Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case presents a new conceptual framework of socialism and applies it to the study of socialist development in China, shedding new light on modern China and signposting novel directions in socialist thought.

Based on a Marxian-Polanyian approach, the book develops a new conceptual framework of socialism by taking the liberal and the communist challenges seriously. In doing so, Brie develops a liberal and a communist formula of socialism based upon two owners of socialist property (the individuals and the society), different forms of possession (public, common, associative, and individual) meditating the interests of the two opposite owners, and democracy as an expression of the will of the many and of all together in common. This formula is then applied to socialist development in China, analysing its booming centrally directed economy and the political ways to safeguard democracy as the rule of, for, and by the people under the Chinese Communist Party.

With an analysis of the means by which China has pursued a unique form of socialist development, Beyond Liberalism and Communism: Socialist Theory and the Chinese Case will appeal to scholars of modern China, political theory, political sociology, and socialist thought.

This book analyses under what conditions, and with what developmental effects, armed organizations shift their 'coercive profile' during civil wars, with a focus on the recent conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

The work begins with an operationalisation of the term 'political settlement', focusing on how power is organized in fragile and conflict-affected countries, and then uses this operationalization to analyse the political settlements of contemporary Syria and Iraq, including their breakdown and transformation during recent civil wars (of 2011-today in Syria and 2014-17 in Iraq). It subsequently examines why and how elite factions have used armed organizations in times of conflict. This approach links an understanding of the broad evolution of power relations at the national level with the specific effects of the use of armed organizations on such relations. It argues for a shift from assigning fixed labels to armed organizations during civil wars to studying their coercive profile in a dynamic fashion, i.e. how armed organizations behave in terms of their use of threats and coercive force. The book introduces five profiles of coercive behaviour that demonstrate how the same organization can behave very differently at various points in time. One of these, the 'hybrid coercive profile', fills a gap in the existing civil war typology of organized armed violence by opening up the possibility of elite factions deliberately combining collaborative and competitive modes of behaviour. As an evidence base, the book provides in-depth analysis of the origins, evolution and operations of four armed organizations that have acted under a hybrid coercive profile during the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars: the Syrian Kurdish People's Defence Forces, the Eagles of the Whirlwind of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the Badr Organization. By connecting the concepts of political settlement and civil war, and applying them to specific armed organizations operating in Syria and Iraq, the book offers new insights into this nexus.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil wars, conflict studies, Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations.

This book examines the international efforts to regulate violence in Kosovo since 1999 through the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and covers 15 years of international presence.

The book analyses the process of implementing international policies from a sociological perspective, and looks at the adaptations and arrangements of public policies achieved through the transactions of international actors with local actors, who are at the heart of policy implementation. In particular, it analyses the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of combatants (DDR) programme and shows the extent to which it was co-produced with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders co-opted by international administrators. These analyses take the opposite view to the work that considers ex-combatants as spoilers. In Kosovo, the combatant leaders acted as peace brokers, facilitating demobilisation and exercising disciplinary control over rank-and-file combatants. Their position as brokers helped them to take control of the new state being built under international administration. This book shows the importance of the relationship between ex-combatants and the state and illustrates the multiplicity of their possible trajectories, including political ones. To elucidate the dynamics of co-production in shaping DDR policies and hybridising international policies as well as in state formation, the book relies on around a hundred interviews with ex-combatants of the KLA and with international personnel, as well as on the archives of international organisations and observations in the field.

This book will be of much interest to students of international statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, Balkan politics and international relations.

The South China Sea (SCS) has been in the spotlight since the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling in 2016, favouring the Philippines on its maritime entitlements. China rejected the verdict and militarized the islands while asserting its 'historic rights' over more than 80% of the SCS. This book examines China's behaviour in the SCS from multiple perspectives like history, environment, law, trade, security, and its relations with Southeast Asian countries that have their own EEZ claims in the SCS, revealing that their actions align with their grand strategy of becoming a global and maritime superpower by 2050 with the Nine Dash Line at its centre.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This text offers an authoritative historiography of German socialist theorist Karl Kautsky and his impact on debates about the Russian Revolution and the contemporary left. Known as the "Pope of Marxism," Douglas Greene examines the totality of Kautsky's political career and dissects the fundamental opportunism and passive radicalism that defined his Marxism. He later examines the most substantive Marxist critics of Kautsky, namely Rosa Luxemburg, V. I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, while offering a critical assessment of the work produced by scholars and activists, Lars Lih, Eric Blanc, and Mike Mcnair, seeking to revive Kautsky. The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky is an important addition to scholarship on the subject and a valuable resource for those interested in the Russian Revolution, German politics, socialism, Marxism, and contemporary left-wing debates.

Steel Town Adivasis: Industry and Inequality in Eastern India presents an analysis of class formation in the industrial town, Rourkela in the eastern Indian state Odisha, and the ways this process relates to regional ethnicity and caste.

This study is based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in the 2000s and oral histories covering the period from the inception of the steel plant, and it focusses on the region's 'tribes', indigenous people or Adivasis who lost their land when the Government of India established a large steel plant in Rourkela in the 1950s.

The book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians interested in industrial labour and work, in class, caste, Adivasis, ethnicity and their dynamic entanglement, as well as students and activists.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book reiterates pluralism as the basic feature of the Indian social sphere. It highlights challenges to the continuity of the plural fabric of India's society and culture. Acknowledging that socio-political concerns on women's issues do not always find adequate representation in social science texts, the book explores issues and policies related to gender. It locates the roots of feminist fundamentalism, studies the reactions to it, and brings forth the demands relating to new agendas and strategies for feminism. The authors also present empirical studies on issues faced by minority communities in India.

An important contribution, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, political sociology, gender studies, exclusion studies, South Asian studies, Affirmative action, and political science.

This book sketches a road map of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land in the tribal areas of North East India from pre-colonial times to the neo-liberal era.

Spread over five chapters, this study unfolds the privatisation of communal land in the backdrop of a larger theoretical and historical canvas. It deals with the different institutional modes of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land, the changes in land use and cropping patterns, the changes in land relations and the land-based identity of the tribal community as a result. The conclusive chapter makes a broader reflection of the grand narrative of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land in North East India.

This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This expanded second edition of Scientific Method shows how science works, fails to work or pretends to work by looking at examples from physics, biomedicine, psychology, sociology and economics.

Scientific Method aims to help curious readers understand the idea of science, not by learning a list of techniques but through examples both historical and contemporary. Staddon affirms that if the reader can understand successful studies as well as studies that appear to be scientific but are not, they will become a better judge of the "science" in circulation today. To this end, this new edition includes a new chapter, What is Science?, which points out that science, like any human activity, has its own set of values, with truth being the core. Other new chapters focus on the emergence of AI and machine learning, science and diversity, and behavioral economics. The book also includes textual features such as bullet-points and text boxes on topical issues.

Scientific Method is essential reading for students and professionals trying to make sense of the role of science in society, and of the meaning, value and limitations of scientific methodology.

This book examines how nineteenth-century Bengal witnessed women writers like Krishnabhabini Devi, Prasanyamoyee Devi, Swarnakumari Devi and Abala Bose interrogated social stereotypes. It presents the first translation of travel writings and letters by Abala Bose, and examines an Indian woman's close observation as she toured India in colonial times and Europe, America and Japan at the height of British imperialism. Her travelogues in colonial India and imperial England relate to and interrogate the hegemonic role of Western ideologies and deconstruct stereotypes of women's travelogues, thus contributing to the female consciousness and tradition of women's writings.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and gender and women's studies.

This book comprises the biographies of the North Korean politicians whose actions played a pivotal role in shaping the formation of the country during the late 1940s, the Korean War of 1950-53 and the power struggles of the mid-1950s.

Drawing from a rich array of archival material in Korean, Russian and oral testimonies, this book gives insight into the life stories of key figures such as Pang Hak-se, the founder of North Korea's secret police; Lee Sang-jo, a rebellious and idealistic North Korean ambassador; and Mun Il, the secretary of North Korea's first leader, Kim Il-sung. The biographies offer fresh perspectives into significant events in North Korean history such as the rise of Kim Il-sung and the reasons behind his selection as the nation's leader. The book also reveals how crucial events during the Korean War, such as the Inchon Landing Operation and China's entry into the war, shed new light on North Korean history.

Unveiling the lives and impact of influential politicians in a notoriously secretive nation, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including students and scholars of North Korea, the Korean War, the Cold War era, Asian history and those interested in the biographies of significant historical figures.

This book provides a comprehensive picture for understanding the experiences and dynamics of precarious workers' in-work poverty in western China.

The research presented in this book identifies the causes and the consequences of precarious employment and in- work poverty and analyses the stakeholders' responses to the changes in the context of employment in China's socialist market economy. The book explains why precarious workers tend to remain outsiders to rapid socio-economic transformation and informs readers as to how people make choices, how those with different abilities adapt to the process of de-traditionalisation, and how marketisation changes people's lifestyles, value systems, and policy designs.

Detailing empirical investigations of the experience and dynamics of workers' precarious life, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese society, social policy, and poverty.

Korea's Platform Empire explores the evolution of digital platforms in South Korea's media sphere, and their global political, economic, cultural, and technological influence.

With a focus on Korea in the context of the global platform revolution, the book takes a methodical look at the broader social implications and the impact on cultural production. The authors explore various facets of the media and cultural industries-looking beyond social media to news broadcasting and the music industry-and look at the policy and regulations behind this shifting technological advancement.

This book will appeal to students and scholars working on media industries, digital media, platform studies, information and technology studies, Korean and East Asian media studies, and the creative and cultural industries.

This book is an introductory account for policy makers, academia, and interested readers on the digital technologies on Indian Military. It covers three technologies - AI, Blockchain, and Quantum communications - and provides a detailed account on the military use cases. It evaluates the readiness of Indian Military in these technologies. A foundational text, it not only provides key policy analysis but also identifies the gray areas for the future research in the security studies.

The volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of military and strategic studies, especially future warfare, AI and Blockchain, and South Asian studies. It will be of interest to general readers as well.

This volume examines the progress made by the Chinese military (the People's Liberation Army, PLA) as it strives to meet its commander-in-chief's directive to transform itself into a more capable fighting force.

The book tracks the reforms undertaken by the PLA in meeting its commander-in-chief's grand objectives set at the 2015 Central Military Commission Reform Work Meeting: for China's armed forces to transform themselves into a more professional and modern military. Focusing on those changes since late 2016 at corps level and below, the first and second sections of the volume document the subsequent force structure and operational changes to the PLA's four conventional services, and two newly established PLA branches: the Strategic Support Force and Joint Logistic Support Force. To that end, the contributors examine the reforms promulgated by the Chinese high command and measure them against observable developments in the PLA's power-projection capabilities. In view of how the instrumentalization of military power is writ large in Beijing's strategic calculus and in regional hotspot issues, the final part of the book also provides pathbreaking insights into two critical but not so well-understood phenomena: the now regular PLA aerial activities in the Taiwan Strait and the PLA Navy's submarine operations in the South China Sea.

This book will be of much interest to students of East Asian security, Chinese politics, and military and strategic studies in general.

This book demonstrates how participatory arts-based approaches can help children and youth contribute to peacebuilding within post-conflict contexts and to their communities.

Cultural forms of storytelling through visual arts, drama, music, and dance can help to enhance post-conflict community well-being, social cohesion, and conflict prevention. However, in the planning and implementation of these arts-based projects, children and youth are often marginalised in decision-making processes. Drawing on cases from Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Nepal, this book demonstrates the benefits of participatory action research with children and youth to inform education curricula and policies for sustaining peace. Showing how artforms can be adapted to meet the needs of children and youth, the book emphasises the need to scale up arts-based peacebuilding initiatives and leverage for greater policy enactment from the bottom up. It is also an excellent example of South-South learning, advocating for a local approach to engage with arts-based methodologies and peacebuilding. This book will be of interest to researchers across the applied arts, sociology, anthropology, political science, peacebuilding, and international development.

Practitioners and policymakers would also benefit from the book's recommendations for the implementation of successful arts-based research projects and interventions.

This book aims to revolutionize information research by introducing a receptive relation understanding of information, which systematically unveils its fundamental characteristics: created ex nihilo, emergence, reciprocity and shareability.

Through a thorough exploration of organismic and sensory receptivity, the book establishes a mechanistic foundation for understanding the nature of information. It navigates the origins of biological information and leads readers into a new era of information studies. Offering a fresh perspective on the nature of information, it delves into its physical, digital, and ideational encodings, as well as the ideational system built upon them. The book sheds light on critical issues such as quantum manifestation of information and the fundamental laws governing the relationship between information and matter/energy. It also dispels common misconceptions about information and its role in the evolution of information civilization.

The book provides valuable insights into understanding artificial general intelligence and the mysteries of consciousness and life. It will be of interest to researchers and students of information philosophy, information science, and artificial intelligence.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese and Eurasian International Relations explores China's relations with the Eurasian continent's regions and countries in a multipolar era, providing an equal and balanced platform for scholars and practitioners from East, West, North, and South. This diversity enriches the contribution, giving it a dynamic ability to examine sources in different languages and cover a vast geography.

Divided into ten parts, this handbook analyses the major powers in a Multipolar World Order; China's political and economic interests in post-Soviet Eurasia, Middle East, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Arctic; and China's relations with the US, Russia, Eurasian Economic Union, NATO and other players. International technology and environmental experts consider the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative, along with other international economic and transport corridors, and examine China's multilateral relations and Digital Silk Road and e-governance roles. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese and Eurasian International Relations also contains official documents detailing the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and several European and Asian states, making it an authoritative source on diplomatic affairs.

This groundbreaking book will be of interest to policymakers, businessmen, scholars, and students of international relations, area studies, cybersecurity and digitalization, economics and the politics of international trade, security studies, foreign policy, global governance, international organizations, and environmental studies.

This interdisciplinary book investigates the problematization of global challenges in world politics by analyzing what they are and how they come to be.

Offering a conceptual framework, including four modes of construction-universalizing, bundling, upscaling, and creating urgency-this book provides a heuristic method for understanding how the process of rendering an issue a "global challenge" unfolds. It examines the role of the global challenges discourse, which may either reinforce or challenge the dominant orders of world politics, such as the capitalist market-based system and the liberal international order. As a consequence, the global challenges discourse facilitates the emergence of new actors and policy fields.

The book will be of interest to students, academics, and practitioners of global governance, international organizations, and, more broadly, international political economy and international relations.

The book offers a vivid analysis of the new geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific in terms of big power rivalry between the US-China and country-wise perspectives situating largely within the late 2000s and culminates with the developments of the COVID-19 period. The great power shift, marked by the rise of China and the relative decline of the US, poses a serious challenge to the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region and the world order in general. Ironically, the play of realism in the region is stymied by broad partnerships of key countries that utilise the liberal approaches of cooperation with both rivals - the US and China. The book captures the mosaic of stakeholders - rivals the US and China along with Russia; other QUAD members Australia, India, and Japan; key ASEAN members, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam; vulnerable states in East Asia, viz. Taiwan and South Korea; and groupings including the ASEAN and QUAD - that constitute the new world politics of the Indo-Pacific.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indo-Pacific studies, global politics, and international relations.

Rozman and Glosserman follow a momentous decade in the transformation of Japanese foreign policy from 2013 to 2023 that unveils Japan in a new light as a leading power more closely aligned with the United States than ever before but with distinct aspirations.

The book presents a comprehensive chronology, a broad sweep of relations with regional partners, and an unprecedented look at new relations with Europe. Zeroing in on the legacy of Abe Shinzo, it pays special attention to the leadership of Kishida Fumio in response to the Biden administration, the Ukraine war, the growing alarm about China, the swings in ties to South Korea, and the hopes to be a bridge with Southeast Asia and India.

It is a vital read for students of international relations in the Indo-Pacific and of Japan and advanced undergraduate courses on Japanese foreign policy, Asian regional studies and comparative international.

Russian Westernizers and Change in International Relations summarizes the Westernizing trend in Russian thought from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

This book looks at Russian thinkers and politicians who have considered Western/European civilization to be superior to others and who have drawn the conclusion that Russia consequently ought to align itself with the West, rather than preserving certain traditional Russian values - and that not doing so is an impediment to political, social, and economic evolution. Within this trend of thought, the author identifies four schools - Christian Westernizers, Economic Liberals, Political Liberals, and Social State Supporters - and explores examples of each. The author compares Russian thinkers from different periods, finding contrasts and similarities within their political and historical settings and assessing their responses to their unique circumstances. He analyzes Russian Westernizers' self-definition and ideas of national freedom relative to those of Western nations, exploring how the West's definition of values and institutions has changed over time. He shows how Western historical developments affected waves of Westernization and pro-Western thinking inside Russia, arguing the importance of this being grounded in national state-building priorities. The growing complexity of global relations, the declining global influence of the West, and the war in Ukraine present Russian Westernizers with new questions and challenges, and this book assesses the resulting implications.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of Russian foreign policy, Russia-West relations, IR theory, diplomatic studies, political science, and European history including the history of ideas.

This book uniquely reverses today's MAGA conspiratorial concept of the deep state to reveal how a very real "deeper state" is evident throughout history, back to the founding of American democracy.

Class and caste-based elites and their political allies have held dominant power in the US. Large corporations, Wall Street, and other sectors of the capitalist class outsource day-to-day governance to the mainstream political parties, which can compete vigorously and create a credible veneer of civil liberties and electoral democracy, disguising and legitimating the deep state. But it is a "shallow democracy," since the deep state sets boundaries on policies and choices to serve itself. It also denies a universal franchise and obstructs the voting rights of people of color, the poor, and other communities threatening to the deep state. Moreover, the deep state constrains civic governance in the workplace and community, denying virtually all working people democratic control over their economic and social life.

Shallow democracy has a long history. Two embryonic deep states - a Northern capitalist deep state and a Southern slave-based deep state - came together in a tense and unstable union to create and govern the US. While the Confederate deep state, which we call proto-American fascism, was defeated in the Civil War, it left a deep imprint on the culture and politics of millions of Americans, and has resurged again in Trumpism. The shallow democracy of the capitalist deep state has survived previous challenges, but it lacks the deep roots that guarantees its survival.

The authors point to prospects for meaningful change arising from the extreme economic chasm dividing the nation economically and racially, and from existential crises of the survival of democracy and of a sustainable planet. They discuss strategy that might finally move the nation beyond MAGA toward deep democracy.

This book argues that Western studies of East-Asian politics are generally flawed due to their adherence to the premise that liberal democracy is the best form of governance.

The book rejects the three main schools of the Western interpretation of Oriental politics and instead examines the border-transcending powers of Confucianism that have, over more than twenty-two centuries, transformed the politics of East Asia. By circumventing the fundamental methodical and ethical assumptions of the Anglophone hegemonic discourse on the politics of the non-Western world, it effectively presents an alternative to traditional Western interpretations of East Asian politics.

Written in an erudite and engaging way this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of Asian studies, Asian politics and political philosophy.

This book explores how the concept of colonialism can help to understand the past and present of Antarctica, and how Antarctica may illuminate the limits of colonialism as an analytic concept. Despite lacking an indigenous population, the continent has been shaped by many of the same political and economic forces that have defined the rest of the world - notwithstanding its unique governance arrangement, the Antarctic Treaty System. The book provides a fresh and timely set of contributions that critically explore different practices, attitudes and logics that suggest that colonialism may have been and may still be present in Antarctica, ranging from religion to material culture to the treatment of animals. The chapters also explore the connection between colonialism and cognate terms like capitalism, socialism, nationalism, and environmentalism.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.