In this book, Vincenzo Ruggiero offers a typology of different forms of political violence. From systemic and institutional violence, to the behaviour of crowds, to armed conflict and terrorism, Ruggiero draws on a range of perspectives from criminology, social theory, political science, critical legal studies and literary criticism to consider how these forms of violence are linked in an interdependent field of forces. Ruggiero argues that systemic violence encourages more institutional violence, which in turn weakens the ability of citizens to set up political agendas for change. He advocates for a reduction of all types of violence, which can be enacted through fairer distribution of resources and the provision of political space for contention and negotiation. This book will be of interest to all those engaged in research on violence, terrorism, armed conflict and the crimes of the powerful. It makes an important contribution to criminological and social theory.

Binding Violence exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts—in particular Sophocles' Antigone, D. A. F. de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat—that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other—violence—especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times.

In this freshly updated, comprehensive study, political scientist David Koyzis surveys the key political ideologies of our era, unpacking the worldview issues inherent to each and pointing out essential strengths and weaknesses. Writing with broad international perspective, Koyzis is a sensible guide for Christians working in the public square, culture watchers, and all students of modern political thought.

The government of Yemen, unified since 1990, remains largely incapable of controlling violence or providing goods and services to its population, but the regime continues to endure despite its fragility and peripheral location in the global political and economic order. Revealing what holds Yemen together in such tenuous circumstances, Peripheral Visions shows how citizens form national attachments even in the absence of strong state institutions. Lisa Wedeen, who spent a year and a half in Yemen observing and interviewing its residents, argues that national solidarity in such weak states tends to arise not from attachments to institutions but through both extraordinary events and the ordinary activities of everyday life. Yemenis, for example, regularly gather to chew qat, a leafy drug similar to caffeine, as they engage in wide-ranging and sometimes influential public discussions of even the most divisive political and social issues. These lively debates exemplify Wedeen’s contention that democratic, national, and pious solidarities work as ongoing, performative practices that enact and reproduce a citizenry’s shared points of reference. Ultimately, her skillful evocations of such practices shift attention away from a narrow focus on government institutions and electoral competition and toward the substantive experience of participatory politics.

In Global Visions of Violence, the editors and contributors argue that violence creates a lens, bridge, and method for interdisciplinary collaboration that examines Christianity worldwide in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By analyzing the myriad ways violence, persecution, and suffering impact Christians and the imagination of Christian identity globally, this interdisciplinary volume integrates the perspectives of ethicists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers to generate new conversations. Taken together, the chapters in this book challenge scholarship on Christian growth that has not accounted for violence while analyzing persecution narratives that can wield data toward partisan ends. This allows Global Visions of Violence to push urgent conversations forward, giving voice to projects that illuminate wide and often hidden landscapes that have been shaped by global visions of violence, and seeking solutions that end violence and turn toward the pursuit of justice, peace, and human rights among suffering Christians.

Binding Violence exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts--in particular Sophocles' Antigone, D. A. F. de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat--that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other--violence--especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times.

Visions of the City is a dramatic history of utopian urbanism in the twentieth century. It explores radical demands for new spaces and ways of living, and considers their effects on planning, architecture and struggles to shape urban landscapes. The author critically examines influential utopian approaches to urbanism in western Europe associated with such figures as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, uncovering the political interests, desires and anxieties that lay behind their ideal cities. He also investigates avant-garde perspectives from the time that challenged these conceptions of cities, especially from within surrealism. At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their alternative visions based on nomadic life and play, David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban spaces and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's New Babylon, finding within his proposals a still powerful provocation to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself. A superb critical exploration of the underside of utopian thought over the last hundred years and its continuing relevance in the here and now for thinking about possible urban worlds. The treatment of the Situationists and their milieu is a revelation. David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate School