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    <title>Polity Blog</title>
    <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/default.aspx</link>
    <description>Support and supplement the  cutting edge books from Polity on new technologies.</description>
    <language>en</language>
    <copyright>Copyright 2009. Polity</copyright>
    <pubDate>19/05/2013</pubDate>
    <ttl>60</ttl>
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      <title>How the Light Gets in Festival returns</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=188</link>
      <description><![CDATA[450 events, 6 stages, 180 speakers, 10 days, 150 bands.HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy festival, returns this May with a packed programme of debates, solo talks and live music geared around this year’s theme: Errors, Lies and Adventure.The festival has put paid to the idea that the public want dumbed down culture. With an unashamedly highbrow programme tackling the latest theorie ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=188">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>03/05/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Creative Industries in China: Art, Design, Media</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=186</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Creative Industries in China is drawn from my research over the past decade on how Chinese policy makers, artists, designers and media practitioners are attempting to change a widespread perception that China is an uncreative nation. The ‘world factory’ portrayal is an uncomfortable reminder for many of economic dominance which is yet to be translated into the cultural sphere. For this reason ‘ind ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=186">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>19/04/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Can feel-good activism save the world?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=170</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This article was originally published on Think Africa Press, authored by James Wan.Think Africa Press spoke to theorist Lilie Chouliaraki about how solidarity has become a consumerist choice rather than a conviction, and more about ourselves than others.‘Doing good’ has never been easier. As clever charity adverts and glamorous celebrity activists insist, all you have to do is send a text to donat ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=170">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>12/04/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Our cultures of promotion</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=159</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In the twenty-first century, promotion is everywhere and everything has become promotable: goods, services, people, organisations, ideas, nations, cultures, pasts and futures. But where is this promotional ubiquity in modern times taking us and how are we to assess the changes it is bringing? Over the course of a century, ad hoc promotional practices became 'professionalised' and systemised on a w ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=159">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>27/03/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>What lessons does China's urbanization hold?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=158</link>
      <description><![CDATA[China was historically an agrarian society with the majority of its population engaged in farming and living in rural areas, and this configuration continued until the last quarter of the twentieth century. But the country has aggressively urbanized since, adding more than 400 new cities and hundreds of millions of urban residents over the last three decades. The shifting demographic trends are ce ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=158">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>11/03/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Keeping up to date with Sociology</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=157</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Question: how do you summarise and present the emergence, development and contemporary shape of a diverse discipline like sociology in a single textbook? Answer: with great difficulty, a ruthless selection process and 1130 pages. The bare facts are that the latest edition of Polity’s Sociologyhas 23 chapters covering the established subjects of theories and methods, families, crime and deviance, r ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=157">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>08/03/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Should journalism strive for objectivity?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=156</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Early in the first season of HBO’s The Newsroom, a series set around a prime-time cable newscast, ‘News Night’, a dramatic declaration initiates a major ‘arc’ of the program.The executive producer, MacKenzie McHale, outlines a new editorial concept for the program: ‘News Night 2.0’:‘This is a new show and there are new rules’, she explains.‘One, “is this information we need in the voting booth?”Tw ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=156">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>28/02/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Disasters: the stress test of Roman society</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=155</link>
      <description><![CDATA[We all know that the Roman empire was one of the most successful and important civilizations the world has ever known. But we also know that it suffered some colossal disasters. Huge military defeats, such as the battle of Cannae when as many men fell as on the first day of the Somme, natural disasters like the eruption of Vesuvius, and the first appearance in Europe of the bubonic plague were jus ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=155">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/02/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>The core concepts of transnationalization</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=154</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Increasing interconnections between nation-states across borders have made the transnational perspective a key tool for understanding our world. Transnational Migration provides an accessible yet rigorous overview of cross-border migration from a transnational perspective, as experienced by family and kinship groups, networks of entrepreneurs, diasporas, and immigrant associations – and as regulat ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=154">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>21/02/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Communities and networks: Using social network analysis to rethink community and urban studies</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=152</link>
      <description><![CDATA[We have lived in communities as long as we have been human, but do we really understand how communities work and what they do? Technological changes, especially the growth of the internet, have led researchers to reevaluate many of our assumptions about the nature of community and communal life – even to ask again foundational questions such as, “What makes a community?” Social network analysis is ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=152">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>28/01/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Our emerging digital society</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=151</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Over the last two decades, our general view of mass communication in modern society has been extensively reconfigured by the ‘new media’ applications stemming from the rollout of digital technologies. In so many different ways, digital media have come to be seen as the definitive technology of our times. The powerful combination of mechanical calculation, electronics, binary code and human languag ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=151">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>21/01/2013</pubDate>
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      <title>Moneymaking and nation-building</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=149</link>
      <description><![CDATA[What has moneymaking to do with nationalism? We typically think of nation-building as a process of cultural representation. We realize that, at a practical level, national movements need money but we typically assume that people give money when they identify with the nation. From this perspective monetary transfers are secondary and dependent on prior identification. But, as Viviana Zelizer points ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=149">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>28/11/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Terrorism: what is it? Can it be morally justified?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=146</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Since the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001 and those that came in their aftermath in London, Madrid, Bali, and elsewhere, terrorism has been in the focus of a worldwide public debate. The debate has involved a wide array of participants, from political scientists and historians to politicians and common citizens. Yet there is little agreement on any of the main questions raised b ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=146">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>31/10/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Living in mediatized worlds</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=145</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The mobile phone changes the way we arrange to meet somebody. The social web produces new ways of doing politics. Television and cinema have turned our cultures into visual cultures. Every day we are confronted with statements like these. However, they are both right and wrong. They are right as they reflect that the various kinds of media matter. Media are deeply related to the way we live our ev ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=145">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>22/10/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Katyn and the Memory Event</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=144</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Last month the National Archives of the United States released to the public a massive corpus of newly declassified documents related to Katyn, the massacre of nearly 22,000 unarmed Polish prisoners by Stalin’s secret police in 1940. Obscured by one of the longest and most extensive cover-ups in history, Katyn has been for decades a sodden field of unanswered questions. Among them: did the Allies  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=144">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>12/10/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Are we living in a punitive age?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=140</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Yes we are. This is true when present-day Western society is compared with its recent past. But modern punitiveness is not simply a backlash; it is accompanied by a concern for crime victims that is more intense than ever before. When viewed over some six centuries, moreover, the standards of punishment have undergone important transformations. This is no less true for violence.These questions ref ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=140">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>10/09/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Publicity, privacy and the personal lives of politicians in media-saturated democracies</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=139</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Is media coverage of politics becoming more focused on the private lives of politicians across democracies?It is often remarked that the personal lives of politicians, like those of sports, film and television stars and host of other celebrities, have become a familiar part of the public's daily media consumption. The public, it might be said, know more detail about politicians’ personal lives tha ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=139">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>03/09/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Is there a global freshwater crisis?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=138</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Drought, floods, contaminated streams and depleted groundwater supplies ... daily headlines draw our attention to these and other water problems. Are they isolated incidents or symptoms of a global crisis? I contend that they are inter-connected threats to our livelihoods and welfare. What links them is the concept of sustainability: ensuring that the various ways we manage freshwater for growing  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=138">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>21/08/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Feeding our imagination: Reflections on the media diet</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=137</link>
      <description><![CDATA[We tend to think of imagination as something private, a personal creative faculty of the mind that is unique to us.But our capacity to imagine isn't produced as some kind of spontaneous generation. Imagination must be nourished, as Luc Boltanski says. Who feeds our imagination in the modern age? We might not always like to admit it, but the media are one of the central 'feeders' of our imagination ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=137">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>10/08/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Researching consumption - a retrospective</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=133</link>
      <description><![CDATA[When a book is published that may be regarded as topical, making concrete recommendations with regard to key issues of the day, one of the questions one is likely to be asked is whether your opinions have changed since you wrote the text. To be honest, I half expected to find this book already dated, overtaken by events, or for my own views to have changed. I wasn’t particularly concerned with the ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=133">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>02/07/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>China's environmental future</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=132</link>
      <description><![CDATA[China’s huge environmental challenges affect not only the health and well-being of China but the very future of the planet.  I wrote China’s Environmental Challenges to provide students, teachers, and the general public with a way of organizing a topic of utmost importance and great complexity.  I hope that the book will encourage teachers to shine a spotlight on the ways in which China is interco ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=132">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/06/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Introducing students to contemporary health studies</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=131</link>
      <description><![CDATA[As a course leader of an undergraduate degree in health studies, I was often asked by students if I could recommend a really good book that would cover the key things that they needed to know when they were starting their 3 year degree programme. I wasn’t able to make such a recommendation at that time. Yes there are some books that touch upon relevant material, but many did not entirely cover the ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=131">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>21/06/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Measuring the success of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=130</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Demobilizing Irregular Forces came about nearly by accident. I had been considering a book on postconflict reconciliation practices when the opportunity to write specifically about the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process arose. Since I work primarily with military officers, the thought of working on the area of stability operations that they are most likely to confront was  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=130">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/05/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Who should respond to international epidemics?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=127</link>
      <description><![CDATA[ When there is an international disease outbreak, who should respond? Who should coordinate disease surveillance operations? Answering these questions is less straightforward than commonly thought. The World Health Organization is charged with being the lead agency to respond to transnational infectious disease epidemics, but it is hardly the only interested party.Governments play a role. New hybr ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=127">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>04/05/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>The tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=126</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Enormous media coverage has been generated by the case of Trayvon Martin. The unarmed black teenager was shot dead on his way back from the shops to the home of his father’s fiancée with whom he was staying.  This occurred on 26 February 2012 in Florida. The initial controversy arose as a result of the failure of the police to charge George Zimmerman, the person who had killed Trayvon Martin, with ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=126">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>23/04/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>The (non-)boundaries of social policy</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=124</link>
      <description><![CDATA[As an academic subject, social policy is something of an undiscovered treasure trove. When I first accepted an invitation to write Social Policy for Polity's Short Introductions series my aim was to proselytise on behalf of a subject which, though it thrives at postgraduate level in the UK and as a field of research, tends to be poorly understood among the uninitiated. That the book has warranted  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=124">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>16/04/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Israel / Palestine</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=125</link>
      <description><![CDATA[What explains the peculiar intensity and evident intractability of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?  Of all the "hot spots" in the world today, the apparently endless clash between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East seems unique in its longevity and resistance to resolution. Is this conflict really different from other ethnic and nationalist confrontations, and if so, in what way?  I demystify the ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=125">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>13/04/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>The stranger in the West </title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=123</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Land of Strangers offers a diagnosis of attitudes towards the stranger in the West since 9/11, when some visible minorities have been increasingly targeted as the focal point of subcutaneous fear, aversion and envy about all manner of things, and the object of punitive measures of surveillance, control and exclusion.  It explains the current situation as the play between a new biopolitics of catas ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=123">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>27/03/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>What does development mean in the 21st century?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=122</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The primary motivation for writing Understanding Development was to take stock of where development is today.  It seemed to me that this was an issue that had received insufficient attention and needed to be addressed, especially in the context of globalisation and environmental decline.  Indeed, many works that have been written on development seem to play down or simply neglect the importance of ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=122">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>10/02/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Africa's rise</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=121</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Africa is re-emerging as a strategic piece on the global chessboard. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is approaching the 1 billion mark, and by 2050 is expected to reach 1.8 billion inhabitants. This demographic dynamic is imposing a dizzying pace on the continent’s economic, social and political transformations. In view of the speed and amplitude of the metamorphosis underway, it is worth scouting ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=121">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>02/02/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Spielberg's cautious ideology</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=120</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Tintin and War Horse are two Spielberg films that have been released in America, within two days of each other.  Neither has taken top honors in the box office but the earnings are respectable enough to show that Spielberg still plays to the massive audiences that he helped create forty years ago.  The geographical center of the audience has shifted to somewhere over the Atlantic and he has given  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=120">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>30/01/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>How companies get pricing wrong and other market mishaps</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=119</link>
      <description><![CDATA[It was only $2. And those who enrolled in auto-pay wouldn’t be charged. Verizon’s convenience fee for making one-time bill payments got the math right but the meanings wrong. A public controversy ensued as consumers expressed righteous outrage over the new wireless phone fee, and the company backed down.Had monthly phone or data rates inched up on all plans by less than a dollar, who would have no ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=119">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>16/01/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Does international recognition matter?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=118</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The recent Palestinian bid for international recognition has failed to secure the backing that the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was hoping for, and it looks like the United States will not have to use its veto at the United Nations Security Council. Even so, the Palestinian leadership has until now rejected the less ambitious option of becoming a “non-member state” of the UN - which could be a ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=118">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>09/01/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Surveying the modern history of knowledge</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=117</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The origins of this book were in personal curiosity, in an attempt to answer the question, by what paths did we reach our present state of collective knowledge? Hence I start in the middle of the 18th century, where volume one ended, and continue the story until the present. The book focuses on academic knowledge, but discusses its relation to other forms of knowhow. It concentrates on the West, b ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=117">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>05/01/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>Teaching the philosophy of art</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=116</link>
      <description><![CDATA[When people ask me what I do, and I say that I work on philosophy of art, a great many otherwise educated people draw a blank. They can’t imagine what happens when philosophers discuss art.The answer, of course, depends on your conception of philosophy: the sole origin of philosophy is a sense of wonder or amazement. Or at least that is the position that Plato ascribes to Socrates in the Theaetetu ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=116">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>03/01/2012</pubDate>
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      <title>The hidden wealth of wood</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=115</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Wood is a material fundamental to world history, which is important to examine, and of which everybody has their own discoveries and experiences. ‘Ötzi’ the ice-man needed it when he was climbing his Alpine glacier; so did medieval cathedral-builders; so does today’s growing green economy. From time immemorial, the skill of the human hand has developed by working on wood, so much that we might say ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=115">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>22/12/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>The rising star of Peter Sloterdijk</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=114</link>
      <description><![CDATA[What’s the fuss about Sloterdijk? – more talked about than read; praised, condemned and until recently ignored in English-language scholarship. This book offers an introduction to, critical appraisal of and engagement with this mercurial thinker. It is the first book devoted to Sloterdijk in English, and its contributors are an international and interdisciplinary dream-team – Babette Babich, Sjoer ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=114">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>17/10/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Exploring the gaps in our political landscape</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=113</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Unrecognized states are places that do not exist in international politics; they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence, but have failed to gain widespread international recognition. Territories such as Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh, Somaliland, Taiwan and Transnistria frequently enjoy all the trappings of statehood: an army, a government, courts, hospitals, schools and othe ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=113">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>12/10/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Climate change and the social</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=112</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In Climate Change and Society the ‘social’ is positioned at the heart of the analysis of why climates are changing and of assessing and developing alternative futures. This book especially demonstrates the importance of social practices that over time are organised into powerful ‘socio-technical’ systems. In the fateful twentieth century, various high carbon social practices, increased income, wea ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=112">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>09/10/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Communicating emotions at work</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=111</link>
      <description><![CDATA[I wrote Communicating Emotions at Workafter spending several decades collecting emotional narratives from clerks, probation officers, teachers, firefighters, managers, factory workers, and many others.  From this research I learned several important truths.  First, although work is often mundane, emotional encounters make it more meaningful, memorable, humane and (sometimes) stressful.  Second, th ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=111">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>19/09/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>A world of new perspectives</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=107</link>
      <description><![CDATA[A world out of control?  A world of ruthless elites, environmental disaster, reborn patriarchy, and growing gaps between rich and poor?  A world where the alternatives are riot, terrorism, or futile protest?  Our world, right?If that is NOT to be our world - if we want real democracy in rich countries as well as poor - we need new strategies of social change, and knowledge to base them on.  Confro ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=107">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>16/09/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Reflections on Investigating Gender</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=110</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Our academic and activist experiences and influences represent a generational and gender divide.  Martha got her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1977 and Mike from New York University in 2006. Martha became an active member of the women’s liberation movement in 1970 at Kent State University and has continued her activism throughout her academic career. As a graduate student, Mike was involved ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=110">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>08/09/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>The twin tales of Russian history</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=108</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Studying imperial Russia, scholars have produced two stories. One concerns a great country that competes successfully, though unevenly, with other European powers, produces brilliant literature, and stages unprecedented social experiments. The other story is one of economic backwardness, unbridled violence, misery, illiteracy, despair, and collapse. I subscribe to both of these at once. But schola ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=108">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/08/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Probing the dark side of government</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=106</link>
      <description><![CDATA[National security intelligence is a vast, complicated, and important topic, with both technical and humanistic dimensions - all made doubly hard to study and understand because of the thick veils of secrecy that surround every nation’s spy apparatus. Fortunately, from the point of view of democratic openness as well as the canons of scholarly inquiry, several of these veils have fallen in the past ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=106">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>12/08/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Reassessing criminology</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=103</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The sociological imagination can be engendered by social marginality. It flourishes at times of rapid change and in environments of diversity; it can be obscured by academic isolation far from the maelstrom of late modern life; it can be forcefully suppressed by government intervention; it can be rung out of the budding scholar by a tedious apprenticeship within the discipline – a so-called profes ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=103">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>06/07/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Practising health communication</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=102</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In what ways does communication in health organizations matter to patients, consumers, and health professionals? How do health organizations function communicatively? Why do the people who work in health professions interact as they do? Communication in Health Organizations provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary review of the research literature to help readers answer these questions and refl ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=102">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>05/07/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Re-interpreting Hayden White</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=100</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Hayden White counts as the most influential contemporary philosopher of history. He is often praised and criticized for his “narrativist” approach to the study of history. Among historians and literary scholars in particular, the name of White is almost synonymous with a “linguistic” or “narrative” turn in historical studies. Few readers, though, have asked why White is interested in narrative dis ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=100">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>07/06/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>George Miller interviews Danny Miller (no relation)</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=97</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The text below is an edited transcript of a longer interview, which you can see on its full glory on YouTube.George Miller:When we met recently it was to discuss Danny's new book, Tales from Facebook, which looks at the consequences of being a Facebook user on people's lives. How is it changing our behaviour and modes of interaction, especially between men and women? What is it doing to our sense  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=97">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>06/06/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Big corporations are bigger than the Big Society</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=98</link>
      <description><![CDATA[News that the UK government has been spending 56 million a day sub-contracting its own activities to private corporations makes interesting reading. There have been repeated government claims that, under the Big Society programme, it is concerned to ensure that a wide range of different kinds of organization would win such contracts and not just firms. To see how the government contracting busines ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=98">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>03/06/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Mapping the emerging transnational institutions</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=96</link>
      <description><![CDATA[ From climate change to organized crime to financial regulation through to global pandemics, many of the gravest problems society faces today cannot be resolved by any country acting alone. Globalization has created a world of “complex interdependence” in which cooperation across borders is required to provide the security, prosperity, and wellbeing on which we all depend. Traditionally, transbord ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=96">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>01/06/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Challenging modern economic theory</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=95</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Institutions and the Economy examines how institutions – understood as the formal and informal rules and practices that surround us as we go about our daily lives – enable and shape economic life. Institutions impact consumer preferences, the actions and processes of firms, wealth and poverty in countries, the growth of international trade, and much more. Indeed, none of the preconditions for econ ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=95">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>27/05/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Europe's contemporary media field</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=93</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This book offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary media field in Europe. It examines the current structure of the various sectors that make up the European media market (broadcasting, the press, the internet), and identifies and assesses the major players and issues. It covers a broad spread of media markets, highlighting the new sectors that are emerging and outlining the factors driv ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=93">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>05/05/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>The story of coltan activism</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=92</link>
      <description><![CDATA[When first asked by Polity to write ColtanI was thrilled. Tantalum, or ‘coltan’ as it is known in the Congo, was the most topical of natural resources. Allegations were swirling on activist blogs, in academia, and at the United Nations about coltan’s relationship to ongoing violence in the Congo: that it was generating profits for armed groups that were waging war and abusing civilians, and that W ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=92">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>04/05/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Richard Beardsworth on why the 21st century needs cosmopolitan liberalism</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=88</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This book opens up a needed space between cosmopolitan moral and political thought and the way in which international relations are theoretically framed.Since the end of the Cold War, the cosmopolitan moral principle has informed, to a greater or lesser extent, the terms through which both states and peoples argue about basic human needs and basic forms of human solidarity in the face of global is ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=88">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>12/04/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Pádraig Carmody on the new scramble for Africa</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=90</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Foreign direct investment in Africa has risen six-fold since 2000 on an annualised basis, according to the publication African Business. African trade is also booming and these interlinked processes are indicative of the “new scramble for Africa” which is currently underway. While in the 1990s Africa was primarily conceived of in the capitals of the great powers as a security threat or problem, th ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=90">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>11/04/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>William Scheuerman challenges the dominant interpretation of realism</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=91</link>
      <description><![CDATA[After I finished making my case for an alternative interpretation of the “realist” school of international theory during a panel at the recent International Studies Association meeting in Montreal, an audience member posed an important question: who cares? Why bother challenging the dominant interpretation of realism as an institutionally complacent and conservative theory of international politic ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=91">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>08/04/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Nabil Dajani on the Arab origins of print media</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=89</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Several researchers of the Arab print media inaccurately claim that Islam prohibited printing and assume that printing began with Gutenberg. Thus they begin their study of Arab print media from the period of what I consider to be the dark age of the Arab world, the demise of the Ottoman Empire. The chapter on Arab printing corrects this inaccuracy and suggests that Arabs knew printing before Guten ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=89">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>07/04/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Stephen Driver on the rise of multi-party politics in the UK</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=87</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Labour leader Ed Miliband called it ‘people power’. Hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets of central London to protest against the coalition government’s programme of public sector cuts. Anti-capitalist and anarchist groups may have grabbed the headlines – much to the dismay of Miliband and the trade unions that organised the day of action – but was this a turning point for Lab ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=87">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>06/04/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Is well-being more important than welfare?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=84</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Welfare rather than happiness or feeling good In a time when talk of happiness and subjective well-being is all around, it is good to remind ourselves that there is another way of conceiving of human well-being. I make a strong case for the concept of welfare in this context. This concept’s original and enduring meanings lie in the distribution of material resources and the institutions and practi ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=84">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/02/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Literature as a cultural and spiritual resource in modern societies</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=83</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Modern German Literatureis a case study of literature as a cultural and spiritual resource in modern societies. It is as much about literature, as a variety of social and artistic practices, as it is about Germany. It is neither literary criticism nor literary history but something in between.   It asks what kind of resource many different kinds of writing in German from many different parts of Eu ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=83">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>24/02/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>What are human rights? Michael Freeman reflects...</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=82</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Michael Freeman, author of a new second edition of Human Rights, looks at the boundaries of the concept. The practice and academic study of human rights have been dominated by lawyers. Respect for human rights depends on the rule of law and thus lawyers have contributed, and continue to contribute, much to the formulation and implementation of human rights. Yet there are obviously important politi ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=82">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>23/02/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>Has Cameron lost the strategic insight that won him the election? </title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=79</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Tim Bale, author of The Conservatives: from Thatcher to Cameron, reflects.To hear some people talk you’d think that Andy Coulson, by signing on as David Cameron’s Head of Communications back in mid-2007 had single-handedly saved the Tory Party from having to face a snap election which it looked sure to lose. Between then and his resignation in the face of persistent public interest in his role in  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=79">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/01/2011</pubDate>
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      <title>David West on introducing continental philosophy</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=76</link>
      <description><![CDATA[David West on the new edition of Continental Philosophy: An IntroductionTo set out to write something as ambitious as an introduction to continental philosophy might be thought unwise, to say the least. It is, of course, only possible to write an introduction to such a broad and diverse tradition – or as some would insist, a motley array of traditions – by focusing on the most important figures an ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=76">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>30/11/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>What are the cornerstones of peacebuilding?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=75</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Denis Sandole, author of Peacebuilding, blogs on the synergistic partnerships necessary to eliminate violent conflict. Other than finding it extremely difficult to say 'no' to Dr. Louise Knight, Polity's senior acquisitions editor, who invited me to participate in Polity's Series on War and Conflict in the Modern World, I was attracted to write Peacebuilding: Preventing Violent Conflict in a Compl ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=75">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>09/11/2010</pubDate>
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      <title> Why Zizek refreshes the parts other theorists cannot reach.</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=72</link>
      <description><![CDATA[ Paul Taylor, author of Zizek and the Media, blogs on an unlikely academic celebrity.Slavoj Zizek is a discombobulating tour de force who, more than any other living intellectual, embodies “the Heineken effect” - he refreshes the parts other theorists cannot reach. Love him or loathe him, Zizek and the Media demonstrates that the surprising success of such an unlikely academic celebrity, is ironic ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=72">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>22/10/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>How does globalization affect food security today?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=71</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Bryan McDonald blogs on food security in a global ageFrom food riots in Mozambique, Egypt and Haiti to tainted food recalls in the United States and China, questions of food quantity and quality have emerged as critical issues of concern for states, international organizations, and individuals. Globalization and global change have amplified traditional food security concerns such as chronic malnut ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=71">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>05/10/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Was J.S. Mill an elitist, an egalitarian or a socialist?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=69</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Dale E. Miller, author of J. S. Mill ,sheds new light on the work of a classic thinkerMine is hardly the first book on the Victorian philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, and someone might well wonder why another is needed. Part of what I take to make my book distinctive is apparent from the table of contents. I address a broad sweep of Mill’s views, as opposed to focusing on a single text.  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=69">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>15/09/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>What  is politically and artistically unique about France’s stellar writers? </title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=68</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Alison Finch, author of French Literature, posts on the relationship between writing and power.I’ve always been keenly interested in both politics and literature. But when I was an undergraduate studying French literature at Cambridge, these two passions were in separate parts of my life. I was active in student politics, but as far as my studies went, it was rather frowned on to depart from the t ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=68">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>07/09/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Do Asian Americans matter?</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=63</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The 2010 midterm elections may have a critical impact on Barack Obama’s political future. What role will Asian Americans play in shaping the President Obama’s fate?Almost twenty years ago, Don Nakanishi suggested that Asian Americans could become an important swing vote in California. More recently, S.B. Woo formed “80-20,” a group trying to get Asian Americans to vote as a bloc to increase their  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=63">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>29/06/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Jenny Shaw on Shopping</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=62</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Shopping: meaningful or meaningless? It is the activity on which we in the rich nations spend most time after work and sleep, and the favourite soft target for the commentariat who regularly argue that shopping is more than emblematic of a ‘hollowed out’ society and is actually destroying the social fabric of modern ‘consumer’ societies. Modern societies are consumer societies, as well as producer ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=62">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>04/06/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Andrew Leach on Architectural History</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=58</link>
      <description><![CDATA[What is Architectural History? is organized by five chapters. The first positions modern, academic architectural history (the architectural history of Wölfflin, Gurlitt, Riegl and their contemporaries) as a disciplinary inheritance of four traditions for knowing architecture as a past field. These are the presentation of architectural history in the architectural treatise, as part of the architect ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=58">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>28/04/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Colin Barnes on the new edition of 'Exploring Disability'</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=57</link>
      <description><![CDATA[A decade ago, a socio/political or ‘social model’ of disability – inspired by an understanding of the economic, political and social deprivations encountered by people with accredited impairments and labelled ‘disabled’ – was hardly visible within mainstream sociology and related disciplines. Today it stands centre stage alongside sociological explanations of racism, sexism, heterosexism and other ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=57">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>23/04/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Explaining the Normative</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=52</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The biggest buzzword in contemporary philosophy is normativity. Volume after volume has been churned out defending the idea that normativity is real, indispensable, even the single metaphysical basis for everything, including nature. The past of philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, has been reinterpreted as being about normativity. Wittgenstein has been made into a defender of normativ ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=52">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>24/03/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Death and Dying in America by  Andrea Fontana and Jennifer Reid Keene</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=51</link>
      <description><![CDATA[As we write this blog we are coping with the aftermath of the tragedy in Haiti. The latest count is an estimated 230,000 deaths and rising.  Haiti happened too late to be included in our book but it reflects its scope--trying to understand and explain who dies, how we die, what happens after we die, and how do we cope with death.  We clearly saw the social implications of death in Haiti, as the po ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=51">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>19/03/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Jane Fuller on the new revised Ed. of Davies &amp; Green's Global Financial Regulation</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=49</link>
      <description><![CDATA[With all the hand-wringing that goes on over financial regulation, you would think that books on the subject would be two a penny. Surprisingly, they are not. So, Howard Davies’s and David Green’s book, Global Financial Regulation, remains an essential guide. This is despite the fact that, as they write in the Update, “Time seems to have speeded up in the world of financial regulation” since the f ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=49">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>26/02/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Molefi Kete Asante on Philosopher Maulana Karenga</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=47</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Maulana Karenga is an important American cultural philosopher and one of the leading proponents of the cultural reconstruction thesis for African Americans. His key writings, based upon his studies of African cultural and philosophical history, treat the classical bases for re-interpreting the social behavior of people whose cultures have been crushed by oppression. In effect, Karenga is an ethici ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=47">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>19/02/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Richard Lachmann on States and Power.</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=46</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Financial crisis, environmental crisis and terrorism are all taken as signs of the weakness and increasingly irrelevancy of states. Capital, ecological disasters and terrorisms seemingly cross borders with impunity. In fact, citizenship remains one of the most important determinants of someone’s life chances. Stand at the U.S.-Mexican border, at the wall dividing Israel and the Palestinian territo ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=46">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>17/02/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Empathy: The Real Invisible Hand of the Market Place  By Jeremy Rifkin</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=44</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The anemic global economic recovery is beginning to stall. Unemployment is shooting up again. The housing market is threatened by a new wave of foreclosures. Tens of millions of Americans are teetering on the edge of survival. Public surveys show that people on Main Street are fast loosing trust in Wall Street and the workings of the market. What’s gone wrong? The economists have a difficult time  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=44">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>08/02/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Luke Martell on Globalization after Copenhagen and the Financial Crisis</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=42</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The Sociology of Globalization discusses dimensions of globalization from media and identity to migration and social movements, from history to theories. It also argues that environment, economics and politics are things that any sociologist who aspires to understand society needs to pay attention to. These dimensions affect society. They are not outside it. Recent developments such as the Copenha ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=42">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>29/01/2010</pubDate>
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      <title> John Brewer on the need for a sociological approach to peace processes</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=41</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Over fifty people were killed in the Johannesburg area in 2009. This seems unsurprising given that it considered the murder capital of the world. The fifty or so people to whom I refer, however, are different: they were economic migrants from neighbouring states, drawn to South Africa by its status as rainbow nation and by the prospect of work. The display of very magnanimous forgiveness South Afr ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=41">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>27/01/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Patrik Wikström on 'The Music Industry'</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=38</link>
      <description><![CDATA[More than ten years have passed since Shawn Fanning and friends released the file-sharing software "Napster" to the world and thereby kick-started one of the most radical transformations of the multinational music industry.Today, young music listeners no longer put on a CD then they party and it is actually also becoming less common that they play MP3s from their computers or iPods. Rather, the yo ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=38">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>18/01/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>David Halpern on his new book 'The Hidden Wealth of Nations'</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=37</link>
      <description><![CDATA[For this blog post,  I thought I’d set out the bones of the argument in my new book The Hidden Wealth of Nations. I certainly found it interesting to revisit some of the big questions that in government there’s rarely the luxury of time to examine very deeply, rolling up my statistical sleeves to wade into data sets and literatures around public concerns, well-being, social policy, inequality and  ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=37">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>14/01/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Polity author Frederick Wasser on Spielberg</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=36</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Is Steven Spielberg a better political filmmaker than his peers?Surprisingly, yes.Steven Spielberg has managed to show that the most successful film director in the history of popular culture is capable of engaging history - but not quite as he pleases. He has done so to a greater degree than his fellow film entertainers. Scorsese, the “thoughtful” American director, has not been as political as S ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=36">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>13/01/2010</pubDate>
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      <title>Professor Molly Rothenberg on her new book The Excessive Subject</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=29</link>
      <description><![CDATA[On the EdgeEdged in:  I decided to write this book when it became clear to me that a new theory of the social subject, with some powerful advantages for social change theory, had become sequestered within a small area in the academy simply because it was associated with psychoanalysis.  It turns out that the theory of the excessive subject, as I term it, depends on developments in the fields of sy ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=29">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>18/12/2009</pubDate>
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      <title>Professor Oliver Leaman on the new second edition of his classic text</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=28</link>
      <description><![CDATA[When I was asked to prepare a second edition of my Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy I wondered what needed to be added to the existing text. When I looked at the book again it seemed strange that although I emphasized that Islamic philosophy is a living part of world philosophy, I only dealt with earlier aspects of Islamic philosophy, so I thought it would not be a bad idea to have a chapt ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=28">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>04/12/2009</pubDate>
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      <title>Polityblogger on Ellis Cashmore's latest book Martin Scorsese's America</title>
      <link>http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=27</link>
      <description><![CDATA[ “In this country, it doesn’t add inches to your dick to get a life sentence” Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) in The DepartedAmerica is a country where success is measured by how long you have to wait in line to get served. The shorter the wait, the more successful you are. This is one of the lessons Martin Scorsese teaches us.In his new book Martin Scorsese’s America, Ellis Cashmore has anatomize ...<a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/blog/post.aspx?id=27">more</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>25/11/2009</pubDate>
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