Since the end of the nineteenth century, traditional historiography has emphasized the similarities between Italy and Germany as “late nations”, including the parallel roles of “great men” such as Bismarck and Cavour. Rethinking the Age of Emancipation aims at a critical reassessment of the development of these two “late” nations from a new and transnational perspective. Essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars examine the discursive relationships among nationalism, war, and emancipation as well as the ambiguous roles of historical protagonists with competing national, political, and religious loyalties.

Migration and especially irregular migration are politically sensitive and highly debated issues in the developed world, particularly in Europe. This book analyses irregular protection-seeking migration in Europe, with close attention to sub-Saharan migration into the EU, from the perspective of emancipatory security theory. Some individuals leave their countries because political, social, and economic structures largely fail to provide protection. This book examines how communities respond to migrants who seek protection and security, where migration is perceived as a source of insecurity by many in that community. The central aim of this critical analysis is to explore ideas and practices which can contribute to replacing the political structures of insecurity with emancipatory structures, where individuals (both irregular migrants and members of the receiving communities) enjoy security together, not opposed to each other. Drawing on the security dilemma, critical approaches to security, forced migration and trust, the book demonstrates how common life between two groups of individuals can be politically constructed, in tandem with limitations, risks, and possible handicaps of initiating such a construction in world politics. Rethinking Security in the Age of Migration will be of interest to students and scholars of migration studies, security studies, international relations, European politics and sociology.

In this broad-ranging text, Ray assesses Critical Theory, particularly that of J[um]urgen Habermas. Developing an analysis of such ideas as the public sphere, communicative action and the colonization of the lifeworld, he examines the insights that Critical Theory can offer global analysis and the challenges to Critical Theory from global social change. In a detailed discussion of post-communist eastern Europe, Islamic revivalism in Iran and the liberation struggle in South Africa, the author argues that modernity is poised between the threat of authoritarian politics of identity on one hand and the promise of opening up new democratic communicative organizations on the other.

In this broad-ranging text, Ray assesses Critical Theory, particularly that of J[um]urgen Habermas. Developing an analysis of such ideas as the public sphere, communicative action and the colonization of the lifeworld, he examines the insights that Critical Theory can offer global analysis and the challenges to Critical Theory from global social change. In a detailed discussion of post-communist eastern Europe, Islamic revivalism in Iran and the liberation struggle in South Africa, the author argues that modernity is poised between the threat of authoritarian politics of identity on one hand and the promise of opening up new democratic communicative organizations on the other.

Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.

This volume unpacks the long history and varied meanings of the emancipation of American slaves.

Rethinking Secularization: Philosophy and the Prophecy of a Secular Age provides a philosophical appraisal of secularization in light of the recent re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. It explores the adequacy of classical theories of secularization, and, rooted in historical and conceptual analysis, what might be offered in their place today. Responding to the once dominant theories of a global, world-historical emancipation from an inherited religious past to a modern secular age, the volume also considers the extent to which philosophy itself has inspired and nourished such prophecies. As a result, a more sophisticated view of secularization emerges, both more interesting and complex than the simple linear process it is often thought to be. From the conceptual origins of secularity in the writings of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to the contemporary secularization theories of Hans Blumenberg, Marcel Gauchet, and Charles Taylor, Rethinking Secularization considers philosophy’s own relationship to the concept of secularization. It reflects the trend in contemporary philosophy to rethink the relation between religion and modernity, and includes systematic contributions to the debate. The book would appeal to a wide range of readers in philosophy, sociology, religious studies, and intellectual history.