This influential book challenges one of the most pervasive and powerful beliefs of our time--that Europe rose to modernity and world dominance due to unique qualities of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit, and that progress for the rest of the world resulted from the diffusion of European civilization. J. M. Blaut persuasively argues that this doctrine is not grounded in the facts of history and geography, but in the ideology of colonialism. Blaut traces the colonizer's model of the world from its 16th-century origins to its present form in theories of economic development, modernization, and new world order.

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute held in 1996 on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples.

Since its publication in 2006 as Fifty Key Thinkers on Development, this invaluable reference has established itself as the leading biographical handbook in its field, providing a concise and accessible introduction to the lives and key contributions of development thinkers from across the ideological and disciplinary spectrum. This substantially expanded and fully updated second edition in the relaunched series without the numerical constraint includes an additional 24 essays, filling in many gaps in the original selection, greatly improving the gender balance and diversifying coverage to reflect the evolving landscape of development in theory, policy and practice. It presents a unique guide to the lives, ideas and practices of leading contributors to the contested terrain of development studies and development policy and practice. Its thoughtful essays reflect the diversity of development in theory, policy and practice across time, space, disciplines and communities of practice. Accordingly, it challenges Western-centrism, Orientalism and the like, while also demonstrating the enduring appeal of "development" in different guises. David Simon has assembled a highly authoritative team of contributors from different backgrounds, regional settings and disciplines to reflect on the lives and contributions of leading authorities on development from around the world. These include: Modernisers like Kindleberger, Perroux and Rostow Dependencistas such as Frank, Furtado, Cardoso and Amin Progressives and critical modernists like Hirschman, Prebisch, Helleiner Sen, Streeten and Wang Political leaders enunciating radical alternative visions of development, such as Mao, Nkrumah and Nyerere Progenitors of religiously or spiritually inspired development, such as Gandhi, Ariyaratne and Vivekananda Development–environment thinkers like Agarwal, Blaikie, Brookfield, Ostrom and Sachs International institution builders like Singer, Hammarsköld, Kaul and Ul Haq Anti- and post-development thinkers and activists like Escobar, Ghosh, Quijano and Roy Key Thinkers on Development is therefore the essential handbook on the world’s most influential development thinkers and an invaluable guide for students of development and sustainability, policy-makers and practitioners seeking an accessible overview of this diverse field and its leading voices.

The political and social structures of modernity are dominated by really eurocentric forms and relations, yet the theorisation of the eurocentricity of modernity remains barely developed. At the same time, modern political and social theory is fundamentally eurocentric, yet the critique of eurocentrism remains marginal to marxian and critical realist theory. Addressing the eurocentrism of both modernity and modern theory, Eurocentrism: A Marxian Critical Realist Critique discloses the deeply embedded constraints it imposes on historical and social reflexivity. Building on the insights of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, Eurocentrism shows how the powerful anti-eurocentric tendencies of the marxian critique of civil society and the critical realist critique of philosophy have been misunderstood or ignored. It develops the latent potential of these traditions to develop a systematically anti-eurocentric approach to understanding and explaining modernity.

This book rethinks and transforms the current discourse on globalization and global justice. It expands the idea of globalization from an economic or corporate context to mean humanization and planetary realizations — moving beyond the boundaries of nation-states and other human-made demarcations. The author challenges the notion of human primacy and makes a fervent call to reconfigure the paradigm of anthropocentrism. Through a careful study of movements for justice and inter-faith dialogue from across the world, the book makes a unique contribution to the emerging study of global responsibility. It also helps us overcome our current civilizational crises and cultivate a new civilization of planetary care and co-responsibility. As part of the Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought series, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law and society, especially social movements, political theory, and philosophy.

This collection analyzes the affinities and interactions between Indic and Judaic civilizations from ancient to contemporary times. The contributors propose a new, global understanding of commerce and culture, to reconfigure how we understand the way great cultures interact, and present a new constellation of diplomacy, literature, and geopolitics.

Earth and its inhabitants face an unprecedented crisis--the human-caused destruction of the planet's life support systems. Deteriorating climate bringing super storms, mass forest fires, melting glaciers, droughts, extreme heat and rising seas, a decline in food production, soil loss, water pollution and declining fisheries all threaten the future of life on earth with a looming extinction event not seen for 60 million years. Beginning in the 17th century, we developed a civilization based on radical materialism, exploitation of natural resources and the myth of endless economic growth. For all its technological wonders, this "hypercivilization" has proven unsustainable. This book explores ways we can create an "ecocivilization" compatible with the laws and limits of nature--a new way of living already developing, with new technologies, new forms of social organization and a new story about ourselves and the Earth.

What challenges face jurisdictions that attempt to conduct law in two or more languages? How does choosing a legal language affect the way in which justice is delivered? Answers to these questions are vital for the 75 officially bilingual and multilingual states of the world, as well as for other states contemplating a move towards multilingualism. Arguably such questions have implications for all countries in a world characterized by the pressures of globalization, economic integration, population mobility, decolonization, and linguistic re-colonization. For lawyers, addressing such challenges is made essential by the increased frequency and scale of transnational legal dealings and proceedings, as well as by the lengthening reach of international law. But it is not only policy makers, legislators, and other legal practitioners who must think about such questions. The relationship between societal multilingualism and law also raises questions for the burgeoning field of language and law, which posits--among other tenets--the centrality of language in legal processes. In this book, Janny H.C. Leung examines key aspects of legal multilingualism. Drawing extensively on case studies, she describes the implications of the legal, practical, and ideological dilemmas encountered in a given country when it becomes bilingual or multilingual, discussing such issues as: how legal certainty and the linguistic ideology of authenticity may be challenged in a multilingual jurisdiction; how courts balance the language preferences of different courtroom participants; and what historical, socio-political and economic factors may influence the decision to cement a given language as a jurisdiction's official language. Throughout, Leung elaborates a theory of "symbolic jurisprudence" to explore common dilemmas found across countries, despite their varied political and cultural settings, and argues that linguistic equality as proclaimed and practiced today is a shallow kind of equality. Although officially multilingual jurisdictions appear to be more inclusive than their monolingual counterparts, they run the risk of disguising substantive inequalities and displacing real efforts for more progressive social change. This is the first book to offer overarching discussion of how such issues relate to each other, and the first systematic study of legal multilingualism as a global phenomenon.

How did the modern world get to be the way it is? How did we come to live in a globalized, industrialized, capitalistic set of nation-states? Moving beyond Eurocentric explanations and histories that revolve around the rise of the West, distinguished historian Robert B. Marks explores the roles of Asia, Africa, and the New World in the global story. He defines the modern world as marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, and an escape from environmental constraints. Bringing the saga to the present, Marks considers how and why the United States emerged as a world power in the 20th century and the sole superpower by the 21st century; the powerful resurgence of Asia; and the vastly changed relationship of humans to the environment.

This book considers the work of the preeminent scholar on decoloniality, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, as a means of examining the development of decoloniality discourse and considering the future direction of the African knowledge economy. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni has been instrumental in the construction of theories and ideas necessary for advancing a decolonial system of education and epistemology. This book considers how Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s work has helped to shape our thinking both on Mugabe and the history of Zimbabwe, and beyond to the broader questions of race, liberation, higher education, and the future of decolonial studies. Renowned author Professor Toyin Falola then invites us to consider the dangers of continued repression of African epistemologies, and the enormous benefits of an alternative knowledge economy in which a diverse multiplicity of ideas drives our understanding of the world on to new heights. Unpacking the various conceptual leanings of decoloniality through the works of one of its leading lights, this book will be an essential read for researchers across the fields of African Studies, Race Studies, Philosophy, and Education.