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The Conundrum of Russian Capitalism looks at the nature of Russian capitalism following the fall of the Soviet Union, showing how the system originated in the degenerated Soviet bureaucracy and the pressures of global capital. Ruslan Dzarasov provides a detailed analysis of Russian corporate governance, labour practices and investment strategies.

By comparing the practices of Russian companies to the typical models of corporate governance and investment behaviour of big firms in the West, Dzarasov sheds light on the relationship between the core and periphery of the capitalist world-system.

This groundbreaking study shows that Russia's new capitalism is not a break with the country's Stalinist past, but in fact the continuation of that tradition.

The Courteous Power seeks to provide a nuanced view of the current relationship between Japan and Southeast Asia. Much of the current scholarship on East–Southeast Asian engagement has focused on the multidimensional chess game playing out between China and Japan, as the dominant post-imperialist powers. Alternatively, there has been renewed attention on ASEAN and other Southeast Asian–centered initiatives, explicitly minimizing the influence of East Asia in the region. Given the urgency of understanding the careful balance in the Indo-Pacific region, this volume brings together scholars to examine the history and current engagement from a variety of perspectives, ranging from economic and political, to the cultural and technological, while also focusing more clearly on the specific relationship between the region and Japan.

A Pact of Love with Criticism, A Pact of Blood with the World

Building on the legacy of Fernando F. Segovia, the pioneering essays in this volume redefine the intersection of biblical studies and geopolitics. Through a thorough exploration of how ancient texts and modern readers influence and reflect geopolitical dynamics, each contributor reveals how biblical narratives have shaped and been shaped by historical power structures, territorial conflicts and climate changes, and cultural exchanges. Essays employ contemporary geopolitical concepts that move beyond traditional readings to offer fresh insights into the strategic and ideological forces behind scriptural texts. An annotated interview with Fernando F. Segovia traces his immigration journey as an adolescent and its indelible imprint on his scholarship as a postcolonial critic. Contributors include Efraín Agosto, Amy Lindeman Allen, Reimund Bieringer, Mark G. Brett, Ahida Calderón Pilarski, Greg Carey, Jorge E. Castillo Guerra, Jin Young Choi, Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Gregory L. Cuéllar, Musa W. Dube, Neil Elliott, Eleazar S. Fernandez, Bridgett A. Green, Leticia A. Guardiola-Sáenz, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Knut Holter, Ma. Maricel S. Ibita, Ma. Marilou S. Ibita, John F. Kutsko, Sung Uk Lim, Francisco Lozada Jr., Luis Menéndez-Antuña, Rubén Muñoz-Larrondo, Robert Myles, Wongi Park, Mitri Raheb, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Fernando F. Segovia, Yak-hwee Tan, Ekaputra Tupamahu, Gerald O. West, Hans (J. H.) de Wit, and H. Daniel Zacharias.

Contrary to our stereotypical views, dictators often introduce elections in which they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud. Why do electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box argues that strong autocrats who can garner popular support become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition’s stunning election victories. The book’s theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

A little over 100 years ago, the first production of An-sky’s The Dybbuk, a play about the possession of a young woman by a dislocated spirit, opened in Warsaw. In the century that followed, The Dybbuk became a theatrical conduit for a wide range of discourses about Jews, belonging, and modernity. This timeless Yiddish play about spiritual possession beyond the grave would go on to exert a remarkable and unforgettable impact on modern theater, film, literature, music, and culture. 

The Dybbuk Century collects essays from an interdisciplinary group of scholars who explore the play’s original Yiddish and Hebrew productions and offer critical reflections on the play’s enduring influence. The collection will appeal to scholars, students, and theater practitioners, as well as general readers.

In The Dark Sahara (Pluto, 2009), Jeremy Keenan exposed the collusion between the US and Algeria in fabricating terrorism to justify a new ‘Saharan front’ in Washington’s War on Terror. Now, in The Dying Sahara, he reveals how the designation of the region as a ‘Terror Zone’ has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of innocent people.

Beginning in 2004, with what local people called the US ‘invasion’ of the Sahel, The Dying Sahara shows how repressive, authoritarian regimes - cashing in on US terrorism ‘rents’ - provoked Tuareg rebellions in both Niger and Mali. Further, he argues that US activity has unleashed a new, narco-trafficking branch of Al-Qaeda.

Keenan's chillingly detailed research shows that the US and its new combatant African command (AFRICOM) have created instability in a region the size of western Europe.

September 12, 1910: The world premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his life. Munich’s new Musik Festhalle was filled to capacity on two successive evenings for the performances, which were received with rapturous applause. Representatives of many European royal houses were in attendance, along with an array of stars from the musical and literary world, including Thomas Mann and the young Arnold Schoenberg. Also present were Alma Mahler, the composer’s wife, and Alma’s longtime lover, the architect Walter Gropius. Knowledge of their relationship would precipitate an emotional crisis in Mahler that, compounded with his heart condition and the loss of his young daughter Maria, would lead to his premature death the next year.

In The Eighth, Stephen Johnson provides a masterful account of the symphony’s far-reaching consequences and its effect on composers, conductors, and writers of the time. The Eighth looks behind the scenes at the demanding one-week rehearsal period leading up to the premiere—something unheard of at the time—and provides fascinating insight into Mahler’s compositional habits, his busy life as a conductor, his philosophical and literary interests, and his personal and professional relationships. Johnson expertly contextualizes Mahler’s work among the prevailing attitudes and political climate of his age, considering the art, science, technology, and mass entertainment that informed the world in 1910. The Eighth is an absorbing history of a musical masterpiece and the troubled man who created it.

How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life 

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. 

Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration.

As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.

Examining how a single book inspired devotion, dread, and lasting superstition in Russian letters

When James Joyce first published Ulysses in 1922, the book enjoyed a hearty welcome in the Soviet Union. In fact, Russian was the second language into which excerpts were translated. However, the early enthusiasm soon gave way to apprehension, and then to public condemnation. The Russian literary community found itself at the epicenter of the political repression of the 1930s, suffering enormous losses among writers and translators, who died en masse through executions and exile. In the context of Ulysses, the numerous violent deaths of its Soviet translators and editors gave rise to rumors, which then developed into superstitious beliefs that managed to outlive their own time. Russian translation scholar Natalia Kamovnikova examines the struggles faced by those who attempted early translations, including death and imprisonment, and how both this translation work and the text itself became sources of fear.

Alongside important background on these early translation attempts, including information on the translators themselves, The Fearful Steelpen unpacks the literary approaches to rendering Joyce’s aesthetics in Russian and traces the socio-political beliefs behind translation and publishing decisions. Kamovnikova goes further, to examine why Ulysses in particular aroused fears in both in its contemporaries and in subsequent generations of Russian writers, as if the text held a dangerous power that could harm those working on it. This fascinating publishing case study reveals the complicated cultural and political dynamics at work behind a seemingly simple translation from one language to another that still resonates in the contemporary moment.

The ancient Aztecs dwelt at the center of a dazzling and complex cosmos. From this position they were acutely receptive to the demands of their gods. The Fifth Sun represents a dramatic overview of the Aztec conception of the universe and the gods who populated it—Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent; Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror; and Huitzilopochtli, the Southern Hummingbird. Burr Cartwright Brundage explores the myths behind these and others in the Aztec pantheon in a way that illuminates both the human and the divine in Aztec life.

The cult of human sacrifice is a pervasive theme in this study. It is a concept that permeated Aztec mythology and was the central preoccupation of the aggressive Aztec state. Another particularly interesting belief explored here is the “mask pool,” whereby gods could exchange regalia and, thus, identities.

This vivid and eminently readable study also covers the use of hallucinogens; cannibalism; the calendars of ancient Mexico; tlachtli, the life-and-death ball game; the flower wars; divine transfiguration; and the evolution of the war god of the Mexica. A splendid introduction to Aztec religion, The Fifth Sun also contains insights for specialists in ethnohistory, mythology, and religion.

The city of Juárez is ground zero for the drug war that is raging across Mexico and has claimed close to 60,000 lives since 2007. Almost a quarter of the federal forces that former President Felipe Calderón deployed in the war were sent to Juárez, and nearly 20 percent of the country’s drug-related executions have taken place in the city, a city that can be as unforgiving as the hardest places on earth. It is here that the Mexican government came to turn the tide. Whatever happens in Juárez will have lasting repercussions for both Mexico and the United States.

Ricardo Ainslie went to Juárez to try to understand what was taking place behind the headlines of cartel executions and other acts of horrific brutality. In The Fight to Save Juárez, he takes us into the heart of Mexico’s bloodiest city through the lives of four people who experienced the drug war from very different perspectives—Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, a mid-level cartel player’s mistress, a human rights activist, and a photojournalist. Ainslie also interviewed top Mexican government strategists, including members of Calderón’s security cabinet, as well as individuals within U.S. law enforcement. The dual perspective of life on the ground in the drug war and the “big picture” views of officials who are responsible for the war’s strategy, creates a powerful, intimate portrait of an embattled city, its people, and the efforts to rescue Juárez from the abyss.

With a keen attention to how culture and elite conflict shape politics, The Great Separation upends deterministic understandings of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the market reforms that followed. This ambitious posthumous volume by sociologist Xiaohong Xu turns the existing scholarship on China’s “neoliberalism” on its head by demonstrating that the effort to separate mass politics from economic policy had its origins well before the Reform and Opening-up era. 

Over the course of the Cultural Revolution, unfolding factional dynamics and interpretive struggles enabled Chairman Mao and his radical colleagues to mobilize workers to advance their own political goals while neutralizing the masses’ economic demands, symbolically separating the political from the economic. This set the stage for a more thoroughgoing depoliticization of the economy after 1989, when China faced challenges from students and workers whose economic grievances had rapidly morphed into political demands for democracy. The result was what Xu calls ordoeconomism: an ideology that valorizes economic development, rejects mass politics, and views the state as the apolitical guardian of the economy. As Xu demonstrates, while ordoeconomism may share some affinities with neoliberalism, it is a distinctively Chinese approach that must be understood on its own terms.