Conceptualizing Politics

Further readings
On globalisation and politics:
Keohane, Robert (2002) Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World, London: 
Routledge.
Diverging voices on globalisation:
Bhagwati, Jagdish (2007) In Defense of Globalization, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodrik, Dani (2011) The Globalization Paradox, New York: Norton.
Stiglitz, Joseph (2007) Making  Globalization Work, New York: Norton.
Two comprehensive readers on all facets of globalisation:
Held, David and Anthony McGrew (2003) The Global Transformation Reader, Cambridge: 
Polity.
Turner, Bryan, ed. (2010) International Handbook of Globalization Studies, London: Routledge.
On whether we have duties towards our posterity:
Tremmel, Joerg Chet, ed. (2006) Handbook of Intergenerational Justice, Cheltenham: Edward 
Elgar.

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In this Excursus we want to peer still deeper into the subjective side of politics, 
raising more radical points about the relevance of politics to the life of the individual 
human being. This perspective must remain in the background of the study of poli-
tics, which deals primarily with communities, their order and their influence on 
the life of entire generations, with no particular attention to the lot of each of their 
members on the path from the cradle to the grave. Yet, at the end of the day, that is 
at the sunset of our journey on the earth (or perhaps on other planets in the future), 
what counts for each individual and gives meaning to their journey is the amount 
of satisfaction or happiness experienced or missed, as well as of sufferance avoided 
or inflicted by human action, most of which is coordinated or regulated by politics. 
Death remains the fundamental component of human life, the paramount constant 
defining the meaning of the existence of us mortal beings; but death is, at the same 
time, the principal destroyer of meaning, in the sense that it nullifies our life plans 
and bereaves of our presence the grid of social and emotional relations we may 
have built up during our life. This is even more true in the case of death prema-
turely and arbitrarily inflicted by political violence in warfare or under a tyrannical 
regime; and also when death is caused or not prevented by omission on the side 
of politicians and officials. Death is unavoidable, but when we die, how we die and 
how many of us must die, depends, among other factors, on politics – not just in 
the obvious case of war. This Excursus is dedicated to the main types of encounter 
between politics and death and is written looking at death from the venture point 
of secular Western culture, for which death is an event regarding the individual in 
her/his ‘being thrown’ (Heidegger’s Geworfenheit, as conceived of in Sein und Zeit/
Being  and Time 1927) into the world, with no assurance of life after death – neither 
as an individual nor in a cosmic perspective like in Oriental religions. On the other 
hand, and irrespective of the diverging metaphysics, for religious believers of most 
faiths causing the death of other humans is as problematic as for people of secular 
convictions.