“Looking for Asian America shows real people engaged in the full range of human activity. This is no small accomplishment for the photographer or his subjects. For Asian Americans it is extraordinary to be merely ordinary. To others, even if not to themselves, Asian Americans appear to be contradictions of identity—a Chinese-Yankee is a knockoff.” —Frank H. Wu, from the Foreword In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie—the only member of his family not (...) born in China—traveled with his wife Tara through nearly forty states to explore and document the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures. Looking for Asian America illustrates their rich and surprising journey across the United States. Through Huie’s eyes, keenly aware of his own Midwestern roots and perspective, we witness such images as a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., a bubble tea Valley Girl, and a Chinese theme park in Orlando. Huie’s camera captures ABCs, FOAs, and a self-described “redneck” Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken together the photographs reveal a complex portrait of the U.S. cultural landscape, and their dignified elegance invites a closer, deeper look. Accompanied by the personal reflections of both Wing and Tara Huie, the nearly one hundred spectacular photos tell a story that both mirrors and contradicts stereotypes of Asian Americans, ultimately questioning what it means to be ethnic and American in the twenty-first century. Wing Young Huie has received widespread acclaim for his works, including Lake Street USA, documenting the cultural landscape of his native Minnesota. He is a recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship and two-time recipient of the McKnight Photography Fellowship. He lives in Minneapolis. Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School and the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Anita Gonzalez teaches in the Master of Liberal Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

Frogtown is a discerning portrait of an ethnically mixed neighbourhood that lies within the shadow of the Minnesota State Capital near downtown St. Paul. Wing Young Huie combines 130 compelling black-and-white photographs, some 50 quotes from talks with residents, and his own commentary to produce a powerful depiction of life on Frogtown's streets and front porches, in its kitchens and backyards, shops and churches. The images are documentary in nature, but the perspective is that of an artist (...) who leaves meanings open to interpretation. Drawn to Frogtown by his own abiding curiosity, Huie spent two years photographing and getting to know its people -- working class whites, Southeast Asian immigrants, African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos. These exquisitely rendered images of Frogtown show the multiple realities that make up a dynamic urban neighbourhood. At the same time, they reflect the changing faces of American cities. (shrink)

These are the pictures you'll never see in Nike ads or car ads or perfume ads. These are the majority of Americans, picking up their broken identities and trying to scrape together a living, a culture, an identity, a life. Most of the images we see are advertisements, trying to sell us a euphoria and prestige we could never achieve. We look around us and are disappointed, we struggle but don't measure up. These photos show us--real and valuable--just as we (...) are. (shrink)

A behind-the-scenes look at the most significant art exhibit of the year.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.4 (2005) 23-41MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]"With Conscious Artifice" Auden's Defense of MarriageSusannah Young-ah Gottlieb1 "Auden Said That?"The greatest lesson of life comes from Auden—sort of.In Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, a line attributed to Auden forms the lesson around which the "runaway bestseller" revolves. As the first paragraph of the book explains and the last (...) paragraph repeats, the book recounts a pedagogical encounter between Mitch and a retired Brandeis professor of Social Psychology, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS: "The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life" [Albom, 1, 192]. Several years earlier Mitch had written his senior thesis under Morrie's direction. Upon learning of Morrie's condition from an episode of Nightline entitled "Life's Lessons," Mitch visits his dying teacher and finds his own feelings of "confusion and depression" [44] healed under Morrie's tutelage. From the first "class" of their renewed relationship Morrie emphasizes that contemporary culture condemns those under its influence to a "meaningless life" [43] and that the confusion Mitch experiences belongs to the entire era—and so, too, an urgent need for clarity. Mitch, in turn, sees in Morrie someone who, by virtue of his life-affirming wisdom and his proximity to death, can identify those "important things" that can fill the cultural vacuum about which he, as a sports reporter, knows all too well. On the fifth of their unofficial Tuesday "office hours," Morrie begins to fulfill his former student's expectations. Clarity comes in an imperative the old professor attributes to Auden:"Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish.'""Love each other or perish." I wrote it down. Auden said that?[91]The line in question could scarcely be clearer, for it represents life in terms of a stark decision: love or death. Despite the simplicity of this choice, however, the scene is curiously complex, as if Mitch, against his explicit intentions, wants to dampen the effect of Morrie's wisdom. That Mitch writes down the line "Love each other or perish" is itself odd—even more so that he writes that he writes it down. As the beginning of the chapter explains at length, the conversation is being recorded, so that all of Morrie's wisdom may be preserved. The act of writing under these circumstances is less a sign of confidence in the supreme importance of the quotation in question than an indication of a degree of unresolved confusion: "Auden said that?" The confusion in this case cannot be attributed [End Page 23] to contemporary culture; rather, it consists in certain philological problems of citation: is Auden the author of the line, and if so, is it correctly rendered? Perhaps under the direction of another Brandeis professor, Mitch had learned and retained the famous last line of the penultimate stanza of Auden's "September 1, 1939": "We must love one another or die."1 Perhaps Mitch, or his publisher, having done some research, wants to signal an awareness of Morrie's misquotation but nevertheless remain faithful to the exact words of his teacher. And in any case who would care about such matters when something of great importance, indeed "life's greatest lesson," has just been articulated?Mitch's curiously inappropriate question does not, however, altogether disappear from Tuesdays. In response, Morrie does not so much insist on the accuracy of the quotation as on its goodness and truth:"Love each other or perish," Morrie said. "It's good, no? And it's so true. Without love, we are birds with broken wings."Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children. This disease—what I'm going through... (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought. In this outstanding and engaging introduction, a companion volume to his German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger, Julian Young examines and assesses the way in which some of the major German thinkers of the period reacted, often in starkly contrasting ways, to the challenges posed by the nature of modernity, the failure of liberalism (...) and the concept of decline. Divided into two parts exploring major intellectual figures of the left and right respectively, Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Georg Lukács: the critique of capitalism: alienation, reification, and false consciousness Ernst Bloch: the Marxist utopia Walter Benjamin: the confluence of phenomenology and left-wing thought: the Arcades Project, aura, and the technological reproduction of the artwork Oswald Spengler: the pessimistic right and the concept of Western decline Max Scheler: Catholic conservatism and the 'objective hierarchy of values' Carl Schmitt: the failure of liberalism, dictatorship, 'friends' versus 'enemies' Leo Strauss: the rejection of moral relativism and the return to classical philosophy. Highly relevant when the viability of liberal democracy is again called into question, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Lukacs to Strauss is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

In 120 exquisitely reproduced black-and-white images, Minnesota in Our Time: A Photographic Portrait showcases the work of twelve talented photographers who sought to capture the essence of the state and its people at the threshold of the new millennium. Like the Farm Security Administration photographers of the Depression era, these men and women document the details of life in this time and the transformations now taking place in this state. This work is a product of the MINNESOTA 2000 Photo Documentation (...) Project, a three-year effort that has also produced an archival collection of 360 images and a museum exhibition. The project's wealth of images provides a multifaceted look at lives and landscapes in Minnesota, focusing on common experiences and themes among a diverse population of individuals. Edited by photography historian George Slade, the book features a selection of the photographs, a lucid interpretive essay by Slade and art historian Robert Silberman, a preface by exhibition curator Bonnie G. Wilson, and brief introductions to and commentaries about each photographer's work. Minnesota in Our Time features photographs by Joe Allen, Tom Arndt, Stephen Dahl, Chris Faust, George Byron Griffiths, Terry Gydesen, David Heberlein, Wing Young Huie, Mark Jensen, Peter Latner, David Parker, and Keri Pickett. (shrink)

It is a fact that in the European Union there is a strengthening of right-wing extremism, radical right movement, populism and nationalism. The consequences of the economic crisis, such as a decline in living standards, losing of jobs, rising unemployment especially among young people, undoubtedly goes in favor of strengthening the right-wing extremism. In the research, forms of manifestation will be covered of this dangerous phenomenon and response of the institutions. Western Balkan countries, as a result of (...) right-wing extremism, are especially sensitive region on possible consequences that might occur, since there are several unresolved political problems, which can very easily turn into a new cycle of conflicts, if European integration processes get delayed indefinitely. (shrink)

Literary education exposes students to unpredictable critical moments in their encounters with a text. Drawing on Dewey’s transactional realism and actor-network theory, this theoretical and conceptual study explores the performativity of things and materials as they shape reading and teaching bodies. This transactional performativity extends beyond the physical positioning of the body to the power relations enacted in text situations. The conceptual rationale is illustrated by a story about a reading chair in a detention home for detained young men—an (...) environment where power issues come to a head. The story illustrates a theoretical discussion of what might be characterized as performing ‘the critical’ in reading and how potentialities for students’ experiences are created in text situations by the different components involved. The purpose of the article is to explore the potentialities of performing critical aspects of reading to challenge, to transform, and to encourage resistance. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the greatest writers and German philosophers of the nineteenth century. His work influenced figures as diverse as Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche. Best known as a pessimist, he was one of the few philosophers read and admired by Wittgenstein. In this comprehensive introduction, Julian Young covers all the main aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Schopenhauer's life and work, he introduces the central aspects of his metaphysics fundamental to understanding his work as (...) a whole: his philosophical idealism and debt to the philosophy of Kant; his attempt to answer the question of what the world is; his account of science; and in particular his idea that 'will' is the essence of all things. Julian Young then introduces and assesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which occupy a central place in his philosophy. He carefully examines Schopenhauer's theories of the sublime, artistic genius and music, before assessing his ethics of compassion, his arguments for pessimism and his account of 'salvation'. In the final chapter, he considers Schopenhauer's legacy and his influence on the thought of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, making this an ideal starting point for those coming to Schopenhauer for the first time. (shrink)

The first section of this chapter illustrates that the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992 has not been categorized sufficiently as a substantial milestone of right-wing violence in postwar Germany. This pogrom led to historically significant limitations in the right to asylum, ultimately resulting in a change to the German constitution. We propose to look at Rostock-Lichtenhagen as an example to explain that practices of remembering right-wing violence, a process that we describe with the term ‘Doing Memory on right- (...) class='Hi'>wing violence’, is a central part of creating a society’s basic story. This basic story, in turn, contributes to how a society understands itself. In this chapter’s second section, we argue first that analyzing practices of memory of right-wing violence, be they acknowledging, forgetting or suppressing those practices, actually make it possible to even expose the persistence of the basic story as a central element of political culture. Second, we want to uncover how potential and publicly effective interventions of and changes to the basic story might look like. Here, we build on Habermas’ model of democracy, utilize Susan Bickford’s work on listening as an important element in her political philosophy and refer to Benjamin Barber, who articulates that a participatory democracy requires political listening. As a result, our chapter’s third section demonstrates how listening can be conceptualized from a supra-individual perspective and how questions that are critical of existing hegemonic structures can prioritize a focus on hegemonic (non)listening. Lastly, we will sketch out strategies to intervene in hegemonic (non)listening. These strategies connect theoretically with concepts of ‘counter publics’ and ‘opinion forming publics’ and reference, among others, the work of Seyla Benhabib and Iris Marion Young, thus enabling the creation and execution of resistance practices of Doing Memory on right-wing violence. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Speculative Realism (SR) has often been characterised as a heterogeneous group of thinkers, united almost exclusively in their commitment to the critique of what Quentin Meillassoux terms ‘correlationism’ or what Graham Harman calls the ‘philosophy of (human) access.’ The terms ‘correlationism’ and ‘philosophy of access’ are in turn often treated – at times even by Meillassoux and Harman themselves – as synonymous. In this paper, I seek to analyse these terms to evaluate their similarities, but also possible differences. I shall (...) argue that the difference between the two terms ought to be retained and emphasised, since it hints at important differences between the positions of Harman and Meillassoux. (shrink)

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

This is a clear and lucid account of Nietzsche's philosophy of art, combining exegesis, interpretation and criticism in a judicious balance. Julian Young argues that Nietzsche's thought about art can only be understood in the context of his wider philosophy. In particular, he discusses the dramatic changes in Nietzschean aesthetics against the background of the celebrated themes of the death of God, eternal recurrence, and the idea of the Übermensch. Young then divides Nietzsche's career and his philosophy of (...) art into four distinct phases, but suggests that these phases describe a circle. An attempt at world-affirmation is made in the central phases, but Nietzsche is predominantly influenced at the beginning and end of his career by a Schopenhauerian pessimism. At the beginning and end art is important because it 'redeems' us from life. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation (...) to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music. (shrink)

The Discovery of Evolution explains what the theory of evolution is all about by providing a historical narrative of discovery. Some of the major puzzles that confront anyone studying living things are discussed and it details how these were solved from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the emergence of the early naturalists in the seventeenth century, the scientific discoveries that led up to and then flowed from Darwin and Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection are then discussed, and finally (...) the modern evolutionary studies at the close of the twentieth century are detailed. This new edition of The Discovery of Evolution is fully updated and contains a new chapter on the evolutionary studies of the twentieth century. By approaching the topic of evolution in this way, it is made accessible to the non-specialist and no previous study of biology is required in order to read and understand this book. (shrink)

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I (...) aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

This book uses rare pathologies to inform questions on topics such as consciousness and rationality. Rather than trying to answer these by inventing far-fetched scenario or 'thought experiments', it is better to utilize a rich but under-used clinical resource.

Twentieth-century developments in quantum physics, together with an emerging science of consciousness, have created the need for a new cosmology, or model of the universe. The theory of process contained in THE REFLEXIVE UNIVERSE places consciousness within the context of contemporary science. One of the central themes of this extraordinary work is that each successive organization of matter, from fundamental particles in physics to living organisms, expresses a particular stage in the evolution of mind. Starting with the photon, the basic (...) unit of light, and moving through atomic physics, molecular chemistry, the morphology of plants and animals and finally to levels of human evolution, Young develops his theory in vivid step-by-step detail. Consciousness, in his point of view, is not isolated from the material universe. It exists in a continuum, one in which physical and nonphysical realms can be linked and the teachings of mythology and religion can be integrated. To order: FAX: 415-883-9280; e-mail: [email protected]; or write: Anodos Foundation, c/o Publishers Services, P.O. Box 2510, Novato, CA 94948. Visa and MasterCard only. Trade STOP orders 40% plus postage. (shrink)

This article examines the formation of consciousness among women at the beginning stages of the women's movement. The author analyzes the complexity of pathways to feminism across the political spectrum, comparing women who were active on the Left in Students for a Democratic Society with women active in the leading conservative organization of the 1960s, Young Americans for Freedom. She finds an unexpected division among women in both groups between those who identify discrimination by their male peers and those (...) who do not. The author argues there are three stages in the formation of feminist consciousness: identification of inequality or mistreatment, discovering a language or framing by which to interpret these experiences, and the social construction of a collective identity. Factors for each of these three stages that help or hinder the formation of feminist consciousness are discussed. (shrink)

This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture, ...

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. -/- The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. (...) They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. -/- Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his (...) work with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

In this collection of closely interrelated essays, Robert Young emphasizes the scope of the nineteenth-century debate on 'man's place in nature' at the same time as he engages with the approaches of scholars who write about it. He is critical of the separation of the writing of history from writing about history, historiography, and of the separation of history from politics and ideology, then or now. Dr Young challenges fellow historians for reimposing the very disciplinary boundaries that the (...) nineteenth-century debate showed were in the service of ideological forces in that culture. Rather, he proposes that the full weight of the contending forces should be made apparent and debated openly so that neither nineteenth-century nor contemporary issues about the role of science in culture should be treated in a narrow perspective. (shrink)

The book investigates the ways in which state-centred approaches to international relations have limited our understanding of global, political, economic and cultural processes. By assessing a wide range of such state-centred work, Youngs identifies the challenges we must address to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world.