Top 5 books: September 2024

As the new academic year kicks off, Book Reviews Editor Mariana Vieira returns with the highlights from the September 2024 issue of International Affairs. All issues of the journal feature a comprehensive book reviews section, which surveys the latest writing on international politics. The titles below spotlight appraisals of the Women, Peace and Security agenda as well as of the British empire, and new writing on the often-overlooked impact of everyday foreign policy in Russia and India.

1) Governing the feminist peace

Written by Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd. Published in New York by Columbia University Press.

Beyond its brilliantly illustrated cover, this co-authored book has a much wider appeal. Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd have teamed up for a provocative and convincing critique of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, as a product of specific global governance frameworks. Deploying some impressive empirical research, Governing the feminist peace persuasively highlights the incoherent, contested and contingent nature of the WPS discourse, particularly as it features in the fields of policy and governance. In the words of our reviewer: ‘forgetting WPS, in the way that Kirby and Shepherd suggest, might provide an opportunity to expand the ethical imaginaries of war and peace’.

Read the full review here.

2) Empireworld

Written by Sathnam Sanghera. Published in New York by Viking Press.

With Empireworld, British journalist Sathnam Sanghera has delivered an outstanding sequel to Empireland (New York: Viking Press, 2021), exploring the impact of the British empire around the globe. Drawing on the colonial legacies in India, Barbados, Mauritius and Nigeria, the author sheds light on how Modi instrumentalizes imperialism in his electoral campaign; how former centres of the slave trade are demanding reparations; and how Nigerian democracy embodies the contradictions of empire. This lucid and accessible examination of the imperial spread of white supremacist ideas, and the mixed record of democracy promotion, will benefit those interested in British history as well as those working in diplomacy.

Read the full review here.

3) Everyday foreign policy

Written by Elizaveta Gaufman. Published in Manchester by Manchester University Press.

Russia’s invasion of Crimea and its subsequent war in Ukraine has inspired a cottage industry of books on both countries. And yet, Elizaveta Gaufman has identified a significant gap when it comes to the complex intersection of Russian foreign policy with daily life. Combining seven thematic case-studies with interviews, Everyday foreign policy examines Russia’s (in)effectiveness in spreading its values throughout society. The book uncovers the role of both hard and soft power while accounting for how ordinary Russians have experienced ‘their country’s turn to extreme nationalism over the last decade’.

Read the full review here.

4) Cosmopolitan elites

Written by Kira Huju. Published in Oxford by Oxford University Press.

Connoisseurs of Kira Huju’s 2022 International Affairs article, ‘Saffronizing diplomacy: the Indian Foreign Service under Hindu nationalist rule’, will find Huju’s first book eminently rewarding. In Cosmopolitan elites, Huju picks up the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) once again, to expose how class, caste, gender and religion shape its composition. The author brings in everyday practices and domestic hierarchies to illustrate the exclusionary codes that dictate participation in international society. The book benefits from a broad historical scope that allows Huju to document the enduring tension between the influence of colonial ideals and the aspirations of a postcolonial India.

Read the full review here.

5) Memory fragmentation from below and beyond the state

Edited by Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux and Eric Sangar. Published in Abingdon and New York by Routledge.

No reading list is complete — this year at least — without the latest writing on memory politics. This excellent edited volume offers 17 chapters dedicated to two different logics of memory fragmentation: vertical and horizontal. The former focuses on conflict memory discourses resulting from how political communities use the past differently, whereas the latter maps out discourses that transcend national boundaries. The book’s sections are helpfully divided according to four different types of (largely non-state) actors that can shape memory discourses. Despite the limited geographical focus on European case-studies, this is a great addition to the literature; the contributions on the role of gender and women in memory are especially welcome.

Read the full review here.

Mariana Vieira is the Book Reviews Editor of International Affairs.

Find the latest book reviews section in our September 2024 issue here.

For more reading suggestions, check out the IA Bookshelf series.

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