Overview
Analyzes intersecting discourses on colonialism, nationalism and humanitarianism within the context of weapons control
Identifies and challenges the current understanding of time and civilization as a rhetorical resource
Decolonizes practices of arms control and disarmament by contesting the ongoing practices of modernism, ethnocentrism and universalism
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Reviews
“Ritu Mathur is an important young scholar offering a vibrant and original postcolonial critique of the stale discourse of international security and arms control that has become ingrown in the West. She offers the fresh perspective on nuclear weapons policy that we so badly need at this moment when the existing nuclear order is crumbling. Her writing reminds us that not only white male voices should be heard on nuclear weapons. Her work is intellectually innovative and important and, if policy-makers will pay attention, practically relevant.”
— Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University, USA
“This is an essential book for every student of arms control and disarmament. Ritu Mathur shows why arms control was in decline long before populist strongmen shoved it in the grave. Deploying sly civility and mimesis, Mathur offers the most persuasive explanation for the failure of arms control to globalize. She explains why advocates could not see the limits of its appeal or the limits of it future. If disarmament is to recover its future, it starts here.”
Aaron Karp, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Political Science and Geography, Old Dominion University, USA
"The question of who is considered sufficiently civilized to wield nuclear weapons fundamentally shapes the diplomacy of arms control and disarmament. Yet only a very few scholars have sought to explore just how. In this carefully crafted intervention, Ritu Mathur shows us how historical geographies of race and civilization determine the standards of nuclear civilization. She uncovers the hidden histories of empire and colonial discourse that lie behind the policy science of arms control. In doing so, she shows us what a decolonized debate over nuclear weapons might look like."
Tarak Barkawi, Professor, London School of Economics, UK
“This important new book makes an original contribution on the social technologies of nuclear governance and the unequal worlds they make and by which they are in turn made. Bringing postcolonial insights and decolonial sensibilities to incisive analysis of the architecture of nuclear weapons management, it not only deepens our understanding of the prevailing nuclear order but demands too that we think beyond extant debates around the control and spread of nuclear arms. In so doing, it raises new possibilities for reading against the grain of civilizational narratives congenitally entangled with dominant nuclear discourses and thereby to imagine a fuller range of possibilities toward a world less imperiled by both.”
J. Marshall Beier, Professor of Political Science, McMaster University, Canada
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Civilizational Discourses in Weapons Control
Authors: Ritu Mathur
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44943-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44942-1Published: 12 July 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44945-2Published: 12 July 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-44943-8Published: 11 July 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 277
Topics: International Security Studies, Military and Defence Studies, International Humanitarian Law, Law of Armed Conflict, History of Military, Development and Post-Colonialism