Spring 2013 Catalog - Duke University Press

18
Arts of the Political
New Openings for the Left
ash amin & nigel thrift
“The Left urgently needs redefinition and rejuvenation during a time
when the forces of the Right are highly mobilized, blowback from several
nonhuman forces has intensified, and a progressive formation will take
the form of a pluralist assemblage. Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift confront
these issues in creative ways, as they explore the levels and modes
needed to activate a progressive movement. This is a bracing and timely
book.”—WILLIAM E. CONNOLLY, author of A World of Becoming
In the West, “the Left,” understood
as a loose conglomeration
of interests centered around the
goal of a fairer and more equal
society, still struggles to make
its voice heard and its influence
felt, even amid an overwhelming
global recession. In Arts of the
Political: New Openings for the
Left, Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift
argue that only by broadening
the domain of what is considered
political and what can be made
into politics will the Left be able to respond forcefully to injustice
and inequality. In particular, the Left requires a more imaginative
and experimental approach to the politics of creating a better
society. The authors propose three political arts that they consider
crucial to transforming the Left: boosting invention, leveraging
organization, and mobilizing affect. They maintain that successful
Left political movements tend to surpass traditional notions of
politics and open up political agency to these kinds of considerations.
In other words, rather than providing another blueprint for
the future, Amin and Thrift concentrate their attention on a more
modest examination of the conduct of politics itself and the ways
that it can be made more effective.
Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Cambridge University. He is
the author of Land of Strangers and coauthor (with Patrick Cohendet)
of Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities.
Nigel Thrift is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick. He is
the author of Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect
and Knowing Capitalism. Amin and Thrift are the authors of Cities:
Reimagining the Urban.
POLITICAL THEORY/SOCIAL THEORY
March 240 pages
paper, 978–0–8223–5401–7, $22.95/£14.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5387–4, $79.95/£60.00
general interest
Sustaining Activism
A Brazilian Women’s Movement
and a Father-Daughter Collaboration
jeffrey w. rubin &
emma sokoloff-rubin
“This absorbing book—combining history, politics, sociology, memoir—is
ultimately beyond category, much like the individual activists in Brazil whom
it traces. Unique individuals can and do join forces to make a movement, as
the authors have joined forces to make this book. Jeffrey W. Rubin and Emma
Sokoloff-Rubin, each a distinct voice within a father-daughter team, exemplify
the complex unities they write about so eloquently.”—MARY JO SALTER,
poet and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins
University
In 1986, a group of young Brazilian
women started a movement to
secure economic rights for rural
women and transform women’s roles
in their homes and communities.
Together with activists across the
country, they built a new democracy
in the wake of a military dictatorship.
In Sustaining Activism, Jeffrey W.
Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin tell
the behind-the-scenes story of this
remarkable movement. As a fatherdaughter
team, they describe the
challenges of ethnographic research and the way their collaboration
gave them a unique window into a fiery struggle for equality.
Starting in 2002, Rubin and Sokoloff-Rubin traveled together to
southern Brazil, where they interviewed activists over the course of
ten years. Their vivid descriptions of women’s lives reveal the hard
work of sustaining a social movement in the years after initial victories,
when the political way forward was no longer clear and the goal
of remaking gender roles proved more difficult than activists had
ever imagined. Highlighting the tensions within the movement about
how best to effect change, Sustaining Activism ultimately shows that
democracies need social movements in order to improve people’s
lives and create a more just society.
Jeffrey W. Rubin is Associate Professor of History and a Research
Associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston
University. Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, a recent Yale graduate, is a Howland
Research Fellow in Buenos Aires.
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES/ACTIVISM
February 200 pages, 27 illustrations
paper, 978–0–8223–5421–5, $22.95/£14.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5406–2, $79.95/£60.00