In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time? More broadly, what has their changing participation meant for women, Hindu nationalism, and Indian democracy? In Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy (Oxford UP, 2023), Rina Verma Williams places women's participation in religious politics in India into historical and comparative perspective through a focus on the most important Hindu nationalist political parties in modern Indian history: the All-India Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She compares three critical periods to show the increasing involvement of women in Hindu nationalist politics over time. In its formative years in the early 1900s, the HMS marginalized women; in the 1980s, the BJP began to mobilize them; and in the contemporary period, as the BJP returned to power in 2014, it has incorporated women into its structures and activities. Williams contends that the incorporation of women into Hindu nationalist politics has significantly advanced the BJP's electoral success compared to prior periods when women were either marginalized or mobilized in more limited ways. Given that the BJP is one of the most dynamic religious/ethno-nationalist parties in the world at present, Williams' account of how it incorporated masses of women into its coalition is essential reading for scholars and students interested not just in India, but in the relationship between gender and right-wing populist politics globally.Yash Sharma is a PhD student in Political Science at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Cincinnati. His research is focused on the interactions of political mobilization and anti-minority violence within Hindu nationalist organizations in India. Twitter. Email: sharmaym@mail.uc.edu

Caritas, a form of grace that turned our love for our neighbour into a spiritual practice, was expected of all early modern Christians, and corresponded with a set of ethical rules for living that displayed one's love in the everyday. Caritas was not just a willingness to behave morally, to keep the peace, and to uphold social order however, but was expected to be felt as a strong passion, like that of a parent to a child. Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self (Oxford UP, 2021) explores the importance of caritas to early modern communities, introducing the concept of the 'emotional ethic' to explain how neighbourly love become not only a code for moral living but a part of felt experience. As an emotional ethic, caritas was an embodied norm, where physical feeling and bodily practices guided right action, and was practiced in the choices and actions of everyday life. Using a case study of the Scottish lower orders, this book highlights how caritas shaped relationships between men and women, families, and the broader community.Focusing on marriage, childhood and youth, 'sinful sex', privacy and secrecy, and hospitality towards the itinerant poor, Caritas provides a rich analysis of the emotional lives of the poor and the embodied moral framework that guided their behaviour. Charting the period 1660 to 1830, it highlights how caritas evolved in response to the growing significance of romantic love, as well as new ideas of social relation between men, such as fraternity and benevolence.

Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his core philosophy. They also assume that racism contradicts his moral theory. In Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere (Oxford UP, 2023), philosopher Huaping Lu-Adler challenges both assumptions. She shows how Kant's raciology--divided into racialism and racism--is integral to his philosophical system. She also rejects the individualistic approach to Kant and racism. Instead, she uses the notion of racism as ideological formation to demonstrate how Kant, from his social location both as a prominent scholar and as a lifelong educator, participated in the formation of modern racist ideology.As a scholar, Kant developed a ground-breaking scientific theory of race from the standpoint of a philosophical investigator of nature or Naturforscher. As an educator, he transmitted denigrating depictions of the racialized others and imbued those descriptions with normative relevance. In both roles, he left behind, as one of his legacies, a worldview that excluded non-whites from such goods as recognitional respect and candidacy for cultural and moral achievements. Scholars who research and teach Kant's philosophy therefore have an unshakable burden to take part in the ongoing antiracist struggles, through their teaching practices as well as their scholarship. And they must do so with a pragmatic attention to nonideal social realities and a deliberate orientation toward substantial racial justice, equality, and inclusion.Lu-Adler pushes the discourse about Kant and racism well beyond the old debates about whether he was racist or whether his racism contaminates his philosophy. By foregrounding the lasting legacies of Kant's raciology, her work calls for a profound reorientation of Kant scholarship.Huaping Lu-Adler is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. She specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western philosophy (particularly epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and logic). She is the author of Kant and the Science of Logic (Oxford, 2018).Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey discusses the past and future of citizenship with David Jacobson, Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida (Tampa). They discuss the origins of the concept of citizenship in the ancient Near East a few thousand years ago and how kinship notions shape the debate on citizenship even in our own time. In their recent book Citizenship: The Third Revolution (Oxford UP, 2023), Jacobson and his co-author, Manlio Cinalli, turn to the experience of the medieval guilds as an alternative that may help rejuvenate the institution of citizenship today. The conversation closes with a discussion of Jacobson’s project on violence among the Vikings and how the monopolization of the legitimate means of violence contributes to the decline of violence in societies, as Norbert Elias argued that it did.

The first ever biography of the founder of Western philosophy Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. In his teens, he honed his intellect by attending lectures from the many thinkers who passed through Athens and toyed with the idea of writing poetry. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. Instead, Plato turned to writing and teaching. He began teaching in his twenties and later founded the Academy, the world's first higher-educational research and teaching establishment. Eventually, he returned to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily that would reflect and perpetuate some of his political ideals. The attempts failed, and Plato's disappointment can be traced in some of his later political works. In his lifetime and after, Plato was considered almost divine. Though a measure of his importance, this led to the invention of many tall tales about him-both by those who adored him and his detractors. In Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2023), Robin Waterfield steers a judicious course among these stories, debunking some while accepting the kernels of truth in others. He explains why Plato chose to write dialogues rather than treatises and gives an overview of the subject matter of all of Plato's books. Clearly and engagingly written throughout, Plato of Athens is the perfect introduction to the man and his work.Robin Waterfield is an independent scholar and translator living in southern Greece. Among his numerous translations of Greek works are Plato's Symposium, Gorgias, and Republic, all published in the Oxford World's Classics series. His previous works of history include Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece and Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Contemporary politics is characterized by the rise (and fall) of many new parties. But what tools do political scientists have to map and measure electoral volatility? How can we best capture this change? And what insights can political scientists draw from other disciplines? Join host Tim Haughton for a discussion with Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker, the authors of a new book, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2023). Their book draws on a database of 200 000 electoral candidates from over 60 elections across nine democracies. Allan Sikk is Associate Professor at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Philipp Köker is Lecturer and Research Fellow at Leibniz University in Hannover. Tim Haughton is Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a founding co-director of CEDAR at the University of Birmingham. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham!

Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian states are digitally catching up with their democratic counterparts, and both are showing a growing interest in the use of cyber controls--online censorship and surveillance technologies--that allow governments to exercise control over the Internet. Under what conditions does a digitally connected society actually help states target their enemies? Why do repressive governments sometimes shut down the Internet when faced with uprisings? And how have cyber controls become a dependable tool in the weapons arsenal that states use in civil conflict?In Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Anita R. Gohdes addresses these questions, and provides an original and in-depth look into the relationship between digital technologies and state violence. Drawing on large-scale analyses of fine-grained data on the Syrian conflict, qualitative case evidence from Iran, and the first global comparative analysis on Internet outages and state repression, Dr. Gohdes makes the case that digital infrastructure supports security forces in their use of violent state repression. More specifically, she argues that mass access to the Internet presents governments who fear for their political survival with a set of response options. When faced with a political threat, they can either temporarily restrict or block online public access or they can expand mass access to online information and monitor it to their own advantage. Surveillance allows security forces to target opponents of the state more selectively, while extreme forms of censorship or shutdowns of the Internet occur in conjunction with larger and more indiscriminate repression. As digital communication has become a bedrock of modern opposition and protest movements, Repression in the Digital Age breaks new ground in examining state repression in the information age.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Is contemporary international order truly a secular arrangement? Theorists of international relations typically adhere to a narrative that portrays the modern states system as the product of a gradual process of secularization that transcended the religiosity of medieval Christendom. William Bain's Political Theology of International Order (Oxford University Press, 2020) challenges this narrative by arguing that modern theories of international order reflect ideas that originate in medieval theology. They are, in other words, worldly applications of a theological pattern.This ground-breaking book makes two key contributions to scholarship on international order. First, it provides a thorough intellectual history of medieval and early modern traditions of thought and the way in which they shape modern thinking about international order. It explores the ideas of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Martin Luther, and other theologians to rise above the sharp differentiation of medieval and modern that underpins most international thought. Uncovering this theological inheritance invites a fundamental reassessment of canonical figures, such as Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes, and their contribution to theorizing international order. Second, this book shows how theological ideas continue to shape modern theories of international order by structuring the questions theorists ask as well as the answer they provide. It argues that the dominant vocabulary of international order, system and society, anarchy, balance of power, and constitutionalism, is mediated by the intellectual commitments of nominalist theology. It concludes by exploring the implications of thinking in terms of this theological inheritance, albeit in a world where God is only one of several possibilities that can called upon to secure the regularity of order.William Bain is Associate Professor of International Relations at National University of Singapore. He is the author of Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (OUP, 2003) and editor of, and contributor to, Medieval Foundations of International Relations (Routledge, 2016) and The Empire of Security and the Safety of the People (Routledge, 2006). He has written widely on the theory of international society and the history of international thought.

Coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, pigs. Each of these objects were ubiquitous in the premodern cultural representation of the Irish. Through case studies of these five objects, Colleen Taylor’s new monograph Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2024) recovers the sometimes-oppressive, sometimes-liberatory meanings invested in nonhuman matter. Irish Materialisms collects a rich archive of material from William Carleton’s “Phil Purcel, the Pig Driver,” to the it-narrative The Adventures of a Bad Shilling in the Kingdom of Ireland, Gulliver’s Travels to Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl.Colleen Taylor is Professor of English at Boston College. She has held the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame and an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Award at University College Cork. Irish Materialisms is her first monograph.

Anticommunism in French Society and Politics, 1945-1953 (Oxford UP, 2023) evaluates the prevalence of anticommunism among the French population in 1945 to 1953, and examines its causes, character, and consequences through a series of case studies on different segments of French society. These include the scouting movement; family organisations; agricultural associations; middle-class groups; and trade unions and other working-class organisations. Aaron Clift contends that anticommunism was more widespread and deeply rooted than previously believed, and had a substantial impact on national politics and on these social groups and organisations. Furthermore, he argues that the study of anticommunism allows us a deeper understanding of the values they regarded as the most important to defend. Although anticommunism was a diverse phenomenon, this work identifies common discourses, including portrayals of communism as a threat to the nation; the colonial empire; the traditional family; private property; religion; the rural world; and Western civilisation. It also highlights common aims (such as the rehabilitation of wartime collaborators) and tactics (such as the invocation of apoliticism). While acknowledging the importance of the Cold War, it rejects the assumption that anticommunism was an American import or foreign to French society and demonstrates links between anticommunism and anti-Americanism. It concludes that anticommunism drew its strength from the connection or even conflation of communism with perceived negative social changes that were seen to threaten traditional French civilisation, interacting with the postwar international and domestic environment and the personal experiences of individual anticommunists.Aaron Clift received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2022, following a Master's at the University of Toronto and a Bachelor's at the University of Victoria. After a stint as a Postdoctoral History Scholar at the University of Calgary, Dr. Clift is now a Fellow at the London School of Economics where he teaches and researches on the Cold War period.