Polity imprint: 1443 books
Democracy and Dictatorship
The Nature and Limits of State Power
Language: English
Release Date: June 6, 2017
In this important volume Norberto Bobbio examines some of the central themes of political theory and presents a systematic exposition of his views. With great astuteness and profound scholarship, Bobbio unfolds the elements for a general theory of politics.
Bobbio's wide-ranging argument is...
by Tzvetan Todorov
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2015
The political history of the twentieth century can be viewed as the history of democracy’s struggle against its external enemies: fascism and communism. This struggle ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet regime. Some people think that democracy now faces new enemies:...
A History of Murder
Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present
Language: English
Release Date: April 18, 2013
This book offers a fascinating and insightful overview of seven centuries of murder in Europe. It tells the story of the changing face of violence and documents the long-term decline in the incidence of homicide. From medieval vendettas to stylised duels, from the crime passionel of the modern period...
Violence and Punishment
Civilizing the Body Through Time
Language: English
Release Date: August 22, 2013
This innovative book tells the fascinating tale of the long histories of violence, punishment, and the human body, and how they are all connected. Taking the decline of violence and the transformation of punishment as its guiding themes, the book highlights key dynamics of historical and social change,...
Siblings
Sex and Violence
Language: English
Release Date: April 24, 2013
Siblings and all the lateral relationships that follow from them are clearly important and their interaction is widely observed, particularly in creative literature. Yet in the social, psychological and political sciences, there is no theoretical paradigm through which we might understand them. In...
by Loreen N. Olson, Elizabeth A. Baiocchi-Wagner, Jessica M. Wilson-Kratzer
Language: English
Release Date: January 22, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: January 22, 2014
This text provides for the first time in book form an exploration of the communicative aspects of the darker side of family life, ranging from, for example, severe acts of violence to more subtle forms of conflict. In addition to offering a working definition of the concept of the "dark side"...
Theology and Religion
Why It Matters
Language: English
Release Date: February 25, 2019
Graham Ward argues that the study of theology and religion, as a single academic discipline, plays a vital role in helping us to understand politics, world affairs, and the nature of humanity itself. Religion can be used to justify inhumane actions, but it also feeds dreams, inspires hopes, and shapes...
Persons and Things
From the Body's Point of View
Language: English
Release Date: May 7, 2015
What is the relationship between persons and things? And how does the body transform this relationship? In this highly original new book, Roberto Esposito - one of Italy’s leading political philosophers - considers these questions and shows that starting from the body, rather than from the thing...
Immunitas
The Protection and Negation of Life
Language: English
Release Date: May 11, 2017
This book by Roberto Esposito - a leading Italian political philosopher - is a highly original exploration of the relationship between human bodies and societies. The original function of law, even before it was codified, was to preserve peaceful cohabitation between people who were exposed to the...
Experience
New Foundations for the Human Sciences
Language: English
Release Date: June 29, 2018
This book is a radical plea for the centrality of experience in the social and human sciences. Lash argues that a large part of the output of the social sciences today is still shaped by assumptions stemming from positivism, in contrast to the tradition of interpretative social enquiry pioneered by...
The Excessive Subject
A New Theory of Social Change
Language: English
Release Date: December 24, 2013
In The Excessive Subject: A New Theory of Social Change, Molly Anne Rothenberg uncovers an innovative theory of social change implicit in the writings of radical social theorists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj ?i?ek. Through case studies of these...
by Graeme Gilloch
Language: English
Release Date: March 31, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: March 31, 2015
This major new book offers a much-needed introduction to the work of Siegfried Kracauer, one of the main intellectual figures in the orbit of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. It is part of a timely revival and reappraisal of his unique contribution to our critical understanding of modernity,...
by Darrell P. Rowbottom
Language: English
Release Date: October 30, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: October 30, 2015
When a doctor tells you there's a one percent chance that an operation will result in your death, or a scientist claims that his theory is probably true, what exactly does that mean? Understanding probability is clearly very important, if we are to make good theoretical and practical choices.
In...
Reinventing India
Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy
Language: English
Release Date: May 28, 2013
When India was invented as a "modern" country in the years after Independence in 1947 it styled itself as a secular, federal, democratic Republic committed to an ideology of development. Nehru's India never quite fulfilled this promise, but more recently his vision of India has been challenged by...