Rethinking Theory And History In The Cold War

"Rethinking Theory and History in the Cold War focuses on what we mean by 'politics' and 'international relations' and how such assumptions have come to determine our understanding of the Cold War. Using an historical-materialist method, the author criticizes conventional conceptions of international politics that tend to focus on the agency of and relations among states, and offers an alternative historical sociology of the Cold War through an analysis of the relationship between formal political authority and socio-economic production. Seen from this perspective, the state the modern conceptions of politics can be seen as products of a capitalist modernity, in which politics is based on the separation of the spheres of politics in the state and economics in civil society."--BOOK JACKET.

"Rethinking Theory and History in the Cold War focuses on what we mean by 'politics' and 'international relations' and how such assumptions have come to determine our understanding of the Cold War. Using an historical-materialist method, the author criticizes conventional conceptions of international politics that tend to focus on the agency of and relations among states, and offers an alternative historical sociology of the Cold War through an analysis of the relationship between formal political authority and socio-economic production. Seen from this perspective, the state the modern conceptions of politics can be seen as products of a capitalist modernity, in which politics is based on the separation of the spheres of politics in the state and economics in civil society."--BOOK JACKET.

What really happened when the world's two greatest superpowers went head to head during the Cold War? We Now Know is a major reappraisal of the struggle for political and ideological supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Gaddis uses fascinating and previously unavailable source material, including new documents from the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe, to produce the first ever comparative international history of the Cold War. His book takes a detailed look at this unique conflict, putting forward new theories about why two ideologically opposed empires rose up and how their long power struggle dominated international affairs. Book jacket.

Leading scholars discuss ideology and hotly contested post-structuralist theory.

The end of the Cold War should have been an occasion to reassess its origins, history, significance, and consequences. Yet most commentators have restated positions already developed during the Cold War. They have taken the break-up of the Soviet Union, the shift toward capitalism and electoral politics in Eastern Europe and countries formerly in the USSR as evidence of a moral and political victory for the United States that needs no further elaboration. This collection of essays offers a more complex and nuanced analysis of Cold War history. It challenges the prevailing perspective, which editor Allen Hunter terms "vindicationism." Writing from different disciplinary and conceptual vantage points, the contributors to the collection invite a rethinking of what the Cold War was, how fully it defined the decades after World War II, what forces sustained it, and what forces led to its demise. By exploring a wide range of central themes of the era, Rethinking the Cold War widens the discussion of the Cold War's place in post-war history and intellectual life.

John Lewis Gaddis had written four previous books on the Cold War by the time he published We Now Know – so the main thrust of his new work was not so much to present new arguments as to re-examine old ones in the light of new evidence that began emerging from behind the Iron Curtain after 1990. In this respect, We Now Know can be seen as an important exercise in evaluation; Gaddis not only undertook to reassess his own positions – arguing that this was the only intellectually honest course open to him in such changing circumstances – but also took the opportunity to address criticisms of his early works, not least by post-revisionist historians. The straightforwardness and flexibility that Gaddis exhibited in consequence enhanced his book's authority. He also deployed interpretative skills to help him revise his methodology and reinterpret key historical arguments, integrating new, comparative histories of the Cold War era into his broader argument.

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has long been understood in a global context, but Jeremy Friedman's Shadow Cold War delves deeper into the era to examine the competition between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for the leadership of the world revolution. When a world of newly independent states emerged from decolonization desperately poor and politically disorganized, Moscow and Beijing turned their focus to attracting these new entities, setting the stage for Sino-Soviet competition. Based on archival research from ten countries, including new materials from Russia and China, many no longer accessible to researchers, this book examines how China sought to mobilize Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seize the revolutionary mantle from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union adapted to win it back, transforming the nature of socialist revolution in the process. This groundbreaking book is the first to explore the significance of this second Cold War that China and the Soviet Union fought in the shadow of the capitalist-communist clash.

This anthology of essays questions many widespread assumptions about the culture of postwar America. Illuminating the origins and development of the many threads that constituted American culture during the Cold War, the contributors challenge the existence of a monolithic culture during the 1950s and thereafter. They demonstrate instead that there was more to American society than conformity, political conservatism, consumerism, and middle-class values. By examining popular culture, politics, economics, gender relations, and civil rights, the contributors contend that, while there was little fundamentally new about American culture in the Cold War era, the Cold War shaped and distorted virtually every aspect of American life. Interacting with long-term historical trends related to demographics, technological change, and economic cycles, four new elements dramatically influenced American politics and culture: the threat of nuclear annihilation, the use of surrogate and covert warfare, the intensification of anticommunist ideology, and the rise of a powerful military-industrial complex. This provocative dialogue by leading historians promises to reshape readers' understanding of America during the Cold War, revealing a complex interplay of historical norms and political influences.