Centre for Global and Transnational Politics

Jonathan Seglow co-edited (along with G. Calder and P. Cole) the recently published Citizenship Acquisition and National Belonging: Migration, Membership and the Liberal Democratic State (Palgrave).

From the publisher: This groundbreaking collection critically explores the nature and implications of immigration, naturalization and national identity in contemporary Western liberal democracies. What does it take to become a citizen of a particular nation? In a globalizing world, and with increasing international mobility, is it justified to restrict membership of a society? If so, on what grounds? Do societies need a distinctive national culture in order to thrive – and should this be a factor in the allocation of citizenship to those migrating from elsewhere? How is national identity actually perceived among the existing citizens of western countries? 
In this volume major commentators, from a range of critical perspectives, explore a series of pressing, controversial issues surrounding the acquisition of citizenship, in theory and practice. These issues are of key importance for policy makers and social institutions, and for the self-understanding of contemporary societies. This book will be vital reading for students and researchers in Political Theory, Sociology, Law, Social Policy, Ethics, and other disciplines where the current debates around migration and citizenship apply.

Reflections on Time and Politics by Nathan Widder (Pennsylvania State Univ Press)

Recent philosophical debates have moved beyond proclamations of the "death of philosophy" and the "death of the subject" to consider more positively how philosophy can be practiced and the human self can be conceptualized today. Inspired by the writings of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze, rapid changes related to globalization, and advances in evolutionary biology and neuroscience, these debates have generated a renewed focus on time as an active force of change and novelty. Rejecting simple linear models of time, these strands of thought have provided creative alternatives to a traditional reliance on fixed boundaries and stable identities that has proven unable to grapple with the intense speeds and complexities of contemporary life.

In this book, Nathan Widder contributes to these debates, but also goes significantly beyond them. Holding that current writings remain too focused on time's movement, he examines more fundamentally time's structure and its structural ungrounding, releasing time completely from its traditional subordination to movement and space. Doing this enables him to reformulate entirely the terms through which time and change are understood, leading to a radical alteration of our understandings of power, resistance, language, and the unconscious, and taking post-identity political philosophy and ethics in a new direction.

Eighteen independent but interlinked reflections engage with ancient philosophy, mathematical theory, dialectics, psychoanalysis, archaeology, and genealogy. The book's broad coverage and novel rereadings of key figures including Aristotle, Bergson, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze make this a unique rethinking of the nature of pluralism, multiplicity, and politics.

http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03394-5.html

Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory by Chris Rumford (Routledge).

The book takes issue with various strands of globalization thinking from the perspective of ‘critical cosmopolitanism’. At the core of this critique is the idea that globalization theories have, over a period of two decades or so, uncritically offered us a strong vision of the singularity of the world, its oneness and ‘unicity’, to use Robertson’s term, a vision which follows from the insistence that globalization makes the world into a single place (and allows us to perceive it as a single place). The book advances the idea that cosmopolitanism, if it is to retain a critical edge in the social sciences, has to be centrally concerned with generating a multiplicity of perspectives, and consequently allowing for the possibility of many worlds. The result is a highly innovative account of European transformations under conditions of globalization. The book argues for a social theory of European transformations rather than a sociology of European integration, and introduces us to concepts which challenge accepted thinking on the spaces and borders of Europe. In addition to its compelling reading of cosmopolitanism, 'Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory' offers a provocative critique of Europe-as-Empire, and advances the claim that Europe should be considered ‘postwestern’.

Contents:
1 Introduction: Cosmopolitanism as a Politics of Space
2 From a Sociology of the EU to a Social Theory of Europe
3 The Borders and Borderlands of Europe: A Critique of Balibar
4 Europe’s Cosmopolitan Borders
5 ‘Spaces of Wonder’: The Global Politics of Strangeness
6 Empire and the Hubris of the ‘High Point’
7 Postwesternization
8 The World is Not Enough: Globalization Reconsidered
9 Concluding Thoughts: The Spaces of Critical Cosmopolitanism

www.routledge.com/books/Cosmopolitan-Spaces-isbn9780415390675

The book has its own webpage: http://cosmo101.wordpress.com/

Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific edited by Amitav Acharya and Evelyn Goh (MIT Press)

Power in World Politics edited by Felix Berenskoetter and Michael J. Williams (Routledge)

This book engages the view that students of International Relations need to break with the habit of defining power in terms of military capabilities of states.

Featuring contributions from both upcoming and distinguished scholars, including Steven Lukes, Joseph Nye, and Stefano Guzzini, it explores the nature and location of ‘power’ in international politics through a variety of conceptual lenses. With a particular focus on the phenomenon of ‘soft’ power and different types of actors in a globalizing world, fifteen chapters assess the meaning of ‘power’ from the perspectives of realism, constructivism, global governance, and development studies, presenting discussions ranging from conceptual to practical oriented analyses.

Power in World Politics attempts to broaden theoretical horizons to enrich our understanding of the distribution of power in world politics, thereby also contributing to the discovery and analysis of new political spaces. This is essential reading for all advanced students and scholars of international relations.