New Books in World Affairs

Michael Cook, a widely-respected historian and scholar of Islam begins his book with a question that everyone seems to be asking these days: is Islam uniquely violent or uniquely political? Why does Islam seem to play a larger role in contemporary politics than other religions? The answers that are provided for these questions, particularly in the media, range from the ludicrous to the islamophobic. Cook, on the other hand, embarks on a much more nuanced and learned attempt at answering the question. His book, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton University Press, 2014), rightly begins with the assumption that if there is something unique about Islam in this regard, the uniqueness of it can only be understood through comparative study of other religions and their engagement with politics. Cook looks at Hinduism and Christianity’s involvement in modern political life and places them alongside Islam, delving deeper into issues of political identity, warfare, and social values. What he finds is interesting, and goes to the heart of almost every debate taking place in a wide variety of fields like religious studies and the sociology of religion. Listen as we talk with him about his book, about contemporary global politics, ISIS and Al-Qaeda, as well as fascinating future projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In 2005, the Comedy Central Network aired an episode of “South Park” in which one of the characters asked if any “Third World” countries other than Russia had the ability to fly a whale to the moon. During a press conference that took place two years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin lamented that he was the only “pure democrat” left in the world. The United States did not deserve such a title, he explained, in light of its “homeless citizens, detentions without normal court proceedings, and horrible torture.” The willingness of a U.S. cartoon to mock Russia’s pretensions to “great power” status and Putin’s defense of his government’s democratic credentials raise important questions about the general trajectory of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union. Angela Stent addresses this important topic in her new book The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twentieth First-Century (Princeton University Press, 2014). Drawing on her experience as professor of history at Georgetown University and work in the U.S. State Department, she explores the question of why U.S.-Russian relations have often become strained despite having some successes cooperating on issues such as arms control. Do geographical, historical, ideological, and cultural differences make such discord inevitable? Just how much do “personal relations” and “domestic issues” shape this relationship? What steps, if any, can Americans take in the coming years to forge a more productive relationship with the Russian Federation? Whatever one thinks of Stent’s arguments and recommendations, she has succeeded in writing a thought provoking work that will help general readers and specialists better understand the vicissitudes of recent U.S.-Russian relations. Whether they like it or not, U.S. and Russian policymakers will have to continue dealing with each when addressing problems as diverse as the future of Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and “global terrorism.” Over the long term, the question becomes: Can the leaders of these two nations put the past behind them and work together to create a more humane and peaceful world? Or, as Stent argues, will this relationship remain a “limited partnership” where U.S. and Russian policymakers continue to clash on most issues and only cooperate when their governments’ interests happen to coincide? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Some say it should be a loose collection of sovereign nation states; others say it should aspire to be a kind of super-nation state itself. Or is it, in truth, a messy but workable mixture of a number of extremes, ideals and concepts? These are the type of questions that Mark Corner‘s new book The European Union: An Introduction (I. B. Tauris, 2014) seeks to both ask about the EU and tentatively answer. This is not just another routine tour around the institutions and functions of the European Union – instead, it’s a sharply written introduction to the EU that makes the reader understand it beyond the constraints of terms such as ‘nation state’. It’s also a very timely book, as the 28 member bloc is under scrutiny as never before, especially in the wake of both the euro crisis and the continent-wide rise of Eurosceptic parties. It’s a recommended read for anybody trying to make sense of one of the grandest twentieth-century projects that is still evolving and adapting to the world today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Any person who turns on CNN or Fox News today will see that the United States faces a number of critical problems in the Middle East. This reality should surprise few. Stunned by the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, the George W. Bush administration sent U.S. troops to Afghanistan as part of a larger “war on terror” and invaded Iraq in 2003 to “disarm” Saddam Hussein. At this very moment, the United States still has troops in Afghanistan and continues to employ drones to kill “terrorists” in places like Yemen. It has put together a coalition of states, including some Arab governments, to begin the process of taking back the huge swaths of territory that the extremist jihadi group ISIS has taken in Iraq and Syria. The Middle East has also not just “stood still” for U.S. policymakers to find their bearings. The “Arab Spring” and “Green movement” in Iran have raised profound questions about the future of government and authority in the region. In his work Shifting Sands: The United States and the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2014), Joel Migdal addresses the question of why U.S. policymakers have had so many problems accomplishing their goals in the region since the end of World War II. Employing clear prose without the polemics and scholarly jargon that so many books on this subject contain, he explains how the U.S. government has far too often ignored the complexities and history of the Middle East when acting in the region. While Migdal’s periodization of events in the Middle East and the place of Israel in U.S. foreign policy may strike some as too revisionist, he offers a number of valuable suggestions about how U.S. policymakers can best navigate the shoals of the region in the coming years  Even if readers do not find all of these arguments persuasive, they will benefit from grappling with his critiques and insights. Shifting Sands stands out a useful reminder of what can go wrong when policymakers ignore historical trends and assume the universal applicability of the American experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

I am old enough to realise that we have entered a science fiction world in which the old systems of the market place are being sidestepped by new technology. We who follow the tried and true methods are missing out of the brave new world. The changes are particularly true for the middle men whose services are no longer needed as the web allows customers to deal directly with producers. This also applies to the participants in organised crime. James Martin‘s terrific new book Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs (Palgrave, 2014)spells out how this is occurring in the drug trade as the Tor Network allows drug users to purchase their products from anywhere in the world. No longer are they tied to a street dealer or a friend for supply. No longer do they lack choice in quality or variety. Now they can peruse a range of products from the safety of their home. They have choice that would never be available without the internet. More importantly, as Martin points out, they are now valued customers with contracts, refund policies and providers of feedback on service quality. These websites provide all types of illicit goods but, surprisingly, many have ethical frameworks that limit their product ranges to restrict the sale of unacceptable goods and services such as child pornography or, in comes cases, firearms. This book is a mind expanding (pun intended) exploration of a high tech illicit market place that is essential reading for police, academics and the public at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Guy Chet, Associate Professor of early American and military history at the University of North Texas, in his book The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014) makes a well-crafted argument for the persistence of Atlantic piracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after the age of Blackbeard and Captain Kid. He asserts that piracy was not abruptly stamped out by the royal navy but remained normal rather than exceptional for a long time past the 1730s. The end of piracy is described in the traditional historical narrative as a speedy decline due to the central state’s extension of its authority into the Atlantic frontier and its monopolization of violence. Chet, following methodology established by legal and borderland historians, critiques this assessment pointing out that frontier conditions are sustainable for long periods of time. He fleshes out through each section of his work why the monopoly on violence pronounced in statutory law was not accepted as legitimate or seen in reality in peripheral communities. Despite the central state’s use of army, navy, courts and gallows to extend authority to the frontier, Atlantic piracy waned only slowly in the face of these delegitimizing efforts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Stardom has a history. Hideaki Fujiki‘s new book traces that history through a story of the transformations of Japanese film stars in the early twentieth century. Taking a deeply transnational approach to understanding the imbrication of film stardom and modernity in Japan, Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013) considers modern stardom as a historical process that depended on not just the appearance of a star, but also the circulation of her name and image in the media, and the support of consumers of that media. The book identifies and explores three main periods of the history of early film stardom in Japan, looking in turn at the rise and popularity of early Japanese film stars (1910s-mid-1920s), American film stars in Japan (mid-1910s onward), and a new type of Japanese film star (after the early 1920s). Fujiki’s book is full of the stories of early Japanese benshi who narrated silent films for eager audiences, American actresses like Mary Pickford and Clara Bow who brought a new kind of physicality and sexuality to stardom in Japan, and film directors and critics who attempted to understand and theorize modern Japanese film acting. Making Personas also illuminates the institutional history of the Japanese cinema business, and considers the new forms of stardom that emerged with Japanese colonial modernity. It is a fascinating work on many levels, and well worth reading for fans of modern Japanese history and film history alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Randall L. Schweller is Professor of Political Science and a Social and Behavioral Sciences Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellow at Ohio State University.  He has written Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) In Maxwell’s Demon, Schweller examines the future of world politics, by connecting the increasing reliance on technology and multitasking with a fragmenting world order. The book combines the Greek myth of the Golden Apple of Discord, which explains the start of the Trojan War, with a look at the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Works in the field of genocide studies tend to fall into one of a few camps.  Some are emotional and personal.  Others are historical and narrative.  Still others are intentionally activist and aimed at changing policy or decisions. Martin Shaw‘s works fit into a fourth category.  A historical sociologist, Shaw brings the very best of the social sciences to bear on the subject.  His work is carefully reasoned, theoretically informed and intensely analytical.  He’s driven to understand how the incidents of mass violence fit together into particular categories and into the broader context of a changing world. His thinking about genocide studies has influenced the field immensely.  A decade ago, he began considering the question of the relationship between war and genocide.  Four years later, he provided a theoretically rich discussion of the nature of genocide as a term and as an event. Now he moves on to consider the way in which the changes in the organization of the modern world have shaped the prevalence and nature of mass killing.  In Genocide and International Relations: Changing Patterns in the Transitions of the Late Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Shaw surveys centuries of world history to understand the patterns and relationships that drive genocide and mass violence.  Packed with observations and insight, the book demands and rewards attentive reading and reflection.  It’s a short book, but one that lingers long after you’ve finished reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The history of globalization is found in more than international political organizations and multinational corporations, free-trade agreements and foreign direct investments, satellite communications and special export zones. When looking at the forces that have driven globalization over the last decades, we must also look to football and especially the World Cup. Indeed, there is no greater proof of globalization than the fact that a large part of the world’s population cheered or groaned at exactly the same moment, as Mario Gotze scored to put Germany ahead of Argentina in this year’s final. Globalization is an important theme in the volume of essays on the history of football’s premiere tournament, The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities (Wallstein, 2014). Coming out of a 2013 conference held at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, the volume boasts an impressive squad of football scholars, coming from universities and research institutes in nine different countries. After opening essays from David Goldblatt and Alan Tomlinson, the contributors give an in-depth look at each of the World Cup tournaments, from 1930 in Uruguay to 2010 in South Africa. Credit goes to the volume’s editors, Kay Schiller and Stefan Rinke, for putting together a cohesive, comprehensive, and readable collection of essays, one that can be recommended for students of sports history and curious fans of global football. In the podcast, we hear from both Kay and Stefan about their colleagues’ findings, the persistent themes in World Cup history, and their expectations for World Cups of the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs