You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Lived International is a poetic account of Stephen Chan’s personal engagement in International Relations. It speaks to the inadequacy of an abstract voyeurism while the problems of the world are death, devastation and underdevelopment. Drawn from a lifetime of travel and engagement, and from both published and hitherto unpublished poetry, forming a parallel list to the author’s academic works, the book seeks to inject into debate the sense that language, spoken and written discourse alone, are not a sufficient claim to ‘bearing witness’, and that even activism from afar can often fail to understand a human condition that afflicts the majority of the world’s population. Chan demonstrates that a life of praxis, living international relations, yields more insights than a life of theory alone.
The End of Certainty is a magical realist book on world politics. Stephen Chan takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through how we can establish a new kind of international relations and construct a common future for the planet. Chan argues that the certainties of singular traditions of philosophy have failed to help us understand power shifts and struggles in an endlessly diverse world. Chan argues that fusing different strands of Western, Eastern, religious and philosophical thought, is far more likely to help us move forward amidst uncertainty. In doing so, he takes us on a journey from the battlefields of Eritrea to the Twin Towers, via the Book of Job, Clausewitz, Fanon and Wahabism. You'll never think about international politics in quite the same way again.
African liberation is often seen in terms of heroism, but seldom in terms of thought. Even Sartre, in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s seminal The Wretched of the Earth, wrote of the ‘native’ with his coiled muscles about to explode into rebellion. The African and the black person are denied the condition of philosophy, apparently driven only by frustration and anger. Stephen Chan’s new book charts the long history of African political thought, from the years of North American slavery, through the development of modern African nationalism and the difficulties of governing new states, to Africa’s political philosophy today, taking on the world as an equal. He dwells at length on major ...
Edited with authority by the influential and respected Stephen Chan, this unique collection of essays gathers together for the first time both African and Chinese perspectives on China's place in Africa. The book starts with an excellent introductory essay from Stephen Chan, written in his usual elegant prose and featuring some very fresh insights organised with great clarity. Featuring useful historical context, this brave book analyses the "moral" aspects of the policies and ensuing migration. The book completely undermines existing assumptions concerning Sino-African relations, such as that Africa is of critical importance for China; that China sees no risk in its largesse towards Africa; and that there is a single Chinese profile/agenda. The resulting collection touches the issue of racism but is equally about moments of pure idealism and 'romance' in Sino-African history.
Diplomacy is an evolving practice in terms of historical circumstance and changing national interests. History and interests do not always coincide. This book explores in brief, pungent case examples, the challenges diplomacy faces today as actors seek to change history and undermine interests.
Tension between China and the United States has escalated recently. Are these countries headed for an armed conflict? The answer to this question depends importantly on their respective foreign policy intentions. Does one of them (or both) intend to challenge and overhaul the existing international order or if you will, the rules of the game in conducting international relations? This book seeks to discern these countries' revisionist impulses and discusses theorigins, evolution, and implications of past and present countries motivated by these impulses for world peace and stability.
The new millennium can only be a time of true globalization if different histories and systems of understanding the world are appreciated. The authors unveil significant studies to do with epistemological debates in International Relations, and give detailed middle and far-eastern examples of how different cultures have used story-telling as a means of understanding what is outside and around. Especially provocative is the Chinese idea of the West as an 'Other', as atypical and, indeed, inscrutable, to the extent of not needing scrutiny at all.
Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with colo...
On 21st November 2017 Robert Mugabe resigned as President of Zimbabwe after 37 years in power. A week earlier the military had seized control of the country and forced him to step down as leader of the ruling Zanu-PF party. In this revised and updated edition of his classic biography, Stephen Chan seeks to explain and interpret Mugabe in his role as a key player in the politics of Southern Africa. In this masterly portrait of one of Africa's longest-serving leaders, Mugabe's character unfolds with the ebb and flow of triumph and crisis. Mugabe's story is Zimbabwe's - from the post-independence hopes of idealism and reconciliation to electoral victory, the successful intervention in the inter...
Morgan Tsvangiraiís appointment as Zimbabweís Prime Minister in 2009 followed many yearsí leadership of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions and the Movement for Democratic Change. How has that experience equipped him for high national office? Does he have the personal, intellectual and political qualities required to be President? In July 2004, as he was awaiting the verdict in his treason trial, Tsvangirai spent several days in conversation with Stephen Chan. Chan was concerned to find out if Tsvangirai was more than ëmerely a charismatic leader of the oppositioní; if he had ëhis own intellectual agenda [and] political philosophyí. His questions were even-handed and astute. ëDisc...