School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemIran in the world: President Rouhani's foreign policy(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016-04-08)This book evaluates President Hassan Rouhani's foreign policy during his first two years in office, looking at the case studies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Turkey, and Syria, as well as the Iran-US relationship. President Rouhani came to power in Iran in 2013 promising to reform the country's long-contentious foreign policy. His top priorities were rehabilitating the Iranian economy, ending the nuclear dispute, rebuilding relations with the US, and mending ties with Iran's neighbors. It is argued here that while President Rouhani has made progress in the Iran-US relationship, in nuclear negotiations and some bilateral relationships, his broader success has been hampered by regional political developments and domestic competition. Further, it is contended that his future success will be guided by emerging regional tensions, including whether Iran's neighbors will accept the terms of the nuclear agreement.
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ItemNew Opposition in the Middle East(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018-09-27)This book uses a Contentious Politics lens to examine patterns of contestation since 2009 and 2011 among the Middle East's most important opposition actors. The volume is comprised of seven chapters that ask questions in relation to the responsiveness of opposition groups to their political environments, the long-term legacies of authoritarianism, and whether the post-2009/2011 political environment is better or worse for Middle Eastern oppositions. It interrogates the ways in which oppositions have morphed in relation to this changed operating environment, subjectively interpreting the costs and benefits of contestation in order to maximise political opportunities. To some oppositions, changes in the power balance between regime structures and opposition agents led to unprecedented opportunity for political action, while for others, structures were galvanised to restrict opposition activities. In total, the volume shows that even though the Arab Uprisings and Green Movement achieved few of their overt goals, the events unleashed smaller shifts across the region that have led to a fundamental change in the politics of contestation amongst the region�s oppositions. These patterns echo experiences in other parts of the world, including the coloured revolutions in post-Soviet states, and the political environment in Chile after Pinochet.
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ItemThe Muslim Brotherhood in Syria(Cambridge University Press, 2019)Having played a role in every iteration of Syrian politics since the country gained independence in 1946, the Muslim Brotherhood were the most prominent opposition group in Syria on the eve of the 2011 uprising. But when unrest broke out in March 2011, few Brotherhood flags and slogans were to be found within the burgeoning protest movement. Drawing on extensive primary research including interviews with Brotherhood members, Dara Conduit looks to the group's history to understand why it failed to capitalise on this advantage as the conflict unfolded, addressing significant gaps in accounts of the group's past to assess whether its reputation for violence and dogmatism is justified. In doing so, Conduit reveals a party that was neither as violent nor as undemocratic as expected, but whose potential to stage a long-awaited comeback was hampered by the shadow of its own history.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRelating Worlds of Racism: Dehumanisation, Belonging, and the Normativity of European Whiteness(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)This international edited collection examines how racism trajectories and manifestations in different locations relate and influence each other. The book unmasks and foregrounds the ways in which notions of European Whiteness have found form in a variety of global contexts that continue to sustain racism as an operational norm resulting in exclusion, violence, human rights violations, isolation and limited full citizenship for individuals who are not racialised as White. The chapters in this book specifically implicate European Whiteness – whether attempting to reflect, negate, or obtain it – in social structures that facilitate and normalise racism. The authors interrogate the dehumanisation of Blackness, arguing that dehumanisation enables the continuation of racism in White dominated societies. As such, the book explores instances of dehumanisation across different contexts, highlighting that although the forms may be locally specific, the outcomes are continually negative for those racialised as Black. The volume is refreshingly extensive in its analyses of racism beyond Europe and the United States, including contributions from Africa, South America and Australia, and illuminates previously unexplored manifestations of racism across the globe.
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ItemThe Road to Federalism in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka Finding the Middle Ground(Routledge, 2018-01-19)Nations built on exclusion and assimilation, decades of civil war, widespread poverty, authoritarianism and the decline of democracy. Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are travelling a road to federalism. Institutions and ethnic identity have interacted to privilege some and marginalise others. But when the right conditions prevail, political equality can be restored. This book charts the origins and evolution of federalism and other approaches to the accommodation of minority ethnic groups in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It applies a historical institutionalism methodology to understand why federalism has been resisted, what causes it to be established and what design options are most likely to balance otherwise competing centripetal and centrifugal forces. Breen shows how Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are finding a middle ground whereby deliberative and moderating institutions are combined with accommodating ones to support a political equality among groups and individuals.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableReligion and Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Roman Catholic and Sunni Islamic Perspectives(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)In this book, Dragovic considers how the unique traits of religious institutions can make or break statebuilding efforts. But understanding how religious institutions can contribute does not explain why they would.
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ItemIllness, Identity, and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters(Springer, 2017-11-03)This book explores the cultural and economic conditions fuelling the popularity of the polarizing Paleo diet in Australia. Based on ethnographic research in Melbourne and Sydney, Catie Gressier recounts the compelling narratives of individuals struggling with illness and weight issues. She argues that ‘going Paleo’ provides a sense of agency and means of resistance to the neoliberal policies and practices underpinning the growing prevalence of lifestyle diseases. From its nostalgic constructions of the past, to the rise of anti-elite sentiments inherent in new forms of health populism, Gressier provides a nuanced understanding of the Paleo diet’s contemporary appeal.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableOlder workers in an ageing society: Critical topics in research and policy(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013-01-01)This book explains how they are keen to tackle issues associated with the ageing of populations, namely the funding of pension systems
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ItemNo Preview AvailableNavigating the Future: An Ethnography of Change in Papua New Guinea(ANU Press, 2017)'Navigating the Future' draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Kubo people and their neighbours, in a remote area of Papua New Guinea, to explore how worlds are reconfigured as people become increasingly conscious of, and seek to draw into their own lives, wealth and power that had previously lain beyond their horizons. In the context of a major resource extraction project—the Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) Project–taking shape in the mountains to the north, the people in this area are actively reimagining their social world. This book describes changes in practice that result, tracing shifts in the ways people relate to the land, to each other and to outsiders, and the histories of engagement that frame those changes. Inequalities are emerging between individuals in access to paid work, between groups in potential for claiming future royalties, and between generations in access to information. As people at the village of Suabi strive to make themselves visible to the state and to petroleum companies, as legal entities entitled to receive benefits from the PNG LNG Project, they are drawing new boundaries around sets of people and around land and declaring hierarchical relationships between groups that did not exist before. They are struggling to make sense of a bureaucracy that is foreign to them, in a place where the state currently has minimal presence. A primary concern of 'Navigating the Future' is with the processes through which these changes have emerged, as people seek to imagine—and work to bring about—a radically different future for themselves while simultaneously reimagining their own past in ways that validate those endeavours.
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