic:
Defense Policy, Sovereignty, International Security, Territorial Disputes, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Russia, Canada, North America, and Arctic

44. Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bargaining in U.S. Foreign Policy

Author:
Evan Resnick
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Since its founding, the United States has allied with unsavory dictatorships to thwart even more urgent security threats. How well has the United States managed such alliances, and what have been their consequences for its national security? In this book, Evan N. Resnick examines the negotiating tables between the United States and its allies of convenience since World War II and sets forth a novel theory of alliance bargaining. Resnick’s neoclassical realist theory explains why U.S. leaders negotiate less effectively with unfriendly autocratic states than with friendly liberal ones. Since policy makers struggle to mobilize domestic support for controversial alliances, they seek to cast those allies in the most benign possible light. Yet this strategy has the perverse result of weakening leverage in intra-alliance disputes. Resnick tests his theory on America’s Cold War era alliances with China, Pakistan, and Iraq. In all three cases, otherwise hardline presidents bargained anemically on such pivotal issues as China’s sales of ballistic missiles, Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, and Iraq’s sponsorship of international terrorism. In contrast, U.S. leaders are more inclined to bargain aggressively with democratic allies who do not provoke domestic opposition, as occurred with the United Kingdom during the Korean War. An innovative work on a crucial and timely international relations topic, Allies of Convenience explains why the United States has mismanaged these “deals with the devil”—with deadly consequences.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Negotiation, Diplomatic History, and Allies
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, China, and Iraq
Publication Identifier:
9780231549028
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

45. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates

Author:
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
During the two decades that preceded the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and Syria, animated debates took place in Cairo and Damascus on political and social goals for the future. Egyptian and Syrian intellectuals argued over the meaning of tanwir, Arabic for “enlightenment,” and its significance for contemporary politics. They took up questions of human dignity, liberty, reason, tolerance, civil society, democracy, and violence. In Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution, Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab offers a groundbreaking analysis of the tanwir debates and their import for the 2011 uprisings. Kassab locates these debates in their local context as well as in broader contemporary political and intellectual Arab history. She argues that the enlightenment they advocated was a form of political humanism that demanded the right of free and public use of reason. By calling for the restoration of human dignity and seeking a moral compass in the wake of the destruction wrought by brutal regimes, they understood "tanwir" as a humanist ideal. Kassab connects their debates to the Arab uprisings, arguing that their demands bear a striking resemblance to what was voiced on the streets of Egypt and Syria in 2011. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution is the first book to document these debates for the Anglophone audience and to analyze their importance for contemporary Egyptian and Syrian intellectual life and politics
Topic:
Arab Spring
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, and Egypt
Publication Identifier:
9780231549677
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

46. Alternative East Asian Nuclear Futures, Volume I: Military Scenarios

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The 13 chapters contained in this book’s two volumes were prompt-ed by a single inquiry in 2012 from the MacArthur Foundation. Was there any way, I was asked, to further clarify the economic and nonproliferation downsides if further production of civilian pluto-nium proceeded in East Asia? My initial reply was no. So much already had been done.But the more I thought about it, two things that had yet to be at-tempted emerged. The first was any serious analysis of just how bad things could get militarily if Japan and South Korea acquired nuclear weapons and North Korea and Mainland China ramped up their own production of such arms. Such nuclear proliferation had long been assumed to be undesirable but nobody had specified how such proliferation might play out militarily. Second, no serious consideration had yet been given to how East Asia might be able to prosper economically without a massive buildup of civilian nucle-ar power. Since each of the key nations in East Asia—China, the Koreas, and Japan—all would likely exploit their civilian nuclear energy infrastructure to acquire their first bombs or to make more, such inattention seemed odd.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, North Korea, and Global Focus

47. Alternative East Asian Nuclear Futures, Volume II: Energy Scenarios

Author:
Henry D. Sokolski
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
The 13 chapters contained in this book’s two volumes were prompt- ed by a single inquiry in 2012 from the MacArthur Foundation. Was there any way, I was asked, to further clarify the economic and nonproliferation downsides if further production of civilian pluto- nium proceeded in East Asia? My initial reply was no. So much already had been done.But the more I thought about it, two things that had yet to be at- tempted emerged. The first was any serious analysis of just how bad things could get militarily if Japan and South Korea acquired nuclear weapons and North Korea and Mainland China ramped up their own production of such arms. Such nuclear proliferation had long been assumed to be undesirable but nobody had specified how such proliferation might play out militarily. Second, no serious consideration had yet been given to how East Asia might be able to prosper economically without a massive buildup of civilian nucle- ar power. Since each of the key nations in East Asia—China, the Koreas, and Japan—all would likely exploit their civilian nuclear energy infrastructure to acquire their first bombs or to make more, such inattention seemed odd.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, North Korea, and Global Focus

48. The Witness as Object: Video Testimony in Memorial Museums

Author:
Steffi De Jong
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
In recent years, historical witnessing has emerged as a category of "museum object." Audiovisual recordings of interviews with individuals remembering events of historical importance are now integral to the collections and research activities of museums. They have also become important components in narrative and exhibition design strategies. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes for the first time the new global phenomenon of the "musealization" of the witness to history, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of the transformation of video testimonies into exhibits.
Topic:
Mass Media, Media, Holocaust, and Museums
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Israel, and Global Focus

49. What We Know About Race and Ethnicity

Author:
Michael Banton
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Attempts of nineteenth-century writers to establish “race” as a biological concept failed after Charles Darwin opened the door to a new world of knowledge. Yet this word already had a place in the organization of everyday life and in ordinary English language usage. This book explains how the idea of race became so important in the USA, generating conceptual confusion that can now be clarified. Developing an international approach, it reviews references to “race,” “racism,” and “ethnicity” in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and comparative politics and identifies promising lines of research that may make it possible to supersede misleading notions of race in the social sciences.
Topic:
Race, Sociology, and Ethnicity
Political Geography:
United States and North America

50. Selling the Economic Miracle: Economic Reconstruction and Politics in West Germany, 1949-1957

Author:
Mark E. Spicka
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.
Topic:
Cold War, Economics, Elections, European Union, Political stability, and Propaganda
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, West Germany, and Central Europe

51. Patrons of Women: Literacy Projects and Gender Development in Rural Nepal

Author:
Esther Hertzog
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Assuming that women’s empowerment would accelerate the pace of social change in rural Nepal, the World Bank urged the Nepali government to undertake a “Gender Activities Project” within an ongoing long-term water-engineering scheme. The author, an anthropologist specializing in bureaucratic organizations and gender studies, was hired to monitor the project. Analyzing her own experience as a practicing “development expert,” she demonstrates that the professed goal of “women’s empowerment” is a pretext for promoting economic organizational goals and the interests of local elites. She shows how a project intended to benefit women, through teaching them literary and agricultural skills, fails to provide them with any of the promised resources. Going beyond the conventional analysis that positions aid givers vis-à-vis powerless victimized recipients, she draws attention to the complexity of the process and the active role played by the Nepalese rural women who pursue their own interests and aspirations within this unequal world. The book makes an important contribution to the growing critique of “development” projects and of women’s development projects in particular.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, Women, and Anthropology
Political Geography:
Asia and Nepal

52. Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismark to the Economic Miracle

Author:
David Meskill
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the country’s human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The author’s account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industry’s evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germany’s domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany.
Topic:
National Security, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Domestic Politics, and Labor Policies
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Berlin, and Central Europe

53. JUDGING 'PRIVILEGED' JEWS Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the 'Grey Zone'

Author:
Adam Brown
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust included the creation of prisoner hierarchies that forced victims to cooperate with their persecutors. Many in the camps and ghettos came to hold so-called “privileged” positions, and their behavior has often been judged as self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood, and often taboo aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone,” this study analyzes the passing of moral judgment on “privileged” Jews as represented by writers, such as Raul Hilberg, and in films, including Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Negotiating the problems and potentialities of “representing the unrepresentable,” this book engages with issues that are fundamental to present-day attempts to understand the Holocaust and deeply relevant to reflections on human nature.
Topic:
Mass Media, Film, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

54. IMPOTENT WARRIORS Perspectives on Gulf War Syndrome, Vulnerability and Masculinity

Author:
Susie Kilshaw
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Gulf began to surface. This mysterious illness was given the name “Gulf War Syndrome” (GWS). This book is an investigation into this recently emergent illness, particularly relevant given ongoing UK deployments to Iraq, describing how the illness became a potent symbol for a plethora of issues, anxieties, and concerns. At present, the debate about GWS is polarized along two lines: there are those who think it is a unique, organic condition caused by Gulf War toxins and those who argue that it is probably a psychological condition that can be seen as part of a larger group of illnesses. Using the methods and perspective of anthropology, with its focus on nuances and subtleties, the author provides a new approach to understanding GWS, one that makes sense of the cultural circumstances, specific and general, which gave rise to the illness.
Topic:
Health, Gulf War, Masculinity, and PTSD
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, United Kingdom, Europe, and Middle East

55. From Clans to Co-Ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily

Author:
Theodoros Rakopoulos
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
From Clans to Co-ops explores the social, political, and economic relations that enable the constitution of cooperatives operating on land confiscated from mafiosi in Sicily, a project that the state hails as arguably the greatest symbolic victory over the mafia in Italian history. Rakopoulos’s ethnographic focus is on access to resources, divisions of labor, ideologies of community and food, and the material changes that cooperatives bring to people’s lives in terms of kinship, work and land management. The book contributes to broader debates about cooperativism, how labor might be salvaged from market fundamentalism, and to emergent discourses about the ‘human’ economy.
Topic:
Environment, Political Economy, Labor Issues, Economy, and Collaborative Efficiency
Political Geography:
Europe, Italy, Sicily, and Southern Europe

56. A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films

Author:
Gerd Gemünden
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.
Topic:
Immigration, Media, Film, and Material Culture
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

57. Urban Transport in the Sharing Economy Era: Collaborative Cities

Author:
CIPPEC
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC)
Abstract:
More than half of the global population lives in cities, an increase of 15 percent over the last 35 years. Driven largely by population growth and a search for better living conditions and work opportunities, this trend is expected to continue. With 80% of its population living in cities, Latin America is the second most urbanized region on the planet and is estimated that by 2050 approximately 90% of its population will be urban (UN-Habitat, 2012).
Topic:
Economics, Urbanization, Digital Economy, Urban, Transportation, and Cities
Political Geography:
Argentina, Latin America, and Global Focus

58. The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History

Author:
Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine. This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakba is the first extended and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas together.
Topic:
Holocaust and Nabka
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine
Publication Identifier:
9780231544481
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

59. Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices

Author:
Robert McNally
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
As OPEC has loosened its grip over the past ten years, the oil market has been rocked by wild price swings, the likes of which haven't been seen for eight decades. Crafting an engrossing journey from the gushing Pennsylvania oil fields of the 1860s to today's fraught and fractious Middle East, Crude Volatility explains how past periods of stability and volatility in oil prices help us understand the new boom-bust era. Oil's notorious volatility has always been considered a scourge afflicting not only the oil industry but also the broader economy and geopolitical landscape; Robert McNally makes sense of how oil became so central to our world and why it is subject to such extreme price fluctuations. Tracing a history marked by conflict, intrigue, and extreme uncertainty, McNally shows how—even from the oil industry's first years—wild and harmful price volatility prompted industry leaders and officials to undertake extraordinary efforts to stabilize oil prices by controlling production. Herculean market interventions—first, by Rockefeller's Standard Oil, then, by U.S. state regulators in partnership with major international oil companies, and, finally, by OPEC—succeeded to varying degrees in taming the beast. McNally, a veteran oil market and policy expert, explains the consequences of the ebbing of OPEC's power, debunking myths and offering recommendations—including mistakes to avoid—as we confront the unwelcome return of boom and bust oil prices.
Topic:
Economics, Oil, and OPEC
Political Geography:
United States and Middle East
Publication Identifier:
9780231543682
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

60. Holy Wars and Holy Alliance: The Return of Religion to the Global Political Stage

Author:
Manlio Graziano
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Religions are reemerging in the social, political, and economic spheres previously occupied and dominated by secular institutions and ideologies. In the wake of crises exposing the limits of secular modernity, religions have again become significant players in domestic and international politics. At the same time, the Catholic Church has sought a "holy alliance" among the world's faiths to recentralize devout influence, an important, albeit little-noticed, evolution in international relations. Holy Wars and Holy Alliance explores the nation-state's current crisis in order to better understand the religious resurgence's implications for geopolitics. Manlio Graziano looks at how the Catholic Church promotes dialogue and action linking world religions, and examines how it has used its material, financial, and institutional strength to gain power and increase its profile in present-day international politics. Challenging the idea that modernity is tied to progress and secularization, Graziano documents the "return" or the "revenge" of God in all facets of life. He shows that tolerance, pluralism, democracy, and science have not triumphed as once predicted. To fully grasp the destabilizing dynamics at work today, he argues, we must appreciate the nature of religious struggles and political holy wars now unfolding across the international stage.
Topic:
International Relations and Religion
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231543910
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN