Faces of the State is a penetrating study of the production of a state-revering political culture in the public life of 1990s Turkey. In this new contribution to the anthropology of the state, Yael Navaro-Yashin brings recent poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory to bear on the study of the political. Delving deeper than studies of nationalist discourse that would focus on consciously articulated narratives of political identity, the author explores sites of "fantasy" in the public-political domain of Istanbul. The book focuses on the conflict over secularism in the aftermath of an Islamist victory in the city's municipalities. In contrast with studies that would problematize and objectify religious movements, the author examines the agency of secularists under a state widely known for its "secularist" policies. The complexity and dynamism of the context studied moves well beyond scholarly distinctions between "secularity" and "religion," as well as "state" and "society." Here, secularism and Islamism emerge as different guises for a culture of statism where people from "society" compete to claim "Turkish culture" for themselves and their life practices. With this work that stretches the boundaries of regionalism, the author situates her anthropological study of Turkey not only in scholarship on the Middle East, but also in the broader problem of thinking "Europe" anew.

This book examines the numerous illegal measures states use, from unlawful imprisonment and curtailing of civil liberties to torture, in the name of responding to terrorism. At the same time, it considers how trade and industrial activities terrorize people by depriving them of the natural resources they need to survive and by exposing communities to life-threatening hazardous conditions.

In the new edition of this major work, Seyom Brown brings his authoritative account of United States foreign policy completely up-to-date with analyses of the Truman administration to the Clinton administration. Most notably, Brown provides an insightful overview of the last three presidencies, beginning with an expanded treatment of the Reagan years to the first major scholarly assessment of Bush's foreign policies to Clinton's early ambivalence toward grappling with the dilemmas of the post-Cold War world.

The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.

A leading legal scholar provides a highly original comparative analysis of how justice is administered in legal systems around the world and of the profound and often puzzling changes taking place in civil and criminal procedure. Constructing a conceptual framework of the legal process based on the link between politics and justice, Mirjan R. Damaska provides a new perspective that enables disparate procedural features to emerge as fascinating recognizable patterns. His book is "a significant work of scholarship . . . full of important insights."—Harold J. Berman

Terrorism, a widespread global phenomenon, manifests itself in the actions and the policies of individuals and groups, but also and primarily in the actions and policies of states. Delving into the seldom-discussed question of the motivation for most episodes of terrorism, this book studies terrorism’s effects based on the economic and geopolitical imbalances that frame today's global governance. The main goal of terrorism is to induce terror, and perhaps to influence public opinion for political change. Many states hide their terrorist activities under the “faces” they show the world, masks intended to hide real aims of acquiring or expanding power and wealth. These activities, presented as “self-defense,” “preventive action,” “counter-measures” or even as promoting "progress and development," are forms of state terrorism that are much more widespread, powerful, and destructive than the actions originating from groups labeled terrorist since 9/11. This book examines the numerous illegal measures states use, from unlawful imprisonment and curtailing of civil liberties to torture, in the name of responding to terrorism. At the same time, it considers how trade and industrial activities terrorize people by depriving them of the natural resources they need to survive and by exposing communities to life-threatening hazardous conditions. In closing, the book considers how existing laws might stem the tide of state terrorism. The conclusions are not optimistic: the UN's systems and legal regimes are clear in defense of human rights, but the structure and nature of state power do not permit these mandates to prevail. With a foreword by Tullio Scovazzi.

“Concise, clear and convincing. . . a vision for the country as a whole.” —James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review A leading sociologist's brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California Once upon a time, any mention of California triggered unpleasant reminders of Ronald Reagan and right-wing tax revolts, ballot propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, and racist policing that sparked two of the nation's most devastating riots. In fact, California confronted many of the challenges the rest of the country faces now—decades before the rest of us. Today, California is leading the way on addressing climate change, low-wage work, immigrant integration, overincarceration, and more. As white residents became a minority and job loss drove economic uncertainty, California had its own Trump moment twenty-five years ago, but has become increasingly blue over each of the last seven presidential elections. How did the Golden State manage to emerge from its unsavory past to become a bellwether for the rest of the country? Thirty years after Mike Davis's hellish depiction of California in City of Quartz, the award-winning sociologist Manuel Pastor guides us through a new and improved California, complete with lessons that the nation should heed. Inspiring and expertly researched, State of Resistance makes the case for honestly engaging racial anxiety in order to address our true economic and generational challenges, a renewed commitment to public investments, the cultivation of social movements and community organizing, and more.

Explores the family trees and genealogical identity of twelve remarkable Americans: Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Eva Longoria, Yo Yo Ma, and others. Since 2007, the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been helping African Americans find long-buried details about their ancestors by researching their family trees and then, when the paper trail ends, by analyzing their DNA and marrying that information to a wealth of historical data. Now, in Faces of America, Gates explores the family trees of twelve of America’s most recognizable and extraordinary citizens, individuals who learn that they are of Asian, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Jewish, Latino, Native American, Swiss, and Syrian ancestry: Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian and television personality Stephen Colbert, writer Louise Erdrich, writer Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, cellist Yo Yo Ma, writer and director Mike Nichols, former monarch of Jordan Queen Noor, surgeon and author Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and Olympic gold medalist and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi. In addition, each of the subjects in Faces of America underwent dense genotyping to trace their genetic ancestry on their father’s line, their mother’s line, and their percentages of European, Asian, Native American, and African ancestry. Readers will share in the surprise and delight, the shock and sadness of these twelve individuals themselves as Gates unveils their rich family stories, traced back to their arrival on America’s shores, and beyond, deep into the history of their ancestors’ countries of origin. In this compelling book, Gates demonstrates that where we come from profoundly and fundamentally informs who we are today.

ISIS's genocidal attack on the Yezidi population in northern Iraq in 2014 brought the world's attention to the small faith that numbers less than one million worldwide. That summer ISIS massacred Yezidi men and enslaved women and children. More than one hundred thousand Yezidis were besieged on Sinjar Mountain. The US began airstrikes to roll back ISIS, citing a duty to save the Yezidis, but the genocide is still ongoing. The headlines have moved on but thousands of Yezidi women and children remain in captivity, and many more are still displaced. Sinjar is now free from ISIS but the Yezidi homeland is at the centre of growing tensions amongst the city's liberators, making returning home for the Yezidis almost impossible. The mass abduction of Yezidi women and children is here conveyed with extraordinary intensity in the first-hand reporting of a young journalist who has been based in Iraqi Kurdistan for the past four years, covering the war with ISIS and its impact on the people of the country. Otten tells the story of the ISIS attacks, the mass enslavements of Yezidi women and the fallout from the disaster. She challenges common perceptions of Yezidi female victimhood by focusing on stories of resistance passed down by generations. Yezidi women describe how, in the recent conflict, they followed the tradition of their ancestors who, a century ago during persecutions at the fall of the Ottoman empire, put ash on their faces to make themselves unattractive and try to avoid being raped. Today, over 3,000 Yezidi women and girls remain in the Caliphate where they are bought and sold, and passed between fighters as chattel. But many others have escaped or been released. Otten bases her book on interviews with these survivors, as well as those who smuggled them to safety, painstakingly piecing together their accounts of enslavement. Their deeply moving personal narratives bring alive a human tragedy.

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University