In this provocative analysis of global politics, the anthropologist Marc Abeles argues that the meaning and aims of political action have radically changed in the era of globalization. As dangers such as terrorism and global warming have moved to the fore of global consciousness, foreboding has replaced the belief that tomorrow will be better than today. Survival, outlasting the uncertainties and threats of a precarious future, has supplanted harmonious coexistence as the primary goal of politics. Abeles contends that this political reorientation has changed our priorities and modes of political action, and generated new debates and initiatives. The proliferation of supranational and transnational organizations-from the European Union to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to Oxfam-is the visible effect of this radical transformation in our relationship to the political realm. Areas of governance as diverse as the economy, the environment, and human rights have been partially taken over by such agencies. Non-governmental organizations in particular have become linked with the mindset of risk and uncertainty; they both reflect and help produce the politics of survival.

Abeles examines the new global politics, which assumes many forms and is enacted by diverse figures with varied sympathies: the officials at meetings of the WTO and the demonstrators outside them, celebrity activists, and online contributors to international charities. He makes an impassioned case that our accounts of globalization need to reckon with the preoccupations and affiliations now driving global politics. The Politics of Survival was first published in France in 2006. This English-language edition has been revised and includes a new preface.

Argues that the emergence of transnationalism and globalization (particularly in the form of NGOs) is an effect--not the cause--of an unprecedented transformation in our relationship to the political realm.

About the Author

Marc Abeles is a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and he holds a research professorship at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of numerous books, including Anthropologie de la globalisation, Le Spectacle du pouvoir, and Quiet Days in Burgundy: A Study of Local Politics.

Reviews
"...The Politics of Survival contains some fascinating discussions...it provides a fresh look at the preoccupation with living and surviving in uncertain times, and is therefore worth reading by students of contemporary political studies." - Akin Akinwumi, Political Studies Review
"Marc Abeles is one of the foremost anthropological specialists on the study of contemporary politics, and The Politics of Survival is a brilliant book. Abeles's distinctly European take on issues of globalization will be extraordinarily valuable for a U.S. readership."-George Marcus, coauthor of Designs for an Anthropology of the Future
"This thoughtful essay on The Politics of Survival offers a new perspective on the relationship between survival, security, governmentality and what Marc Abeles calls the accelerating 'dearth of the future'. By boldly comparing the central debates about welfare and solidarity in the European Union with a close reading of divine kingship in Africa, Abeles is able to suggest new perspectives on the future of sovereignty, the new sacrality of non-governmental organizations, the function of the discourse of human rights and the general climate of precaution that characterize global politics. This book will be of equal interest to anthropologists, political theorists and all scholars concerned with the nature and future of utopian thinking."-Arjun Appadurai, author of Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger
"The contribution of this book lies primarily in the opening up of an important new field of enquiry: what happens to politics, to democracy, to the relationship between the individual and the state, when survival is reframed as a political agenda? This book goes well beyond the dichotomous trade-off between liberty and security to show, instead, how politics itself is changed through discourses of fear and survival, a change that we are likely to be analysing for years to come." -- Marianne Maeckelbergh * Anthropological Forum *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822346074
Author Julie Kleinman
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 277g