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NEW BOOKS:

Paramilitary Groups and the State under Globalization
Edited By Jasmin Hristov, Jeb Sprague, Aaron Tauss

University of Lorraine (Nancy, France), November 24 - 25, 2022

Dating back to the beginnings of Greek democracy and the Platonic conception of the philosopher king, the relations between power and knowledge have recently come back to the fore with the rise of populism or the sanitary crisis. Whether an obstacle to democracy, a means for citizens to control their representatives or a vehicle for regenerating democracy (Mounk 2018), knowledge now appears, more than ever before, as a constitutive feature of government.

This interdisciplinary conference will seek to explore the implications of such relations since the 18th century and to examine to what extent knowledge may establish, legitimize or discredit the forms and figures of political power.

Alongside the democratic ideal, the specialisation and secularisation of knowledge during the Enlightenment gave rise to conceptions of a social order based on knowledge, be it Robert Owen's utopian schemes, Comtean positivism or the clerisy called for by S. T. Coleridge. As mass democracy spurred the growth and influence of political parties, debating societies and think tanks appeared with the aim of influencing political decision-makers as well as public opinion, precipitating reforms and asserting the dominance of thought over action (Stone & Denham 2004; Landry 2021). In the liberal and democratic project, education has come to represent a valuable means of promoting citizenship for reformers ranging from philanthropists, socialists and liberals, to philosophical traditions such as British idealism or American pragmatism (Tyler 2006; Dewey 1916). On a broader scale, cultural critics or intellectuals have invoked their learning or expertise to purportedly counterbalance institutional power or to exert influence in the public sphere.

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NEW BOOKS:

	Weaponized Whiteness: The Constructions and Deconstructions of White Identity Politics By Fran Shor	Globalization Matters: Engaging the Global in Unsettled Times By Manfred B. Steger and Paul James	Globalizing the Caribbean: Political Economy, Social Change, and the Transnational Capitalist Class By Jeb Sprague

NEW BOOKS:

Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic
By William I. Robinson

Second Thoughts on Capitalism and the State
By Leslie Sklair

Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis
By Eve Darian-Smith