Michael Warner

Michael Warner, one of our most brilliant social critics, argues that gay marriage and other moves toward normalcy are bad not just for the gays but for everyone. In place of sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.

Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life

The Trouble with Normal

In recent years, lesbians and gay men have developed a new, aggressive style of politics. At the same time, innovative intellectual energies have made queer theory an explosive field of study. In "Fear of a Queer Planet", Michael Warner draws on emerging new queer politics, and shows how queer activists have come to challenge basic assumptions about the social and political world. Existing traditions of theory - Marxism, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, anthropology, legal theory, nationalism, and antinationalism - have too often presupposed a heterosexual society, as the essays in this volume demonstrate. "Fear of a Queer Planet" suggests a new agenda for social theory. It moves beyond the idea that lesbians and gay men share a minority identity and special interests and that their issues can be subordinated to more general social conflicts. Instead, Warner and the other contributors to this volume show that queer sexualities take many forms, are the subject of many kinds of conflict and struggles, and must be taken as a starting point in thinking about cultural politics. This collection explores the impact of ACT UP, Queer Nation, multiculturalism, the new religious right, outing, queerness, postmodernism, and other shifts in the politics of sexuality. The authors featured speak from different backgrounds of gender, race, nationality, and discipline. Together, they show how struggles over sexuality have profound implications for progressive politics, social theory, and cultural studies. Michael Warner has written extensively on censorship and the public sphere, the construction of American literary history, and the social and political implication of literary theories. He is author of "The Letter of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America" and co-editor of "The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A Documentary Anthology".

Queer Politics and Social Theory

Fear of a Queer Planet

An investigation of how the idea of a public as a central fiction of modern life informs our literature, politics, and culture.

Publics and Counterpublics

Myra Jehlen

The English Literatures of America redefines colonial American literatures, sweeping from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the West Indies and Guiana. The book begins with the first colonization of the Americas and stretches beyond the Revolution to the early national period. Many texts are collected here for the first time; others are recognized masterpieces of the canon--both British and American--that can now be read in their Atlantic context. By emphasizing the culture of empire and by representing a transatlantic dialogue, The English Literatures of America allows a new way to understand colonial literature both in the United States and abroad.

1500-1800

The English Literatures of America

A social critic argues that gay marrige and other attempts at "normalcy" are counterproductive to gays and society at large, arguing for a new, multifarious definition of human sexuality

This sweeping history of the development of professional, institutionalized intelligence examines the implications of the fall of the state monopoly on espionage today and beyond. During the Cold War, only the alliances clustered around the two superpowers maintained viable intelligence endeavors, whereas a century ago, many states could aspire to be competitive at these dark arts. Today, larger states have lost their monopoly on intelligence skills and capabilities as technological and sociopolitical changes have made it possible for private organizations and even individuals to unearth secrets and influence global events. Historian Michael Warner addresses the birth of professional intelligence in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subsequent rise of US intelligence during the Cold War. He brings this history up to the present day as intelligence agencies used the struggle against terrorism and the digital revolution to improve capabilities in the 2000s. Throughout, the book examines how states and other entities use intelligence to create, exploit, and protect secret advantages against others, and emphasizes how technological advancement and ideological competition drive intelligence, improving its techniques and creating a need for intelligence and counterintelligence activities to serve and protect policymakers and commanders. The world changes intelligence and intelligence changes the world. This sweeping history of espionage and intelligence will be a welcomed by practitioners, students, and scholars of security studies, international affairs, and intelligence, as well as general audiences interested in the evolution of espionage and technology.

An International Security History

The Rise and Fall of Intelligence

Boys' Club

Rory Sullivan

The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg clearly identified the corporate sector as one of the key actors in the delivery of national and international poverty reduction targets in developing countries. "Partnerships" between government, civil society and business were proposed as one means whereby these poverty reduction targets were to be achieved. Despite the rhetoric, there was less consideration of how such partnerships could work in practice, the outcomes that could be achieved, or the relative merits of partnerships over other, more traditional approaches to development. This book is about partnerships between the private sector, government and civil society. Its objective is to share practical experiences in establishing and implementing such partnerships and to show how partnerships work. The focus is on the oil, gas and mining industries, as these sectors have tended to be the primary drivers of foreign investment in developing countries. These corporations increasingly operate in regions characterised by poor communities and fragile environments. The more effective use of external relationships to ensure the effective contribution of these investments to poverty reduction and local environmental management is critical, for the companies, for government, and for the poor. Putting Partnerships to Work is based on the work of the Secretariat of the Natural Resources Cluster (NRC) of Business Partners for Development (BPD). This major research programme, which ran from 1998 to 2002, aimed to enhance the role of oil, gas and mining corporations in international development. The programme objective was to produce practical guidance, based on the experience of specific natural resource operations around the world, on how partnerships involving companies, government authorities and civil-society organisations can be an effective means of reducing investment risks and of promoting community and regional development. The programme encompassed partnerships in Colombia, Nigeria, India, Venezuela, Bolivia, Zambia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia and Tanzania. The specific projects that were implemented included not only "traditional" development projects such as the provision of water, healthcare or infrastructure but also themes as diverse as conflict prevention, regional development, micro-enterprise development and managing oil spill compensation. Based on the experience of establishing and implementing effective partnerships, the NRC identified good practice, and developed replicable guidelines, tools and training materials. This book is not only about good practice; it presents both the positive outcomes and lessons from the programme, as well as the risks and costs, and where things went wrong. It also provides evidence not only of the viability of partnerships (i.e. that partnerships "can work") but also evidence that partnership approaches can provide substantially better outcomes for all parties than can more traditional approaches to development or corporate social responsibility. For example, a road in India was constructed at 25% of the cost to government; it took just 11 months for a community health centre in Venezuela to become operational and with its long-term financial future assured; and primary education enrolment rates in the vicinity of a gold mine in Tanzania have jumped from a historic level of 60–80% to almost 100% (as a consequence of improved infrastructure and community awareness of the importance of education). These development and public-sector benefits have been accompanied by substantial business benefits, including significant reductions in the cost of community development initiatives and/or the leverage of additional resources, greater sustainability and viability of development projects and significant improvements to corporate reputation and their local "social licence to operate" with communities. The book argues that to achieve these benefits requires all parties to invest time and effort in first exploring the best design for the partnership, understanding the motivations of their potential partners and, once the partnership has been established, continuing to actively support the partnership and ensure its ongoing viability. Partnerships that engage the strengths of companies, government and civil society can, under the right conditions, yield better (and more sustainable) results for communities and for business than traditional approaches to development. The authors argue that, because it is built on the central idea of each partner "doing what they do best", the partnership approach offers an opportunity to rethink the way in which companies view they contributions to the livelihoods of local communities. Through partnerships it is possible that community development will be seen less as an "add-on" or "cost" to the company but more an integral part of business strategy providing significant commercial and other benefits. Perhaps most importantly, partnerships offer the potential for regional operating companies to change the perceptions of government and of civil society that the company will take the primary responsibility for local development. Rather, partnerships enable companies to locate themselves as one of (but not the only) agent of development in the local region. Partnerships enable communities to take charge of their own development needs, interacting with government to jointly design and maintain public services. They also allow government to play its proper role of fulfilling its public mandate, delivering necessary services and ensuring the quality and sustainability of development impacts. The challenges of poverty reduction in the developing world are so great that no one sector can address them on its own. Partnerships between business, government and civil society are a means of addressing this most fundamental of truths. It is hoped that this book will provide a road map for all those working towards making the elimination of poverty a reality.

Strategic Alliances for Development between Government, the Private Sector and Civil Society

Putting Partnerships to Work

This is the story of a puppy, Butch, who was sent away from his first home. His best friend, Whitney, who is also a puppy, tells his story. Butch soon finds out that the world is both scary and fun. He also learns that there are people everywhere who care for him and lead him to the home he would choose for himself.

BUTCH FINDS A HOME

This anthology surveys the emergence of Anglo-American cultures in the first dramatic period of the European empires. It includes Francis Bacon, Adam Smith, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope as well as Wheatley and Edwards.

The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800

The Boys' Club is the must-read inside story behind the power and politics of AFL, Australia's biggest sport. Revealing how the fledgling state administrative body evolved into the Australian Football League and its meteoric rise to become one of the richest and most powerful organisations in the land, award-winning investigative journalist Mick Warner delivers a fascinating insight into key figures and their networks. Tracking the rise of the game and the AFL figureheads, The Boys' Club lifts the lid on the scandals, secrets and deal making that have shaped the Australian game.

The Boys' Club

Craig J. Calhoun

Jonathan VanAntwerpen

“What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” This apparently simple question opens into the massive, provocative, and complex A Secular Age, where Charles Taylor positions secularism as a defining feature of the modern world, not the mere absence of religion, and casts light on the experience of transcendence that scientistic explanations of the world tend to neglect. In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, a prominent and varied group of scholars chart the conversations in which A Secular Age intervenes and address wider questions of secularism and secularity. The distinguished contributors include Robert Bellah, José Casanova, Nilüfer Göle, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Simon During, Colin Jager, Jon Butler, Jonathan Sheehan, Akeel Bilgrami, John Milbank, and Saba Mahmood. Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age succeeds in conveying to readers the complexity of secularism while serving as an invaluable guide to a landmark book.

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age

Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America

The Letters of the Republic

Edward LiPuma

Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar

Jane Kramer

Benjamin Lee

DIVCultural studies exploration of the implications of the circulation of increasingly abstract forms of capital in the contemporary global economy./div

Michael Warner

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