Two years ago Nepal went through a classic revolutionary experience. A mass urban uprising combined with the struggle waged by revolutionary guerrillas, who had been operating in the countryside, to bring down the royalist government. In recent months, the non-revolutionary… Continue Reading
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (Verso, 2007), £24.99 This is one of the most important books of the past decade, although its impact would have been greater had its 600 dense but sometimes repetitive pages… Continue Reading
Niveditya Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and Contestation: India Since 1989 (Zed, 2007), £12.99 This book, written by two academics who are also campaigners, offers the best survey of recent Indian history that I have seen. It begins with a… Continue Reading
Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History: What’s Left of the Social? (University of Michigan, 2007), £15.95 Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (University of Michigan, 2006), £14.50 For… Continue Reading
Toby Shelley, Exploited: Migrant Labour in the New Global Economy (Zed, 2007), £14.99 Exploited should be a basic reference for all those concerned with economic, social and political aspects of migration today. This short book contains a mass of information… Continue Reading
Matt Perry, Prisoners of Want: The Experience and Protest of the Unemployed in France, 1921–45 (Ashgate, 2007), £55 The inter-war period was turbulent for the working class movement. In the aftermath of the First World War revolution was in the… Continue Reading
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward New Manifestoes Volume 1: Democratizing Democracy—Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon (Verso, 2007), £24.99 Volume 2: Another Production is Possible (Verso, 2007), £24.99 Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a radical social theorist active… Continue Reading
Adam David Morton, Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy (Pluto, 2007), £18.99 Antonio Gramsci used the concept of “passive revolution” to explain the process leading to the unification of Italy in 1861. The relative backwardness of the country… Continue Reading
Matthew Paterson, Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (Cambridge University, 2007), £15.99 Matthew Paterson’s important new book provides a Marxist analysis of the car’s dominance, including sections on its economic, cultural and ecological aspects. In 2006 nine of the… Continue Reading
Joseph A Massad, Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago, 2007), £18 Sexual freedom has become an issue in international politics, with allegations of Muslim homophobia used to justify the superiority of the West and the “war on terror”. Joseph A Massad… Continue Reading