エピソード

  • Alan Chong, "The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

    Alan Chong, "The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
    2025/05/04
    In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. While diplomacy between states is the visible face of international relations, this “informal diplomacy” is usually less visible but no less powerful. Information politics can be found in propaganda, Internet politics, educational exchanges, tourism, and even popular film. In The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Alan Chong examines this informational dimension of international politics, investigating how information is generated, conveyed through channels, and directed specifically at audiences. While citizens are often portrayed as faithfully loyal supporters and beneficiaries of the modern nation-state—a fiction supported by passports, identification papers, and other notarized credentials—they are subject to the pulls of loyalty from transnational tribal affiliations, mythological and historical narratives of ethnicity, as well as the transcendental claims of religion and philosophy. Increasingly, social media also enchants non-state individuals, providing new virtual communities as the center of loyalties rather than national affiliations. By reinterpreting taken-for-granted concepts in journalism, media, political economy, nationalism, development, and propaganda as information politics, this book prepares serious-minded scholars, citizens, politicians, and social activists everywhere to understand the power plays in international communication and use alternatives to begin transforming power relations.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    1 時間 17 分
  • Subho Basu, "Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    Subho Basu, "Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
    2025/05/03
    Intimation of Revolution: Global Sixties and the Making of Bangladesh (Cambridge UP, 2023) analyzes the growth of Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan during the 1950s and 60s, highlighting the interplay of global politics and local socio-economic changes. The book posits that the 1969 revolution and the 1971 liberation war were influenced by the "global sixties," which reshaped Pakistan's political environment and paved the way for Bangladesh's creation. It challenges the conventional view of Bangladesh as solely a consequence of the Indo-Pakistani conflict, instead portraying it as a nation forged by Bengali nationalists resisting internal colonization by the Pakistani military-bureaucratic regime. The narrative explores how this resistance and nation-building process was inspired by concurrent decolonization movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, while also being influenced by the Cold War competition between the USA, the USSR, and China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    45 分
  • Shaun Walker, "The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West" (Knopf, 2025)

    Shaun Walker, "The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West" (Knopf, 2025)
    2025/05/02
    Shaun Walker, The Illegals (Knopf, 2025) is the definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and a revelatory examination of how that hidden history shaped both Russia and the West.More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.” During the Second World War, illegals were dispatched behind enemy lines to assassinate high-ranking Nazis. Later, in the Cold War, they were sent to assimilate and lie low as sleepers in the West. The greatest among them performed remarkable feats, while many others failed in their missions or cracked under the strain of living a double life.Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, as well as archival research in more than a dozen countries, Shaun Walker brings this history to life in a page-turning tour de force that takes us into the heart of the KGB’s most secretive program. A riveting spy drama peopled with richly drawn characters, The Illegals also uncovers a hidden thread in the story of Russia itself. As Putin extols Soviet achievements and the KGB’s espionage prowess, and Moscow continues to infiltrate illegals across the globe, this timely narrative shines new light on the long arc of the Soviet experiment, its messy aftermath, and its influence on our world at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    1 時間
  • Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)

    Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)
    2025/05/01
    Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made - and is still making - our unequal world. In Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy (Verso, 2025) Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    1 時間 15 分
  • Jack Copley, "Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)

    Jack Copley, "Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2022)
    2025/04/30
    One of the most distinctive aspects of global capitalism in the last half century or so has been the increased role of the financial sector in the global economy, especially in the advanced industrial economies of the Global North. The profitability and market capitalization of firms in the financial sector have increased immensely, firms that originated in the real economy have diversified into financial activities, cross-border financial flows have limited the policy autonomy of national governments, and the value of financial assets has driven increasing global inequality. How did the financial sector come to occupy such an important position in the global economy? My guest today, the political economist Jack Copley, addresses this question by going back to the archives to investigate why the British government implemented key reforms associated with financial liberalization during the 1970s and 1980s. In Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain (Oxford UP, 2022), he shows that financialization did not result from some grand ideologically-driven policy agenda, nor did it result from the actions of far-sighted omnipotent state managers automatically adjusting the course of the British economy in the face of increased manufacturing competition. Rather, he argues that financial liberalization in the UK resulted from policymakers attempting to muddle through from one crisis to the next by balancing competing imperatives to enhance the country’s competitive position in the global economy while maintaining social and political order domestically. Short-term efforts to put out economic fires drove financial liberalization, rather than grand ideological designs or automatic adjustment to changing circumstances. Jack Copley is an assistant professor in international political economy at Durham University in the UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    45 分
  • Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    2025/04/29
    Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization (Princeton UP, 2024) shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history. Martin Thomas is professor of imperial history and director of the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict at the University of Exeter. A fellow of the Leverhulme Trust and the Independent Social Research Foundation, he is the author of Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940; Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire; and other books. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    49 分
  • Nicholas D. Anderson, "Inadvertent Expansion: How Peripheral Agents Shape World Politics" (Cornell UP, 2025)

    Nicholas D. Anderson, "Inadvertent Expansion: How Peripheral Agents Shape World Politics" (Cornell UP, 2025)
    2025/04/28
    Territorial expansion is typically understood as a centrally driven and often strategic activity. But Nicholas D. Anderson’s new book, Inadvertent Expansion (Cornell University Press, 2025), shows that nearly a quarter of great power coercive territorial acquisitions since the nineteenth century have in fact been instances of what the author calls “inadvertent expansion.” A two-step process, inadvertent expansion first involves agents on the periphery of a state or empire acquiring territory without the authorization or knowledge of higher-ups. Leaders in the capital must then decide whether to accept or reject the already-acquired territory. Through cases ranging from those of the United States in Florida and Texas to Japan in Manchuria and Germany in East Africa, Anderson shows that inadvertent expansion is rooted in a principal-agent problem. When leaders in the capital fail to exert or have limited control over their agents on the periphery, unauthorized efforts to take territory are more likely to occur. Yet it is only when the geopolitical risks associated with keeping the acquired territory are perceived to be low that leaders are more likely to accept such expansion. Accentuating the influence of small, seemingly insignificant actors over the foreign policy behavior of powerful states, Inadvertent Expansion offers new insights into how the boundaries of states and empires came to be and captures timeless dynamics between state leaders and their peripheral agents. Our guest is Nicholas D. Anderson, an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    34 分
  • Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)

    Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)
    2025/04/25
    The history of queer politics in the United States since 1968 is commonly narrated as either a progressive campaign for state recognition or as a subcultural rejection of prevailing gender norms. But these accounts miss the true scale of queer politics in the post-war era. By centering transnational relations, practices, and infrastructures in the history of sexual rebellion, Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States (Stanford University Press, 2025) provides an alternative view of US-based struggles for sexual freedom. Dr. Alexander Stoffel analyzes three prominent US-based social movements—gay liberationism, Black lesbian feminism, and AIDS activism—to argue that they were fundamentally shaped by their transnational entanglements. Departing from popular domestic framings of these movements, Dr. Stoffel recasts the history of radical queer thought and action as a project of erotic worldmaking. This project mobilized queer affects of pleasure, desire, and eroticism in the fight for revolutionary transformation on a world scale. The transnational perceptions, activities, and consciousness of queer radicals, Dr. Stoffel argues, not only conditioned the trajectory of queer history, but also radicalized wider anti-imperialist, socialist, and abolitionist struggles past and present. In this ambitious and interdisciplinary work, Dr. Stoffel reconsiders the United States' revolutionary sexual past and creates new opportunities for the study of sexual formations in relation to questions of capital accumulation, empire, and resistance. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
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    1 時間 4 分