1989 marks the unraveling of India's 'Nehruvian Consensus' around the idea of a modern, secular nation with a self-reliant economy. Caste and religion have come to play major roles in national politics. Global economic integration has led to conflict between the state and dispossessed people, but processes of globalization have also enabled new spaces for political assertion, such as around sexuality. Older challenges to the idea of India continue from movements in Kashmir and the North-East, while Maoist insurgency has deepened its bases. In a world of American Empire, India as a nuclear power has abandoned non-alignment, a shift that is contested by voices within. Power and Contestation shows that the turbulence and turmoil of this period are signs of India's continued vibrancy and democracy. The book is an ideal introduction to the complex internal histories and external power relations of a major global player for the new century.

"Kevin Hart and Geoffrey H. Hartman bring together essays by prominent scholars from a range of disciplines to focus on Blanchot's diverse concerns: literature, art, community, politics, ethics, spirituality, and the Holocaust."--Jacket.

This new edition updates its precedessor and uses the Asian economic crisis to indicate how theoretical differences identified in the South-East Asian boom were brought into even sharper relief in the analysis of the crisis and recovery strategies.

This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia.

Emphasizing the social processes that underpin the global economy and demonstrating how the uneven effects of global economic integration impact upon actors this book also underlines the reciprocal effects that reconfigure the terrain of global accumulation.

This book analyses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a powerful actor in International Relations by examining how the ASEAN community has evolved, looking specifically at its relationship with the EU with regards to human rights. The book adds to important contemporary debates within constructivist theory, shedding light on the need for ‘critical’ constructivism that emphasises language and contestation and what that may entail. On an empirical level, it challenges the idea of an 'EU-centrism,' demonstrating how ASEAN is the major driving force behind its human rights and community aspirations, as well as within the ASEAN-EU relationship. Furthermore, this book engages with the introspection surrounding constructivism by addressing the trouble with 'norms,' and instead unpacking the relationship between ASEAN and the EU to show language power in play. In particular, the book looks at how language, or rather coercive language, helps us ‘see’ contestation in action, something that researchers sympathetic towards the idea of ASEAN’s ‘resistance’ have been unable to show through a focus on norms. Tracing the evolution of the ASEAN community and human rights aspirations in a new light, showing how exactly the EU remains an inspiration, but not a model, and more interestingly how ASEAN demonstrates power in the relationship, the book will be of interest to academics working on Asian Studies, European Studies, International Relations Theory and human rights.

The Theory of Contestation advances critical norms research in international relations. It scrutinises the uses of ‘contestation’ in international relations theories with regard to its descriptive and normative potential. To that end, critical investigations into international relations are conducted based on three thinking tools from public philosophy and the social sciences: The normativity premise, the diversity premise and cultural cosmopolitanism. The resulting theory of contestation entails four main features, namely types of norms, modes of contestation, segments of norms and the cycle of contestation. The theory distinguishes between the principle of contestedness and the practice of contestation and argues that, if contestedness is accepted as a meta-organising principle of global governance, regular access to contestation for all involved stakeholders will enhance legitimate governance in the global realm.