Résumé : How did the Taliban gain the trust of the Afghan population through decades of conflict? How did they put themselves in a position to regulate social relations? And with what consequences for Afghan society? The Taliban Courts in Afghanistan: Waging War by Law explores how the Taliban used the law as a resource in its conflict with militarily and technologically superior Western armies. While the international coalition set up an inadequate and corrupt legal system, the Taliban set up hundreds of courts in the countryside. By insisting on due process, impartiality of judges, and the enforcement of verdicts, this system of justice established itself as one of the few sources of predictability in the daily lives of Afghans. The armed movement used law to substantiate their claim to embody the state, disseminate their vision of society, and establish local legitimacy. Their courts attempted to balance the political agenda of the movement, the demands of Islamic law, the needs of the population, and the expectations of international legal actors whose implicit recognition they desired. In contemporary civil wars, where dispensing justice is at once a juridical activity, a political weapon, and a stake in the war, this book thus accounts for why the West lost the war and how the Taliban took over the country. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork in various provinces in Afghanistan and unique access to Taliban judges and court users, this socio-legal investigation offers new perspectives on a country that was at war for over four decades. Baczko proposes an innovative reflection on the place of law and courts in civil wars as well as a stark reminder of the dangers of foreign intervention. Timely and thought-provoking, this book is appeals to a multi-disciplinary audience including legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, diplomats, policy-makers, and anyone interested in the Afghan conflict. - Note de l'editeur

Résumé : Experimental architect and engineer Frei Otto (1925-2015) innovative tent structures were modeled first and foremost on nature. Illustrated with over 250 black-and-white images and drawings from his archive, this oversized first monograph on his work accompanying the extensive exhibition at ZKM (2016) features for the first time a large number of his experimental models and drawings. In the 1950s, Frei Otto's tent structures left their mark on the horticultural shows of the new Bonn Republic; together with Behnisch & Partner he created the roof landscape for the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Otto's interdisciplinary mode of thinking harnessed architecture, technology, art, science, society and nature to civil engineering. Known for his lightweight tensile and membrane-based structures incorporating massive tent constructions like those by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov and architect Antonio Gaudí, Otto perfected the construction of tents for both temporary and alternative housing. His interest in alternative materials for shelter originated with his internment as a POW after the war. Exhibition: ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (05.11.2016 - 19.03.2017).

Résumé : The Brussels Canal Zone, one of the most dynamic areas of the city, is an example of post-industrial reconversion, where private and public actors and civil society negotiate visions on future renewal. This study looks at visions expressed in spatial planning documents from 1988 onwards and then focuses on four urban development projects: the reconversion of the Tour & Taxis site, the renewal of the Belle-Vue brewery in Molenbeek, the citizens’ movement Platform Kanal and the branding project of the Canal Zone by the regional government. These visions are studied in a qualitative way using urban regime theory, discourse analysis and Lefebvre’s approach on the social production of space.This book gives a detailed insight on how spatial visions are negotiated in complex urban renewal processes. It provides a transversal, historical and contemporary socio-economic geography of the Brussels Canal Zone. This work proposes a framework that is not only an analytical and comparative tool for researchers, but also an instrument of reflection for policy makers, urban professionals and social movements.Sofie Vermeulen holds a PhD in Urban Geography and Spatial Planning (Cosmopolis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2015).

Résumé : In A Century of Violence in a Red City Lesley Gill provides insights into broad trends of global capitalist development, class disenfranchisement and dispossession, and the decline of progressive politics. Gill traces the rise and fall of the strong labor unions, neighborhood organizations, and working class of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, from their origins in the 1920s to their effective activism for agrarian reforms, labor rights, and social programs in the 1960s and 1970s. Like much of Colombia, Barrancabermeja came to be dominated by alliances of right-wing politicians, drug traffickers, foreign corporations, and paramilitary groups. These alliances reshaped the geography of power and gave rise to a pernicious form of armed neoliberalism. Their violent incursion into Barrancabermeja's civil society beginning in the 1980s decimated the city's social networks, destabilized life for its residents, and destroyed its working-class organizations. As a result, community leaders are now left clinging to the toothless discourse of human rights, which cannot effectively challenge the status quo. In this stark book, Gill captures the grim reality and precarious future of Barrancabermeja and other places ravaged by neoliberalism and violence. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : "Coming of age in the 1960s, the photographer Danny Lyon (b. 1942) distinguished himself with work that emphasized intimate social engagement. In 1962 Lyon traveled to the segregated South to photograph the civil rights movement. Subsequent projects on biker culture, the demolition and redevelopment of lower Manhattan, and the Texas prison system, and more recently on the Occupy movement and the vanishing culture in China's booming Shanxi Province, share Lyon's signature immersive approach and his commitment to social and political issues that concern those on the margins of society. Lyon's photography is paralleled by his work as a filmmaker and a writer. Danny Lyon: Message to the Future is the first in-depth examination of this leading figure in American photography and film, and the first publication to present his influential bodies of work in all media in their full context. Lead essayists Julian Cox and Elisabeth Sussman provide an account of Lyon's five-decade career. Alexander Nemerov writes about Lyon's work in Knoxville, Tennessee; Ed Halter assesses the artist's films; Danica Willard Sachs evaluates his photomontages; and Julian Cox interviews Alan Rinzler about his role in publishing Lyon's earliest works. With extensive back matter and illustrations, this publication will be the most comprehensive account of this influential artist's work"

Résumé : Exploring the contentious relationship between trade and labour, this book looks at the impact of the EU’s ‘new generation’ free trade agreements on workers. Drawing upon extensive original research, including over 200 interviews with key actors across the EU and its trading partners, it considers the effectiveness of the trade-labour linkage in an era of global value chains. The EU believes trade can work for all, claiming that labour provisions in its free trade agreements ensure that economic growth and high labour standards go hand-in-hand. Yet whether these actually make a difference to workers is strongly contested. This book explains why labour provisions have been profoundly limited in the EU’s agreements with the CARIFORUM group, South Korea and Moldova. It also shows how the provisions were mismatched with the most pressing workplace concerns in the key export industries of sugar, automobiles and clothing, and how these concerns were exacerbated by the agreements’ commercial provisions. This pioneering approach to studying the trade-labour linkage provides insights into key debates on the role of civil society in trade governance, the relationship between public and private labour regulation, and the progressive possibilities for trade policy in the twenty-first century. This book will appeal to research scholars, post-graduate students, trade policy practitioners, policy researchers allied to labour movements, and informed activists.

Résumé : "Adventures in the Aid Trade takes us on a fascinating journey through 40 years of work at the coal face of international development. Drawing on his experiences from long periods in the field, the author reflects on what has worked, what has not and why, and considers how these experiences relate to students and practitioners today. Looking beyond high-level policy matters and international relations, this book focuses instead on the author's actual experiences in the field and the inspired local people he encountered. The narrative traces how these people, working through their own organisations, make a difference to the lives of their contemporaries, and learn how they generate the income to do it. Chapters draw on the author's experiences of working with local practitioners from 40 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, South, South East, and Central Asia, and the South Pacific. Peppered with lively stories and anecdotes, Adventures in the Aid Trade provides valuable lessons from the shifting aid landscape and reflects on where the industry is likely to go next. Whether you are a current development practitioner, or a student just starting out in your understanding of the development and humanitarian sectors, this book provides an invaluable snapshot of the world of civil society organisations, governance, the voluntary sector, and the lived lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times

Résumé : "Kenya is one of the most politically dynamic and influential countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, it is known in equal measure as a country that has experienced great highs and tragic lows. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kenya was seen as a "success story" of development in the periphery, and also led the way in terms of democratic breakthroughs in 2010 when a new constitution devolved power and placed new constraints on the president. However, the country has also makes international headlines for the kind of political instability that occurs when electoral violence is expressed along ethnic lines, such as during the "Kenya crisis" of 2007/08 when over 1,000 people lost their lives and almost 700,000 were displaced. This Handbook explains these developments and many more, drawing together 50 specially commissioned chapters by leading researchers. The chapters they have contributed address a range of essential topics including the legacy of colonial rule, ethnicity, land politics, devolution, the constitution, elections, democracy, foreign aid, the informal economy, civil society, human right, the International Criminal Court, the rise of China, economic policy, electoral violence, and the impact of mobile phone technology. In addition to covering some of the most important debates about Kenyan politics, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of Kenyan history from 1930 to the present day and features a set of chapters that review the impact of devolution on regional politics in every part of the country"

Résumé : The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution draws on a wealth of new scholarship to create a vibrant dialogue among varied approaches to the revolution that made the United States. In thirty-three essays written by authorities on the period, the Handbook brings to life the diverse multitudes of colonial North America and their extraordinary struggles before, during, and after the eight-year-long civil war that secured the independence of thirteen rebel colonies from their erstwhile colonial parent. The chapters explore battles and diplomacy, economics and finance, law and culture, politics and society, gender, race, and religion. Its diverse cast of characters includes ordinary farmers and artisans, free and enslaved African Americans, Indians, and British and American statesmen and military leaders. In addition to expanding the Revolution's who, the Handbook broadens its where, portraying an event that far transcended the boundaries of what was to become the United States. It offers readers an American Revolution whose impact ranged far beyond the thirteen colonies. The Handbook's range of interpretive and methodological approaches captures the full scope of current revolutionary-era scholarship. Its authors, British and American scholars spanning several generations, include social, cultural, military, and imperial historians, as well as those who study politics, diplomacy, literature, gender, and sexuality. Together and separately, these essays demonstrate that the American Revolution remains a vibrant and inviting a subject of inquiry. Nothing comparable has been published in decades. - Note de l'editeur

Résumé : Urbanization is rapidly overtaking China and India, the two most populous countries in the world. One-sixth of humanity now lives in either a Chinese or Indian city. This transformation has unleashed enormous pressures on land use, housing, and the environment. Despite the stakes, the workings of urban governance in China and India remain obscure and poorly understood. In this book, Xuefei Ren explores how China and India govern their cities and how their different styles of governance produce inequality and exclusion. Drawing upon historical-comparative analyses and extensive fieldwork (in Beijing, Guangzhou, Wukan, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata), Ren investigates the ways that Chinese and Indian cities manage land acquisition, slum clearance, and air pollution. She discovers that the two countries address these issues through radically different approaches. In China, urban governance centers on territorial institutions, such as hukou and the cadre evaluation system. In India, urban governance centers on associational politics, encompassing contingent alliances formed among state actors, the private sector, and civil society groups. Ren traces the origins of territorial and associational forms of governance to late imperial China and precolonial India. She then shows how these forms have evolved to shape urban growth and residents' struggles today. As the number of urban residents in China and India reaches beyond a billion, Governing the Urban in China and India makes clear that the development of cities in these two nations will have profound consequences well beyond their borders

Résumé : Fourteen essays examine the unexpected relationships between government power and intimate life in the last 150 years of United States history. The last few decades have seen a surge of historical scholarship that analyzes state power and expands our understanding of governmental authority and the ways we experience it. At the same time, studies of the history of intimate life, marriage, sexuality, child-rearing, and family, also have blossomed. Yet these two literatures have not been considered together in a sustained way. This book, edited and introduced by three preeminent American historians, aims to close this gap, offering powerful analyses of the relationship between state power and intimate experience in the United States from the Civil War to the present.The fourteen essays that make up Intimate States argue that "intimate governance", the binding of private daily experience to the apparatus of the state, should be central to our understanding of modern American history. Our personal experiences have been controlled and arranged by the state in ways we often don’t even see, the authors and editors argue ; correspondingly, contemporary government has been profoundly shaped by its approaches and responses to the contours of intimate life, and its power has become so deeply embedded into daily social life that it is largely indistinguishable from society itself. "Intimate states" makes a persuasive case that the state is always with us, even in our most seemingly private moments.

Résumé : In this concise yet thorough history of America in the 1980s, Doug Rossinow takes the full measure of Ronald Reagan's presidency and the ideology of Reaganism. Believers in libertarian economics and a muscular foreign policy, Reaganite conservatives in the 1980s achieved impressive success in their efforts to transform American government, politics, and society, ushering in the political and social system Americans inhabit today. Rossinow links current trends in economic inequality to the policies and social developments of the Reagan era. He reckons with the racial politics of Reaganism and its debt to the backlash generated by the civil rights movement, as well as Reaganism's entanglement with the politics of crime and the rise of mass incarceration. Rossinow narrates the conflicts that rocked U.S. foreign policy toward Central America, and he explains the role of the recession during the early 1980s in the decline of manufacturing and the growth of a service economy. From the widening gender gap to the triumph of yuppies and rap music, from Reagan's tax cuts and military buildup to the celebrity of Michael Jackson and Madonna, from the era's Wall Street scandals to the successes of Bill Gates and Sam Walton, from the first "war on terror" to the end of the Cold War and the brink of America's first war with Iraq, this history, lively and readable yet sober and unsparing, gives readers vital perspective on a decade that dramatically altered the American landscape. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : Sommaire : Piecing together the American dream / Stephen Coppel -- Irresistible: the rise of the American print workshop / Susan Tallman -- 1. Pop art -- 2. Three giants of printmaking: Johns, Rauschenberg, Dine -- 3. The print workshop: Laboratories of experimentation and collaboration -- 4. Made in California: the West Coast experience -- 5. Persistence of abstraction: gestural and hard-edge 1960s-1970s -- 6. Minimalism and conceptualism from the 1970s -- 7. Photorealism: portraits and landscapes -- 8. The figure reasserted -- 9. Politics and dissent -- 10. Feminism, gender and the body -- 11. Race and identity: unresolved histories -- 12. Signs of the times.. The American Dream: From Pop to present presents an overview of the development of American printmaking since 1960, paying particular attention to key figures such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. The 1960s was a period of change in the production, marketing and consumption of prints and the medium attracted a new generation of artists whose attitude towards making art had been conditioned by the monumentality and bold, eye-catching nature of popular imagery in postwar America, from advertising billboards to drive-in movies. Artists used to working on large canvases and huge sculptures created prints of an unprecedented ambition, scale and boldness in state-of-the-art workshops newly established on both the East and West coasts. Prints also became a means for expressing opinions on the great social issues of the day, from civil rights to the overt and covert role of government. This has continued, with feminism, gender, the body, race and identity, all topics represented in prints in a variety of stylistic approaches across the decades. The changing nature of American society provides a core element of the narrative, with prints offering a fascinating insight into contemporary thinking and attitudes.

Résumé : During the last days of July 1967, Detroit experienced a week of devastating urban collapse—one of the worst civil disorders in twentieth-century America. Forty-three people were killed, over $50 million in property was destroyed, and the city itself was left in a state of panic and confusion, the scars of which are still present today.Now for the first time in paperback and with a new reflective essay that examines the events a half-century later, The Detroit Riot of 1967 (originally published in 1969) is the story of that terrible experience as told from the perspective of Hubert G. Locke, then administrative aide to Detroit’s police commissioner. The book covers the week between the riot’s outbreak and the aftermath thereof. An hour-by-hour account is given of the looting, arson, and sniping, as well as the problems faced by the police, National Guard, and federal troops who struggled to restore order. Locke goes on to address the situation as outlined by the courts, and the response of the community—including the media, social and religious agencies, and civic and political leadership. Finally, Locke looks at the attempt of white leadership to forge a new alliance with a rising, militant black population; the shifts in political perspectives within the black community itself; and the growing polarization of black and white sentiment in a city that had previously received national recognition as a "model community in race relations." The Detroit Riot of 1967 explores many of the critical questions that confront contemporary urban America and offers observations on the problems of the police system and substantive suggestions on redefining urban law enforcement in American society. Locke argues that Detroit, and every other city in America, is in a race with time—and thus far losing the battle. It has been fifty years since the riot and federal policies are needed now more than ever that will help to protect the future of urban America. All historians, from professional to novice, will find value in this compelling account of a marked moment in American history. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : "Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was for a time one of America's most beloved authors, known for household manuals and children's poems, including the immortal "Over the River and Through the Wood." But in 1833, having converted to the abolitionist cause, Child published An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, the first book-length condemnation of slavery printed in the United States. Child's book created an immediate uproar and catapulted her into the life of an activist. Lydia Maria Child became one of the most consequential radicals of nineteenth-century America. In this biography of Child, Lydia Moland foregrounds Child's struggles of conscience and the meaning they held for her life-and, potentially, for ours. In her first career, Lydia Maria Child achieved what almost no woman in history had before-she was a self-sufficient female author. What, then, made her throw it all away to write An Appeal? The scandal of that book caused sales of her other books to plummet, polite society to cast her out, her beloved husband David to be jailed for libel, and the two rendered penniless. Yet Child soon drew untold numbers to the cause of abolition with her writings and her deeds. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Charles Sumner both credit her with their conversion. During the Civil War, the Union Army distributed her words to 300,000 troops to help weary soldiers justify their sacrifice. She spirited endangered abolitionists out of the country, protected activists from angry pro-slavery mobs with her own body, and helped Harriet Jacobs edit Jacobs's autobiography, the most influential slave narrative by a woman in American history. Moland's biography restores this brave and brilliant woman to her proper place in American history while showing how her example answers these urgent questions: When confronted by sanctioned evil or systematic injustice, how should a citizen live? What prompts moral change? When do we have a duty to disobey unjust laws? Child's story is one from the past with much to teach us about our present"--