The Civilization Of Perpetual Movement

From the Chinese Emperors to the Romans and the Byzantines, from British Foreign Office agents in the Great Game to today's hippies, backpackers and aid workers, a long line of "civilized", sedentary, peoples have again and again misunderstood nomads, and nomadism. Caricatured as backward herders, thieving pastoralists, or members of some vast and undifferentiated horde of humanity forever wandering the planet, nomads are usually perceived as anything but modern and almost always as on the verge of obsolescence. The Civilization of Perpetual Movement is the first examination of nomadism as a vital global political practice. Nick McDonell - bestselling novelist and war correspondent - draws upon his years spent with and research into nomads around the world to illuminate what is, and has always been, a most modern practice. In the lucid, evocative prose which earnt him comparisons with Graham Greene and John Le Carré in the New York Times, McDonell uncovers the ways nomads and states influence each other, historically and today - with surprising consequences, from the plains and mountains of Central Asia to the grasslands of the Great Rift Valley. Part literary meditation, part reflection on international relations, part original history, The Civilization of Perpetual Movement is firmly in the tradition of iconoclastic thinkers from Bruce Chatwin to James Scott to T. E. Lawrence.

Migration and cosmopolitanism are said to be complementary. Cosmopolitanism means to be a citizen of the world, and migration, without impediments, should be the natural starting point for a cosmopolitan view. However, the intensification of migration, through an increasing number of refugees and economic migrants, has generated anti-cosmopolitan stances. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as it emerges from migrant protests like?Sans Papiers, No One Is Illegal, and No Borders, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses this discrepancy and explores how migrant protest movements elicit a new form of radical cosmopolitanism. The combination of basic theoretical concepts and detailed empirical analysis in this book will advance the theoretical debate on the inherent cosmopolitan aspects of migrant activism. As such, it will be a valuable contribution to students, researchers and scholars of political science, sociology and philosophy.

This is a new modernized version of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by the Swiss historian and art critic Jacob Burckhardt. It presents the text in contemporary language to improve accessibility and engagement for present-day readers. First published in 1860, Burckhardt’s book brilliantly analyzes Italian arts, culture, politics, and society. In reviving classical ideas and values, the Italian Renaissance was a marked departure from the Middle Ages. Here as elsewhere in the Europe of the Renaissance, the driving spirits were humanism, individualism, secularism, and the pursuit of knowledge. However, Italy had important distinctive features in the patronage of the arts, the ascent of the merchant class, the city-states, and the rise of the “Renaissance man” or “universal man” adept in multiple disciplines. The arts both reflect and shape the society, its values, and the aspirations of individual people. Burckhardt delves deeply into the evolving art and architecture of Renaissance Italy. We read of the resurgence of ancient Greek and Roman forms, the rediscovery of perspective, the mastery of human anatomy, and the illustrious contributions of artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The book has exerted a profound influence on our understanding and interpretation of the Renaissance. Burckhardt's emphasis on individualism, secularism, and celebrating human achievement continues to shape scholarly discourse surrounding this subject. Later research has challenged and refined some of Burckhardt's ideas. Nonetheless, his work remains an indispensable reference for anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the cultural and intellectual history of a momentous era. Contents Editorial Foreword Part 1: The State as a Work Of Art Part 2: The Development of the Individual Part 3: The Revival of Antiquity Part 4: The Discovery of the World and Of Man Part 5: Society and Festivals Part 6: Morality and Religion Select Bibliography

Religion has power structures that require and justify its existence, spread its influence, and mask its collaboration with other power structures. Power, like religion, is in collaboration. Along this line, this book affirms that one could see and study the power structures and power relations of a religion in and through the missions of empires. Empires rise and roam with the blessings and protections of religious power structures (e.g., scriptures, theologies, interpretations, traditions) that in return carry, propagate and justify imperial agendas. Thus, to understand the relation between religion and power requires one to also study the relation between religion and empires. Christianity is the religion that receives the most deliberation in this book, with some attention to power structures and power relations in Hinduism and Buddhism. The cross-cultural and inter-national contributors share the conviction that something within each religion resists and subverts its power structures and collaborations. The authors discern and interrogate the involvements of religion with empires past and present, political and ideological, economic and customary, systemic and local. The upshot is that the book troubles religious teachings and practices that sustain, as well as profit from, empires.

The popular conception of the Renaissance as a culture devoted to order and perfection does not account for an important characteristic of Renaissance art: many of the period's major works, including those by da Vinci, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Ronsard, and Montaigne, appeared as works-in-progress, always liable to changes and additions. In Perpetual Motion, Michel Jeanneret argues for a sixteenth century swept up in change and fascinated by genesis and metamorphosis. Jeanneret begins by tracing the metamorphic sensibility in sixteenth-century science and culture. Theories of creation and cosmology, of biology and geology, profoundly affected the perspectives of leading thinkers and artists on the nature of matter and form. The conception of humanity (as understood by Pico de Mirandola, Erasmus, Rabelais, and others), reflections upon history, the theory and practice of language, all led to new ideas, new genres, and a new interest in the diversity of experience. Jeanneret goes on to show that the invention of the printing press did not necessarily produce more stable literary texts than those transmitted orally or as hand-printed manuscripts—authors incorporated ideas of transformation into the process of composing and revising and encouraged creative interpretations from their readers, translators, and imitators. Extending the argument to the visual arts, Jeanneret considers da Vinci's sketches and paintings, changing depictions of the world map, the mythological sculptures in the gardens of Prince Orsini in Bomarzo, and many other Renaissance works. More than fifty illustrations supplement his analysis.

Assessing the different kinds of borders between African nations, the contributors present a borderland and trans-region approach to understanding the challenges and opportunities facing the peoples of the African continent. Africa faces rampant violence, terrorism, deterioration of water-energy-food provision, influxes of refugees and immigrants, and religious hatred under the trends of globalization. Solutions for these issues require new perspectives that are not attempted by conventional state-building approaches. Statehood is limited in many places on the African continent because many states are combined by loose political ties. African states’ borders tend to be regarded as porous and fragile. However, as the contributors to this volume argue, those porous borders can contribute to cultural and socio-economic network construction beyond states and the creation of active borderlands by increasing people’s mobility, contact, and trade. A must read for scholars of African studies that will also be of great value to academics and students with a broader interest in nationhood, globalization, and borders.

On the Edge of Empires explores the mixed culture of North Mesopotamia in the Roman period. This volatile region at the eastern edge of the Roman world became during the imperial period the theater of confrontation for multiple political entities: Rome, Parthia, Sasanian Persia. Roman presence is only recognizable through military installations – forts, barracks, military camps – yet these fascinating lands tell a story of frontier people and soldiers, of trade despite war, and daily life between the Empires. This volume combines archaeological and historical, literary and environmental evidence in order to explore this important borderland between east and west. On the Edge of Empires is a valuable addition to researchers engaged in the historical and archaeological reconstruction of the frontier areas of the Roman Empire, and a fascinating study for students and scholars of the Romans and their neighbours, borderlands in antiquity, and the history and archaeology of empires.

The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched ‘scientism’, has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization.