Providing a thorough reassessment of our understanding of politics in Third World societies, this book contains some of the liveliest and most original analyses to have been published in recent years. The severity of the political and economic crisis throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1980s has highlighted the inadequacy of existing political science theories and the urgent need to provide new paradigms for the 1990s.

Ray Oldenburg’s concept of third place is re-visited in this book through contemporary approaches and new examples of third places. Third place is not your home (first place), not your work (second place), but those informal public places in which we interact with the people. Readers will come to understand the importance of third places and how they can be incorporated into urban design to offer places of interaction – promoting togetherness in an urbanised world of mobility and rapid change.

A systematic reassessment, by two leading figures in the field, of the paradigm of international development in both theory and practice. It offers an overview and critique of development theory and strategy, and a new framework for the analysis of global inequality, poverty and development in an era of globalization.

The study of international relations, has traditionally been dominated by Western ideas and practices, and marginalized the voice and experiences of the non-Western states and societies. As the world moves to a "post-Western" era, it is imperative that the field of IR acquires a more global meaning and relevance. Drawing together the work of renowned scholar Amitav Acharya and framed by a new introduction and conclusion written for the volume, this book exposes the narrow meaning currently attached to some of the key concepts and ideas in IR, and calls for alternative and broader understandings of them. The need for recasting the discipline has motivated and undergirded Acharya's own scholarship since his entry into the field over three decades ago. This book reflects his own engagement, quarrels and compromise and concludes with suggestions for new pathways to a Global IR- a forward-looking and inclusive enterprise that is reflective of the multiple and global heritage of IR in an changing and interconnected world. It is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the history, development and future of international relations and international relations theory.

The landmark alternative history of the Cold War from the perspective of the Global South, reissued in paperback with a new introduction by the author In this award-winning investigation into the overlooked history of the Third World—with a new preface by the author for its fifteenth anniversary—internationally renowned historian Vijay Prashad conjures what Publishers Weekly calls “a vital assertion of an alternative future.” The Darker Nations, praised by critics as a welcome antidote to apologists for empire, has defined for a generation of scholars, activists, and dreamers what it is to imagine a more just international order and continues to offer lessons for the radical political projects of today. With the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rise of India and China on the global scene, this paradigm-shifting book of groundbreaking scholarship helps us envision the future of the Global South by restoring to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced an impoverished and asymmetrical international political arena. No other book on the Third World—as a utopian idea and a global movement—can speak so effectively and engagingly to our troubled times.

Since the late 1980s, there has been a global upsurge of various forms of regionalist projects. The widening and deepening of the European Union (EU) is the most prominent example, but there has also been a revitalization or expansion of many other regionalist projects as well, such as the African Union (AU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). More or less every government in the world is engaged in regionalism, which also involves a rich variety of business and civil society actors, resulting in a multitude of regional processes in most fields of contemporary politics. In this new text, Fredrik Söderbaum draws on decades of scholarship to provide a major reassessment of regionalism and to address questions about its origins, logic and consequences. By examining regionalism from historical, spatial, comparative and global perspectives, Rethinking Regionalism transcends the deep intellectual and disciplinary rivalries that have limited our knowledge about the subject. This broad-ranging approach enables new and challenging answers to emerge as to why and how regionalism evolves and consolidates, how it can be compared, and what its ongoing significance is for a host of issues within global politics, from security and trade to development and the environment. Retaining a balanced and authoritative style throughout, this text will be welcomed for its uniquely comprehensive examination of regionalism in the contemporary global age.

Rethinking Middle East Politics considers a range of debates on the character of political and socioeconomic development in the Middle East, focusing on the linked processes of state formation and capitalist development. Simon Bromley seeks to reformulate the central questions involved in the study of state formation. He builds a comparative framework based on an examination of key developmental processes in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and offers a range of substantive theses on the place of democracy and Islam in the region. His findings explain a very large part of what appears to be significant in the emergence of the modern Middle East. Rethinking Middle East Politics presents a new way of analyzing politics in the Middle East, offering a perspective that has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally and for the social and political theory of modernity.

This important anthology addresses established notions about Third Cinema theory, and the cinema practice of developing and postcolonial nations. The 'Third Cinema' movement called for a politicised film-making practice in Africa, Asia and Latin America, one which would take on board issues of race, class, religion, and national integrity. The films which resulted from the movement, from directors such as Ousmane Sembene, Satyajit Ray and Nelson Pereira dos Santos, are among the most culturally signficant, politically sophisticated and frequently studied films of the 1960s and 1970s. However, despite the contemporary popularity and critical attention enjoyed by films from Asia and Latin America in particular, Third Cinema and Third Cinema theory appears to have lost its momentum. Rethinking Third Cinema seeks to bring Third Cinema and Third Cinema theory back into the critical spotlight. The contributors address the most difficult and challenging questions Third Cinema poses, suggesting new methodologies and redirections of existing ones. Crucially, they also re-examine the entire phenomenon of film-making in a fast-vanishing 'Third World', with case studies of the cinemas of India, Iran and Hong Kong, among others.

Based on an in-depth examination of the Brazillian case, this book argues that we need to rethink important theoretical issues and empirical realities of party systems in the third wave of democratization.

This title represents the most forward thinking and comprehensive review of development economics currently available.