Ronnie D. Lipschutz

The idea of global security has taken on new meaning in the post-Cold War world, compelling analysts of international relations to reassess the military, political, and cultural issues that intersect with the notion of security. On Security represents a wide range of views on shifting concepts of security at the turn of the millennium, when the tangible, bipolar arrangement of the Cold War-era world system no longer exists." "Unlike much work in the field, the essays in this volume do not take the state for granted as the referent object of security. Contributors probe deeper, asking what it really is that we imagine needs securing: the international system? the nation-state? culture? On Security inquires further into what constitutes security: protection against enemies? suppression of a particular ethnic or religious group? insulation against economic competitors? And finally, contributors look into how ideas about security enter the realm of public debate and become institutionalized in organizations and policies: are they based on tangible, objective threats, or do they arise from psychological and emotional attitudes about feared enemies?" "Ranging in perspective from neorealist to postmodernist to constructivist, the essays in On Security attempt to find answers and to come to grips with some of the dilemmas confronting the idea of security today. The contributors to On Security - Barry Buzan, Beverly Crawford, James Der Derian, Daniel Deudney, Pearl-Alice Marsh, Ole Wever, and Ronnie D. Lipschutz - offer a thought-provoking overview of the ongoing debate about the nature of political reality and international relations.

On Security

Mary Ann Tétreault

What would international relations look like if our theories and analyses began with individuals, families, and communities instead of executives, nation-states, and militaries? After all, it is people who make up cities, states, and corporations, and it is their beliefs and behaviors that explain why some parts of the world seem so peaceful while others appear so violent, why some societies are so rich while others are so poor. Now in a fully updated and revised edition, this unique text on contemporary global politics begins with people, treating them as "social individuals" with free will and human agency even as they are limited and disciplined by rules and rulers. Offering a fresh approach to global politics, this dynamic author team trades perspectives with each other and with such eminent social theorists as Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt to develop their resonant theme. Using practical examples as well as theory, the authors show students how they can take charge of their lives and the politics that affect them, even in the context of a vast global economy and impersonal international forces that sometimes seem out of control. Filled with idealism, yet firmly grounded in current realities, Global Politics as if People Mattered is a fresh take on the proper place and potential of individuals in world politics—front and center, actively engaged in a way of life that is as politically personal as it is politically powerful. This distinctive text, a perfect reading for lower-division politics courses, helps students to carve out their own political space in the contemporary global order.

Global Politics as if People Mattered

This entertaining and enlightening book provides a guide to basic concepts and practices in capitalism, neoclassical economics, and political economy through an interpretation of popular films and novels of the past sixty years. Including works as varied as The Matrix, Lord of the Flies, The Dark Knight, Fight Club, and The Return of Martin Guerre, Ronnie D. Lipschutz describes and analyzes their essential role in the production and reproduction of contemporary society. His thoughtful and imaginative critique will bring to life the concepts and practices of economics and political economy for all readers.

Political Economy, Capitalism, and Popular Culture

This book examines the troubled modern nation–state and reflects on the “end” of authority, sovereignty, and national security, and the implications of that end in the coming decades.

War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century

After Authority

As memories of the Cold War recede, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what it was about and why it evoked such feelings of intensity and fatalism. Fortunately, we have a gold mine of movies and novels to help us recall why an entire generation of Americans grew up ducking under school desks in air raid drills and stocking the family bomb shelter. Cold War Fantasies retrieves those times, based on the idea that a nation's history, self-concept, and collective anxiety are reflected in popular culture. In Cold War Fantasies, Ronnie Lipschutz combines an historical account of foreign and domestic politics from 1945 to 1995 with summaries and analyses of thirty novels and films contemporaneously published and produced. Lipschutz rejects the standard line on the Cold War and critically examines the impacts and effects of language and images on politics. Viewing those films and reading those novels enables the reader to come away with a clearer sense of how people felt during the Cold War period-about themselves, about "the enemy," and about the world while living in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy

Cold War Fantasies

The title of this book is a play upon several important concepts and forces in the ongoing debate about American empire. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration and its counsels in the U.S. Department of Justice have been both constituting an empire of American hegemony and, in so doing, violating the spirit and the law of the American Constitution at home and abroad. The U.S. Constitution has been doing work in the "nonsovereign" spaces of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad, and CIA black detention sites around the world. The reach of this constitution is becoming visible in National Security Agency surveillance and data mining of electronic communications between the United States and the rest of the world and in a myriad of other regulatory and legal demands made by the United States both of its citizens and of those living in and traveling among other countries. And, in testing the limits of its wished-for powers, the Bush administration seeks to constitute an imperium that, by its own definition, would be nowhere subject to the long-assumed checks of either the U.S. Constitution, Congress, the courts, or international law, for it operates outside of the boundaries of American sovereignty in defiance of the international community and the United Nations, and in violation of the law of nations. This book is the latest and perhaps sharpest entry in the burgeoning literature of American empire since Hardt and Negri. Its focus on the legal and institutional aspects of empire sets it apart from the literature on this subject.

Ronnie D. Lipschutz

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