This volume uses elements of Arendt’s theory to engage with four distinctive political problems connected with contemporary globalization: genocide, global poverty, refugees and the domination of the public realm by neoliberal economic globalization.

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most powerful political theorists. The purpose of this book is to make an innovative contribution to the newly emerging literature connecting Arendt to international political theory and debates surrounding globalization. In recent years the work of Arendt has gathered increasing interest from scholars in the field of international political theory because of its potential relevance for understanding international affairs. Focusing on the central theme of evil in Arendt’s work, this book weaves together elements of Arendt’s theory in order to engage with four major problems connected with contemporary globalization: genocide and crimes against humanity; global poverty and radical economic inequality; global refugees, displaced persons, and the ‘stateless’; and the destructive domination of the public realm by predatory neoliberal economic globalization. Hayden shows that a key constellation of her concepts—the right to have rights, superfluousness, thoughtlessness, plurality, freedom, and power—can help us to understand and address some of the central problems involving political evil in our global age. In doing so, this book takes Arendtian scholarship and international political theory into provocative new directions. Political Evil in a Global Age will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of politics, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.

A leading political scientist identifies "political evil" as wrongdoing perpetrated by individuals with specific political goals, cites specific examples throughout the world and explains that important changes can be initiated through adjustments in how political evil is treated.

Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.

Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider examine the forms that collective memory take in the age of globalisation. They explore how the Holocaust has been remembered in Germany, Israel and the US over the past 50 years and demonstrate how this event has become detached from its precise context.

Must we fight terrorism with terror, match assassination with assassination, and torture with torture? Must we sacrifice civil liberty to protect public safety? In the age of terrorism, the temptations of ruthlessness can be overwhelming. But we are pulled in the other direction too by the anxiety that a violent response to violence makes us morally indistinguishable from our enemies. There is perhaps no greater political challenge today than trying to win the war against terror without losing our democratic souls. Michael Ignatieff confronts this challenge head-on, with the combination of hard-headed idealism, historical sensitivity, and political judgment that has made him one of the most influential voices in international affairs today. Ignatieff argues that we must not shrink from the use of violence--that far from undermining liberal democracy, force can be necessary for its survival. But its use must be measured, not a program of torture and revenge. And we must not fool ourselves that whatever we do in the name of freedom and democracy is good. We may need to kill to fight the greater evil of terrorism, but we must never pretend that doing so is anything better than a lesser evil. In making this case, Ignatieff traces the modern history of terrorism and counter-terrorism, from the nihilists of Czarist Russia and the militias of Weimar Germany to the IRA and the unprecedented menace of Al Qaeda, with its suicidal agents bent on mass destruction. He shows how the most potent response to terror has been force, decisive and direct, but--just as important--restrained. The public scrutiny and political ethics that motivate restraint also give democracy its strongest weapon: the moral power to endure when the furies of vengeance and hatred are spent. The book is based on the Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2003.

The second half of the nineteenth century marks a watershed in human history. Railroads linked remote hinterlands with cities; overland and undersea cables connected distant continents. New and accessible print technologies made the wide dissemination of ideas possible; oceangoing steamers carried goods to faraway markets and enabled the greatest long-distance migrations in recorded history. In this volume, leading scholars of the Islamic world recount the enduring consequences these technological, economic, social, and cultural revolutions had on Muslim communities from North Africa to South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and China. Drawing on a multiplicity of approaches and genres, from commodity history to biography to social network theory, the essays in Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print offer new and diverse perspectives on a transnational community in an era of global transformation.