1st Edition
Globalizing Political Theory
Globalizing Political Theory is guided by the need to understand political theory as deeply embedded in local networks of power, identity, and structure, and to examine how these networks converge and diverge with the global. With the help of this book, students of political theory no longer need to learn about ideas in a vacuum with little or no attention paid to how such ideas are responses to varying local political problems in different places, times, and contexts.
Key features include:
- Central Conceptual Framework: Introducing readers to what it means to “globalize” political theory and to move beyond the traditional western canon and actively engage with a multiplicity of perspectives.
- Organization: Focused on key topics essential for an introductory class aimed at both globalizing political theory and showing how political theory itself is a globalizing activity.
- Themes: Colonialism and Empire; Gender and Sexuality; Religion and Secularism; Marxism, Socialism, and Globalization; Democracy and Protest; and Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity.
- Pedagogy: Each chapter features theoretical concepts and definitions, political and historical context, key authors and biographical context, textual evidence and exegesis from the foundational texts in that thematic area, a list of discussion questions, and a list of resources for further reading.
Committed to a multiplicity of perspectives and an active engagement between the global and the local, Globalizing Political Theory connects directly with undergraduate and graduate-level courses in political theory, global political theory, and non-western political thought.
Introduction: What Does it Mean to Globalize Political Theory?
Smita A. Rahman, Katherine A. Gordy and Shirin S. Deylami
Part 1: Colonialism and Empire
1 The Mentor and the Mentee: Competing Visions in Vietnamese Political Thought
Kevin Pham
2 From Black Liberation to Human Freedom: Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon and Universal Emancipation
Derefe Kimarley Chevannes
3 Life, Death and Futurity in the Work of Achille Mbembe
John E. Drabinski
Part 2: Gender and Sexuality
4 The Ayatollah Khomeini: Gender and Sexuality in the Fight against Westoxification
Shirin S. Deylami
5 Towards an Afro-Latin American Feminism: Notes on Lélia Gonzalez’s Theorizations
Fernanda Cardoso Fonseca
6 Different Foundations for Islamic Feminisms: Comparing Genealogical and Textual Approaches in Ahmed and Parvez
Connor B.S. Strobel
Part 3: Religion and Secularism
7 Sayyid Qutb and the Politics of Renewal
Smita A. Rahman
8 The Dialectical Utopianism of Ali Shariati
Naveed Mansoori
9 The Sikh and Ahmadiyya Communities: Finding Shared and Distinct Understandings of the Oneness of God through Religious Pluralism
Misbah Hyder
Part 4: Marxism, Socialism, and Globalization
10 Walter Rodney and Samir Amin: From Relations of Underdevelopment to Global Decolonization
Thomas Meagher
11 Ernesto "Che" Guevara’s Political Economy: Balancing Productivity and Dis-Alienation
Katherine A. Gordy
12 R. İhsan Eliaçık: Anti-Capitalist Islamic Thought in Turkey
Siavash Saffari
13 Thomas Malthus and Global Malthusianism
Jimmy Casas Klausen
Part 5: Democracy and Protest
14 "Be Water, My Friend": Protest, Identity Politics, and Democracy in Hong Kong
Peng Yu
15 Fatima Meer’s Father: Storytelling-History, Racialized Men of Color and Feminism, and Overcoming the Precarity of Black-Asian Solidarity
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard
16 Abdias do Nascimento: Quilombist Praxis Amidst the Genocide of Black People
Ananda Vilela and Marta Fernández
Part 6: Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity
17 Contesting Conquest: Titu Cusi Yupanqui’s Anticolonial Resistance
Angélica María Bernal
18 Haunani-Kay Trask, Ka Lāhui Hawai’i, and Indigenous Sovereignty
Vicki Hsueh
19 W.E.B Du Bois, the Negro Problem, and the Case against Black Involvement in War
Jared Anthony Loggins
Biography
Smita A. Rahman is the Johnson Family University Professor of Political Science at DePauw University where she teaches courses in modern, contemporary, and Islamic political thought. Her research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary and comparative political theory. In particular, she is interested in exploring how foundational concepts in political theory rupture and become contested in a globalized world of difference.
Katherine A. Gordy is a Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses in political theory and Latin American Studies. Her specific research and teaching interests are comparative political theory (Latin American and Caribbean political thought), critical theory, and theories of history and ideology.
Shirin S. Deylami is a Professor of Political Science and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Western Washington University, where she teaches courses in contemporary political theory, feminist theory, and Islamic political thought. Her research interests are at the intersection of feminist theory and Islam with particular interest in the way debates about Muslim women’s identity and freedom affect Islamic and Western conceptions of self and other.
"Globalizing Political Theory is a timely and rigorous volume that effectively deprovincializes intellectual histories of political thought. The editors have curated engaging conversations across time and space that show how thinkers responding to differing local contexts produced ideas and concepts that resonate beyond them."
Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science, Brown University
"Among the most urgent missions of political theory today is to deepen its engagement with forms of thought, knowledge, and imagination beyond the Western canon. Scholars have now been doing this in greater numbers and with greater rigor for almost two decades. But debates still persist about the most urgent priorities for this mission, and the most appropriate methods and tools. This volume is an outstanding introduction to these debates for an undergraduate or graduate level, with chapters by some of the top emerging scholars working in non-Western and decolonial thought."
Andrew F. March, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
"Like it or not, political theory has always been global. From excavating unrecognized prehistory to plumbing contemporary transnational resonances, this essential volume brings to light what is so often hidden, and in so doing helps craft a political theory made to the measure of the world."
George Maher, Visiting Associate Professor of Global Political Thought, Vassar College
"This volume offers new perspectives on a range of familiar political issues, from a range of modern thinkers from across the world. It will definitely disrupt business-as-usual in the teaching and practice of political theory."
Leigh K. Jenco, Professor of Political Theory London School of Economics and Political Science
