An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time

"A short, serene volume. . . . Gordon avoids treating his subject in allegorical terms, in part because Benjamin always resisted conscription into a story larger than his own."-Anahid Nersessian, New Yorker

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism-his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving-that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization.

Award-winning author Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin's story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. Tracing Benjamin's life from his Berlin childhood to his Parisian exile, through the romanticism of the youth movements and the conflicts over modernism and Marxism, Gordon brings Benjamin to life.

This book examines the UK's enduring 'permacrisis'-austerity policies, Brexit, climate change, inflation, and the rising cost of living-through the lens of the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a policy continuum.

The book demonstrates that the policy continuum cannot be considered as a mere attempt to tackle a range of social and economic issues but also as contributing to forging the permacrisis sui generis. It concludes that the government's policy responses before, during and after the pandemic presented various flaws in governance, leadership and execution, constituting a crucial part of the permacrisis in the UK. Evidencing this through its assessment of policy outcomes in a number of key public policy fields, such as mental health, care and education, the book explores the impact of the pandemic on wide-ranging and long-term inequalities and vulnerable populations.

This book is of key interest to scholars and students of British politics, policy studies and, more broadly, sociology and social policy.

Juergen Habermas is the voice of a generation. One of the world's most influential philosophers and Germany's greatest living intellectual, he has shaped debates, both academic and public, for more than half a century. For as long as the cultural historian Philipp Felsch can remember, Habermas has been around: as an admonishing voice of reason, as the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society, as the son of his grandparents' neighbours in Gummersbach. Is the philosopher's intellectual supremacy coming to an end today, or are his ideas gaining new relevance in the crisis times in which we now find ourselves?

To answer this question, Felsch plunged anew into Habermas's voluminous work and travelled to his home to talk with him over tea and cake about the concerns that have motivated him, the people who have influenced him and the controversies in which he has been involved. Can the ideas that the philosopher has championed throughout his career - universalism, reason, dialogue - be of any help to us now as we face the major challenges of the twenty-first century?

This compelling account of a strikingly original thinker is also a portrait of an epoch that bears his imprint and a glimpse of a future we could embrace.

In the Philippines, the concept of Indigeneity is deeply intertwined with colonial history, a pattern echoed across the globe. Yet, its manifestation in the Philippines bears distinct features. The Philippine Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997 identifies as Indigenous groups who resisted colonization. Today the Philippines recognizes approximately 110 diverse Indigenous ethnic groups that are made up of 14-17 million people. This book aims to show how discussions of Indigeneity in the Philippines can contribute to the conversation about global Indigeneity by highlighting the distinct circumstances of the Philippines.

The fourteen essays in this volume are divided into four sections: Defining Indigenous Peoples and their Rights, Indigenous Knowledge, Colonialism, and Making Identities. The interdisciplinary essays touch on Indigenous peoples throughout the Philippines and beyond to diasporas. Most of the essays are rooted in northern Luzon in the Cordillera region, reflecting the field's strength. A variety of theoretical insights emerge in the volume, but a common thread is each essay's firm grounding in specific people, places, and processes, and the critical reading of source materials. The twenty-four contributors teach us that Indigeneity in the Philippines is a complex and evolving identity brought to national attention by the hard work of Indigenous communities.

In the Philippines today, Indigenous peoples continue to negotiate their rights, affirm their presence, and advocate for their concerns. Indigenous knowledge has been flourishing in epistemologies, rituals, stories, books, and educational structures. This volume of essays on Indigeneity in a nation that is known for its support of Indigenous groups is one of the first of its kind for Southeast Asia.

Routledge Handbook of Asian Diaspora and Nationalism presents cutting-edge research on various temporal and spatial dimensions of Asian diasporic nationalism. It examines how nationalism is negotiated and renegotiated in the diasporic context, and how diasporic nationalism significantly contributes to the ongoing processes of transnationalism and ethnonationalism.

Divided thematically into four broad sections, the chapters critically examine how diasporic nationalism remains a subtle yet prominent characteristic of Asian diasporas today:

? Historicizing Diasporic Nationalism

? Diasporic Nationalism and Homeland Politics

? Diaspora and Cultural Nationalism

? Diaspora and Ethnonationalism

Contributing to the growing diaspora and transnational studies, this book serves as an essential reference guide for students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities.

The unprecedented uncertainties marked by the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and the war in Gaza have redirected our attention to the importance of partnerships and engagements in international relations.

India-EU dialogues through the annual summits have familiarized each other with a greater understanding of one another's perspectives and interests. Their strategic engagement has broadened in the last few years to include climate change, energy, connectivity, migration, education, science and technology, and research and innovation. The growing convergence in Brussels and New Delhi's strategic interests opens up new windows of opportunities for greater cooperation on diversified issues. Capturing the new momentum in India-EU relations, this book uncovers various issues and topics spanning across politics, education, and culture. Each chapter in this book analyzes the scope of the cooperation, the existing challenges that India and the EU encounter, and provides policy recommendations for the future.

The subject matter of this book also includes:

• Data Protection and Regulation
• Cultural Diplomacy and the Dynamics of Cultural Institutes in India and Europe
• India-EU Relations and the National Education Policy 2020
• Europe, Christendom and its Encounter in India
• Portuguese Citizenship to Goans and the Postcolonial Predicament in the Goan Response

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

This book employs an interdisciplinary lens to help readers understand why Russia invaded Ukraine, as well as why and by what means it continues to wage war against the Ukrainian people, state, nation, culture, and the country's environmental well-being.

Through listening to, learning from, and analytically engaging Ukrainian intellectuals, Cynthia R. Nielsen in Ethical and Hermeneutical Reflections on War, Violence, and Responsibility: Listening to Ukrainian Voices demonstrates that Russia is not only carrying out an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine but also exposes how its use of (pseudo)History, gender narratives, information warfare, religious discourses, and other forms of propaganda have laid the groundwork for the present war and function to maintain it. By bringing contemporary Ukrainian voices such as Serhiy Zhadan and Olexsandr Myhked into conversation with hermeneutical, moral, and political philosophy and utilizing discourse analysis to explain Russia's imperial identity, we not only gain a better understanding of why Russia invaded Ukraine, but also a clearer picture of how war in the 21st century impacts human lives and communities, culture, language, the information sphere, as well as the toll it takes on non-human animals and the environment.

This book is an excellent supplement for anyone who is preparing to teach on Ukraine, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the wars in post-modernity.

Dogs and Their Humans in Pacific Island Interspecies Cultures explores diverse canine-human relationships in ancient and contemporary Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Australia. Anthropologically combining ethnographic, archaeological, biological, and linguistic evidence, the chapters demonstrate that from Hawaiian backyards to the Australian outback, both dogs and humans act differently depending on the cultural conditions connecting them in their multispecies communities.

This book rewards readers with a profound understanding of the intricate and dynamic relationships between dogs and humans, highlighting the significant impact these interspecies interactions have on shaping cultural and ecological landscapes that affect empathy, customs, genes, and ecosystems.

This book critically reflects on dominant landscape techniques, discusses landscapes that are marginalised through globalising market forces, and focuses on the collective nature of landscapes-from planetary climates to intimate private spaces. Whether in views from above or the mirror and mirage that landscapes can create, landscape practices too often foreground hegemony and embolden individuals with power, while simultaneously concealing the actions from which they are produced. Chapters show how landscapes are only possible through the collective contribution of humans and non-humans, interacting, sharing between, providing for, and making with. Collective Landscape Futures investigates the common, shared, and public endeavours that produce landscapes. Chapters address varied concerns across diverse geographies, from wilding practices to extractive landscapes and from decolonizing approaches to tools for co-creation. This volume will appeal to scholars and activists working in environmental humanities, landscape studies, and landscape architecture, and the many disciplines which converge around these topics, including design, geography, anthropology, philosophy, and politics.

Critical Voices in Library and Information Work presents 25 profiles of notable, transformational library and information science (LIS) workers in the United States, Canada, and the UK, all of whom are involved in progressive library and information work projects or research endeavors.

Discussing a piece of literature, art, or music that helped direct their path into socially conscious library work and that continues to inspire them, interviewees provide insights into their work and the current state of critical librarianship. They also reflect upon the current state of institutions, including academic, public, and school libraries, as well as special libraries. The authors of the book present these conversations in a narrative form that situates their subjects' professional work within their broader historical and cultural milieu, while carefully supplementing the conversations with real-world information and context. The resulting collection gives insight into what grounds and inspires influential LIS professionals and highlights the diversity found in critical librarianship as one of its greatest strengths. Together, the professionals' voices provide the reader with a better understanding of what drives their peers' transformational LIS work.

Critical Voices in Library and Information Work presents the voices of professionals who hail from traditional and non-traditional information environments and who have varying levels of experience. The book will appeal to practicing library workers and information professionals, as well as students and academics engaged in the study of LIS.

This book explores a little-known but richly layered history of Jewish communities in one of the world's most diverse and dynamic regions. Spanning over a millennium, the Jewish presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus has often been overshadowed by broader imperial, colonial, and Soviet narratives. This groundbreaking collection sheds new light on how Jews-Bukharan, Mountain, Georgian, and Ashkenazi-lived, worked, and interacted with their Muslim and Christian neighbours across shifting political regimes.

Drawing from fresh archival research, oral histories, and interdisciplinary approaches, nine scholars examine the complex cultural, linguistic, economic, and political entanglements that defined Jewish life in the region during the long 19th and 20th centuries. Topics range from demographic reviews, religious prejudice, trade networks and wartime evacuations to literary crosscurrents and everyday coexistence under Russian and Soviet rule. At its heart, the volume reveals how Jews were not peripheral actors but key contributors to the development of modern Central Asian and Caucasian societies.

Accessible and insightful, Shared Spaces: Jews and Interethnic Encounters in Central Asia and the Caucasus, 19th-20th Centuries is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of minorities, interethnic relations, and the making of modern Eurasia. It invites a broader understanding of how diverse communities shaped the region's shared past.

The chapters in this book were published in Central Asian Survey.

This book explores Greenpeace's efforts to expand its engagement in the Circumpolar North in the 21st century and how this work is affected and informed by the organization's controversial legacy of anti-sealing campaigning in the 1970s and 1980s.

Presenting the fallout for peoples and cultures targeted by Greenpeace's anti-sealing campaigning as a pivotal dimension to the organization's history, the book argues that this history must first be acknowledged in order to understand how Greenpeace has developed more positive working relationships in some instances with northern Indigenous peoples in recent years. The book looks to dispel the misconception that Greenpeace is universally rejected in the Circumpolar North, whilst also highlighting that its engagement and alliances are being built in the shadow of its yet-to-be fully tackled history as a leading part of the anti-sealing movement.

Greenpeace in the Circumpolar North is ideal for courses and research with a focus on Arctic studies, environmental activism, and Indigenous studies, and for those interested in learning more about the complex legacy of Greenpeace.

Ethiopia has been going through the most tumultuous period in its recent history, with conflict and civil war killing hundreds of thousands and leaving millions displaced. This book investigates the escalation and making of the current crises in Ethiopia, starting with the root causes of the protests (2015-2018), the bumpy transition (2018-2021), the civil war in the north (November 2020-November 2022) and ongoing violence in Amhara and Oromia regions, taking us up to 2024.

Adopting a diachronic approach, the book brings in historical insights to help us understand the causes of the crises and how they have led to current realities on the ground. The book presents a multiscalar analysis, investigating local identity and security concerns and state- level political, economic and security dynamics. Using the concept of the intrastate insecurity complex, the book sheds light on contested notions of security between state security on the one hand and societal security - the security of ethno- linguistic or cultural groups - on the other. It also takes into account the relevance of regime security in the complex dynamics between state and societal security.

Providing fresh conceptual and analytical perspectives on the unfolding situation, the book will be an important read for researchers, policymakers and practitioners interested in governance, development and security issues in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

This book examines how traditional Chinese values have been adapted and integrated into modern Chinese society.

It delves into Confucianism and Chinese culture, inspecting their underlying tenets and their use in today's world. The first part discusses the essence of Confucian thought and the roles of Confucius and Mencius as central figures. It emphasizes core values such as benevolence, harmony, integrity, and fortitude. The text also details the evolution of Confucianism and the challenges it faces today, offering strategies for its preservation and development. The second part illustrates how Confucian principles can address modern societal issues. This section discusses cultivating the Junzi character, the complementary nature of Confucianism and Daoism in enriching human life, and the role of moral education in shaping individuals with strong ethics. Additionally, it examines the relevance of Confucianism in fostering social harmony and guiding international relations. By bridging historical insights with contemporary relevance, this book demonstrates the enduring vitality of Confucian wisdom in shaping a just and harmonious world.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Chinese philosophy and Confucianism, as well as those interested in Chinese culture.

This book examines which characteristics allow a non-state armed actor to be considered an effective diplomatic actor for the purpose of a meaningful peace settlement.

The work demonstrates how such characteristics can potentially contribute to a more successful outcome in peacemaking initiatives with non-state armed actors, and how their absence can become a peril for peace. Addressing a gap in the diplomatic studies literature, the book is concerned with defining, characterising and categorising the effectiveness of diplomatic actors. It argues that the critical characteristics are autonomy, organisational coherence and representativeness, all of which non-state armed actors need to possess to a sufficient degree if they are to engage in meaningful negotiations which could lead to a sustainable peace settlement. The empirical data are drawn from analysis of the diplomatic engagements with the Khmer Rouge that led to 1991 Paris Peace Agreements in relation to the Cambodian conflict and from exploration of the difficulties experienced in attempting to negotiate a peace settlement with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The book's detailed analysis of these two case studies demonstrates the value of the diplomatic actors' framework.

This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, peace studies, Asian studies and international relations.

Renowned Taiwan expert and former intelligence officer J. Michael Cole explains how this Pacific nation has become a tinderbox that could ignite a full-scale global conflict. Drawing on unparalleled access to Taiwanese government sources and two decades of on-the-ground observation, he explores the root causes of the conflict between Taiwan and China - from the identity politics that make "peaceful unification" inconceivable, to the rise of Xi Jinping, the most powerful and authoritarian Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. With in-depth analysis of how the war in Europe is influencing preparations by Beijing, Taipei, and Washington for a potential cross-Strait confrontation, The Taiwan Tinderbox is an impassioned plea for the defense of Taiwan as a priority for the international community and the future of democracy.

The Frankfurt Institute continues to command the interest of a wide range of scholars working in history, philosophy, sociology, and political science. Yet, the prevailing narrative about the Institute overlooks a crucial component of its history: the economic theories developed by its lesser-known members. This book presents the first comprehensive study of these overlooked contributions, providing a transformative account that repositions the Institute as a site of original and influential economic thought. Most research on the Frankfurt Institute remains narrowly focused on a select few members whose work developed methods of critiquing capitalism that were more philosophically oriented than empirically grounded in economic reality.

Drawing on new archival research, this book brings to the forefront the sidelined and long-neglected economic ideas of Franz L. Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Carl Gruenberg, Henryk Grossmann, Arkadij Gurland, Gerhard Meyer, Kurt Mandelbaum, and Karl A. Wittfogel. Viewing the work of the Institute through these figures highlights the fact that material, historical, and empirical approaches to economic theory were central to its work. Being primarily a work of intellectual history, the book contextualises the Institute's economic theories within the historical settings of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

The book emphasises the role of these underappreciated economists in shaping economic discourse around the structural characteristics of capitalist economies during the twentieth century and offers a renewed perspective on the intricate interplay between economics, politics, history, and epistemology, which lay at the heart of the Institute's endeavours. This book will be of interest to researchers on twentieth-century economic history, intellectual history, political philosophy, history of economic thought, epistemology, and critical theory.

This is the first full-scale analytical and critical monograph on the moral philosophy of W. D. Ross. It shows why Ross is admired as a major figure in ethics. He provided one of the most distinctive and powerful theories in the field, and Robert Audi sets out and explains Ross's comprehensive ethics, including his theory of obligation-of duty and the right-and his theory of value, of the good and the bad. Ross is conceptually sophisticated, rich in ideas, and historically informed. He reflects the best in Aristotle's ethics and is an astute critic of Kant, Mill, Moore, and others.

Audi clarifies Ross's substantive moral views, from their metaphysical grounds to their practical applications, and explains how Ross illuminates much in contemporary ethics, theoretical and applied-intuition, reflective equilibrium, defeasibility, and many distinctions: between grounds and constitution, basic and consequential obligations, commensurability and combinability, moral stringency and moral predominance, enumerative and intuitive induction, rightness and creditworthiness, and many others. The Intuitionist Ethics of W. D. Ross presents Ross as demonstrating the powers of intuition in moral practice, portraying the diversity of standards for determining duty, and preserving the plurality of values in moral reflection. He is a judicious exemplar of full-scale ethical intuitionism, as both a method of moral thinking and a major option in doing and teaching ethics.

This book explores gender, sexualities, labour, migration and coloniality in Africa and India in an attempt towards transnational understanding and ways of rethinking gender. It scrutinises the nuances, textures, taxonomies and architectures of gender and sexuality in the mediated encounters between the two regions.

Amidst the current climate of great global fragmentation and geopolitical conflict, this volume brings new readings from Africa and India to surface points of contact and departure. As a counter to ruptures and alienation that often characterise geopolitical borders, this book advances new epistemologies from both the internal and external borders of the modern (and colonial) world-system. In fresh and incisive essays, the volume offers ideas to build solidarity and collaboration through the lens of 'contact zones' that open up prospects for transcultural dialogues across continents, contexts, regions, nations, identities and disciplines. The volume contributes to transnational understanding, highlights complex diversity and resists the idea of a single, unified set of experiences of gender and sexuality in non-Western contexts. Rather than representing mainstream trends, it advances the idea of interracial solidarity that is linked to the revolutionary momentum of confronting imperialism as a consciousness that reifies oppressive domains of thinking.

The book will be of interest to scholars of gender and sexuality, anthropology, cultural theory, sociology, human geography, development studies, cultural and media studies, film studies, linguistics, curriculum studies, political science, land and migration studies. It will also be of interest to activists working in these domains.

This book analyzes the concept of likelihood of success in just war thinking and argues that if the concept should be retained, it must be reconsidered within the overall whole of the tradition of just war.

The concept of likelihood of success has stood out as particularly troublesome to thinkers and practitioners in the just war tradition. The idea, while related to the other categories of just war, such as proportionality and military necessity, can at times be confused with being an absolute rather than a co-belligerent criterion within the broader just war canon. With such an abstraction, justice can be collapsed into a kind of pragmatic calculation, favoring the powerful, and virtually invalidating insurrection, rebellion, or resistance. This volume brings together scholars and experts from across the tradition to reconsider and reconceptualize the likelihood of success. It analyzes this concept not only in light of the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, but also in historical cases such as Thermopylae or the Russo-Finnish Winter War. It also examines how we categorize and calculate the likelihood of success and what, after all, we mean by "success." Further, the volume considers how close or far from the target we should get, or expect to get, before claiming that a war is "unjust" or immoral, and raises the issue of the destructiveness caused by defenders themselves.

This book will be of interest to students of just war theory, military ethics, statecraft, and international relations generally.

This book re-examines and contextualises political developments that have seen African countries make progress in achieving democratic governance over the last two decades alongside their struggle to institutionalise it amidst socioeconomic and political complexities.

It provides a comprehensive discussion on emerging or 'aborted democratisation' and its social consequences, as contributors analyse the environmental, security, socioeconomic, and political impacts of political transitions, whether democratic or otherwise, on the continent. The book explores the potential causes of democratic regression and the consolidating authoritarianism in regions where democratic progress appeared promising and their actual implications for African governance. Finally, it provides practical recommendations for sustainable policy changes to ensure democratic survival.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics and studies, democracy and democratisation, autocratisation studies, development and area studies, human rights, governance, human security, and more broadly to political science, African history, international relations, and the wider social sciences.

Chapter 3 and Chapter 12 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Can libertarian free will survive our best physical theories? While prominent physicists argue that genuine agency contradicts science, this book demonstrates that contemporary physics actually provides robust foundations for human freedom.

Physics and Free Will rigorously navigates the complex intersection of physical theory and the free will debate. Koperski begins by clarifying determinism's scientific foundations before systematically addressing challenges from special relativity and refuting physics-based arguments against mind-body dualism. Drawing on insights from continuum mechanics and condensed matter physics, he reveals how multiscale systems exhibit the emergence of causally efficacious properties irreducible to their micro-constituents. Using these insights, Koperski develops a framework that preserves libertarian intuitions about genuine choice while remaining consistent with physical theory. Through meticulous examination of determinism, reductionism, and the causal closure of physics, this comprehensive work reveals how contemporary science's recognition of emergent causation provides ample space for genuine human agency.

This book will be essential for researchers and graduate students in metaphysics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind, and for anyone seeking to understand how contemporary science reshapes rather than eliminates the possibility of free will.

Understanding the African Diaspora offers a clear and engaging introduction to the global movements, histories, and cultural experiences of African and African-descended peoples, from ancient times to the present.

The book traces the wide-reaching impact of the African diaspora, shaped by both forced and voluntary migrations, including the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and more recent waves of movement. It explores how African-descended communities have contributed to and reshaped societies across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, while maintaining enduring ties to the African continent. Each chapter presents key historical developments, cultural expressions, and political struggles, supported by maps, timelines, and infographics that help bring complex topics into focus. Students are introduced to major debates in the field and regional case studies that highlight the diversity and resilience of African diasporic life.

Designed especially for courses in African Diaspora Studies, this textbook is also well-suited for African and African American history and related programmes. Its accessible structure and interdisciplinary approach make it ideal for undergraduate students, educators, and general readers seeking a strong foundation in one of the most significant and far-reaching movements in global history.