The evolution of international criminal justice since the 1990s has spurred both scholarly study and controversy. Against those who bluntly denounce “victors’ justice” to the point of paving the way for negationism, a recent book takes an empirical approach to the question of the reception of the work of international courts and the effects of their decisions on the populations involved.
Israel’s nuclear policy is the nation’s last taboo. Avner Cohen’s book explains that the country’s posture of nuclear opacity is incompatible with the values of a liberal democracy and that it undermines the norm of public accountability and oversight. However, in the name of its special relationship with Israel, the US turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear program.
What institutional means are available to the Chinese people for expressing their displeasure with officialdom? Isabelle Thireau and Hua Linshan’s book is the first Western study of the xinfang, the Administration of Letters and Visits, a government agency that currently processes in excess of 13 million complaints a year.
Are fears of new forms of colonization of Africa by China justified? In a book based on solid investigation and evidence, Deborah Brautigam clears prevailing misconceptions and uncovers the unprecedented realities of China’s presence in the African continent.
Few academics have taken seriously the contents of the talk and tales that found popular anti-Semitism past and present in Poland. In an arresting book, anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir retraces the phenomenon back to its roots on the strength of a study of the “blood libels” revolving around Host profanations, child kidnapping and ritual murders. An exploration of the Polish catholic subconscious.
What can literature teach us about China’s experience of democracy in the twentieth century? In an ambitious work, Sebastian Veg explores the links between fiction and democracy in his search for a critical reflection on the reader-citizen.
In her latest book, Saskia Sassen undertakes a ruthless demystification of economic globalization. She argues that globalization is embedded in institutions and places and reveals the nature of contemporary social conditions while indicating there are future options open for individual and collective action.
