Introduction

Abstract

This chapter presents the research questions, chapter summaries, and main arguments of the book. Like Hollywood cinema, pop music, and video games, young adult (YA) fiction series are influential not just in the United States and Europe; they also have impact across many other contested polities in the divided hemispheres of the post-9/11 world and in the global political economy. To explore the politics of peace in popular culture, the book investigates (a) how peace is conceptualized, debated, and fought over within YA fiction/film texts; (b) how peace is distributed or denied within cultural production, consumption, and other practices related to these texts; and (c) how these discourses and practices operate and are given meaning by different social actors within and across local, national, and transnational boundaries.