Radical Subjects in International Politics: Action and Activism

Series edited by Ruth Kinna

In a period marked, on the one hand, by a growing disengagement from parliamentary democracy and, on the other, by extraparliamentary activism (evidenced in struggles for global justice, ecological campaigning, local community projects and the embrace of utopian aspirations), this series provides a platform for scholarship that interrogates modern political movements, probes the local, regional and global dimensions of activist networking and the principles that drive them, and develops innovative frames to analyse issues of exclusion and empowerment.

The series uses the idea of political subjection to promote the discussion and analysis of individual, communal and civic participation and activism. Radical subjects refers both to the character of the topics and issues tacked in the series and to the ethic guiding the research. The series has a radical focus in that it provides a springboard for the discussion of activism that sits outside or on the fringes of institutional politics, yet which, insofar as it reflects a commitment to social change, is far from marginal.

The series commissions proposals for research monographs and edited collections that might:
– question how well current critical analysis captures concepts of social transformation and describes activity that falls outside mainstream analytical frameworks;
– analyse the discontents that current social, political, cultural and economic arrangements exclusion provoke in different communities (for example, homelessness, trafficking, militarism);
– examine the constructive transformative power of resistance struggles (virtual and actual, cultural and avant-garde) delegitimized by mainstream politics;
– consider how far protest ‘events’ support grass-roots, self-regulating solidarities and cooperative practices;
– examine the ways in which transnational solidarities are forged across and within states and in ways that participants transcend boundaries;
– consider the ways in which tensions within contemporary activism can be explained or resolved.

The scope of the project is defined by engagement with the concept of the radical in contemporary politics but research might be multi- or interdisciplinary, working at the boundaries of art and politics, political utopianism, feminism, sociology and radical geography. Scholarly analysis which seeks to contextualise actions or activism historically is welcome, but discussion of historical movements otherwise unrelated to issues of contemporary practice is not properly located in this series.