“This poetic volume will nourish gardeners and nature lovers.”
Publishers Weekly review Byung-Chul Han's 'In Praise of the Earth'
Philosopher Han (The Crisis of Narration) serves up an offbeat meditation on the aesthetic and symbolic value of gardens. The au...
04/09/2025
“From Shakespeare’s fools to Donald Trump, this exhilarating read considers stupidity in its many forms”
- Sam Leith, The Guardian reviews 'A Brief History of Stupidity' by Stuart Jeffries
From Shakespeare’s fools to Donald Trump, this exhilarating read considers stupidity in its many forms
04/09/2025
“Pettman’s book might best be read as comfort for the ghosted, providing a conceptual framework and a history of the idea. (You are not the first to be ghosted, and you won’t be the last.)”
Active Non-Alignment as Strategy,World Faces Poly-Crisis,Jorge Heine on global challenges de...
20/08/2025
"Two preeminent scholars of the Chinese military, have joined forces in this authoritative study that is both accessible and deeply informative."
'China’s Quest for Military Supremacy' by Joel Wuthnow and Phillip C. Saunders reviewed in Foreign Affairs
Wuthnow and Saunders, two preeminent scholars of the Chinese military, have joined forces in this authoritative study that is both accessible and deeply informative.
19/08/2025
The prices of some products fluctuate dramatically, while others remain more constant. What accounts for these extreme differences?
Renowned economist Truman F. Bewley investigates and elucidates this puzzling problem. Its crux, he argues, is that differentiated product prices are usually stable, whereas the prices of undifferentiated products – for which buyers can easily find comparable substitutes – are often volatile. Although product differentiation gives producers market power, this power alone does not guarantee price stability. There are nearly undifferentiated products whose producers have market power yet for which prices are unstable. Weakness of product differentiation makes it so advantageous for producers to compete on price that they do so and forego the benefits and stability of price collusion. Producers of truly differentiated goods prefer to compete on product performance rather than price and find that reducing prices during recessions does little to increase demand.
Based on hundreds of interviews with businesspeople responsible for setting prices, Bewley’s book is an unusual and groundbreaking work, with findings vital for economists, students, and policymakers.
Price Setting by Truman F. Bewley is out now and available worldwide.
Mike Phipps reviews 'The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of Precarity', by Panos Theodoropoulos, for
Labour Hub
Mike Phipps reviews The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of Precarity, by Panos Theodoropoulos, published by Polity. Writing this book, Panos Theodoropoulos worked in a range of precari…
14/08/2025
China’s economic rise over the last four decades has been as confounding as it has been impressive. Few economies have grown as fast and changed the lives of so many people in such a short time. How is it that a nominally Communist state has been able to achieve this “economic miracle”? And what are the consequences of this rapid transformation into a global economic powerhouse both inside China and abroad?
The Political Economy of China is a lively and comprehensive introduction to China’s economic development in the contemporary era. Across its twelve thematic chapters, the book offers a multifaceted examination of the history, sectors and policies that are essential for understanding China’s growth experience. Chapter topics include the evolution of the state and private sectors; rural economic development; the labour market; social welfare in China, the environment; macroeconomic management and finance; foreign trade and direct investment; and China’s “going out” strategy of overseas investment, that includes the Belt and Road Initiative.
Written by a respected authority on the subject with more than a decade of experience teaching it to students, the book will serve as a vital resource for anyone new to the study of Chinese political economy or seeking a deeper understanding of the political and economic logic behind the headlines about the miracle and mirage of China’s rise.
Decolonization has long been debated across the social sciences, but the economics discipline has so far avoided such critical engagement. This book provides a much-needed intervention.
Dutt, Alves, Kesar, and Kvangraven uncover the deeply Eurocentric foundations that shape how economists study the world today. These have rendered the discipline ill-equipped to tackle critical questions, such as structural racism, uneven development, the climate crisis, labour relations, and how structural power shapes economic outcomes. Decolonizing economics entails challenging the norms of neutrality and objectivity that economists claim to speak from, while fostering alternative ways of understanding the economy that take seriously structural power relations and contemporary processes of economic development. Readers will come to understand the political stakes of decolonization and the wide range of scholarship that already exists that can help us grasp economics from non-Eurocentric perspectives. Through such scholarship, we can gain an enriched understanding of capitalism and its relationship to exploitation, colonialism, and racialization.
Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction by Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven is out now and available worldwide.
We are fast approaching the point of “peak digital”, with the continued mass production and excessive consumption of digital technologies set to become a key driver of climate crisis, ecological breakdown and ongoing societal instability.
Digital Degrowth is a call to completely rethink our digital futures in these fast-changing times. It explores how degrowth thinking and alternate forms of “radically sustainable computing” might support ambitions of sustainable, scaled-down and equitable ways of living with digital technologies. Neil Selwyn proposes a rebalancing of digital technology use: digital degrowth is not a call for simply making reduced use of the digital technologies that we already have – rather it is an argument to reimagine digital practices that maximise societal benefits with minimal environmental and social impact. Drawing on illustrative examples from across computer science, hacker and environmental activist communities, this book examines how core degrowth principles of conviviality, autonomy and care are already being used to reimagine alternate forms of digital technology.
Original and stimulating, this is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication, sustainability studies, political ecology, computer/data sciences, and across the social sciences.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Polity posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Polity is a leading international publisher in the social sciences and humanities and we publish some of the world's best authors in these fields. Our aim is to combine the publication of original, cutting-edge work of the highest quality with a systematic programme of textbooks and coursebooks for students and scholars in further and higher education.
The Polity list is particularly strong in the areas of sociology, politics and social and political theory. We also have strong lists in a range of other subjects including philosophy, history, literary studies, media and cultural studies, gender studies, art and anthropology.
We are committed to the diffusion of ideas across language barriers and we have a major translation programme. Among the many authors we translate are Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Norbert Elias, Ulrich Beck, Niklas Luhmann, Norberto Bobbio, Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Georges Duby and Roger Chartier.
While primarily an academic publisher, many of our books are also of interest to a general readership and we are committed to publishing outstanding books which stimulate public debate about key issues in social, political and cultural life.
Established in 1984, Polity has grown rapidly into one of the world's most prestigious lists. We are an independent company with offices in Cambridge and Oxford in the UK and Boston in the US and our books are available throughout the world. Sales representation and distribution of Polity titles is provided by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
![“[A] valuable contribution to our understanding”Mike Phipps reviews 'The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of...](https://img3.medioq.com/290/050/1420449602900502.jpg)
