Bøker utgitt av Pluto Press

Contemporary Arab Thought is a multifaceted book, encompassing a constellation of social, political, religious and ideological ideas that have evolved over the past two hundred years - ideas that represent the leading positions of the social classes in modern and contemporary Arab societies.*BR**BR*Distinguished Islamic scholar Ibrahim Abu-Rabi' addresses such questions as the Shari'ah, human rights, civil society, secularism and globalisation. This is complimented by a focused discussion on the writings of key Arab thinkers who represent established trends of thought in the Arab world, including Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, Adallah Laroui, Muhammad al-Ghazali, Rashid al-Ghannoushi, Qutatnine Zurayk, Mahdi Amil and many others.*BR**BR*Before 1967, some Arab countries launched hopeful programmes of modernisation. After the 1967 defeat with Israel, many of these hopes were dashed. This book retraces the Arab world's aborted modernity of recent decades. Abu-Rabi explores the development of contemporary Arab thought against the historical background of the rise of modern Islamism, and the impact of the West on the modern Arab world.

Control and Subversion investigates the relationship of gender to the inner workings of social control, such as exposing ways in which post-Soviet Tajikistan society threatens men's masculinity, thereby bringing them to force family members into conformity, irrespective of the suffering this may cause. *BR**BR*Told through ethnographically collected life histories, the book examines how masculine and feminine gender characteristics influence personal relationships and explores gender relations at their most intimate - from the secret musings of adolescent girls, through the painful experiences of young men, to the trauma of sexual initiation. *BR**BR*Although largely concentrating on contemporary life, the book also discusses historical materials and Soviet influence on Tajik society. Control and Subversion is essential reading for anyone interested in Central Asia, Muslim societies, the lives of Muslim women, or gender in a Muslim context.

The first biography of the acclaimed musician and political activist.

Shows how corruption operates through informal rules, personal connections and wider social contexts.

In Kosovo, America claimed its war was a 'humanitarian intervention,' in Afghanistan, 'self-defense,' and in Iraq, it claimed the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations. Yet each of these wars was illegal according to established rules of international law. According to these rules, illegal wars fall within the category of 'supreme international crimes'. So how come the war crimes tribunals never manage to turn their sights on America and always wind up putting America's enemies - 'the usual suspects' - on trial?*BR**BR*This new book by renowned scholar Michael Mandel offers a critical account of America's illegal wars and a war crimes system that has granted America's leaders an unjust and dangerous impunity, effectively encouraging their illegal wars and the war crimes that always flow from them.

New edition of classic title on the morality of terrorism

This new edition of the successful handbook Employment Rights is fully updated and revised to include new material on all recent employment law. Employment Rights is a well-established text and reference point on all aspects of labour law - in particular those outside the legal profession. *BR**BR*Coverage is comprehensive and includes recruitment and selection; contracts (and changes to them); wages; discrimination; unfair dismissal and redundancy; health and safety; trade union rights; and work-related benefits.*BR**BR*This new edition has been expanded to include coverage of developments such as the Employment Act 2002, Tax Credits Act 2002, EC Employment, Social Policy, the European Convention of Human Rights; and reform of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Industrial Tribunals Act 1996.*BR*

The 1948 war ended in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli settlers moved in to occupy their land and the Palestinian refugees found themselves expelled. Today there are nearly four million Palestinian refugees - and they want the right to go home.*BR**BR*Since 1948 Israeli refugee policy has become a classic case of denial: the denial that Zionist 'transfer committees' had operated between 1937 and 1948; denial of any wrong doing or any historical injustice; denial of the 'right of return'; denial of restitution of property and compensation; and indeed denial of any moral responsibility or culpability for the creation of the refugee problem.*BR**BR*This book analyses Israeli policies towards the Palestinian refugees as they evolved from the 1948 catastrophe (or nakba) to the present. It is the first volume to look in detail at Israeli law and policy surrounding the refugee question. Drawing on extensive primary sources and previously classified archive material, Masalha discusses the 1948 exodus; Israeli resettlement schemes since 1948; Israeli approaches to compensation and restitution of property; Israeli refugee policies towards the internally displaced ('present absentees'); and Israeli refugee policies during the Madrid and Oslo negotiations.

The Cold War is often presented as an international power struggle between the Soviet Union and the US. Richard Saull challenges this assumption. He broadens our understanding of the defining political conflict of the twentieth-century by stressing the social and ideological differences of the superpowers and how these differences conditioned their international behaviour.*BR**BR*Saull argues that US-Soviet antagonism was part of a wider conflict between capitalism and communism involving states and social forces other than the superpowers. The US was committed to containing revolutionary and communist movements that emerged out of uneven capitalist development.*BR**BR*In highlighting the socio-economic and ideological dimensions of the Cold War, Saull not only provides a richer history of the Cold War than mainstream approaches, but is also able to explain why revolutionary domestic transformations caused international crises. Tracing the origins of new resistance to American global power, Saull's book provides an ideal alternative perspective on the Cold War and its end.

Like many buzzwords, 'global governance' is as poorly understood as it is popular. In contrast to most mainstream accounts, this book examines global economic governance as an integral moment of contemporary capitalism, presenting a critical insight into its real nature and the interests that it serves. *BR**BR*This book begins by asking what has not been discussed in the mainstream debates and why. Drawing on a Marxist perspective, Susanne Soederberg explores neglected issues including transnational debt and the increasingly coercive nature of US aid to so-called 'failed states'. *BR**BR*She argues that mainstream understandings fail to engage with the wider contradictions that characterise global capitalism. In consequence, there is no explanation of the changing nature of American empire and capitalist power in the world.

Leading anthropologists discuss globalisation

A reassessment of Scottish politics and society in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century

A critique of modern African 'democracies'

The feminist press movement transformed the publishing industry, literary culture and educational curricula during the last quarter of the 20th century. This book is both a survey of the movement internationally and a detailed critique of its long-term impact. *BR**BR*Feminist presses are described as 'mixed media', always attempting to balance politics with profit-making. Using a series of detailed case studies, Simone Murray highlights the specific debates through which this dilemma plays out: the nature of independence; the politics of race; feminist publishing and the academy; radical writing and publishing practice; and feminism's interface with mainstream publishing.

These are the debates over indigenous knowledge

Ideal for students looking for a radical approach to film studies.

An introduction to leading British Muslim intellectual, author, journalist and cultural commentator

Why did 9/11 happen?

Transnational corporations straddle the globe, largely unseen by the public. Cargill, with its headquarters in the US, is the largest private corporation in North America, and possibly in the world. Cargill trades in food commodities and produces a great many of them: grains, flour, malt, corn, cotton, salt, vegetable oils, fruit juices, animal feeds, and meat. *BR**BR*Among its most profitable activities is its trade in the global financial markets. There are few national economies unaffected by Cargill's activities, and few eaters in the north whose food does not pass through Cargill's hands at some point. Yet Cargill remains largely invisible to most people and accountable to no one outside the company.*BR**BR*This is an explosive book that breaks the silence on the true extent of Cargill's power and influence worldwide - its ability to shape national policies, and the implications of these strategies for all of us. Thoroughly revised and updated, Kneen's new book offers shocking new evidence of Cargill's activities since the book was first published.

This book explores the balance of power between the state and local communities, with particular reference to societies in the developing world. *BR**BR*Monique Nuijten shows how rituals of bureaucratic power and accusations of corruption give flesh to incredible fantasies, and conspiracy theories among officials, peasants and brokers. At the same time she shows that in this labyrinthine world of bureaucratic obstacles and state control, local agrarian communities manage to find certain room for autonomy.*BR**BR*Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Mexico, Nuijten draws wide conclusions that can be applied to many societies. Providing a detailed ethnography, she focuses on various themes, including a theoretical anthropology of state power; families and factionalism after agrarian reform; local organisation; questions of law; corruption; and development theory.

Explores the impact of hip hop on culture worldwide.

This is a new era where the very notion of collective identity is challenged

Russia has one of the lowest rates of adult life expectancy in the world. Average life expectancy for a man in America is 74; in Russia, it is just 59. Birth rates and population levels have also plummeted. These excess levels of mortality affect all countries that formed the former Soviet bloc. Running into many millions, they raise comparisons with the earlier period of forced transition under Stalin. *BR**BR*This book seeks to put the recent history of the transition into a longer term perspective by identifying, explaining and comparing the pattern of change in Russia in the last century. It offers a sharp challenge to the conventional wisdom and benign interpretations offered in the west of what has happened since 1991. *BR**BR*Mike Haynes and Rumy Husan have produced the first and most complete and accurate account of Russian demographic crisis from the Revolution to the present.

In recent years, a great deal of public attention has been focussed on multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO. This book offers students, practitioners and activists a critical guide to these and other major institutions - the Regional Development Banks and UNDP - that make up the multilateral development system. It analyses how they operate with respect to financing and lending, the various roles that they play, and related changes in their policy concerns - such as structural adjustment, sustainable development, and governance. *BR**BR*The emphasis is on politics within and also between multilateral institutions, analysing the relations - both competitive and collaborative - between, for example, the World Bank and UNDP. NGOs are also shown to be important actors, and the role they have played in recent years is critically assessed. The book concludes with some emerging trends: the 'privatisation' of the system, regionalisation, and 'the politics of protest'.*BR**BR*Boas and McNeill do not simply take the policies of multilateral institutions at face value, but ask how and why these policies came into existence. They seek to promote critical, but informed, engagement both with the member states of multilateral institutions and the institutions themselves.

This is an accessible guide to key Marxist concepts and how to apply them to contemporary cultural analysis.*BR**BR*Drawing on Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, Habermas, Jameson and others, the book retools and redeems key concepts such as class, the mode of production, culture industries, the state, base-superstructure, ideology, hegemony, knowledge and social interests, and commodity fetishism. It also includes analysis of film, television, the internet and print media. Using case studies including Disney, Big Brother to the spirits and spectres in such films as The Others, The Devil's Backbone and Dark City, it illuminates the fetishisms of culture and society under capital.*BR**BR*Exploring the relevance of each concept to understanding the media, Wayne explains why Marxism is an important critical methodology for the media student to engage with. He foregrounds the theoretical and political shifts that have led to its marginalisation in recent years, and highlights how and why these trends are changing as once more, people return to Marx and Marxism to understand the world around them.

Reassesses conventional notions of crime by examining potential categories of social harm inflicted by globalisation

A devastating critique of the global market paradigm

How the colonial experience has been instrumental in shaping modern criminology

This is a revisionist history of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. Assessing the geopolitical and strategic reasons for its creation and dismemberment, it is an important corrective to much contemporary theorising about the destruction of the Yugoslav state.*BR**BR*Kate Hudson draws attention to the role of foreign states whose involvement in Yugoslavia did much to destabilise the region, and explains how and why this happened. *BR**BR*Tracing the state's origins from 1918 through war and the Tito years, she explains the distortion of the socialist economy resulting from Yugoslavia's unusual position between the two Cold War blocs, and the economic collapse of the 1980s as part of the US's drive for a free market. She also investigates the true causes and effects of the recent wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and brings the book up-to-date with an analysis of Milosevic's downfall, and events in Macedonia and Montenegro.