{"title":"The Ceri Series In Comparative Politics And International Studies","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"revolution-unending-book-gilles-dorronsoro-9780231136266","title":"Revolution Unending","description":"Having traveled and researched in Afghanistan since 1988, Gilles Dorronsoro has developed a rich and nuanced understanding of the country's history and people. In Revolution Unending he draws on his extensive firsthand experience to consider the political, historical, economic, and ethnic factors that will influence Afghanistan's future. He argues that U.S. optimism about Afghanistan following Western intervention and recent elections fails to appreciate the divisions that continue to define the country.  While not underestimating the oft-cited \"ethnic factor\" in Afghan politics, especially Pashtun dominance, Dorronsoro argues that class and the competition for employment and education are key factors in explaining the country's recent past. The 1990s saw the triumph of religious authorities (the ulema) and the marginalization of the traditional elites. With coalition intervention in 2001 and the subsequent deposition of the ulema-dominated Taliban, the educated elites are back in power. However, as Dorronsoro argues, patching up the country by means of short-term ethnic alliances and a new division of the spoils will only perpetuate the schisms in society. The Afghan civil war, Dorronsoro suggests, is set to continue and perhaps worsen over time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49891632677137,"sku":"CIN0231136269G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347020157201,"sku":"CIN0231136269A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231136269.jpg?v=1751005796"},{"product_id":"islamist-networks-book-mariam-abou-zahab-9780231133654","title":"Islamist Networks","description":"Al Qaida was unable to realize its lethal potential until it found sanctuary in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden fled after being expelled from Sudan. But why was the network's sanctuary not attacked before September 2001, especially after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998? Abou Zahab and Roy argue that the Taliban was part of a much wider radical Islamist network in the region, whose true center was Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Al Qaida, the Taliban, the Pakistani Deobandis-all of these groups are based in Pakistan, which continues to serve as the regional hub for Islamist movements and their terrorist offshoots. This indispensable book investigates and explains the almost twenty-five-year gestation of these interlinked radical Islamist networks of Pakistan, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, out of which Al Qaida emerged. Taking into account the networks'divergent histories and doctrinal rifts, the authors lay bare the political contingencies that enabled these disparate Islamist movements to coordinate with the aim of attacking what became their common adversary: the United States.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49909369569553,"sku":"CIN0231133650VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53134171799825,"sku":"CIN0231133650G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231133650.jpg?v=1751323518"},{"product_id":"algerian-civil-war-1990-1998-book-luis-martinez-9780231119962","title":"The Algerian Civil War, 1990-1998","description":"The civil war in Algeria shows no sign of imminent resolution. 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Rather than presenting a historical account of the conflict,  The Algerian Civil War focuses on the strategies employed by the war's main combatants.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346125656337,"sku":"CIN0231119968A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51689233875217,"sku":"CIN0231119968VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52716516114705,"sku":"CIN0231119968G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231119968.jpg?v=1750738618"},{"product_id":"being-modern-in-iran-book-fariba-adelkhah-9780231119412","title":"Being Modern in Iran","description":"What does it mean to be modern in Iran today? Can one properly speak of modernity in relation to what many consider to be the paradigmatic Islamic state? Since its 1979 revolution seized the world's attention, the Islamic Republic of Iran has remained a subject of misunderstanding, passion, and polemic, making these questions difficult to answer-or even to ask. This book-a study of Iran's political culture in the broadest and deepest sense-looks into both of these questions by examining the tremendous changes taking place in Iran today.  Because of the difficulties posed for researchers and journalists by the nature of the regime, those interested in contemporary Iranian social life have had to rely on a small number of specialized studies-most of which overemphasize the revolution's radical break with the past and focus exclusively on the Republic's Islamic character as the decisive factor in its social reality. But modernity has not simply been banished and excluded from Iran; nor have the effects of globalization passed it by. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Iran and an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary Iranian politics and culture, anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah investigates modernity in the Islamic Republic of Iran by looking at the growth of individualism, the bureaucracy, commercial forces, and rationalization in post-revolution Iran.  Being Modern in Iran ranges over such topics as * taxation and Islamic legitimacy;  * Mayor Kharbaschi's creation of public space in Tehran;  * the culture of giving;  * religious economics;  * the elections of 1996 and 1997, and the popular rejoicing that greeted them;  * the nation-wide soccer craze; * the changing role of clerics;  * the changing use of the Koran; and * the growth of competition in all areas of life.  These subjects are brought to life by vignette discussions of pigeon-fanciers, flower symbolism, funeral rites, dreams, self-help manuals, cosmetics, and much more. Adelkhah avoids a simpleminded dualism between an \"odious,\" backward, and repressive regime on the one side and a \"kindly\" civil society representing progress and freedom on the other; rather, she argues that a public space is being created through the existence of many religious, political, and economic activities. This sophisticated anthropology of the Iranian state sheds much-needed light on the unique nature of the social experiment Iran has been experiencing since the revolution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347095752977,"sku":"CIN0231119410LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231119410.jpg?v=1750738617"},{"product_id":"being-modern-in-iran-book-fariba-adelkhah-9780231119405","title":"Being Modern in Iran","description":"--  Journal of Palestine Studies","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347099521297,"sku":"CIN0231119402G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231119402.jpg?v=1751323505"},{"product_id":"purify-and-destroy-book-jacques-semelin-9780231142830","title":"Purify and Destroy","description":"How can we comprehend the sociopolitical processes that give rise to extreme violence, ethnic cleansing, or genocide? A major breakthrough in comparative analysis, Purify and Destroy demonstrates that it is indeed possible to compare the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina while respecting the specificities of each appalling phenomenon. Jacques Semelin achieves this, in part, by leading his readers through the three examples simultaneously, the unraveling of which sometimes converges but most often diverges.  Semelin's method is multidisciplinary, relying not only on contemporary history but also on social psychology and political science. Based on the seminal distinction between massacre and genocide, Purify and Destroy identifies the main steps of a general process of destruction, both rational and irrational, born of what Semelin terms \"delusional rationality.\" He describes a dynamic structural model with, at its core, the matrix of a social imaginaire that, responding to fears, resentments, and utopias, carves and recarves the social body by eliminating \"the enemy.\" Semelin identifies the main stages that can lead to a genocidal process and explains how ordinary people can become perpetrators. He develops an intellectual framework to analyze the entire spectrum of mass violence, including terrorism, in the twentieth century and before. Strongly critical of today's political instrumentalization of the \"genocide\" notion, Semelin urges genocide research to stand back from legal and normative definitions and come of age as a discipline in its own right in the social sciences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51876628234513,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51876628398353,"sku":"CIN0231142838G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53363678413073,"sku":"CIN0231142838VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780231142830.jpg?v=1754327928"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/the-ceri-series-in-comparative-politics-and-international-studies-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}