International and European Politics and Globalization

The trade-routes connecting Europe and East Asia have fascinated scholars, traders, and adventurers throughout the centuries. Although its modern incarnation may lack the romantic aura of the fabled »Silk Road«, the recent and rapid growth of private trade and commodity exchange has contributed significantly to a revival of the Silk-Road-trade. This takes the form of long-distance petty trade across the newly established borders of states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union as well as into other neighboring countries – including Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China – but also India, Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia. A far-flung network of trading connections has been established and, at the time of the fieldwork, thousands of petty traders were carrying their goods with them in trucks, buses, and planes, traveling once more along the routes of the old Silk Road, largely unrecognized by governments and unnoticed by foreign economic advisors. The traders, however, transport patterns of consumerism, lifestyles, knowledge, beliefs, political visions, and so on with their material goods, and in this way transsocietation along the trading networks transforms local societies.
Like the old »Silk Road,« the modern version is an agglomeration of different routes with different starting points, running through Central Asia and connecting Asia and Europe; manifest evidence of the continuity in trading patterns on the Eurasian continent.

This book inquires how the global is made and remade by practices of envisioning the world in political projects, in language, and literature.

Which strategies of external communication do conflict parties use during asymmetric conflicts and what shapes the selection of these communication strategies?

Against the backdrop of global power shifts, this book reveals increasing challenges of social movements to push for human rights accountability of Multilateral Development Banks.

Can modern political systems deal with functional differentiation? They must include individuals, produce valued outputs, know the complexity of society, and accept or deny the autonomy of other function-systems. Democratic and autocratic variants result from this.

On the decisive role of European regions in the EU's future: trendsetters on European integration in a turbulent EU?

This volume explores the impact of challenges like rising populism or social fragmentation on democratic citizenship.

The small refugee boat and the European Border Surveillance System, Eurosur, are not only opponents in the cat and mouse game along the EU border. They are also mediators to its very existence.

This Is Not an Atlas collects maps from political struggles, critical research, art and education, seeking to inspire new counter cartographies worldwide.

China and the UK in Sub-saharan Africa: International land acquisitions from the perspective of investors and home country development.