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The Political Ideology of Ayatollah Khamenei: Out of the Mouth of the Supreme Leader of Iran (UCLA Center for Middle East Development (CMED) series)
by Yvette Hovsepian-BearceAyatollah ʿAli Hosseini Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is one of the most controversial and influential Muslim leaders in the world today. As Iran’s main decision-maker, his theocratic ideology and decisions carry global consequences. The Political Ideology of Ayatollah Khamenei is the first book to identify and analyze the development and evolution of the theocratic ideology of the Supreme Leader from 1962 to 2014, using his own writings, speeches, and biographies, as well as literature published in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This work provides new insights into Khamenei’s political thought and behavior and their impact on Iran’s domestic, regional, and international policies. Correlating the development of Khamenei’s personality, character, and political behavior with Iran’s internal and external challenges, this study explores key issues of the Middle East region, in particular Iran’s political posture toward Israel, the United States, and the Muslim world, and the diplomatic crises unfolding over Iran’s nuclear development program. This work provides a comprehensive chronological and thematic survey of Khamenei’s life. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, researchers, diplomats, and policymakers focusing on Middle Eastern politics, Iranian affairs, Islamic studies, and international relations; and could serve as an essential resource for those striving to understand Iran’s policies toward Israel, the United States, and the Muslim world, as shaped by its supreme autocrat.
The Political Implications Of Human Genetic Technology
by Robert H. BlankHuman genetic technology has advanced rapidly in recent years to the point where amniocentesis is commonplace and in vitro fertilization has been successful. On the horizon looms the specter of human cloning and genetic engineering, raising a storm of new moral and ethical questions. These questions, asserts the author, are not the only ones to be considered; the impact and role of public policy are equally critical. What part should the state play in human genetic intervention? To what extent does a democratic society have the duty to take steps to reduce genetic disease and improve the quality of life through genetic engineering? If society has such responsibility, at what stage does societal good preempt individual rights? What is society's obligation toward future generations and is genetic manipulation justifiable on these grounds? After surveying the state of the art, the author grapples with these questions, contending that decisions ultimately will not be based on ethical and moral grounds –they will be fought out in the political arena.
The Political Importance of Regional Trading Blocs (Routledge Revivals)
by Bart Kerremans Bob SwitkyThis title was first published in 2000. This text addresses concerns about regional trade agreements. From a variety of political and economic angles, it explains the emergence of trade blocs, their internal policies and politics, and their effects on global trade. It does not provide sequential descriptions and analyses of each of the world's major trading blocs. The focus here is on a number of causal factors that help explain the emergence of trading blocs and the development of their relations to and effects on the multilateral trading system. In each chapter, attempts have been made to draw theoretical and case-based generalizations that may apply to other trade blocs than the used in the empirical analyses.
The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities
by Adam T. SmithHow do landscapes--defined in the broadest sense to incorporate the physical contours of the built environment, the aesthetics of form, and the imaginative reflections of spatial representations--contribute to the making of politics? Shifting through the archaeological, epigraphic, and artistic remains of early complex societies, this provocative and far-reaching book is the first systematic attempt to explain the links between spatial organization and politics from an anthropological point of view. The Classic-period Maya, the kingdom of Urartu, and the cities of early southern Mesopotamia provide the focal points for this multidimensional account of human polities. Are the cities and villages in which we live and work, the lands that are woven into our senses of cultural and personal identity, and the national territories we occupy merely stages on which historical processes and political rituals are enacted? Or do the forms of buildings and streets, the evocative sensibilities of architecture and vista, the aesthetics of place conjured in art and media constitute political landscapes--broad sets of spatial practices critical to the formation, operation, and overthrow of polities, regimes, and institutions? Smith brings together contemporary theoretical developments from geography and social theory with anthropological perspectives and archaeological data to pursue these questions.
The Political Languages of Emancipation in the British Caribbean and the U.S. South
by Demetrius L. EudellThis comparative study examines the emancipation process in the British Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, during the 1830s and in the United States, particularly South Carolina, during the 1860s. Analyzing the intellectual and ideological foundations of postslavery Anglo-America, Demetrius Eudell explores how former slaves, former slaveholders, and their societies' central governments understood and discussed slavery, emancipation, and the transition between the two.Eudell investigates the public policies--which addressed issues of labor control, access to land, and the general social behaviors of former slaves--used to execute emancipation. In both regions, government-appointed officials (special magistrates in Jamaica and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina) were crucial in implementing these policies. While many former slaves were fighting for the right to be paid for their labor and to own land, many officials came to view their role as part of a new civilizing mission whose goal was to eradicate the psychic damage supposedly caused by slavery. Eudell concludes by examining the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and the retreat from Reconstruction in South Carolina, part of the larger movement of Redemption that occurred in 1877. Both of these occurrences represented the incomplete victory of emancipation, Eudell argues, and should provoke scholarly questions regarding the persistent thesis of U.S. exceptionalism.
The Political Life of Children
by Robert ColesRobert Coles, one of the most eminent child psychiatrists in the world, spent over a decade researching this book and its companion volume, The Moral Life of Children. Coles visits children all over the world, listening with willing ears, and he captures their thoughts and feelings with remarkable sympathy. As Coles demonstrates in this fascinating work, children learn much more than we think they do about political issues. While we have always taken it for granted that parents teach their children about language, religion, and morality, Coles shows how mothers and fathers also instill a strong understanding of political life in their offspring.
The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place
by Maoz Azaryahu Reuben Rose-Redwood Derek AldermanStreetscapes are part of the taken-for-granted spaces of everyday urban life, yet they are also contested arenas in which struggles over identity, memory, and place shape the social production of urban space. This book examines the role that street naming has played in the political life of urban streetscapes in both historical and contemporary cities. The renaming of streets and remaking of urban commemorative landscapes have long been key strategies that different political regimes have employed to legitimize spatial assertions of sovereign authority, ideological hegemony, and symbolic power. Over the past few decades, a rich body of critical scholarship has explored the politics of urban toponymy, and the present collection brings together the works of geographers, anthropologists, historians, linguists, planners, and political scientists to examine the power of street naming as an urban place-making practice. Covering a wide range of case studies from cities in Europe, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, the contributions to this volume illustrate how the naming of streets has been instrumental to the reshaping of urban spatial imaginaries and the cultural politics of place.
The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt
by Angie HeoSince the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state. Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.
The Political Machine: Assembling Sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus
by Adam T. SmithThe Political Machine investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, Adam Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things--from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. Smith looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance--and he considers how these developments continue to shape politics today.Smith shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or "machines" sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortify political power even in the contemporary world. Smith provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, The Political Machine sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.
The Political Museum: Power, Conflict, and Identity in Cyprus (Heritage, Tourism, and Community)
by Alexandra Bounia Theopisti Stylianou-LambertThis engaging volume reveals how politics permeates all facets of museum practice, particularly in regions of political conflict. In these settings, museums can be extraordinarily influential for shaping identity and collective memory and for peace building. Using key Cypriote archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and art museums as examples, this book: provides a multifaceted and deeper understanding of how politics, conflict, national agendas, and individual initiatives can shape museums and their narratives; discusses how these forces contribute to the creation of, and conflict over, national, community and personal identities; examines how museums use inclusion and exclusion in their collections, exhibitions, objects and interpretive material as a way of selectively constructing collective memories. This book will be an important resource for museum professionals, as well as scholars interested in the effects of politics on museums and interpretations of the past.
The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns (Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies)
by Cosimo ZeneBridging two generations of scholarship on social inequality and modern political forms, this book examines the political philosophies of inclusion of subalterns/Dalits in Gramsci and Ambedkar’s political philosophies. It highlights the full range of Gramsci’s ‘philosophy of praxis’ and presents a more critical appreciation of his thought in the study of South Asian societies. Equally, Ambedkar’s thought and philosophy is put to the forefront and acquires a prominence in the international context. Overcoming geographical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, the book gives relevance to the subalterns. Following the lead of Gramsci and Ambedkar, the contributors are committed, apart from underscoring the historical roots of subalternity, to uncovering the subalterns’ presence in social, economic, cultural, educational, literary, legal and religious grounds. The book offers a renewed critical approach to Gramsci and Ambedkar and expands on their findings in order to offer a present-day political focus into one of the most crucial themes of contemporary society. This book is of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including political theory, post-colonial studies, subaltern studies, comparative political philosophy, Dalit studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies and the study of religions.
The Political Philosophy of Confucianism: An interpretation of the social and political ideas of Confucius, his forerunners, and his early disciples.
by Leonard Shihlien HsüFirst published in 1932.One of the most astonishing features of the Confucian teaching to the modern reader is its anticipation of the Spencerian formula of evolution and its adaptation of this to a programme of progress. This volume shows that Confucius' teaching is still relevant in many of its features, not merely for China but also for the West. Contents include: The background of Confucian political philosophy; the state and its origin; political unity and organization; the principle of benevolent government; law and justice; democracy and representation, social evolution.
The Political Philosophy of Judith Butler (Routledge Innovations in Political Theory)
by Birgit SchippersJudith Butler can justifiably be described as one of the major critical thinkers of our time. While she is best-known for her interventions into feminist debates on gender, sexuality and feminist politics, her focus in recent years has broadened to encompass some of the most pertinent topics of interest to contemporary political philosophy. Drawing on Butler’s deconstructive reading of the key categories and concepts of political thought, Birgit Schippers expounds and advocates her challenge to the conceptual binaries that pervade modern political discourse. Using examples and case studies like the West’s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Schippers demonstrates how Butler’s philosophically informed engagement with pressing political issues of our time elucidates our understanding of topics such as immigration and multiculturalism, sovereignty, or the prospect for new forms of cohabitation and citizenship beyond and across national boundaries. A detailed exposition and analysis of Butler’s recent ideas, championing her efforts at articulating the possibilities for radical politics and ethical life in an era of global interdependence, this book makes an makes an important contribution to the emerging field of international political philosophy.
The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal
by Iqbal Singh SeveaThis book reflects upon the political philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal, a towering intellectual figure in South Asian history, revered by many for his poetry and his thought. He lived in India in the twilight years of the British Empire and, apart from a short but significant period studying in the West, he remained in Punjab until his death in 1938. The book studies Iqbal's critique of nationalist ideology, and his attempts to chart a path for the development of the "nation" by liberating it from the centralizing and homogenizing tendencies of the modern state structure. These were highly relevant and often controversial issues during the years leading up to independence, and Iqbal frequently clashed with his contemporaries over his view of nationalism as "the greatest enemy of Islam. " In rejecting post-Enlightenment conceptions of religion, he constructed his own particular interpretation of Islam that would provide solutions to all political, social, and economic ills. In many ways, his vision of Islam - forged through an interaction with Muslim thinkers and Western intellectual traditions - was ahead of its time, and since his death both modernists and Islamists have continued to champion his legacy.
The Political Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Routledge Studies in Islamic Philosophy)
by Seyyed Khalil ToussiProviding a comprehensive and widely accessible investigation into Mullā Ṣadrā’s works, this book establishes his political philosophy and instigates a dialogue on the relevance of Ṣadrā’s philosophy to present day challenges. Investigating Ṣadrā’s primary sources, the book reveals that his discourse on politics cannot be interpreted as a discursive springboard for hierocracy and political authority of jurists, nor does the mystical attitude of his philosophy (with its emphasis on the inner aspects of religion) promote an idea of quietism or a fundamental separation of religion and politics. Laying the groundwork for further translations and interpretation, this volume is not just concerned with ‘political philosophy’ as yet another particular and limited facet of Ṣadrā’s overall system. Rather, through unifying mystical, intellectual and political aspects of this singular philosopher, the volume is concerned with properly contextualizing and understanding the guiding intentions and inspirations that unify and underlie all of his creative philosophical endeavour. This pioneering and provocative work of genuine reflection is a new contribution to the wider subject of political philosophy. It will be of interest to researchers of political philosophy, Islamic philosophy, mysticism, theology, history and Iranian studies.
The Political Poetess: Victorian Femininity, Race, and the Legacy of Separate Spheres
by Tricia LootensThe Political Poetess challenges familiar accounts of the figure of the nineteenth-century Poetess, offering new readings of Poetess performance and criticism. In performing the Poetry of Woman, the mythic Poetess has long staked her claims as a creature of “separate spheres”—one exempt from emerging readings of nineteenth-century women’s political poetics. Turning such assumptions on their heads, Tricia Lootens models a nineteenth-century domestic or private sphere whose imaginary, apolitical heart is also the heart of nation and empire, and, as revisionist histories increasingly attest, is traumatized and haunted by histories of slavery. Setting aside late Victorian attempts to forget the unfulfilled, sentimental promises of early antislavery victories, The Political Poetess restores Poetess performances like Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” to view—and with them, the vitality of the Black Poetess within African-American public life. Crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline to “connect the dots” of Poetess performance, Lootens demonstrates how new histories and ways of reading position poetic texts by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dinah Mulock Craik, George Eliot, and Frances E. W. Harper as convergence points for larger engagements ranging from Germaine de Staël to G.W.F. Hegel, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, Alice Walker, and beyond.
The Political Portrait: Leadership, Image and Power (Routledge Research in Art and Politics)
by Luciano Cheles Alessandro GiaconeThe leader's portrait, produced in a variety of media (statues, coins, billboards, posters, stamps), is a key instrument of propaganda in totalitarian regimes, but increasingly also dominates political communication in democratic countries as a result of the personalization and spectacularization of campaigning. Written by an international group of contributors, this volume focuses on the last one hundred years, covering a wide range of countries around the globe, and dealing with dictatorial regimes and democratic systems alike. As well as discussing the effigies that are produced by the powers that be for propaganda purposes, it looks at the uses of portraiture by antagonistic groups or movements as forms of resistance, derision, denunciation and demonization. This volume will be of interest to researchers in visual studies, art history, media studies, cultural studies, politics and contemporary history.
The Political Power of Protest
by Daniel Q. GillionGillion demonstrates the direct influence that political protest behavior has on Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, illustrating that protest is a form of democratic responsiveness that government officials have used, and continue to draw on, to implement federal policies. Focusing on racial and ethnic minority concerns, this book shows that the context of political protest has served as a signal for political preferences. As pro-minority rights behavior grew and anti-minority rights actions declined, politicians learned from minority protest and responded when they felt emboldened by stronger informational cues stemming from citizens' behavior, a theory referred to as the 'information continuum'. Although the shift from protest to politics as a political strategy has opened the door for institutionalized political opportunity, racial and ethnic minorities have neglected a powerful tool to illustrate the inequalities that exist in contemporary society.
The Political Psychology of War Rape: Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina (War, Politics and Experience)
by Inger SkjelsbækThis book provides a conceptual framework for understanding war rape and its impact, through empirical examination of the case of Bosnia. Providing a contextual understanding of sexual violence in war, and situating Bosnian war rape in relation to subsequent conflicts, the book offers a methodological outline of how sexual violence in war can be studied from a political-psychological perspective. It presents empirical findings from the field that show what war rape can entail in the aftermath of armed conflict for victims and their communities. Through its comprehensive approach to Bosnian experiences, the volume expands the conceptualization of victimhood and challenges the assumption that sexual violence is a particularly difficult theme to study because of victim silence. Rather, the author demonstrates there are many voices that can provide insight and understandings of war rape and its impact without having to compromise the safety and privacy of individual victims. Finally, the book shows the ways in which individual experiences of war rape are shaped by national and international discourses on gender, sexuality and politics. This book will be of interest to students of political psychology, war and conflict studies, European politics, ethnic conflict, politics and IR in general.
The Political Reconstruction of American Tobacco, 1862-1933 (Reconstructing America)
by Patrick Mulford O’ConnorA deeply researched and clearly argued account of the mutual growth of the federal government and the modern tobacco Nearly everything about the United States tobacco economy changed in the generation following the American Civil War. From labor to consumption, manufacturing to regulation, tobacco was utterly reconstructed, “comparatively a new industry,” as one contemporary wrote.The Political Reconstruction of American Tobacco, 1862–1933 exposes the causes of these changes, and in the process, it reconsiders cornerstones of the American national narrative. Through a detailed rendering of tobacco’s late-nineteenth-century political economy, this book argues that the federal state’s and American capitalism’s development were mutually constitutive—and fundamentally political—processes. From the Civil War to the Progressive Era, diverse political movements across tobacco’s commodity chain drove state and market development, creating the immense power and stifling poverty that defined tobacco’s reconstruction. The Political Reconstruction of American Tobacco, 1862–1933 emphasizes the significance of the thousands of manufacturers whose interest groups shaped federal tax policy and, in turn, forged a powerful and effective internal revenue system; the increasingly influential fertilizer producers and warehouse operators who determined tobacco’s value; and the crop scientists who sought to promote and rationalize US tobacco production. As these actors reshaped tobacco’s commodity chain, they missed, and even dismissed, the interests of tobacco growers, especially newly emancipated African Americans and smallholding whites throughout the South.The ruling logic of tobacco’s reconstructed political economy rationalized agrarian indebtedness, justified low prices, and intensified labor discipline on thousands of small farms. In emphasizing these exclusions, The Political Reconstruction of American Tobacco, 1862–1933 reveals how nineteenth-century state and economic development coincided with and even created rural poverty.
The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies (Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science)
by Karen BirdIn 2005, almost 700,000 immigrants acquired the citizenship of a member state of the European Union; over 600,000 became US citizens; nearly 100,000 became Australians and approximately 200,000 Canadians. 2005 was not an exceptional year. During the past decades, many advanced liberal democracies have become more ethnically diverse societies. This book breaks new ground in the analysis of the political representation of immigrants and visible minorities both theoretically and empirically. It examines the upward trend in migrant and minority representation and demonstrates that there remain crucial differences across liberal democracies in the timing of these developments; in channels of access for minority representatives, in the policy focus and outcomes of minority representation; in the nature of the connections between minority representatives and minority communities, and in the nature of their relationships with constituents at large. Part I analyses immigrants and visible minorities as voters, who must be the starting point of any analysis of political representation. Part II deals with the stage of candidate selection within political parties, a crucial and under-researched stage in the process of political representation. Part III deals with immigrants and members of visible minorities, once elected to parliament and includes analyses of the Canadian Parliament, the German Bundestag, MPs in the United Kingdom and Members of the United States Congress. The book will of interest to students and scholars of migration and ethnicity studies and political science, especially those with an interest in political representation, democratic institutions, voting behaviour, party organisation, legislative behaviour and comparative politics.
The Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia: Conflict and Leadership (Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series)
by Marcus MietznerIn the late 1990s, prominent scholars of civil-military relations detected a decline in the political significance of the armed forces across Southeast Asia. A decade later, however, this trend seems to have been reversed. The Thai military launched a coup in 2006, the Philippine armed forces expanded their political privileges under the Arroyo presidency, and the Burmese junta successfully engineered pseudo-democratic elections in 2010. This book discusses the political resurgence of the military in Southeast Asia throughout the 2000s. Written by distinguished experts on military affairs, the individual chapters explore developments in Burma, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, East Timor, Indonesia and Singapore. They not only assess, but also offer explanations for the level of military involvement in politics in each country. Consequently, the book also makes a significant contribution to the comparative debate about militaries in politics. Whilst conditions obviously differ from country to country, most authors in this book conclude that the shape of civil-military relations is not predetermined by historic, economic or cultural factors, but is often the result of intra-civilian conflicts and divisive or ineffective political leadership.
The Political Right in Israel: Different Faces of Jewish Populism (Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict)
by Dani FilcThis book takes a fresh look at the trajectories of Israeli politics since the election of Likud in 1977, examining how right wing parties have adopted populist policies in order to carve out an identity and win support at the polls. As such it demonstrates how populism has become a hugely significant factor in shaping Israeli politics and society. The original perspective taken by the author allows for an understanding of the central phenomena of the contemporary political system in Israel, such as the Likud's party centrality in Israeli politics, the political force of the religious Shas party and the growing influence of certain political leaders. Through this innovative analysis of the concept of populism, the book contributes to a better understanding of the Israeli political system. With Israel playing such a central role in the Middle East conflict, this analysis of the ways in which populism contributes to the consolidation of governing political forces in Israel will allow for a better understanding of this conflict. Combining the theoretical elaboration of the concept of populism with its application in the analysis of a specific test-case, this novel approach contributes to the ongoing research on populist politics, and as such will be a useful tool for understanding many issues in the study of populism, comparative politics and the Middle East.
The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice
by Nina M. MooreThe race problem in the American criminal justice system endures because of the enabling behavior of the public and of policy makers. The tendency of racial justice advocates to point the finger of blame chiefly at law enforcement, or racial conservatives, or the war on drugs, or any other single entity is misguided. Whether the problem is defined in terms of minority overrepresentation in the criminal justice system or in terms of the differential treatment minorities receive while entangled within the criminal process, a critical mass of citizens and policy makers that care enough to demand something be done about it is lacking. We Are "The Man" is the story of how racial concerns are consistently ignored in the national crime-policy process and why.
The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology (Contemporary Liminality)
by Agnes Horvath Arpad SzakolczaiThis book offers a new approach to the problem of evil through an examination of the anthropological figure of the ‘trickster’. A lesser known and much more recent term than evil, the authors use the trickster to facilitate a greater understanding of the return of evil in the modern era. Instead of simply opposing ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the figure of the trickster is used to pursue the trajectories of similarities and quasi-similarities through imitation. After engaging with the trickster as presented in comparative anthropology and mythology, where it appears in tales and legends as a strange, erratic outsider, the authors seek to gain an inside perspective of trickster knowledge through an examination of mythology and the classical world, including both philosophers and poets. The book then goes on to trace the trickster through prehistory, using archaeological evidence to complement the diverse narratives. In this way, and by investigating the knowledge and customs surrounding evil, the authors use the figure of the trickster to provide an unprecedented diagnosis of the contemporary world, where external, mechanical rationality has become taken for granted and even considered as foundational in politics, economics, and technologised science. The authors advance the idea that the modern world, with its global free markets, mass mediatic democracy and technologised science, represents a universalisation of trickster logic. The Political Sociology and Anthropology of the Evil will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social theory, political anthropology and political sociology, as well as those interested in the ways in which evil can infiltrate reality.