Polity press sep 2026 (29 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - What if the state as we know it didn't exist Our air would be poisonous, our votes uncounted, and our markets dysfunctional. Yet across the world, in countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S., attacks on the modern state and its workforce are intensifying. They are morphing into power grabs by self-aggrandizing politicians who attempt to seize control of the state for themselves and their cronies. What replaces the modern state once it is fatally undermined is not the free market and the flowering of personal liberty. Instead, the death of government agencies organized under the rule of law inevitably leads to the only realistic alternative: the rule of men. In The Assault on the State, political scientists Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein offer an impassioned plea to defend modern government against those who seek to destroy it. They dissect the attack on the machinery of government from its origins in post-Soviet Russia to the core powers of Western democracy. The dangers of state erosion imperil every aspect of our lives. Hanson and Kopstein outline a strategy that can reverse this destructive trend before humanity is plunged back into the pathological personalistic politics of premodern times. Also available as an audiobook.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - As the habitable areas of the Earth shrink under climate change, and as many governments around the world adopt measures to deport migrants and refugees, it is time to reexamine our traditional notion of freedom.In the western tradition, freedom is generally understood in relation to space: it is the freedom of movement and the freedom not to be obstructed in one's movement by the state or anyone else. In The Freedom to Stay, von Redecker puts forward the radical argument that we should think of freedom in temporal rather than spatial terms. This means thinking of freedom as the capacity to endure in time and to have the time to be and do as one wishes. This reorientation aligns human liberty with ecological concerns.Combining vivid personal narrative with rigorous philosophical argument, von Redecker shows that freedom is best realized when understood as fulfilled time. The political act of staying ties freedom to material conditions. It requires that habitable space be provided for everyone, including all nonhuman forms of life around us. Staying also reconnects freedom with desire. It channels the urge to live in all creatures, celebrates the ensuing abundance, and honors the specifically human aspiration for free and fulfilled time.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Susanna Rustin's Sexed is a radical retelling of the story of British feminism. Starting in the revolutionary 1790s and ending in the present day, she introduces the 1830s radicals who demanded 'LIBERTY FOR EVER!', Victorian petitioners who expected to be dead before women won the vote, and rival camps of suffragists who embraced and rejected violence. She considers the contributions of the first female MPs, as well as activists including the Greenham peace protesters and the black and Asian women's groups of the 1970s and 1980s. Her goal To show how successive generations have fiercely contested what it means to be a woman, and why this matters. Biology on its own is not destiny. But this book argues that differences between male and female bodies have always been feminist issues. While gender is a useful concept, women cannot be supported by a politics that forgets that they, like men, are sexed.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Britain is broken: its economy hollowed out, unbalanced, and unable to provide good livelihoods for millions. We import too much, make too little, and keep wages low. Neoliberalism has failed.This book puts forward a concrete, costed programme for real economic renewal: rebuilding the foundations of industry, expanding manufacturing, and lifting productivity through skilled work, investment and domestic capacity. It outlines a practical route to generating real wealth rather than recycling financial gains. To deliver it requires sovereignty to plan and invest, and democratic power to mobilise the necessary workers, skills and institutions.This bold intervention is a blueprint for economic revival. Anyone who wishes to be part of the democratic movement that is needed to make this happen should read this book.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The crisis of religion today stems not simply from the fact that certain tenets of faith have lost their validity for us, or that we no longer believe in God. The crisis of religion has a deeper source: it is rooted in a crisis of attention, a crisis of seeing and hearing. It is not God that is dead, declares Byung-Chul Han, it is the human to whom God revealed himself that is dead.For many people today, attention has been displaced by perception, and perception, in our age of information overload, has become voracious - it has become 'binge watching'. It is flattened with junk information and communication, with sonic and visual waste. We 'eat' but we no longer 'look'. Our voracious perception has no need of attention; it is controlled by addiction and dopamine and it devours whatever is presented to it. And a soul that only eats without looking loses its contemplative capacity.Only the soul that fasts can start to contemplate deeply, to observe things without wishing to appropriate or absorb them. Religion presupposes an attention to the things that elude availability, elude consumption. If we looked attentively, with pure attention undisturbed by the frenzied distractions of our digital culture, we would encounter God.Through a dialogue with the thought of Simone Weil, Byung-Chul Han shows us that beyond the immanence of production and consumption, beyond the immanence of information and communication, there is a higher reality that can lead us out of a life that has lost all meaning and grant us an exhilarating fullness of being.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to research and development in a handful of STEM disciplines. It now actively shapes how we work, communicate, learn, and create. Understanding Artificial Intelligence offers a clear and critical guide to this transformative technology, written for students and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.Bringing together insights from philosophy, history, media studies, and communication, award-winning educator David J. Gunkel explains what AI is, how it works, and why it matters. The book introduces key concepts - from algorithms and neural networks to natural language processing and generative AI - while examining the cultural narratives and the political, social, and ethical debates that surround them. Readers are invited to explore how AI redefines creativity, authorship, responsibility, and even what it means to be human.Balancing accessible technical explanation with rigorous critical reflection, Understanding Artificial Intelligence equips readers to engage with AI technologies with confidence and discernment. It is both a map of today's rapidly evolving AI landscape and a call to participate in shaping its future - essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how artificial intelligence will transform knowledge, culture, and everyday life.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Britain's economic stagnation is often blamed for a widespread sense of national crisis. But might the dysfunction of modern British society have a deeper cause James Vitali argues that our economic woes are merely symptoms of an underlying ethical disorder. Our shared prosperity rests upon a common set of moral values: responsibility, duty and stewardship. Yet these values have been fatally undermined by both left and right. Their loss amounts to the destruction of Britain's culture of ownership, a malaise which lies behind so many of Britain's biggest challenges, from our crisis in national self-confidence to the overburdened British state. Only by restoring Britain's ethical bedrock - and building the property-owning democracy it requires - can we prosper again.The Ownership Society articulates a new conservatism that offers Britons an opportunity to take responsibility for themselves, for their communities, and for their loved ones. No one who cares about the future of Britain should miss it. …

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - It all happened in a flash. February 1933 was the month in which the fate of German writers, as for so many others, was decided. In a tensely spun narrative, Uwe Wittstock tells the story of a demise which was predicted by some but also scarcely thought possible. He reveals how, in a matter of weeks, the glittering Weimar literary scene gave way to a long, dark winter, and how the net drew ever closer for Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Else Lasker-Schüler, Alfred Döblin, and countless others.Monday, January 30: Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Joseph Roth cannot wait any longer to learn what today's paper will report. He leaves for the station early in the morning and takes the train to Paris; bidding Berlin farewell comes naturally to him. Meanwhile, Thomas Mann barely spares a thought for politics during the next ten days, focusing instead on his forthcoming speech on Richard Wagner.Weaving an intimate portrait of the major figures whose lives he follows day by day, Wittstock shows how the landslide of events which immediately followed Hitler's victory spelled disaster for the country's literary elite. He resurrects the atmosphere of the times, marked by anxiety for many, by passivity and self-betrayal for some, and by grim determination for others. Who will applaud the new dictator, and who will flee, fearing for their life Drawing on unpublished archival material, this important work is both a meticulous historical narrative and a timely reminder that we must remain vigilant in the face of the forces that threaten democracy, however distant the prospect of totalitarianism may seem.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Multiple times a day, in cities across the US and beyond, a simple yet powerful message is repeated by the well-meaning, the ill-informed, and the bigoted: 'don't go' - avoid at all costs those Black and Brown disinvested neighborhoods that have become bywords for social disorder and urban decay.This book is a collection of intimate stories and evocative photos that uncover the hidden influence of both subtle and overt 'don't go' messages and the segregation they perpetuate in Chicago. Told by everyday people to Tonika Lewis Johnson and Maria Krysan - a Black artist and a White academic who met through their shared passion for anti-segregation work - the stories paint a rich picture of life in a segregated city.One by one, the storytellers upend pessimism with candid, deeply personal, humorous, and heartbreaking tales, and with novel ideas for simple actions that can serve as antidotes to both racism and 'place-ism.'By inviting readers into the lives of regular people who have ignored the warning to stay away from 'don't go' neighborhoods or who live in those very same neighborhoods, the stories in Don't Go illuminate the devastating consequences of racial segregation and disinvestment as well as the inevitable rewards of coming together.Also available as an audiobook.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Maps have escaped from the confines of road atlases or decorative frames to being ubiquitous on our screens. Using a GPS while driving, looking for a shop on Google Maps, or tracking a food delivery - all involve some form of digital maps. Rather than depicting existing reality, maps are active agents in changing it, all the while making use of personalization algorithms, content curation and other techniques that are pervasive in digital media. In doing so, maps are reorienting our geography and further fracturing shared reality into individual spaces.Maps as Media investigates digital maps as new media objects. Combining perspectives from media studies, critical cartography, and science and technology studies, the book examines the transformation of mapping from a specialized domain into a commonplace media practice. Alex Gekker argues that maps are reactive and reflective, fuelled by the ability of software to track, adapt and update. This naturalized state of digital maps allows them to become powerful tools for those wishing to exert power on their end-users. As a growing number of digital technologies integrate GPS and other spatial awareness into their core functionality, this book asks what happens when maps become media.Original and thought-provoking, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Media and Communication Studies, Geography, and Science and Technology Studies.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Cities are now on the front line of dangers associated with the climate crisis, health emergencies, uncontrolled artificial intelligence, escalating warfare, growing authoritarianism and capitalist profligacy. This is especially so for their unprotected populations who, in large numbers, now face a dire future of precarity as powerful elites seek to turn urban assets to their advantage in confronting an uncertain future. For the vast majority of people living in cities, the future is one of foreclosure - a future of dispossession and impoverishment that is lacking a horizon of hope.What pathways remain open for cities to avert a future of foreclosure for people leading modest lives in modest neighbourhoods To answer this question, this book looks to the popular practices and knowledges that exist within urban communities and neighbourhoods, finding within them elements that are potentially reparative and curative. Here the engagement with time is different, involving repertoires of horizontal relations, affinities of place and restive knowledge capable of making something out of nothing, of bending adversity towards other goals. Here, rich yet neglected ecologies of urban inhabitation - with all their wiles and improvisations - emerge as the ground of future-making. The book offers a body of concepts to encapsulate this threatened yet resistant urbanism, exemplifies its workings in the streets of Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico City and Naples, and outlines an infrastructural and aesthetic politics to bring out its potential, thereby enabling another future to shine through urban foreclosure.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This is the first of five volumes based on the lectures given by Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France in the early 1980s under the title 'General Sociology'. In these lectures, Bourdieu sets out to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline, and in doing so he introduces and clarifies all the key concepts which have come to define his distinctive intellectual approach.In this first volume, Bourdieu focuses on the fundamental social processes of naming and classifying the world, the ways that social agents use words to construct social objects and the struggles that arise from this. The sociologist encounters a world that is already named, already classified, where objects and social realities are marked by signs that have already been assigned to them. In order to avoid the naivety and confusion that stem from taking for granted a world that has been socially constituted, sociologists must examine the part played by words in the construction of social things - or, to put it differently, the contribution that classification struggles, a dimension of all class struggles, play in the constitution of classes, including classes of age, gender, race and social class.An ideal introduction to some of Bourdieu's most important concepts and ideas, this volume will be of great interest to the many students and scholars who study and use Bourdieu's work across the social sciences and humanities, and to general readers who want to know more about the work of one of the most important sociologists and social thinkers of the twentieth century. …

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - The Global Financial Crisis was a shock to the shadowy world of financial regulation. Since then, the system has been fundamentally overhauled, tightening up regulations that were far too lax, and making financial institutions safer. But the system is now over-complex and the United States, in particular, is pushing back to set a new balance. Howard Davies, one of the world's leading experts on financial regulation, provides a clear and authoritative guide to this messy system, assesses what works and what doesn't, and lays out a programme of change for the next decade.As Davies explains, regulation is never a finished product. Transformed after 2008, it has had to adapt further to tackle new issues, including cryptocurrencies, the blockchain revolution, climate change, and artificial intelligence. Davies describes how the different pieces of the new regulatory jigsaw fit together, using his years of work in finance and regulation to provide crucial insights into the motivations of lawmakers and market practitioners alike. The book concludes with a bold agenda to make the system more robust, cheaper and more effective.As the appetite for regulation sours and geo-political crises produce sustained uncertainty, Global Financial Regulation is a clear-eyed look at the murky waters of international regulation. An incisive successor to Davies's much-praised guide from 2009, this book is essential reading for regulators, financial market practitioners, and students of the global financial system.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - A war is being waged against the Past. Whether it's toppling statues, decolonising the curriculum or erasing terms from our vocabulary, a cultural crusade is underway designed to render the past toxic. It is condemned as enemy territory and has become the target of venomous hate. What is at stake in provoking such a strong sense of societal shame towards Western history In this book, Frank Furedi mounts a fierce defence of the past and calls for a fight back against the delegitimization of its ideals and accomplishments. Casting the past as a story of shame has become a taken-for granted outlook permeating the educational and cultural life of western society from the top down. Its advocates may see it as a cultural imperative, but society that loses touch with its past will face a permanent crisis of identity. Squandering the wisdom provided by our historical inheritance means betraying humanity's positive achievements. Challenging this great betrayal, Furedi argues, is one of the most important battles of our time.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Riots and rioting are exceptional though not unusual social phenomena. Despite occurring irregularly, they are sufficiently common to be matters about which most of us have some knowledge. They have been the subject of considerable and extended scrutiny for more than a century, with sociologists, psychologists and historians at the forefront of scholarly inquiry.Tim Newburn's international and comparative study offers a close analysis of protest, social movements and the violence connected with them. The book examines riots across the world, ranging from those in America - from the sixties to the recent post-George Floyd uprisings - to those in Europe and the Middle East (during the so-called 'Arab Spring'), as well as Hong Kong's Umbrella movement. Reading Riots questions why such violence occurs, uncovers what happens during riots and takes an extensive look at the legacy of such disorder.This comprehensive book will be of great value to those interested in riots and protest, the policing of such disorder and its consequences, as well as social movements and protest violence in recent times.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In the face of the global rise of authoritarian phenomena - from Trump in the United States to Macri and Milei in Argentina, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, and Erdoðan in Turkey, and the increasing traction of Vox in Spain and the AfD in Germany - Gisela Catanzaro argues for the continued relevance of the concept of ideology for understanding contemporary social processes and political struggles.Catanzaro places particular emphasis on the transformations of neoliberalism and its authoritarian traits, from its origins in Latin America, where it was forced onto societies through bloody coups during the 1970s, through a second phase, linked to globalization, that spread to many parts of the world in the late 1990s, and a more recent phase that has gained prominence since 9/11 and especially since the 2008 financial crisis. In this later phase, the authoritarian spirit of neoliberalism has again come to the forefront, but this time in the midst of formal democracies. Using Argentina as a paradigmatic case but ranging more widely, Catanzaro shows that the authoritarian neoliberalism of the present is driven by, and at the same time exacerbates, an elitist, punitive, sacrificial, anti-egalitarian, and anti-intellectual ideology that has left its traces in subjectivity and social processes.By providing a rigorous exploration of the logic of authoritarian neoliberalism, this book makes a major contribution to understanding an ideology that is increasingly shaping our social and political world.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Black nationalist ideas have been debated over centuries, and have shaped black religious, cultural, economic, and intellectual thought. But how is black nationalism popularly understood And how should we reckon with the unique position of black people in the United States, where black nationalism has been fundamentally shaped by the white nationalism expressed before the Civil War In this illuminating new book, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar sheds much-needed light on black community, unity, and identity. The story of black nationalism is not limited to 'back-to-Africa' Garveyites or to the religious nationalism of the Nation of Islam. By retelling the story of Malcolm X, Ogbar reveals how black nationalist thought has shaped ideas centered on internationalism, self-determination, self-defense, and electoral empowerment. More than 'racial solidarity' or racial pride, black nationalism seeks territorial and political sovereignty - and the (often transnational) efforts to achieve nationhood have brought disparate communities together under the single banner of nationalism.Offering both a panoramic and meticulous history, this lively book is essential reading for anyone who has been curious about the extraordinary impact of black nationalism in contemporary America.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Sollers once wrote that, to him, Claudel was first and foremost the man who wrote, 'Paradise is around us at this very moment, all its forests attentive like a great orchestra that invisibly adores and implores. The whole invention of the Universe with its notes falling vertiginously one by one into the abyss where the wonders of our dimensions are written.'Well, Lacan is, to me, the one who says in this Seminar, 'We are all familiar with hell, it is everyday life.'Is that the same thing No, I don't think so. Here there is no adoration, no invisible orchestra, no vertigo or wonders. Let us begin by the end: Lacan 'evacuated' from the rue d'Ulm along with his audience, not without resistance or an uproar. The episode was in all the papers. What had he done to deserve such a fate He had spoken not only to psychoanalysts, but also to young people who were still fired up by the events of May 1968, who nevertheless accepted him as a master of discourse at the same time as they dreamt of subverting the university system. What did he tell them That 'Revolution' means returning to the same place. That knowledge now imposes its law on power and has become uncontrollable. That thought is censorship itself. He spoke to them about Marx, but also about Pascal's wager - which became in his hands a new version of the master/slave dialectic-not to mention the foundations of set theory. He moved on to a discussion of perversion, and models of hysteria and obsession. All of that is connected, scintillates, and captivates.Between the lines, the dialogue between Lacan and himself continues regarding the subject of jouissance and the relationship between jouissance and speech and language.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In 1816, the climate went berserk. The winter brought extreme cold, and torrential rains unleashed massive flooding in Asia. Western Europe and North America experienced a 'year without a summer', while failed harvests in 1817 led to the 'year of famine'. At the time, nobody knew that all these disturbances were the result of a single event: the eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia - the greatest volcanic eruption in recorded history.In this book, leading climate historian Wolfgang Behringer provides the first globally comprehensive account of a climate catastrophe that would cast the world into political and social crises for years to come. Concentrating on the period between 1815 and 1820, Behringer shows how this natural occurrence led to worldwide unrest. Analysing events as diverse as the persecution of Jews in Germany, the Peterloo Massacre in the United Kingdom, witch hunts in South Africa and anti-colonial uprisings in Asia, Behringer demonstrates that no region on earth was untouched by the effects of the eruption. Drawing parallels with our world today, Tambora and its aftermath become a case study for how societies and individuals respond to climate change, what risks emerge and how they might be overcome.This comprehensive account of the impact of one of the greatest environmental disasters in human history will be of interest to a wide readership and to anyone seeking to understand better how we might mitigate the effects of climate change.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Huey P. Newton was called many things in his time: revolutionary, genius, criminal, even the most surveilled human being in world history. Yet, little of the truth about him is known today due to persistent distortions of his legacy as co-founder of the Black Panther Party.In this much-needed intellectual history, Delio Vásquez establishes Newton as a true philosopher. Newton developed innovative theories for how the most oppressed could spearhead revolutionary change in a rapidly developing technological society. Inspired by his ideas, the Panthers forged alliances with Black student unions and street gangs, Hollywood elites and poor whites, the gay liberation movement and Third World nations.Newton left behind dozens of unpublished manuscripts analyzing politics, feminist thought, education, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and theology - texts presented here for the first time. Vásquez also puts into proper perspective Newton's late descent into addiction and madness - a direct effect of US government techniques of cognitive war that targeted his body and mind in ways that remain all too relevant today.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book by the leading political thinker and philosopher Sueli Carneiro examines how race operates in Brazilian society and why myths of racial democracy have so much staying power in the country despite the many ideological and cultural shifts. To understand this, Carneiro develops Foucault's concepts of biopower and dispositif and links them with Charles W. Mills's writings on the racial contract, creating the 'dispositif of raciality.' Carneiro argues that this concept operates through, on the one hand, 'epistemicide,' the process whereby Black people are invalidated as knowing subjects, and, on the other, a complicity among white people in relation to the social subordination and elimination of Black people.As with all dispositifs, however, the dispositif of raciality possesses its own resistance, and Carneiro also addresses Black resistance, understood through the voices and testimonies of insurgents against subordination and epistemicide. Their words reveal that it is from the strength of self-esteem, the recognition of their own autonomy, and the triumph of memory and collective action that the sap of resistance is extracted. It is only through collective struggle, where the care of self and of others becomes emancipatory, that the dispositif of raciality can be confronted.Hailed as one of the most important works of political philosophy written in Brazil, this book sheds new light on the mechanisms through which racial regimes reproduce themselves and how these patterns might be broken. It will be of great value to students and scholars of Brazil, Latin America, and Black studies and it will appeal to anyone interested in questions of race, racism, and the legacies of colonialism.…

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Once there were princes and peasants and very few between. The extremes of wealth and poverty are still with us, but that shouldn't blind us to the fact our societies have been utterly transformed for the better over the past century. As Daniel Waldenström makes clear in this authoritative account of wealth accumulation and inequality in the modern west, we are today both significantly richer and more equal.Using cutting-edge research and new, sometimes surprising, data, Waldenström shows that what stands out since the late 1800s is a massive rise in the size of the middle class and its share of society's total wealth. Unfettered capitalism, it seems, doesn't have to lead to boundless inequality. The key to progress was political and institutional change that enabled citizens to become educated, better paid, and to amass wealth through housing and pension savings. Waldenström asks how we can consolidate these gains while encouraging the creation of new capital. The answer, he argues, is to pursue tax and social policies that raise the wealth of people in the bottom and middle rather than cutting wealth of entrepreneurs at the top.Richer and More Equal is a benchmark account of one of the most profound and encouraging social changes in human history and a blueprint for continued progress.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - As a philosopher, Amy Olberding is trained to wrestle with abstraction. But when she takes over her ancestral family farm in the Ozarks, her experience turns far more earthy. Her double life in philosophy and farming worked well enough, for a time. But then she tried to write a philosophy book about grief.Olberding's profession prepared her to write a scholarly book, but left her ill-equipped to do so among the haunting traces of her ancestors: the grandfather who could fix anything, the uncle who cautioned against letting your brains show, and the grandmother who once had all her chickens killed to conceal her hillbilly origins. Like her grandmother, Olberding was adept at killing chickens, at least metaphorically, taking on the marks of class and education expected of professors. But her efforts to write dispassionately about grief from a farm populated with family ghosts quickly foundered. Instead, Olberding presents a lyrical mosaic that refuses to shy away from the acute confusions that come with loss. Insistently joining farm life to learning and Ozark ancestors to philosophers, Olberding offers evocative meditations on community and tradition, the contradictions of mental and manual labor, the worlds of urbane airs and country speech, and describes a life of the mind slowly giving way to raw experience.Kill All the Chickens is the book you get when loss is less a problem to solve than a place where you live. Most of all, it is an effort to revive some chickens, to let the earthy stuff of sorrow sometimes mess up the cleaner wisdoms philosophy might offer.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - AI and the Great Ontological TransformationHow did we get to this horrific moment when life itself may be snuffed out on this once animated planet For 98 per cent of the time our species has inhabited the Earth, we adapted to the temporal processes, patterns, and flows of an environment alive with agency. Two thousand years ago our ancestors changed course and began to think of our world as made up of inert substances, things, and resources to be extracted, propertized, commodified, marketed, and consumed. We quickened the pace over the past two centuries of the Industrial Age, systematically stripping the planet of agency, and now find ourselves and our fellow creatures on the brink of extinction. Philosophers describe this historical dialectic as process ontology vs. substance ontology.The existential question we now face is this: can we restore vibrant life on our planet or will we continue to exploit and degrade our Earthly largesse The answer will depend, in great part, on how we choose to use Artificial Intelligence.The powers that be in the AI world imagine a geopolitical approach to managing the planet, where a handful of tech giants govern the future and extract the last remains of what was a thriving environment, and where even humanity is bypassed by machine intelligence, giving rise to the 'singularity' alongside an AI-framed substance ontology paradigm. By contrast, a powerful alternative AI is quietly scaling with the build-out of a highly distributed AI infrastructure attached to local ecosystems and stewarded by bioregional commons governance, enjoining the collaborative intelligence of both our species and our fellow creatures. The People's AI is pure process ontology and fosters a deep biophilic realignment with the natural world.The choice we make between holding on to an AI substance ontology or grabbing hold of a nascent AI process ontology will determine whether our planet, once brimming with life, will flourish again or perish.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - In this book, Hugo Micheron retraces the history of European jihadism from the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s to the present day. Over a period of some thirty years, jihadist ideas spread to the main cities of Europe, where they were disseminated by thousands of Islamic activists. These ideas were also embedded in online media which connect Islamic communities across the world.Micheron argues that the development of Jihadism has not been linear, but has followed a wave-like pattern of ebbs and flows. At high tide, the movement is visible and its sympathizers give priority to armed jihad. They seek to mediatize their operations in order to galvanize sympathizers, draw in new recruits and intimidate adversaries. These periods of high tide are the times when they most often employ terrorism. At low tide, jihadism seems to have been defeated. Organizations are dismantled and they no longer have the operational capacity to conduct large-scale attacks. To the external observer, armed jihad seems to have disappeared, and its threat is correspondingly weakened. But jihadism has not disappeared: it has merely mutated. Armed struggle has been replaced by ideological struggle. This wave-like movement of jihadism is poorly understood in the West. Observers tend to measure the threat only in terms of overt terrorist attacks and they ignore the mutations that occur during the periods of low tide, and hence they fail to appreciate the reconfigurations of jihadism that take place over the long term.Based on archival research as well as numerous interviews, Micheron provides the first full history of European jihadism. He shows that jihadism has ebbed and flowed in Europe with astonishing regularity, at a rate of one complete cycle per decade. It originated in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, put down roots in Europe in the 1990s, spread throughout the continent after September 11, 2001, and expanded to new horizons with the emergence of Islamic State in Iraq and then Syria, where it changed scale. In the post-IS period, it underwent new phases of mutation, in prisons and within European societies, which makes it all the more urgent to understand this broad movement today.Unrivaled in the breadth and depth of its coverage, this book will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the threats faced by Western democracies today, as well as students and scholars of political science, IR, terrorism and extremism.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Over the last 500 years, capitalism has produced a world that is highly interdependent and at the same time highly asymmetrical. These asymmetries were often established by violent means and are in many cases vigorously defended to this day. In his ambitious global history of capitalism, Friedrich Lenger charts the course of these developments, which have left no one unaffected - from the indigenous people of America to the silk weavers of Bengal. This is a story of flagrant wealth and extreme poverty, of violence and oppression, and of the relentless exploitation both of labour and of our planet, for which we are now paying the price.Among the global inequalities produced by capitalism are the unequal consumption of fossil fuels and the environmental degradation that affects different parts of the world in different ways and to different extents. The indifference capitalists display towards the natural world resembles their past indifference to human suffering. The millions of slaves forced to work on American plantations until well into the nineteenth century is just one example of how oppressive labour and a capitalist economy go hand in hand.This brilliant and wide-ranging book tells the story of the rise and triumph of capitalism from the fifteenth century to the present day and lays bare its fundamental dynamic: capitalism will never place limits on itself, underlining the fact that any restrictions have to be imposed from outside. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the modern world, the fundamental problems we face today, and the economic solutions upon which our survival as a species will depend.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - This book by the late Brazilian activist and quilombo leader Antônio Bispo dos Santos offers an original perspective on ways of living and relating to others and to the land that is rooted in a quilombo cosmovision - the polytheistic, counter-colonial, confluential worldview articulated by Bispo through quilombola thinking in Brazil. It presents a fresh critique of capitalism and colonialism that emerges from a quilombola perspective.Nêgo Bispo lays out a set of terms and concepts developed over his lifetime, based on ancestral quilombola knowledge. His key concept is 'counter-colonialism' - a practice of confronting and undoing colonial domination through quilombola modes of life, struggle, and thought. He argues that the hyper-individualistic, capitalistic, colonial approach to cultivating the earth sees the land as subservient to its desires. A quilombo cosmovision, by contrast, understands that our desires are always in dialogue with the wants and needs of the earth - we must live in harmony with the earth, animals, and people, and if we take from the earth, we must also give to the earth.This remarkable book introduces a new perspective on the debates about the destructive consequences of capitalism and colonialism and will be of interest to anyone who wants to think about how we live in relation to each other and to the earth.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Behind the headlines, a struggle between two opposing philosophical visions has shaped the course of international efforts to save the planet from global warming. The liberal cosmopolitanism of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant has been up against the darker vision of an authoritarian global order of great power rivals developed by Carl Schmitt, 'Crown Jurist of the Third Reich'.Clive Hamilton shows how the influence of Schmitt's once-taboo ideas has recently spread around the world - in Trump's America, in Xi Jinping's China, and in Europe with the rise of right-wing populism. His book maps how the actions of these three great powers have defined the course of global climate negotiations.The Kantian vision, best represented by the European Union, has common sense on its side - a threat to everyone that can be solved by collective responses. In practice, however, UN agreements have triggered resistance from surging anti-globalist forces influenced by the Nazi jurist's ideas, a world defined by friends and enemies and where weaker states submit to powerful ones.As the Earth hurtles towards a hot and perilous future, which of these worldviews prevails, Kant's or Schmitt's, could determine humanity's fate.…

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Until very recently, the climate crisis was considered the most serious and urgent challenge facing contemporary societies. There was widespread agreement that a comprehensive green transformation is necessary to address the planetary emergency, secure the survival of humanity and facilitate a good life for all. Yet, suddenly, ecological issues have slipped down the political agenda. Conservatives welcome 'the end of the green hegemony', the far-right rallies against eco-emancipatory policies, and an authoritarian turn that once again champions fossil fuels is gaining momentum across the world.This book examines the causes of this dramatic change of course. It reminds us that in environmental politics, social norms and cultural values ¿¿are as important as biophysical facts. Even if the scientific evidence on climate change and the collapse of biophysical systems is clear, the supposedly categorical imperatives presented by ecologists ultimately express a particular worldview.Ingolfur Blühdorn argues that the emancipatory logic itself is a key driver of the current collapse of the green project. He shows how this counter-cultural project was fraught with inherent contradictions. Eco-emancipatory movements themselves contributed to mainstreaming values, lifestyles and notions of self-determination that ultimately blocked the green transformation and propelled a postliberal turn. To many, eco-political ideals today appear more like a threat than a promise. A renaissance of fossil fuels, autocratic leadership, and strict policies of exclusion seem to offer a better future, beyond eco-emancipatory values and the scenarios of ecological collapse.But the transition to a postliberal modernity will benefit very few and make life brutish, nasty and shortfor many.…