What is ‘deconstruction’? What authors are considered ‘postmodern novelists’? The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism combines a series of fourteen in-depth background chapters with a body of A-Z entries to create an authoritative, yet readable guide to the complex world of postmodernism. Following full-length articles on postmodernism and philosophy, politics, feminism, lifestyles, television, and other postmodern essentials, readers will find a wide range of alphabetically-organized entries on the people, terms and theories connected with postmodernism, including: Peter Ackroyd; Jean Baudrillard; Chaos Theory; Death of the Author; Desire; Fractals; Michel Foucault; Frankfurt School; Generation X; Minimalism; Poststructuralism; Retro; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; and Trans-avant-garde. Students interested in any aspect of postmodernist thought will find this an indispensable resource.

1989 marks the unraveling of India’s ‘Nehruvian Consensus’ around the idea of a modern, secular nation with a self-reliant economy.

Caste and religion have come to play major roles in national politics. Global economic integration has led to conflict between the state and dispossessed people, but processes of globalization have also enabled new spaces for political assertion, such as around sexuality. Older challenges to the idea of India continue from movements in Kashmir and the North-East, while Maoist insurgency has deepened its bases. In a world of American Empire, India as a nuclear power has abandoned non-alignment, a shift that is contested by voices within.

When first published in Italy, this book sold out in months. It stirred much media interest and was widely welcomed across the political spectrum and in scholarly circles. Now available in English in an updated version, The Urban Village introduces the concept of self-sustainable local development based on each locality’s territorial specificities and traditions. After exploring the significance of local development in all its political, social and technical dimensions, Professor Magnaghi sets out a concrete vision for a new urban regional ‘utopia’. He proposes, in addition to conventional indices of wealth and income, other criteria of social progress – including quality of life, social solidarity, and the development of non-commercial caring relations. Only when local communities value their local heritages, he argues, and build themselves on a basis of local economic self-government, will they be able to resist the colonization and marginalization that globalization so often inflicts on them.

At a time when the idea of the local, the demand for genuine decentralization capable of building effective community-level self-governing institutions, innovative democratic experiments, and ecological sustainability are all attracting more public interest, Alberto Magnaghi’s blend of theoretical thinking and practical proposals is likely to prove a source of inspiration for politicians, planners and citizens wrestling with the challenge of building urban and rural communities.