In Violent Utopia Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, from the post-Reconstruction migration of Black people to Oklahoma Indian Territory to contemporary efforts to rebuild Black prosperity. He focuses on how the massacre in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood—colloquially known as Black Wall Street—curtailed the freedom built there. Rather than framing the massacre as a one-off event, Lewis places it in a larger historical and social context of widespread patterns of anti-Black racism, segregation, and dispossession in Tulsa and beyond. He shows how the processes that led to the massacre, subsequent urban renewal, and intergenerational poverty shored up by nonprofits constitute a form of continuous slow violence. Now, in their attempts to redevelop resources for self-determination, Black Tulsans must reconcile a double inheritance: the massacre’s violence and the historical freedom and prosperity that Greenwood represented. Their future is tied to their geography, which is the foundation from which they will repair and fulfill Greenwood’s promise.

This controversial book explores the presence of the fantastic in Biblical and related texts, and the influence of Biblical traditions on contemporary fantasy writing, cinema, music and art. The contributors apply a variety of critical concepts and methods from the field of fantasy studies, including the theories of Tolkien, Todorov, Rosemary Jackson and Jack Zipes, to Biblical texts and challenge theological suppositions regarding the texts which take refuge in science or historiography. Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God presents a provocative and arresting new analysis of Biblical texts which draws on the most recent critical approaches to provide a unique study of the Biblical narrative.

Volume 2 of Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 continues and complements the discussion of the event undertaken in the first part of the two-volume publication (2014). This time, the focus is put on language and discourse. The contributions here volume explore the construction of “Us” and “Them” in a variety of pre- and post-9/11 texts, mainly from the perspectives of (political) discourse analysis and translation studies. The book shows how language in use reflects and retells the tragic event and how it (re-)constructs its actors, bringing us closer to understanding the roots and long-term consequences of 9/11. The volume is by no means exhaustive of the topic, but demonstrates its complexity and continuing relevance for today’s world.

What if we understood the idea of family as central to representing alternative forms of governance as expressions of racial deviance? In The Politics of Kinship, Mark Rifkin shows how ideologies of family, including notions of kinship, recast Indigenous and other forms of collective self-organization and self-determination as disruptive racial tendencies in need of state containment and intervention. Centering work in Indigenous studies, Rifkin illustrates how conceptions of family and race work together as part of ongoing efforts to regulate, assault, and efface other political orders. The book examines the history of anthropology and its resonances in contemporary queer scholarship, contemporary Indian policy from the 1970s onward, the legal history of family formation and privacy in the United States, and the association of blackness with criminality across US history. In this way, Rifkin seeks to open new possibilities for envisioning what kinds of relations, networks, and formations can and should be seen as governance on lands claimed by the United States.

One of the main themes running through Gandhi’s life and work was the battle against evil. This book offers a fascinating reconstruction of Gandhi and the doctrine of Ahimsa or non-violence. Gandhi’s moral perfectionism is contrasted with other forms of perfectionism, but the book stresses that Gandhi also offered a doctrine of the second best. Following Gandhi, the author argues that outward violence with compassion is intrinsically not as good as non-violence with compassion, but it is a second best that is sometimes a necessary evil in an imperfect world. The book provides an illuminating analysis of coercion, non-co-operation, civil disobedience and necessary evil, comparing Gandhi’s ideas with that of some of the leading western moral, legal and political philosophers. Further, some of his important ideas are shown to have relevance for the working of the Indian Constitution. This book will be essential for scholars and researchers in moral, legal and political philosophy, Gandhi studies, political science and South Asian studies.

Are utopian visions viable in the 21st century? Utopia has been equated, for many, with totalitarianism. Such visions are not acceptable. The loss of utopian visions altogether is also unacceptable. This book argues that American Pragmatism and Feminist theory can combine to provide a process model of utopia that pushes to build a flexible future that helps us deal with change, conflict, and diversity without resorting to fixed ends.

"The authors in this collection engage with what a participatory society would look like, how it would function, and how our commitments to just outcomes is related to the sort of institutions we maintain. Topics include: participatory economics, political vision, education, architecture, artists in a free society, environmentalism, work after capitalism, and poly-culturalism."--BOOK JACKET.