About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherZONE Books

ISBN-101935408038

ISBN-139781935408031

eBay Product ID (ePID)234788751

Product Key Features

Number of Pages184 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameWalled States, Waning Sovereignty

SubjectGlobalization, Geopolitics, History & Theory, Public Policy / Social Policy

Publication Year2017

TypeTextbook

AuthorWendy Brown

Subject AreaPolitical Science

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight10.9 Oz

Item Length8.9 in

Item Width6.7 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

LCCN2017-302248

ReviewsWinner of the David Easton Award, Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association

Dewey Edition22

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal320.1

Edition DescriptionExpanded

SynopsisA prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness.Why do walls marking national boundaries proliferate amid widespread proclamations of global connectedness and despite anticipation of a world without borders? Why are barricades built of concrete, steel, and barbed wire when threats to the nation today are so often miniaturized, vaporous, clandestine, dispersed, or networked?In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Wendy Brown considers the recent spate of wall building in contrast to the erosion of nation-state sovereignty. Drawing on classical and contemporary political theories of state sovereignty in order to understand how state power and national identity persist amid its decline, Brown considers both the need of the state for legitimacy and the popular desires that incite the contemporary building of walls. The new walls-dividing Texas from Mexico, Israel from Palestine, South Africa from Zimbabwe-consecrate the broken boundaries they would seem to contest and signify the ungovernability of a range of forces unleashed by globalization. Yet these same walls often amount to little more than theatrical props, frequently breached, and blur the distinction between law and lawlessness that they are intended to represent. But if today's walls fail to resolve the conflicts between globalization and national identity, they nonetheless project a stark image of sovereign power. Walls, Brown argues, address human desires for containment and protection in a world increasingly without these provisions. Walls respond to the wish for horizons even as horizons are vanquished., A prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness. Why do walls marking national boundaries proliferate amid widespread proclamations of global connectedness and despite anticipation of a world without borders? Why are barricades built of concrete, steel, and barbed wire when threats to the nation today are so often miniaturized, vaporous, clandestine, dispersed, or networked? In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty , Wendy Brown considers the recent spate of wall building in contrast to the erosion of nation-state sovereignty. Drawing on classical and contemporary political theories of state sovereignty in order to understand how state power and national identity persist amid its decline, Brown considers both the need of the state for legitimacy and the popular desires that incite the contemporary building of walls. The new walls--dividing Texas from Mexico, Israel from Palestine, South Africa from Zimbabwe--consecrate the broken boundaries they would seem to contest and signify the ungovernability of a range of forces unleashed by globalization. Yet these same walls often amount to little more than theatrical props, frequently breached, and blur the distinction between law and lawlessness that they are intended to represent. But if today's walls fail to resolve the conflicts between globalization and national identity, they nonetheless project a stark image of sovereign power. Walls, Brown argues, address human desires for containment and protection in a world increasingly without these provisions. Walls respond to the wish for horizons even as horizons are vanquished., Why, just two decades after international celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, are so many nation-states building elaborate walls at or near their borders? Why walls now, given growing global connectedness and given the general imperviousness of late modern powers -- from capital to religion to terror -- to physical blockading? How do walls shore up an imago of sovereign statehood and to what extent do they fortify reactionary national imaginaries? What do the new walls perform symbolically, materially, psychically? In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty , Wendy Brown reflects on the proliferation of nation-state walls in a time of eroded nation-state sovereignty and intensifying transnational powers unleashed by globalization. A leading theorist of neoliberalism, Brown argues that although the new walls may demarcate existent or aspirational nation-state boundaries, they do not arise as fortresses against invading national armies or even as articulations of sovereign statehood. Rather, in a post-Westphalian context of increasing nonstate transnational actors and powers, the new walls consecrate the very boundary corruption they would contest as well as signify the contemporary limitations of national and global governance by law or political dictate. Even as walls theatrically display nation-state sovereignty, they index with equal force the decline of sovereign state power. In a rare combination of powerful theory and precise historical, political, and economic analysis, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty provides a new -- indeed the first -- account of nation-state walling as a distinctive contemporary phenomenon. For Brown, the frenzy of wall building today reveals crucial predicaments of political power and desire emerging from the waning of sovereignty, including new political legitimacy deficits, new citizen anxieties, and new fusions of state and non-state violence., A prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness.

LC Classification NumberJC327.B75 2017