First published in 1990, this study focuses on the subversive techniques of British postmodernist fiction and examines its challenge to Realist traditions, and the liberal humanist ideology behind it. Exploring the concept of literary postmodernism, and the strategies and philosophies to which it has given rise, Alison Lee investigates how they are developed in a selection of contemporary British novels, including Midnight’s Children, Waterland, Flaubert’s Parrot, and Lanark. Postmodernism is considered in relation to history, the visual and performing arts, popular culture, including advertising, music videos, and popular fiction, notably Stephen King’s Misery. A detailed and comprehensive study, this reissue of Realism and Power will be essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies.

Bodies and Machines is a striking and persuasive examination of the body-machine complex and its effects on the modern American cultural imagination. Bodies and Machines, first published in 1992, explores the links between techniques of representation and social and scientific technologies of power in a wide range of realist and naturalist discourses and practices. Seltzer draws on realist and naturalist writing, such as the work of Hawthorne and Henry James, and the discourses which inform it: from scouting manuals and the programmes of systematic management to accounts of sexual biology and the rituals of consumer culture. He explores other mass-produced and mass-consumed cultural forms, including visual representations such as composite photographs, scale models, and the astonishing iconography of standardization.

Since the 1970s, the field of political geography has undergone a significant transformation, where new methodologies have been implemented to investigate the exercise of the power of the state within the urban environment. First published in 1985, the essays in this collection addressed the growing need to assess the academic revisions that had been taking place and provide a reference point for future developments in the discipline. Still of great relevance, the essays consider the most prominent themes in areas of key importance to political geography, including theory and methodology, minority groups, local government and the geography of elections. This volume will be of significant value for students of political geography, urban demography and town planning.

The classic realist text has long been derided by post-structuralist critics as an unsophisticated and reactionary form. In this study, first published in 1992, John Rignall makes a powerful case for the rehabilitation of realism as a self-aware and reflexive genre. Using the novels of Scott, Balzac, Dickens, George Eliot, Flaubert, James, Ford and Conrad, Rignall argues for an understanding of realism through the recurrent figure of the flâneur. The flâneur is the strolling spectator whose problematic vision both of and in the novel makes him the representative figure of the realist text. A significant contribution to the field, this title will be of particular view to students of realism, literary theory, and comparative literature.

First published in 1987, this book comprises a critical evaluation of Marxist, Gramscian and pluralist theories of social development; the application of these theories, chiefly to Third World countries: hence consideration of the problems of ‘specificity’, general theory and social change. This is followed by an assessment of the stages of economic development in relation to state power and politics; and the role of the ‘external’: the impact of the world market economy and the security imperative. The book is not a discussion of theory, but of theory-in-practice. Above all, it represents a continuing debate between Marxism and pluralism – on the themes of accumulation, power, legitimacy – resulting in convergence.

Despite flourishing economic interactions and deepening interdependence, the current political and diplomatic relationship between Japan and China remains lukewarm at best. Indeed, bilateral relations reached an unprecedented nadir during the spring of 2005, and again more recently in autumn 2012, as massive anti-Japanese demonstrations across Chinese cities elicited corresponding incidents of popular anti-Chinese reprisal in Japan. This book systematically explores the complex dynamics that shape contemporary Japanese-Chinese relations. In particular, it analyses the so-called ‘revival’ of nationalism in post-Cold War Japan, its causality in redefining Japan’s external policy orientations, and its impact on the atmosphere of the bilateral relationship. Further, by adopting a neoclassical realist model of state behaviour and preferences, Lai Yew Meng examines two highly visible bilateral case studies: the Japanese-Chinese debacle over prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and the multi-dimensional dispute in the East China Sea which comprises the Senkaku/Diaoyudao territorial row, alleged Chinese maritime incursions, and bilateral competition for energy resources. Through these examples, this book explores whether nationalism really matters; when, and under what circumstances nationalism becomes most salient; and the extent to which the emotional dimensions of nationalism manifest most profoundly in Japanese state-elites’ policy decision-making. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars of both Japanese and Chinese politics, as well as those interested in international relations, nationalism, foreign policy and security studies more broadly.

First published in 1980, this book presents an important critique of prevailing political doctrine in Western societies at a time of major change in circumstances of Western civilization. G. Lowell Field and John Higley stress the importance of a more realistic appraisal of elite and mass roles in politics, arguing that political stability and any real degree of representative democracy depend fundamentally on the existence of specific kinds of elites.