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3445 results in Agenda Publishing

Page 1 of 173

Syria
  • Realism in Action
  • Neil Quilliam
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • The Syrian regime and, in particular, the Asad clan has managed to survive the Arab uprisings, recover lost territory, and retain its authority over state institutions and diplomatic missions outside of the country. Syria's foreign policy, as developed under former president Hafez al-Asad, has effectively enabled the current regime's survival.

    Neil Quilliam examines how Syria, a country that operates at the margins of the international political system, has been able to project its power beyond its size and capability by leveraging relations with key states that typically oppose US policy in the region. He explains how Syria's relations with its major partners, including Russia and China and regional actors like Iran, are key to sustaining the regime and securing its survival. But this has come at a price. In a compelling analysis Quilliam shows that by effectively mortgaging the state to Russia and Iran, Bashar al-Asad has severely limited his margin for manoeuvre in the future. The book offers an insightful and balanced analysis of both the continuity and change within the Syrian state and the threat it poses in its regional context and the persistent challenge it presents to the international community.

New World New Rules
  • Global Cooperation in a World of Geopolitical Rivalries
  • George Papaconstantinou, Jean Pisani-Ferry
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    07 November 2024
  • The need for collective action has never been greater, but geopolitics, structural changes and diverging preferences mean that existing global governance arrangements, devised at Bretton Woods in the 1940s, are either unravelling or outmoded. Reconciling this contradiction is today's pressing global policy challenge.

    In this short book, two of Europe's most-experienced policymakers and analysts outline a new agenda for global governance. They examine governance practices across several key policy areas - climate, health, trade and competition, banking and finance, taxation, migration and the digital economy - and consider what works and what doesn't, and why. The global governance solutions they put forward are ambitious but pragmatic. They require complexity, flexibility and compromise. Attributes that global governments are demonstrably short of, but today's global crises urgently demand.

Killing the Trade
  • Strategies to End the Illegal Wildlife Trade and Make Conservation Pay
  • Richard Milburn
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025
  • The global illegal wildlife trade is estimated by Interpol to be worth $20 billion annually. A combination of poverty and rich-world demand is driving several thousand species towards extinction and the conservation sector has struggled to respond. Killing the Trade shows that with a shift in strategy, that dire situation can be turned on its head. By bringing together lessons from conservation successes and failures and incorporating insights from the commercial sector, the book sets out a workable holistic strategy to address the underlying causes of the illicit trade. Built around the guiding principle - if it pays it stays - the book provides policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders with an action plan to help bring the multi-billion-dollar trade to an end.

Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge
  • David E. Cooper
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    19 September 2024
  • How do we, as individuals, accommodate a pessimistic and misanthropic view of the world? If the human condition is impossible to ameliorate, then how should we live? How do we bring about the wellbeing and happiness we seek in the face of such overwhelming evidence that our condition is and will remain very bad indeed and owes significantly to our own entrenched failings?

    In this thoughtful and insightful book the philosopher David E. Cooper explores this fundamental dilemma. He rejects an activist commitment to radical improvement of the human condition, and instead advocates quietism as a way to live as well and as happily as we can. This quietist position, which draws on Buddhist and Daoist ideas as well as those from western philosophy, is supplemented by finding refuge from the everyday human world in a 'place' both 'other' and 'better' than that world. Such places of refuge, Cooper argues, are best found in natural environments.

    Refuge in nature, whether a garden or a wilderness, cultivates an attunement to, or a sense of, the way of things, and thereby invites assurance of being 'in the truth' and the enjoyment that such assurance fosters. The quietist who finds refuge in nature lives as well as and as happily as anyone can do who accepts the negative verdict on the human condition.

Unhappy Families
  • Childcare in a Hopeless World
  • Adam Ferner
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    26 September 2024
  • Adam Ferner's engaging and personal book explores the ethical dimensions of childcare in a world riven by conflict and inequality. He argues that widespread attitudes towards biological parenthood contribute to these worsening crises and examines the liberatory potential of foster-care and adoption.

    Written in a clear and jargon-free style, the book is informed by both Ferner's training as a philosopher and his extensive experience as a child support worker. His analysis foregrounds the concerns of young people largely marginalized by society, and he argues against the prevailing orthodoxy that hope is a necessary element of childcare. The book challenges us to look afresh at our everyday notions of parenthood, childcare and having children, and to question the dominant ethos of the family.

The War on Terror
  • Andrew Thomson, Rubrick Biegon
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • The War on Terror has remained an enduring feature of American foreign policy for over two decades. This short history positions the War on Terror within the broader context of Cold War interventionism and the rise of various transnational threats to American (and global) security during the late twentieth century. It introduces readers to the main concepts, debates and theories which have been used to understand and make sense of the War on Terror. These include approaches that frame it as a disparate set of policies aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks against American citizens at both home and aboard; as part of a project aimed at helping maintain the United States' dominant position within international politics; and as an idea intimately bound up with perceptions of American national identity and America's place in the world. In this way, the book aims to show how the War on Terror has changed global politics, as well as why it has been fought and proven so difficult to end despite multiple failed attempts at course correction. The book is ideally suited for courses on international security, American foreign policy and contemporary world politics.

Max Weber's Sociological Thought on the Economy
  • Edited by Andrea Maurer
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    12 September 2024
  • Max Weber (1864-1920) has long been considered a founding figure of sociology. This book offers a fresh reading of Weber's work and highlights his thinking about the economy and economic interactions in society. Complicated by the reception history precipitated by his untimely death, the workings of the economy and capitalism are themes that run throughout his writings but are often overlooked or subordinated to his sociology.

    In an attempt to restore Weber's place in the history of economics and to relate his approach to social science to the field today, a distinguished group of Weberian scholars explore the life and works of Max Weber, his interest in economic institutions and forms and his most influential analytical concepts.

Okinawa
  • Great Power Competition and the Keystone of the Pacific
  • Ra Mason
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Okinawa is a tiny island of huge geopolitical importance. Located between the tip of Japan's mainland and Taiwan, it hosts key US military bases, which have played a contested and controversial role on the island. In addition, the sovereignty of some of Okinawa's outlying territory is disputed by China and its future is tied closely to the competing strategies over Taiwan. It is also a potential target for North Korean missiles aimed at American military assets on the islands. In this short and revealing book, Ra Mason explores why and how this island paradise and the waters around it could trigger great power conflict.

Sustainable Development and Water Security
  • Towards Achieving a Water-Secure World
  • Melvyn Kay, Olcay Ünver
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024
  • Water is an integral part of our daily lives, yet most of us have little idea about how much water we use to maintain our lifestyles and the extent to which our lifestyles pollute and degrade water resources. The increasing occurrence of floods, droughts and water pollution incidents are reminders of our vulnerability in relation to water. Estimates suggest that global water demand could outstrip supply by the middle of the century if we continue with the current 'business as usual' approach to water management.

    Melvyn Kay and Olcay Ünver use Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 as a framework to explore the concept of sustainable water resources management and how to improve water security. They provide a synthesis of water resources planning and management issues across all water-using sectors to dispel misunderstandings and myths and enable informed approaches to decision-making. In so doing, they offer an in-depth critical review of SDG6, including what it does and does not do. Case studies from around the world are used throughout the book to illustrate the key issues of water (in)security.

Foul Play
  • Tackling Football's Integrity Problem
  • Dan Hough
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    17 October 2024
  • Football has an integrity problem.

    Whether it is the reckless behaviour of players on or off the pitch, television commentators bad-mouthing decisions during the game, or corrupt governance of the sport, football has a tarnished reputation. Big money means big public interest and an even bigger responsibility to make it a sport that is inclusive, professional and, at the very least, law-abiding.

    Dan Hough puts the game under scrutiny to find out why football has become the benchmark for bad behaviour in sport. He examines the role of players, governing bodies, managers and owners, referees, pundits and fans to show how they have all contributed to the game's failings and how all have a part to play in improving its integrity.

    Football matters and because it matters it needs fixing.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
  • Martin Shaw
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    14 November 2024
  • The launch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 signalled the first modern protest movement in Britain. Martin Shaw details CND's rise, the activists involved, the tensions with the Committee of 100 around direct action, and the culture, radicalism and social groups that were mobilized to 'ban the bomb'.

    The book discusses how a new movement in the 1980s, led by European Nuclear Disarmament and the Greenham women's peace camp, helped remove cruise missiles from Europe and end the Cold War. It examines how the campaign influenced - and was influenced by - antiwar movements from Vietnam to Iraq and Gaza, as well as the environmental and women's movements.

    As the nuclear threat returns in the 2020s, this study shows that the antinuclear movement's ideas and the non-violent direct action it pioneered still reverberate in the campaign against the UK's 'nuclear deterrent' - and in protest movements from Stop the War to Extinction Rebellion.

Preventing the Greenlash
  • How to Overcome Opposition to Green Policies
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    03 October 2024
  • Politicians stand at a crossroads where the path to green policies is fraught with political risks, as the immediate costs to society may overshadow the profound future benefits. Lorenzo Forni sets out the decisions we need to take to collectively save the world from the ravages of climate catastrophe and how politicians might keep voters on board with the green transition. He shows how reaching the net-zero emissions target to forestall further climatic change cannot be achieved by small changes in individual lifestyles alone, but requires big and brave public policy enacted by governments that is properly financed and economically sound.

The Habitation Society
  • Creating Sustainable Prosperity
  • Fred Block
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    25 February 2025
  • In The Habitation Society, leading economic and political sociologist Fred Block argues that we are at a time of 'blocked transition' from one mode of economic and social organization to another. We now have a habitation economy because most people work at creating, maintaining or improving the soft and hard infrastructure of the communities in which we live. The problem, however, is that we do not yet have a habitation society since our economy continues to be organized through the structures, institutions and concepts of an industrial economy. While the old industrial economy is dying, the new habitation society cannot yet be born.

    But it is more than this, our methods for understanding how the economy works are also built around the analysis of industrial production, which are completely inadequate, Block shows, for grasping the new reality of how we buy and consume services in the habitation economy. In the absence of concepts to make sense of what is happening, the political space becomes filled with conspiracy theories and disinformation. Specifically, it has become extremely difficult for people to understand their own relationship to the larger economy and society, in particular, there is no longer an obvious relationship between the amount or intensity of work effort and economic output.

    Fred Block's compelling analysis offers a path through this confusion and a means to understand our transition and what form this will take.

The Political Economy of Deindustrialization
  • Causes, Consequences, Implications
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    10 September 2024
  • It is often assumed that deindustrialization is a bad thing, confined to the Global North, and caused by cheap imports from the Global South. Although not entirely incorrect, the truth is far more complicated. Ray Kiely argues that the current economic debate assumes too much in terms of causality around deindustrialization, which is better seen as a product of wider changes in contemporary global capitalism. Yet, evidence of a zero-sum game doesn't have to be very strong for this to have become an issue of deep politics, informing right-wing populism and contemporary geopolitical tensions (namely with China). A clearer understanding of the processes of deindustrialization can help in appreciating the political responses and movements across the Global North - and South - and enable us to find better responses to the processes themselves.

The Urban Field
  • Capital and Governmentality in the Age of Techno-Monopoly
  • Sami Moisio, Ugo Rossi
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    18 July 2024
  • We live in an era of techno-monopoly power in which technocapitalism - through ubiquitous digital platforms - has colonized both the internet and key aspects of our everyday lives. Cities and larger urban and metropolitan environments have provided a fertile ground for the rise and rapid growth of this power. In The Urban Field, Moisio and Rossi reveal an urban monopoly capitalism supported by the 'corporatized state'. They critically examine the relationship between capital and the state, and the generation of an urban governmentality centred on the economization of knowledge and technology in four key sites: labour, human capital, startups and forms of life. Moisio and Rossi contend that, ultimately, the urban field is a constitutively political construct that can be enacted in a different way, no longer as a value-extraction machine but as a collective endeavour aiming at redefining established modes of economic value creation.

North Korea
  • Survival of a Political Dynasty
  • Ramon Pacheco Pardo
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    20 June 2024
  • The Kim family of North Korea is the most successful political dynasty of the twentieth century, and it shows no signs of loosening its grip on power. A communist dictatorship formed in the embers of the Second World War, it heads one of the most repressive regimes in the world with human rights abuses and the sophisticated surveillance of its population deployed as tools of state control. Deliberately isolated from the world, North Korea is an anomaly in the international system. It survives through the sale of weapons, while its people often starve because of the refusal to take in international trade or aid.

    Ramon Pacheco Pardo offers insight and first-hand experience of North Korea today. In seeking to explore the threat North Korea might pose to global security, he shows how the regime has been shaped by its own sense of insecurity and animosity towards the United States. As the regime continues to develop its own nuclear capabilities and export arms to Russia, Iran and Syria, Pacheco Pardo considers its tense relations with the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as its more ambiguous relationship with China.

Deglobalization
  • Edward Ashbee
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    05 September 2024
  • Edward Ashbee examines the globalizing processes of the past thirty years and considers the extent to which there has been 'deglobalization' or 'slowbalization' and the reasons for these apparent shifts.

    The analysis disaggregates the different trends that collectively constitute 'globalization' and surveys competing perspectives on globalization and reviews the arguments of those who argue that the concept is either myth or hyperbole. The book reveals how globalization is being reconfigured in ways that weaken its former associations with neoliberalism and Americanization thereby laying the basis for a new economic and social settlement.

    The book looks at the original promise held out by globalizing trends which became fully evident at the same time as the dot.com economy became part of everyday life. The book then charts the backlash against 'globalism' and the ways in which it became pronounced across much of Europe, North America and Asia. And it asks how far has that backlash, together with the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of 'techno-nationalism' led to a stalling or even reversal in globalizing processes.

Timber!
  • How Wood Can Help Save the World from Climate Breakdown
  • Paul Brannen
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • The carbon emissions generated by concrete and steel construction are well-known. Why then are we not using more carbon-friendly building materials? In a passionate and compelling argument Paul Brannen advocates the use of timber in buildings wherever possible. His controversial and counterintuitive argument is clear: planting trees is not enough to reduce carbon, we also have to chop them down and use more wood in our buildings and cities.

    This is the first book to take timber from the margins to the mainstream, from the forests to the cities. The book tackles head-on questions about sustainability, safety, the biodiversity of commercial forests and the pressures on land use. The case for timber as a construction material is persuasively made - the creation of new engineered timbers with the structural strength of steel and concrete enable us for the first time to build wooden skyscrapers - and draws on the latest developments in engineering and material science. In addition to the familiar forestry models, the book advocates alternatives such as wood farming and agroforestry that bring with them added biodiversity gains for farms.

    With the built environment currently responsible for forty per cent of the world's carbon emissions, Brannen's message is unequivocal: we must change how we build. Timber! offers fresh and inventive ideas that over time could see our expanding cities storing more carbon than our expanding forests.

False Prophets of Economics Imperialism
  • The Limits of Mathematical Market Models
  • Matthew Watson
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    25 July 2024
  • This book studies the methodological revolution that has resulted in economists' mathematical market models being exported across the social sciences. The ensuing process of economics imperialism has struck fear into subject specialists worried that their disciplinary knowledge will subsequently count for less. Yet even though mathematical market models facilitate important abstract thought experiments, they are no substitute for carefully contextualised empirical investigations of real social phenomena. The two exist on completely different ontological planes, producing very different types of explanation.

    In this deeply researched and wide-ranging intellectual history, Matthew Watson surveys the evolution of modern economics and its modelling methodology. With its origins in Jevons and Robbins and its culmination in Samuelson, Arrow and Debreu, he charts the escape from reality that has allowed economists' hypothetical mathematical models to speak to increasingly self-referential mathematical truths. These are shown to perform badly as social truths, consequently imposing strict epistemic limits on economics imperialism.

    The book is a formidable analysis of the epistemic limitations of modern-day economics and marks a significant counter to its methodology's encroachment across the wider social sciences.

Heralds of a Democratic Europe
  • Representation without Politicization in the European Community, 1948-68
  • Koen van Zon
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    04 June 2025
    Print publication:
    15 August 2024
  • The received wisdom in European integration history is that, long before the EU was plagued by Euroscepticism and other forms of contestation, there was a 'permissive consensus' between European elites and the general public, which allowed European integration to move forward. This book looks beyond this presumed consensus, to ask how the members of European institutions themselves perceived and shaped their relations with European citizens during the early years of the European Communities.

    It does so from the perspective of the people who were responsible for representing citizens at the European level: the members of the European Parliament (which represented European citizens) and the Economic and Social Committee (which represented European organised interests). The book follows the first generation of these European representatives in building their institutions during the 1950s and 1960s. It shows that the European representatives sought to democratise the Communities, within the constraints of the legal and institutional framework that was created with the European treaties. In doing so, the book argues, they created new path dependencies and reaffirmed existing ones, but hardly challenged the status quo - characterised later with concepts like the permissive consensus and the democratic deficit. The book shows, then, that the European representatives' ambition to democratise the European Communities from within has shaped European integration in ways that are not fully appreciated and understood by historians and political scientists.

Page 1 of 173