2019
Jia Gao and Yuanyuan Su. Social Mobilisation in Post-Industrial China The Case of Rural Urbanisation Authored Research Books. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019.
In recent years China has experienced intense economic development. Previously a rapidly urbanising industrial economy, the country has become a post-industrial economy with a service sector that accounts for almost half the nation’s GDP. This transformation has created many socio-political changes, but key among them is social mobilisation. This book provides a full and systematic analysis of social mobilisation in China, and how its use as part of state capacity has evolved.
The first book on the topic written in English in recent decades, Social Mobilisation in Post-Industrial China provides readers with a thorough analysis covering all vertical administrative levels, as well as considering new participants. Bringing together interdisciplinary analyses of the current uses of social mobilisation in China, this book draws on empirically rich original research. It presents a clear picture of how boyi (‘strategic game-playing’) is acted out at different levels of society and within different sectors, and the social dynamics at work.
Ali Akbar and Abdullah Saeed. Contemporary Approaches to the Qur’an and its Interpretation in Iran. Routledge, 2019.
This book sets out how contemporary Iranian scholars have approached the Qur’an during recent decades. It particularly aims to explore the contributions of scholars that have emerged in the post 1979-revolution era, outlining their primary interpretive methods and foundational theories regarding the reading of the Qur’an.
Examining issues such as the status of women, democracy, freedom of religion and human rights, this book analyses the theoretical contributions of several Iranian scholars, some of which are new to the English-speaking academy. The hermeneutical approaches of figures such Abdolkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Mohsen Kadivar, Hasan Yousefi-Eshkevari, Abolqasem Fanaie and Mostafa Malekian are presented and then analysed to demonstrate how a contextualist approach to the Qu’ran has been formed in response to the influence of Western Orientalism. The effect of this approach to the Qu’ran is then shown to have wide-ranging effects on Iranian society.
This study reveals Qu’ranic thought that has been largely overlooked by the West. It will, therefore. Be of great use to academics in Religious, Islamic and Qur’anic studies as well as those studying the culture of Iran and the Middle East more generally.
Vedi Hadiz. “Islamic populism and the politics of neoliberal inequalities,” in Carlos de la Torre (ed.,). Routledge Handbook of Global Populism. Routledge, 2019.
The Routledge Handbook of Global Populism provides instructors, students, and researchers with a thorough and systematic overview of the history and development of populism and analyses the main debates. It is divided into sections on the theories of populism, on political and social theory and populism, on how populists politicise inequalities and differences, on the media and populism, on its ambiguous relationships with democratisation and authoritarianism, and on the distinct regional manifestations of populism. Leading international academics from history, political science, media studies, and sociology map innovative ideas and areas of theoretical and empirical research to understand the phenomenon of global populism.
Lewis Mayo and Julian Millie. “Grave Visiting (Ziyara) in Indonesia,” in Babak Rahimi and Peyman Eshaghi (eds.,). Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World. The University of North Carolina Press. 2019.
Traveling to and far beyond the Hajj, the most well-known Muslim pilgrimage, the volume’s contributors reveal and analyse emerging contemporary Islamic pilgrimage practices around the world, in minority- and majority-Muslim countries as well as in urban and rural settings. What was once a tiny religious attraction in a remote village, for example, may begin to draw increasing numbers of pilgrims to shrines and tombs as the result of new means of travel, thus triggering significant changes in the traditional rituals, and livelihoods, of the local people. Organised around three key themes – history and politics; embodiment, memory, and material religion; and communications – the book reveals how rituals, practices, and institutions are experienced in the context of an inexorable global capitalism.