Global Society in Transition:An International Politics Reader


Book Description

International Politics: A Journal of Transnational Issues and Global Problems has, since 1997, published an extraordinary array of path-breaking analyses about the world's political metamorphosis. Featuring scholarship that transcends boundaries of states and disciplines, International Politics editors and contributors have joined to assemble, from the journal's last few volumes, a far-reaching portrait of new actors, identities, norms, and institutions that populate a stage once confined to states, power, and national interests. Further, interventions to build states, make or keep the peace, impose sanctions or save currencies are examined, as are the institutional enlargements at the forefront of policy in Europe. This book offers a wealth of policy-relevant scholarship about a world-in-making--not yet detached from Cold War or even Westphalian roots, but certainly in process towards a qualitatively different global system. All published after rigorous peer review, chapters in Global Society in Transition will provide comparative politics, international relations, and world affairs courses at undergraduate and graduate level with instant access to the best of new research and innovative thinking in these fields.




North Korea in Transition


Book Description

Following the death of Kim Jong Il, North Korea has entered a period of profound transformation laden with uncertainty. This authoritative book brings together the world's leading North Korea experts to analyze both the challenges and prospects the country is facing. Drawing on the contributors' expertise across a range of disciplines, the book examines North Korea's political, economic, social, and foreign policy concerns. Considering the implications for Pyongyang's transition, it focuses especially on the transformation of ideology, the Worker's Party of Korea, the military, effects of the Arab Spring, the emerging merchant class, cultural infiltration from the South, Western aid, and global economic integration. The contributors also assess the impact of North Korea's new policies on China, South Korea, the United States, and the rest of the world. Comprehensive and deeply knowledgeable, their analysis is especially crucial given the power consolidation efforts of the new leadership underway in Pyongyang and the implications for both domestic and international politics. Contributions by: Nicholas Anderson, Charles Armstrong, Bradley Babson, Victor Cha, Bruce Cumings, Nicholas Eberstadt, Ken Gause, David Kang, Andrei Lankov, Woo Young Lee, Liu Ming, Haksoon Paik, Kyung-Ae Park, Terence Roehrig, Jungmin Seo, and Scott Snyder.




Global Health and International Relations


Book Description

The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.




Introduction to International Criminal Law


Book Description

This title covers the history, nature, and sources of international criminal law; the ratione personae; ratione materiae - sources of substantive international criminal law; the indirect enforcement system; the direct enforcement system; and much more.




Captured by Evil


Book Description

One of the most powerful words in the English language, corruption is also one of the most troubled concepts in law. According to Laura Underkuffler, it is a concept based on religiously revealed ideas of good and evil. But the notion of corruption defies the ordinary categories by which law defines crimes -- categories that punish acts, not character, and that eschew punishment on the basis of religion and emotion. Drawing on contemporary examples, including former assembly woman Diane Gordon and former governor Rod Blagojevich, this book explores the implications and dangers of maintaining such an archaic concept at the heart of criminal law.




Facebook Society


Book Description

Facebook claims that it is building a “global community.” Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self. Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate in fact remake the self in their image. Sharing is the outsourcing of one’s experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are stuck ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we go about accumulating more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self becomes diminished—and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social-media companies’ relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising purposes presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Presenting a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it.




新中国外交60年


Book Description

本书从理论和实践的角度对新中国外交进行了系统梳理和总结,重点对改革开放30年来中国的外交实践进行理论上的概括和提炼,在全球化迅速发展、国际国内两个大局相互结合的新形势下,各篇论文从不同的角度推动了中国外交理论上的创新。




China's Embedded Activism


Book Description

In recent years China has been remarkable in achieving extraordinary economic transformation, yet without fundamental political change. To many observers this would seem to imply a weakness in Chinese civil society. However, though the idea of democracy as multitudes of citizens taking to the streets may be attractive, it is simultaneously misleading as it disregards the nature of political change taking place in China today: a gradual shift towards a polity adapted to a pluralist society. At the same time, one may wonder what the limited political space implies for the development of a social movement in China. This book explores this question by focusing on one of the most active areas of Chinese civil society: the environment. China’s Embedded Activism argues that China’s semi-authoritarian limitations on the freedom of association and speech, coupled with increased social spaces for civic action has created a milieu in which activism occurs in an embedded fashion. The semi-authoritarian atmosphere is restrictive of, but paradoxically, also conducive to nationwide, collective action with less risk of social instability and repression at the hand of the governing elite. Rich in case studies about environmental civic organizations in China, and written by a team of international experts on social movements, NGOs, democratization, and civil society, this book addresses a wide readership of students, scholars and professionals interested in development, geography and environment, political change, and contemporary Chinese society.




International Criminal Law, Volume 1: Sources, Subjects and Contents


Book Description

Volume 1 deals with international crimes. It contains several significant contributions on the theoretical and doctrinal aspects of ICL which precede the five chapters addressing some of the major categories of international crimes. The first two chapters address: the sources and subjects of ICL and its substantive contents. The other five chapters address: Chapter 3: The Crime Against Peace and Aggression (The Crime Against Peace and Aggression: From its Origins to the ICC; The Crime of Aggression and the International Criminal Court); Chapter 4: War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide (Introduction to International Humanitarian Law; Penal Aspects of International Humanitarian Law; Non-International Armed Conflict and Guerilla Warfare; Mercenarism and Contracted Military Services; Customary International Law and Weapons Control; Genocide; Crimes Against Humanity; Overlaps, Gaps, and Ambiguities in Contemporary International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity); Chapter 5: Crimes Against Fundamental Human Rights (Slavery, Slave-Related Practices, and Trafficking in Persons; Apartheid; International Prohibition of Torture; The Practice of Torture in the United States: September 11, 2001 to Present); Chapter 6: Crimes of Terror-Violence (International Terrorism; Kidnapping and Hostage Taking; Terrorism Financing; Piracy; International Maritime Navigation and Installations on the High Seas; International Civil Aviation); Chapter 7: Crimes Against Social Interest (International Control of Drugs; Challenges in the Development of International Criminal Law: The Negotiations of the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption; Transnational Organized Crime; Corruption of Foreign Public Officials; International Criminal Protection of Cultural Property; Criminalization of Environmental Protection).




Marginalisation in China


Book Description

Economic transition in China has witnessed (re)centralization of resources from the margin to the core in economic, social and political senses. This book employs a marginalization lens to reveal, delineate and better understand the processes, patterns, trends, multiple dimensions and dynamics of the phenomenon, and the consequences and implications for development and well-being in the country. Bringing together a wide range of domestic and international experts and disciplinary perspectives, the book combines empirical research and conceptual analysis to provide an insightful overview of China's recent development. It contributes to the debate over marginalization and its interactions with globalization and transition in China, and has significance for various domestic and international policy arenas in respect of tackling marginalization, poverty and social exclusion effectively while striving for the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals in China and beyond.