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‘Nationalizing the Body’ revisits the history of ‘western’ medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali ‘daktars’ who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see ‘western’ medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how ‘western’ medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave ‘daktari’ medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of colonial South Asian medical history, it seeks to understand how ‘daktari’ medicine re-positioned the colonized bodies as nationalized bodies.

‘Nationalizing the Body’ revisits the history of ‘western’ medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali ‘daktars’ who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see ‘western’ medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how ‘western’ medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave ‘daktari’ medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of colonial South Asian medical history, it seeks to understand how ‘daktari’ medicine re-positioned the colonized bodies as nationalized bodies.

In the aftermath of considerable seismic unrest caused by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, this volume focuses on exposing the coastal vulnerability of the region. Despite a plethora of enquiries into natural disasters in different parts of the globe, there is now a more conspicuous concern than ever for the South East Asian region. This global concern has become all the more prevalent since the Hyogo Declaration in January 2005 and the recent Asian Summit in Indonesia. The purpose of this treatise is to bring the characteristics of the disastrous events of the region to the fore, seeking to present not only the continuing fatalities and fragilities of the area, but also the possibilities for coping with natural disasters. The book’s layout is specifically shaped by the nature of the damage and threat caused by these disasters, particularly concerning the communities at risk and their responses. This book will appeal to those involved in both global and local organizations as administrators, facilitators, stakeholders and activists, as well as Governmental / Non Governmental agencies, societies including organizations such as ESCAP, UNDP, WMO, UNESCO, UNCRD.

This text will examine U.S. Supreme Court cases which highlight, feature and illuminate some facets of natural law reasoning since the Court’s decree in Roe v. Wade. For most of our constitutional and legal history, there has been an exhilarating debate about whether natural law commands or encourages certain legal resolutions – even from the time of the Founders. Most would concur that the legal philosophy of Jefferson and other Founders favored a natural law basis for this republic and its corresponding rights. And while the proposed text accepts that the concept and understanding of natural law reasoning has both supporters and detractors in contemporary settings, earlier Supreme Court rulings on controversial subject matter used natural law language with regularity. Since the 1970s, the idea of a perennial, immutable and unassailable natural law has lost favor. And given the recent surge in controversial case law and conflicting decisions on highly charged topics, a return to first principles grounded in nature and natural law might be beneficial. Indeed, the proposed research hopes to gauge its current relevance, usage and reliance in more modern judicial cases.

This text will examine U.S. Supreme Court cases which highlight, feature and illuminate some facets of natural law reasoning since the Court’s decree in Roe v. Wade. For most of our constitutional and legal history, there has been an exhilarating debate about whether natural law commands or encourages certain legal resolutions – even from the time of the Founders. Most would concur that the legal philosophy of Jefferson and other Founders favored a natural law basis for this republic and its corresponding rights. And while the proposed text accepts that the concept and understanding of natural law reasoning has both supporters and detractors in contemporary settings, earlier Supreme Court rulings on controversial subject matter used natural law language with regularity. Since the 1970s, the idea of a perennial, immutable and unassailable natural law has lost favor. And given the recent surge in controversial case law and conflicting decisions on highly charged topics, a return to first principles grounded in nature and natural law might be beneficial. Indeed, the proposed research hopes to gauge its current relevance, usage and reliance in more modern judicial cases.

Examines the evolving landscape of data privacy and ethics, arguing that businesses can build trust and drive growth by adopting transparent, consumer-focused data frameworks beyond legal compliance

Data privacy continues to be an important topic for discussion throughout changing technology, business, and legislation landscapes. The U.S. legislation continues to shift state-by-state, resulting in changes that are often difficult for companies to keep up with. This is (one reason) why businesses should adopt their own data framework principles to guide their business strategy. Developing data guidelines or principles is the practice of a business voluntarily going beyond data privacy legislation to create and implement a data collection and usage framework that prioritizes customer relationships through a lens of transparency and control.
The book explores how consumer data are currently collected from everyday interactions, surveys, website usage, purchases, and more, then examines how that information feeds data and business strategies for companies around the world. Data collection is often complex—it requires different kinds of technology and uses different validation methods, all across different pieces of data—and this complexity can lead to issues with accuracy and tracking of when and how consumer data are used. Data are used to drive business strategies by helping companies find their most loyal users, bring in new customers, and increase usage, among other things. An underlying guide for data principles can lead to improved accuracy in data collection, help businesses stay transparent with consumers, generate more trust, and ultimately, increase business performance.
As consumers become more educated and more aware about what data are collected and how they are used by companies, there is a growing need for businesses to develop a relationship with their consumers built on trust and mutual value. There is currently a gap between the amount of data collected, its usage, and how consumers trust and value the companies with which they do business.
Finally, this book discusses how businesses can bridge that gap, between consumer trust and effective business strategy by developing their own set of data guidelines and principles that can improve business growth. These strategies are designed to help drive consumer trust by treating consumers like real people and understanding the relationship between data collection, usage, and consumer trust.

‘Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond’ examines the applicability of the concept of social exclusion in contemporary India, and addresses the following questions: How does an increasingly liberalised Indian economy contribute to processes of social inclusion and exclusion and to the reproduction of poverty and inequality? To what extent does the deepening of Indian democracy offer hitherto marginalised social groups new opportunities for pursuing strategies of inclusion? And how does ‘development’ alter the social terrain on which inequalities are negotiated? These and related discussions form the focal points of the volume. Importantly, the contributors deal explicitly with the simultaneity of processes of exclusion and inclusion, and with their entangled manifestation in social life. By applying the concept of social exclusion to concrete empirical case studies, the contributors expand conceptual horizons by keeping in mind that neither exclusion nor inclusion can be considered without its ‘alter ego’. The volume also challenges narrow conceptualisations of social inclusion and exclusion in terms of singular factors such as caste, policy or the economy. This collaborative endeavour and cross-disciplinary approach, which brings together younger and more established scholars, facilitates a deeper understanding of complex social and political processes in contemporary India.

‘Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond’ examines the applicability of the concept of social exclusion in contemporary India, and addresses the following questions: How does an increasingly liberalised Indian economy contribute to processes of social inclusion and exclusion and to the reproduction of poverty and inequality? To what extent does the deepening of Indian democracy offer hitherto marginalised social groups new opportunities for pursuing strategies of inclusion? And how does ‘development’ alter the social terrain on which inequalities are negotiated? These and related discussions form the focal points of the volume. Importantly, the contributors deal explicitly with the simultaneity of processes of exclusion and inclusion, and with their entangled manifestation in social life. By applying the concept of social exclusion to concrete empirical case studies, the contributors expand conceptual horizons by keeping in mind that neither exclusion nor inclusion can be considered without its ‘alter ego’. The volume also challenges narrow conceptualisations of social inclusion and exclusion in terms of singular factors such as caste, policy or the economy. This collaborative endeavour and cross-disciplinary approach, which brings together younger and more established scholars, facilitates a deeper understanding of complex social and political processes in contemporary India.

Doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects, designers, managers, artists, scientists, innovators, inventors, farmers and all other professions and walks of life have the immense possibilities of making it big. And such immense possibilities represent in terms of scale, value, excellence, and tremendous impact upon the larger society. However, quite often, it is observed that the efforts and impact of making it big fail to live up to the expectations of self and others and do not take off the way envisaged. 

Everyone has desires. Spiritual leaders too give up the mundane life. However, they carry the deeply rooted desire to attain insights and enlightenment, eventually. Irrespective of what life one leads, one core but common desire is to enjoy the autonomy to make decisions. However, life introduces one to several ups and downs resulting in both successes and failures. Nonetheless, one desires to be happy throughout and enjoy whatever is in possession. Also, one aspires to achieve all that one feels capable of achieving, thus driving oneself to take risks against the opportunities identified. 

In the backdrop, the present book is for every individual who is either an aspiring entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur, irrespective of the domain expertise or industry one represents. The book attempts to focus and address a pressing pain point of entrepreneurs: the pain point happens to be one of the major gaps towards successful and sustainable entrepreneurship in one’s life. 

A strong but subtle factor impacting in this context is the failure to achieve entrepreneurial success through great deals in all stages, at all levels of entrepreneurial journey. The present book attempts to bridge the gap through the power (soft) skill – ‘negotiation’ for entrepreneurs!

Doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects, designers, managers, artists, scientists, innovators, inventors, farmers and all other professions and walks of life have the immense possibilities of making it big. And such immense possibilities represent in terms of scale, value, excellence, and tremendous impact upon the larger society. However, quite often, it is observed that the efforts and impact of making it big fail to live up to the expectations of self and others and do not take off the way envisaged. 

Everyone has desires. Spiritual leaders too give up the mundane life. However, they carry the deeply rooted desire to attain insights and enlightenment, eventually. Irrespective of what life one leads, one core but common desire is to enjoy the autonomy to make decisions. However, life introduces one to several ups and downs resulting in both successes and failures. Nonetheless, one desires to be happy throughout and enjoy whatever is in possession. Also, one aspires to achieve all that one feels capable of achieving, thus driving oneself to take risks against the opportunities identified. 

In the backdrop, the present book is for every individual who is either an aspiring entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur, irrespective of the domain expertise or industry one represents. The book attempts to focus and address a pressing pain point of entrepreneurs: the pain point happens to be one of the major gaps towards successful and sustainable entrepreneurship in one’s life. 

A strong but subtle factor impacting in this context is the failure to achieve entrepreneurial success through great deals in all stages, at all levels of entrepreneurial journey. The present book attempts to bridge the gap through the power (soft) skill – ‘negotiation’ for entrepreneurs!

Recent years have seen the strong development of Neo-Victorian studies, including its theorisation by such scholars as Cora Kaplan, Sally Shuttleworth, Ann Heilmann, Christian Gutleben, Marie-Louise Kohlke, Mark Llewellyn and others. It is a focus that has engaged literary critics from around the globe like Carmen Veronica Borbély (Romania), Susanne Gruß (Germany), Tiffany Gagliardi Trotman (Spain), Hitomi Nakatani (Japan), Agnieszka Matysiak (Poland), Max Duperray (France), Jeanne Ellis (South Africa) and Van Leavenworth (Sweden) to name just a few. [NP] ‘Neo-Gothic Narratives’ defines and theorizes what, exactly, qualifies as such a text, what mobilises the employment of the Gothic to speak to our own times, whether nostalgia plays a role and whether there is room for humour besides the sobriety and horror in these narratives across various media. What attracts us to the Gothic that makes us want to resurrect, reinvent, echo it? Why do we let the Gothic redefine us? Why do we let it haunt us? Does it speak to us through intertexuality, self-reflectivity, metafiction, immersion, affect? Are we reclaiming the history of women and other subalterns in the Gothic that had been denied in other forms of history? Are we revisiting the trauma of English colonisation and seeking national identity? Or are we simply tourists who enjoy cruising through the otherworld? The essays in this volume investigate both the readerly experience of Neo-Gothic narratives as well as their writerly pastiche.

Recent years have seen the strong development of Neo-Victorian studies, including its theorisation by such scholars as Cora Kaplan, Sally Shuttleworth, Ann Heilmann, Christian Gutleben, Marie-Louise Kohlke, Mark Llewellyn and others. It is a focus that has engaged literary critics from around the globe like Carmen Veronica Borbély (Romania), Susanne Gruß (Germany), Tiffany Gagliardi Trotman (Spain), Hitomi Nakatani (Japan), Agnieszka Matysiak (Poland), Max Duperray (France), Jeanne Ellis (South Africa) and Van Leavenworth (Sweden) to name just a few. [NP] ‘Neo-Gothic Narratives’ defines and theorizes what, exactly, qualifies as such a text, what mobilises the employment of the Gothic to speak to our own times, whether nostalgia plays a role and whether there is room for humour besides the sobriety and horror in these narratives across various media. What attracts us to the Gothic that makes us want to resurrect, reinvent, echo it? Why do we let the Gothic redefine us? Why do we let it haunt us? Does it speak to us through intertexuality, self-reflectivity, metafiction, immersion, affect? Are we reclaiming the history of women and other subalterns in the Gothic that had been denied in other forms of history? Are we revisiting the trauma of English colonisation and seeking national identity? Or are we simply tourists who enjoy cruising through the otherworld? The essays in this volume investigate both the readerly experience of Neo-Gothic narratives as well as their writerly pastiche.

If neo-Victorianism is, as Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn remark, ‘more than historical fiction set in the nineteenth century’, then it is because it ‘must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians’ while keeping in mind the ethical, metafictional and metacritical parameters in ‘acts of (readerly/writerly) appropriation’ in the metafictional mode. They acknowledge the initial definition had to be aware of ‘metafictional and metahistorical concern with the process of narrating/re-imagining/re-visioning histories, and had to be self-conscious about its own position as literary or filmic reconstruction’ but now they are alert to the global, ongoing ‘discourse around nostalgia, heritage and cultural memory’ in other parts of the long-nineteenth century world as portrayed in neo-Victorian narratives. Neo-Victorian Lesbians on Screen argues the portrayal on screen of lesbians situated in the long nineteenth century across various countries is at the very least a dual task; the imperative project of revoicing lesbian silence and female companionship is complicated by the lack of and/or complex representation of such women in the past. The adaptations, with varying degrees of success, carefully manipulate the gaze of the viewer to illustrate both how crucial the act of looking proves to be for lesbian attachment in these films and how the viewer’s own gaze changes the way the lesbian is represented. Texts, subtexts and intertextualities help elucidate the memories and sexualities of the various women. Men – in their silence, abuse, misunderstanding or love – relate to the women with a lack of social roadmap to govern their responses. Maier and Friars consider the adaptations’ awareness of the audience and the ways in which the films implicitly acknowledge the stakes behind bringing the lesbian to life, as it were, in visual media. Because screen adaptations disrupt historical distance by literally picturing Victorian subjects via a medium they did not have, films of novels as well as biofictions, and new narratives are challenged by the lesbian subject’s vivid presence on screen. The lesbian is no longer a contained (neo)Victorian presence in the ‘othered’ nineteenth century, but her very existence on screen signals her effervescent modernity, which filmmakers alternately embrace or reject.

“Network Persistence and the Axis of Hierarchy” reimagines the very nature of social life starting from quite ordinary, even banal considerations, culminating in conclusions that challenge central, universally held tenets. The main argument shows how networks, modestly redefined as a strong, yet imperfect tendency for pairings to recur day after day, that is, stickiness, imply a singular axis of stratification. This is contrary to the nearly universal insistence that stratification is multidimensional. Reanalysis of three central mobility data sets strongly sustains the novel claim. Network concepts provide a supple base for analysis whereby order and regularity are firmly enforced in network neighborhoods by repetitive, often collective, action and mutual regulation but are not necessarily uniform or universal across locales. This provides new takes, often quite radical, on accounts of structure and order by authors such as Bourdieu, Collins and Parsons. The new formulation local rules but not necessarily global rules allows for a plural reality where varied theoretical ideals are possible and could occur but are not inevitable or universal. This tames the otherwise inevitable cacophony of competing foundational accounts whose claims to universality exclude some to much of what is claimed by rivals. Meanwhile, the potential lability of plural possibilities is sharply constrained by the overarching principal axis of stratification which is the joint condition of social life.

This book introduces a new thrilling field–neurocomputional poetics, the scientific ‘marriage’ between cognitive poetics, data science and neuroscience. Its goal is to uncover the secrets of verbal art reception and to explain how readers come to understand and like literary texts. For centuries verbal art reception was considered too subjective for quantitative scientific studies and still nowadays many scholars in the humanities and neurosciences alike view literary reading as too complex for accurate computational prediction of the neuronal, experiential and behavioural aspects of reader responses to texts. This book sets out for changing this view. 

It offers state-of-the-art computational models and methods allowing to predict which crucial textual features of prose and poetry, such as syntactic and semantic complexity or emotion potential, interact with reader features, such as empathy or openness to experience, in shaping a literary reading act. It contains hands-on practical examples on how to do computational text analyses of books and poems that can answer questions like: 

• Which is Jane Austen’s most beautiful book?
• Which poet created the most fitting poetic metaphors? or
• Which author of plays of the nineteenth century was the most literary?

The book’s first chapter about ‘The Two Boons of an Unnatural Daily Activity’ discusses the neuronal bases and other relevant aspects of immersive and aesthetic processes evoked by reading prose and poetry. In the second chapter, the author introduces a comprehensive model of verbal art reception that can explain what makes texts comprehensible and likeable and how they affect our body and mind. The model makes explicit important differences between the reading of prose and poetry and clarifies which text features make prose more immersive and poetry more aesthetic. The next two chapters discuss state-of-the-art methods for quantitative text, reader and reading act analyses from cognitive poetics, data science, psychology and neuroscience and shows how they can be used to dissect the complex author-text-reader nexus that shapes verbal art reception.

Chapters 5 and 6 then present hands-on practical examples on how to do simple and sophisticated computational text analyses including sentiment and topic analyses, cutting-edge machine learning methods, and multivariate predictive modeling using neural nets. Chapters 7 and 8 of the book then present a representative sample of empirical studies in both computational and neurocognitive poetics the author and his collaborators have carried out during the last decade. The results of these studies provide comprehensive insights into the complex workings of the brain during verbal art reception from the processing of single words and sentences to the aesthetic evaluation of metaphors or entire poems and novels, including a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the reading of Shakespeare sonnets that will change the ways of scientific studies of literature. The book ends with a short chapter about conclusions and future developments.

The model and methods introduced in the book offer game-changing insights for both fundamental and applied science that will affect standard metrics of readability and the way text processing and verbal art reception are viewed in literary studies, education, psychology or the media sciences.

This book introduces a new thrilling field–neurocomputional poetics, the scientific ‘marriage’ between cognitive poetics, data science and neuroscience. Its goal is to uncover the secrets of verbal art reception and to explain how readers come to understand and like literary texts. For centuries verbal art reception was considered too subjective for quantitative scientific studies and still nowadays many scholars in the humanities and neurosciences alike view literary reading as too complex for accurate computational prediction of the neuronal, experiential and behavioural aspects of reader responses to texts. This book sets out for changing this view. 

It offers state-of-the-art computational models and methods allowing to predict which crucial textual features of prose and poetry, such as syntactic and semantic complexity or emotion potential, interact with reader features, such as empathy or openness to experience, in shaping a literary reading act. It contains hands-on practical examples on how to do computational text analyses of books and poems that can answer questions like: 

• Which is Jane Austen’s most beautiful book?
• Which poet created the most fitting poetic metaphors? or
• Which author of plays of the nineteenth century was the most literary?

The book’s first chapter about ‘The Two Boons of an Unnatural Daily Activity’ discusses the neuronal bases and other relevant aspects of immersive and aesthetic processes evoked by reading prose and poetry. In the second chapter, the author introduces a comprehensive model of verbal art reception that can explain what makes texts comprehensible and likeable and how they affect our body and mind. The model makes explicit important differences between the reading of prose and poetry and clarifies which text features make prose more immersive and poetry more aesthetic. The next two chapters discuss state-of-the-art methods for quantitative text, reader and reading act analyses from cognitive poetics, data science, psychology and neuroscience and shows how they can be used to dissect the complex author-text-reader nexus that shapes verbal art reception.

Chapters 5 and 6 then present hands-on practical examples on how to do simple and sophisticated computational text analyses including sentiment and topic analyses, cutting-edge machine learning methods, and multivariate predictive modeling using neural nets. Chapters 7 and 8 of the book then present a representative sample of empirical studies in both computational and neurocognitive poetics the author and his collaborators have carried out during the last decade. The results of these studies provide comprehensive insights into the complex workings of the brain during verbal art reception from the processing of single words and sentences to the aesthetic evaluation of metaphors or entire poems and novels, including a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the reading of Shakespeare sonnets that will change the ways of scientific studies of literature. The book ends with a short chapter about conclusions and future developments.

The model and methods introduced in the book offer game-changing insights for both fundamental and applied science that will affect standard metrics of readability and the way text processing and verbal art reception are viewed in literary studies, education, psychology or the media sciences.

Based on detailed ethnographic material, ‘New Lithuania in Old Hands’ analyzes the impact that European Union membership has had upon the country’s ageing small-scale farmers. Addressing the highly relevant themes of European Union enlargement and the ‘Return to Europe’, this book describes how Lithuania’s EU membership has been a far cry from the scenarios of wealth and overabundance once promised.

On the contrary, membership of the EU has in many instances resulted in a return to subsistence production, increased insecurity and a reinforcement of kinship obligations. Within the agrarian sector, such changes threaten to have a large impact upon the future of family structures, and in turn, the future of the farming demographic as a whole.

While political forces have attempted to create a ‘New Lithuania’ in light of Europe’s geopolitical agenda, it has been the country’s ageing ‘Soviet generation’ that has actually brought into effect the restructuring of the agricultural sector. Thus, instead of treating the European Union as an elite project and voicing the support of various other parts of the population, ‘New Lithuania in Old Hands’ shows how the broader parts of the rural population have been affected by and engaged in the processes of change that followed Lithuania’s accession to the EU.

Based on detailed ethnographic material, ‘New Lithuania in Old Hands’ analyzes the impact that European Union membership has had upon the country’s ageing small-scale farmers. Addressing the highly relevant themes of European Union enlargement and the ‘Return to Europe’, this book describes how Lithuania’s EU membership has been a far cry from the scenarios of wealth and overabundance once promised.

On the contrary, membership of the EU has in many instances resulted in a return to subsistence production, increased insecurity and a reinforcement of kinship obligations. Within the agrarian sector, such changes threaten to have a large impact upon the future of family structures, and in turn, the future of the farming demographic as a whole.

While political forces have attempted to create a ‘New Lithuania’ in light of Europe’s geopolitical agenda, it has been the country’s ageing ‘Soviet generation’ that has actually brought into effect the restructuring of the agricultural sector. Thus, instead of treating the European Union as an elite project and voicing the support of various other parts of the population, ‘New Lithuania in Old Hands’ shows how the broader parts of the rural population have been affected by and engaged in the processes of change that followed Lithuania’s accession to the EU.

Nikolai Gretsch's Travel Letters is a fully translated English edition of a three-volume account published by Nikolai Gretsch (1787–1867) in Russian in 1839.  In the original Russian, Gretsch describes his travels in post-Napoleonic England, France, and Germany in 1837 at the behest of the Russian Empire.  

Gretsch had been asked to travel into Western Europe to examine the educational systems and report his findings to the Russian government.  However, he was more than just a functionary.  He was a journalist, novelist, and philologist.  For nearly three decades, he published a journal called Son of the Fatherland, and he was able to convince many influential Russian thinkers of the time to contribute to the periodical.  Later, he would publish The Reader’s Library and then The Northern Bee.  The former was a short-lived magazine, but the latter was a newspaper that remained in circulation for almost three decades.  As these accomplishments suggest, Gretsch was an intellectual—a person who looked beyond the surface-level of his existence to seek deeper meaning.  

In consequence, as he travelled through England, France, and Germany, his sharp mind absorbed far more than just the details of the educational systems he had been sent to investigate.  He noticed the cultural norms in his surroundings, the history of each country, and the personal experiences of the people he met.  When he returned to Russia, Gretsch assembled his entertaining and often humorous personal observations into the three-volume edition that was published in St. Petersburg in 1839 — not long after Napoleon’s final defeat.  His astute observations provide a rich contemporary resource for information about the countries he visited.  The observations are all the more relevant since they come from the viewpoint of an outsider.  Additionally, as a result of his government position, Gretsch was able to move in social circles that would have been closed to many other people.  In England, he once found himself in the same room with the future Queen Victoria, for example, and in France, he had lunch with Victor Hugo.  Given the new historicist slant of modern literary and cultural studies, Gretsch’s observations offer a treasure-trove of contextual information that will be valuable to history and literature scholars as well as to general readers interested in cultural interactions during the nineteenth century.  This narrative has never before been translated into English in its entirety. 

Nikolai Gretsch's Travel Letters is a fully translated English edition of a three-volume account published by Nikolai Gretsch (1787–1867) in Russian in 1839. In the original Russian, Gretsch describes his travels in post-Napoleonic England, France, and Germany in 1837 at the behest of the Russian Empire.

Gretsch had been asked to travel into Western Europe to examine the educational systems and report his findings to the Russian government. However, he was more than just a functionary. He was a journalist, novelist, and philologist. For nearly three decades, he published a journal called Son of the Fatherland, and he was able to convince many influential Russian thinkers of the time to contribute to the periodical. Later, he would publish The Reader’s Library and then The Northern Bee. The former was a short-lived magazine, but the latter was a newspaper that remained in circulation for almost three decades. As these accomplishments suggest, Gretsch was an intellectual—a person who looked beyond the surface-level of his existence to seek deeper meaning.

In consequence, as he travelled through England, France, and Germany, his sharp mind absorbed far more than just the details of the educational systems he had been sent to investigate. He noticed the cultural norms in his surroundings, the history of each country, and the personal experiences of the people he met. When he returned to Russia, Gretsch assembled his entertaining and often humorous personal observations into the three-volume edition that was published in St. Petersburg in 1839 — not long after Napoleon’s final defeat. His astute observations provide a rich contemporary resource for information about the countries he visited. The observations are all the more relevant since they come from the viewpoint of an outsider. Additionally, as a result of his government position, Gretsch was able to move in social circles that would have been closed to many other people. In England, he once found himself in the same room with the future Queen Victoria, for example, and in France, he had lunch with Victor Hugo. Given the new historicist slant of modern literary and cultural studies, Gretsch’s observations offer a treasure-trove of contextual information that will be valuable to history and literature scholars as well as to general readers interested in cultural interactions during the nineteenth century. This narrative has never before been translated into English in its entirety. 

Nikolai Gretsch's Travel Letters is a fully translated English edition of a three-volume account published by Nikolai Gretsch (1787–1867) in Russian in 1839. In the original Russian, Gretsch describes his travels in post-Napoleonic England, France, and Germany in 1837 at the behest of the Russian Empire.

Gretsch had been asked to travel into Western Europe to examine the educational systems and report his findings to the Russian government. However, he was more than just a functionary. He was a journalist, novelist, and philologist. For nearly three decades, he published a journal called Son of the Fatherland, and he was able to convince many influential Russian thinkers of the time to contribute to the periodical. Later, he would publish The Reader’s Library and then The Northern Bee. The former was a short-lived magazine, but the latter was a newspaper that remained in circulation for almost three decades. As these accomplishments suggest, Gretsch was an intellectual—a person who looked beyond the surface-level of his existence to seek deeper meaning.

In consequence, as he travelled through England, France, and Germany, his sharp mind absorbed far more than just the details of the educational systems he had been sent to investigate. He noticed the cultural norms in his surroundings, the history of each country, and the personal experiences of the people he met. When he returned to Russia, Gretsch assembled his entertaining and often humorous personal observations into the three-volume edition that was published in St. Petersburg in 1839 — not long after Napoleon’s final defeat. His astute observations provide a rich contemporary resource for information about the countries he visited. The observations are all the more relevant since they come from the viewpoint of an outsider. Additionally, as a result of his government position, Gretsch was able to move in social circles that would have been closed to many other people. In England, he once found himself in the same room with the future Queen Victoria, for example, and in France, he had lunch with Victor Hugo. Given the new historicist slant of modern literary and cultural studies, Gretsch’s observations offer a treasure-trove of contextual information that will be valuable to history and literature scholars as well as to general readers interested in cultural interactions during the nineteenth century. This narrative has never before been translated into English in its entirety. 

The gothic is a dark mirror of the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with non-fiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, world-wide reputations (Edgar Allan Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for nearly a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.

Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois to the relatively obscure Leona Sansay.  Some of these readings are themselves as disturbingly gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are tenuous in the gothic South. It is our contention that southern gothic fiction is in many ways realistic fiction, and, even at its most grotesque and haunting, is closely linked to the realities of southern life.

In America, and in the American South especially, the great fears, taboos, and boundaries often concern race. Even in stories where black people are not present, as in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The System of Professor Tarr and Dr. Fether,” slavery hangs in the background as a ghostly metaphor. Our background readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner’s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.

The gothic is a dark mirror of the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with non-fiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, world-wide reputations (Edgar Allan Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for nearly a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.

Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois to the relatively obscure Leona Sansay.  Some of these readings are themselves as disturbingly gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are tenuous in the gothic South. It is our contention that southern gothic fiction is in many ways realistic fiction, and, even at its most grotesque and haunting, is closely linked to the realities of southern life.

In America, and in the American South especially, the great fears, taboos, and boundaries often concern race. Even in stories where black people are not present, as in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The System of Professor Tarr and Dr. Fether,” slavery hangs in the background as a ghostly metaphor. Our background readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner’s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.

“No Size Fits All” is a book that will break the public policy deadlock over federal education standards in the United States. American debates about education policy are focused at the moment on two big policy disputes.

The first big dispute concerns the Common Core testing standards, which force American students into a dreary routine that makes millions of children hate school for no good reason. The second big dispute concerns the proposal of Education Secretary Betsy De Vos to siphon federal public school funding into “vouchers” that parents could use to send their children to private schools. Critics complain that this proposal is inherently a threat to the hard-won right to a tuition-free public education at the elementary and secondary levels.

The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform that its critics condemn as subversive. “No Size Fits All” interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative––one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.

“No Size Fits All” is a book that will break the public policy deadlock over federal education standards in the United States. American debates about education policy are focused at the moment on two big policy disputes.

The first big dispute concerns the Common Core testing standards, which force American students into a dreary routine that makes millions of children hate school for no good reason. The second big dispute concerns the proposal of Education Secretary Betsy De Vos to siphon federal public school funding into “vouchers” that parents could use to send their children to private schools. Critics complain that this proposal is inherently a threat to the hard-won right to a tuition-free public education at the elementary and secondary levels.

The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform that its critics condemn as subversive. “No Size Fits All” interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative––one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.

Unfolds the relevance of non-violence that is not only limited to the peaceful co-existence of humankind but also signifies the role played by non-violence to build a fundamental interconnectedness between humans and nature

Violence impregnates human life in many ways. We do violence to individuals or groups. We do violence to plants and animals. We do violence to the planet Earth. However, Nature will not survive our arrogance and patterns of exploiting and destroying the biosphere if we do not break the cycle of violence. As such, any moral effort to stop barbaric consumerism and chaotic nihilism is simultaneously the possibility of making life and biodiversity flourish on Earth. The moral imperative is thus also an ecological imperative. Therefore, the question is: how can we talk about non-violence in the current ecological crisis? Put differently, we can also ask: how can non-violence be brought to our ecological concerns? Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’. The notion of injustice becomes all the more crucial when applied to excluding animals and plants from the history of our planet. This eco-moral crisis must become more public as the ecological trajectory of the Earth foreshadows a very troublesome future.
Non-violence and Ecological Imperative is a contribution to the relevance and potential of the philosophy of non-violence in showing clearly that our viable ecological future depends on attitudes and strategies that are rooted in the Gandhian moment of civilising humanity as an antidote to the violent modern techno-industrial way of life. The interdependence and cooperation between humans and nature are inevitable. Non-exploitative and non-violent prerequisites of Gandhian ideology entail that interdependence and cooperation must be based on altruistic values and not on self-interest and materialistic values. This signifies immeasurable love not only among humans but also with nature. Thus, absolute love substitutes greed. Non-possession from an absolute love revolutionises the socio-ecological paradigm of human civilisation. Various ecological scientists and economists have asserted the need for revisiting the harmony between human activities and nature.
Stern et.al (1998) concluded that economic growth would never result in improvement in environmental quality. Arrow et.al (1995) concluded that economic growth is not a panacea for environmental quality. Meadows et al. (1972) in his book The Limits to Growth claimed that environmental limits would cause the collapse of the world economic system. Against this backdrop, Gandhi advocated the process of recycling and minimising waste so that humans adopt a lifestyle that integrates with the ecosystem. Humans must dwell in a life that converges with the law of nature and maintains ecological harmony. This notion of continuity of life is inspired by the Gandhian philosophy of non-violence and absolute love. The moment there is a break in continuity, it results in violence leading to unrest or conflict, dismantling the process of continuity.

Develops a new ethical framework for understanding nonviolence through Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” bridging literature, philosophy, and activism with insights from thinkers like Gandhi, Žižek, and Judith Butler

In recent years, several high-profile academic outputs related to theory and ethics of nonviolence have emerged. This book adds to theoretical literature on nonviolence through developing a new framework based on concepts drawn from Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” (LGI) which was originally articulated in the novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). In doing so, this book accounts for a previously undetected ethical dimension of nonviolence. It repositions Dostoevsky as a vital contributor to theory on nonviolence and uncovers a philosophical stance that defines violence not through political revolution, but by spiritual resistance and self-reproach. This book accounts for principal findings that have been identified in empirical scholarship on nonviolence, and while doing so, it engages with classical political theorists and scholars on nonviolence, including Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Gene Sharp along with contemporary works including Žižek, Atack, Christoyannopoulos, and Butler.This book contributes a new framework to assess the ethical motivations behind nonviolence and its empirical efficacy based on concepts drawn from Dostoevsky’s parable. The analysis of LGI offers an innovative explanation of the historical role of nonviolence and presents new implications for interpreting the efficacy of nonviolence in the contemporary world. Scholars have described the Grand Inquisitor as being representative of an evolution toward a totalitarian state, and it has even been acknowledged that the Grand Inquisitor was an inspiration for several key dystopian works that came afterwards such as Zamiatin’s We (1921), Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Yet with great scholarly and literary emphasis having been placed on the authoritarian symbols of this parable, the LGI contains an under-studied component of nonviolence which, to date, is yet to be identified and theorized.

This collection of essays delves into the central human problem of interpersonal violence, proposing nonviolence as a powerful antidote. Drawing from the author’s personal experiences, philosophical reflections, and scholarly work over the past two decades, the book offers a multifaceted exploration of nonviolence through ethical, spiritual, and practical lenses. Beginning with the author’s early pacifism shaped by the violence of the 1980s and the post-9/11 world, the essays provide insights into the complexities of practicing nonviolence in a violent society.

The book examines various aspects of nonviolence, including the ethical foundations rooted in love and morality, the influence of spirituality and disciplined practice on peacemaking, and the practical challenges of nonviolent parenting. It engages with critical theories of violence, critiques deterministic views of human aggression, and explores the role of somaesthetics and body consciousness in cultivating a nonviolent ethos. The essays also tackle the philosophical underpinnings of political nonviolence, from pacifism and nonresistance to pragmatic approaches that challenge traditional definitions of success in conflict.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book weaves together historical analysis, philosophical discourse, and personal narrative to present nonviolence as more than an ideal but as a practical guide for living. It highlights the importance of virtues such as kindness, empathy, and respect, drawing on the works of influential figures such as Gandhi, King, and Nhat Hanh. Ultimately, this collection seeks to inspire readers to consider nonviolence not merely as an ethical stance but as a transformative way of being in the world, offering hope for a less violent future.

Irish author (Eleanor) Norah Hoult (1898–1984) traveled in prominent literary circles and corresponded actively with some of the leading Irish authors of her time, including Brigid Brophy, Sean O’Casey, and Sean O’Faolain. Critics today compare her not only to O’Faolain and Frank O’Connor, but also to novelists Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien. Despite her reputation and a forty-four year publishing career, however, Hoult and her work remain surprisingly neglected.

This edition rectifies this critical oversight and introduces Hoult’s short story collection, 'Poor Women!', to a new generation of readers. 'Poor Women!' displays Hoult’s subtlety and humor as an author and her nature as a keen witness to human frailty. In these stories, Hoult unflaggingly highlights the restrictions imposed on her characters by society and its institutions: she thus provides a window into the social, literary and political milieu from which she hails.

Largely cited for its engagement with women’s and religious issues, 'Poor Women!' thus also displays a keen awareness of wider historical issues like the challenges of war and of cultural identity construction. Her incisive portraits capture the emotional paralysis of her characters and their self-delusions. Such thematic and stylistic emphases invite further comparison to better-known contemporary Irish literary giants like James Joyce and Mary Lavin.

Irish author (Eleanor) Norah Hoult (1898–1984) traveled in prominent literary circles and corresponded actively with some of the leading Irish authors of her time, including Brigid Brophy, Sean O’Casey, and Sean O’Faolain. Critics today compare her not only to O’Faolain and Frank O’Connor, but also to novelists Kate O’Brien and Edna O’Brien. Despite her reputation and a forty-four year publishing career, however, Hoult and her work remain surprisingly neglected.

This edition rectifies this critical oversight and introduces Hoult’s short story collection, 'Poor Women!', to a new generation of readers. 'Poor Women!' displays Hoult’s subtlety and humor as an author and her nature as a keen witness to human frailty. In these stories, Hoult unflaggingly highlights the restrictions imposed on her characters by society and its institutions: she thus provides a window into the social, literary and political milieu from which she hails.

Largely cited for its engagement with women’s and religious issues, 'Poor Women!' thus also displays a keen awareness of wider historical issues like the challenges of war and of cultural identity construction. Her incisive portraits capture the emotional paralysis of her characters and their self-delusions. Such thematic and stylistic emphases invite further comparison to better-known contemporary Irish literary giants like James Joyce and Mary Lavin.

In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British literature, Scandinavia emerged as a setting for Gothic terror. This book explores the extensive use of Nordic superstition as it provided a vocabulary for Gothic texts, examining the cultural significance these references held for writers exploring Britain’s northern heritage. In Gothic publications, Nordic superstition sometimes parallels the representations of Catholicism, allowing writers to gloat at its phantasms and delusions. Thus, runic spells, incantations, and necromantic communications (of which Norse tradition afforded many examples) could replace practices usually assigned to Catholic superstition. Yet Nordic lore did more than merely supplant hackneyed Gothic formulas; it presented readers with an alternative conception of ‘Otherness’. Nordic texts—chiefly based on the Edda and the supernatural Scandinavian ballad tradition—were seen as pre-Christian beliefs of the Gothic (i.e., Germanic) peoples, including the Anglo-Saxons. The book traces the development of this Nordic Gothic, situating it within wider literary, historical, political, and cultural contexts.

A significant context explored in the book is the conflict between the respective supporters of Celtic and Germanic heritage in the British Isles. The critical interventions of the Hugh Blair, John Pinkerton, Thomas Percy and others are important for understanding the role Norse tradition came to play. Among supporters of the Gothic/Germanic past, the Norse ancestors’ undaunted confrontation with fear was hailed as a testament to the bravery and boldness of the race. In turn, the terror discovered in Norse tradition was made to do cultural work as an ethno-political intervention in favour of Anglo-Saxon heritage in Britain. 

Another context for the Nordic imaginary is the commercial book market. British writers often teetered between approaching Nordic superstition with genuine antiquarian interest and exploiting it for the shock effects it afforded. With respect to the dual investment in Nordic material, a central focus is the Danish ballad material included in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk and his Tales of Wonder. Other writers who are discussed include Thomas Gray, Thomas James Mathias, William Wordsworth, Anna Seward, Walter Scott, and Ann Radcliffe. The book will also introduce readers to lesser-known authors.

This is a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian themes that appeared between 1996 and 2019. It is divided into three parts, with a common trajectory laid out in a substantial introduction. The first part links meaning, necessity and normativity. It defends and modifies Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of a ‘grammatical rule’ holds the key to understanding linguistic meaning and its connection to necessary propositions. The second part elucidates the connections between meaning, concepts and thought in Wittgenstein and beyond. It shows how he laid the grounds for a sound understanding of four contested issues—radical interpretation, concepts, nonsense and the scope and limits of animal thought. The third part provides a qualified defence of Wittgenstein’s influential yet extremely controversial idea that philosophical problems are conceptual, and thereby rooted in confusions concerning the meanings of and semantic relations between linguistic expressions. Against irrationalist interpretations, Glock demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s method is argumentative rather than therapeutic.

The essays reconstruct Wittgenstein’s writings in a way that identifies the often cryptic problems and arguments in his work. This sets them apart from a currently popular trend of therapeutic interpretations, as in the ‘New Wittgenstein’ school. By contrast to other critics of such interpretations, Glock acknowledges that they are to a limited extent warranted by some aspects of Wittgenstein’s work, e.g. concerning the notion of nonsense or what he calls ‘the myth of mere method’. At the same time the essays convincingly criticize these aspects and show that they are not presupposed by the more important lessons that Wittgenstein still has to teach. 

The collection brings out the abiding relevance of Wittgenstein’s reflections to contemporary debates on central themes such as the importance of normativity, the foundations of meaning and necessity, the nature of concepts, the possibility of animal thought and the proper method of philosophy. 

Defining what one means by the notion of ‘otherness’ is no mean feat. Typing the word into JSTOR results in no fewer than 39,000 citations. One can be overwhelmed with notions of what constitutes ‘otherness’.

To a great extent, the essays in ‘Notions of Otherness’ approach specific texts (e.g., Sarraute’s ‘Tropisms’) and philosophies (e.g., Lawrence’s ‘Ranamin’) as reflective of Simmel’s notion of the Stranger whose membership within the group, described in the Spring 2010 issue of ‘Social Research’, involves both being outside it and confronting it.

The entirety of the literary texts that have been written about (Cahan, Woolf, Schulz, Lawrence, Ionesco, Duras, Wittig and Maraini) have been addressed from the perspective of being ‘outside the group’ and ‘confronting’ the group both from a sociological perspective and an aesthetic one. Challenging male authority is one example of being outside the group; challenging traditional notions of writing fiction is another aspect of being outside the group; challenging one’s own loss of culture or being forced to do so is being outside the group and advocating a fascist form of living within a democracy is yet another aspect of being outside the group. Each of these texts challenges ‘codes of otherness’ and by so doing manifest notions of otherness in a distinctly unique manner.

Over the past decade, the impending environmental crisis has given birth to an international consensus on the need to address climate change, accompanied by a renewed interest in carbon emissions, energy consumption and energy production. Many Western countries are now set to transition towards a low-carbon economic structure. Energy choices have become, now and more than ever, highly critical questions due to their fundamentally political, strategic, geopolitical, economic, social and cultural impacts.

Since the mid-2000s, the British government has been actively involved in reforming the country’s energy strategy by encouraging the development of renewables and promoting the revival of the national nuclear industry, which had laid almost dormant until then. Seeing the UK government take back control of its energy strategy represented a rather bold and surprising political move, given the neoliberal dynamics which had spread in the energy sector during the privatisation era of the 1980s and1990s. There are currently about seventy reactors under construction in the world; yet, the British programme is the only one building nuclear reactors (Hinkley Point C) in a liberalised energy market. Consequently, many doubts were raised on the ability of the government to reshape the country’s energy mix through the revival of nuclear power, an industry historically blighted by financial difficulties and its controversial legacy. 

Nuclear Power Policies in Britain analyses the UK state’s capacity to shape energy decision-making using a diverse toolbox of political instruments ranging from legislative, regulatory and communication levers to financial incentives. This case study determines how the current UK public policy on nuclear energy has been debated, legitimised, negotiated and implemented within the constraints of a neoliberal environment. By taking a holistic approach to the nuclear venture, it offers valuable insight on the British approach to energy policy-making and contributes to redefining the country’s ‘technopolitical regime’ in this day and age.

The idea of occupational devotion, or devotee work, was conceptualized and incorporated in the serious leisure perspective as one of the two serious pursuits. The other pursuit is serious leisure itself, with both forms being anchored in activities that are immensely appealing and fulfilling. Despite such desirable qualities the serious pursuits constitute a minority of all work and leisure, these two domains being dominated by disagreeable work and hedonic casual leisure activities. 

The devotee occupations serve as full-time or part-time livelihoods for people fortunate enough to have found them. Such work has so far been observed to exist in four sectors of the economy: the liberal professions, consulting occupations, craft-like trades, and creativity-based small businesses. In ways to be set out in the coming chapters, devotee work roots in serious leisure, and many participants in the latter have no desire to pursue the former. Moreover, some of those who do “quite their day job” to try to make a living at their leisure passion fail to achieve this dream and are forced to return to pure amateur, hobbyist, or career volunteer status. That is, these aspirants fail to make enough money to live as they need to, whether at a level of poverty or near-poverty (eg, the starving artist), passable living, or comfortable living. 

Neither type of serious pursuit offers an unalloyed life of positiveness. Nevertheless, both are hugely attractive, even while the enthusiasts invariably face some costs and unpleasant requirements that weigh against the powerful rewards. So it is that, unlike casual leisure, perseverance and effort number among the defining qualities of the serious pursuits.

Advanced study in the humanities and social sciences discloses a deep ambivalence about Theory. Structurally, of course, the professionalization of young academics is approaching extinction. There are fewer and fewer secure jobs in academia, and thus fewer and fewer students embarking upon advanced study, and, in turn, fewer and fewer programs educating these students. What is offered the remaining students is instructive. Notably, students are expected by their future colleagues to be familiar with, maybe even conversant in Theory, but the structural logic of austerity prompts educators to wonder whether instruction in Theory is an efficient use of dwindling resources, especially now that academic publishing (with important exceptions) behaves as though this future, like the “last” wormhole, is collapsing. Given the Faustian articulation of publishing and promotion can advanced study in the humanities and social sciences even be justified today? Paradoxically, students are still expected to know what is less and less on offer. How is Theory to be “handled” (fingered, worked with, fashioned) under such circumstances?

A reading of Theory that in tracing when and where Theory arises in the event of reading proposes how Theory might best be handled in the context of higher education today. Arguing against those who propose to avoid Theory in the name of its putative obsolescence, this text sets out to challenge two aspects of this avoidance. On the one hand, Theory has been set aside in the name of identity politics, that is, the proposition that its intellectual pertinence has been overshadowed by a sense of political urgency construed as at odds with Theory. Theory itself has assumed an identity, a profile. On the other hand, implicit within the avoidance of Theory is a concept of “context” that calls for reflection. Resisting the tendency to treat context as either negligible or obvious, this text sets out to trace, in the when and where of Theory, the rudiments of a “sociographic” (think “historiographic”) account of context. In relation to it, the reading that is Theory can be usefully situated as part of a politics of higher education in the era of the global crisis of the university.

This argument is advanced through a series of readings that produce eccentric, sociographic accounts of important (some quite unusual) texts or performances of Theory. As such they enact an attention to reading that is advanced as an instance of “offering” as called for in the title.

Advanced study in the humanities and social sciences discloses a deep ambivalence about Theory. Structurally, of course, the professionalization of young academics is approaching extinction. There are fewer and fewer secure jobs in academia, and thus fewer and fewer students embarking upon advanced study, and, in turn, fewer and fewer programs educating these students. What is offered the remaining students is instructive. Notably, students are expected by their future colleagues to be familiar with, maybe even conversant in Theory, but the structural logic of austerity prompts educators to wonder whether instruction in Theory is an efficient use of dwindling resources, especially now that academic publishing (with important exceptions) behaves as though this future, like the “last” wormhole, is collapsing. Given the Faustian articulation of publishing and promotion can advanced study in the humanities and social sciences even be justified today? Paradoxically, students are still expected to know what is less and less on offer. How is Theory to be “handled” (fingered, worked with, fashioned) under such circumstances?

A reading of Theory that in tracing when and where Theory arises in the event of reading proposes how Theory might best be handled in the context of higher education today. Arguing against those who propose to avoid Theory in the name of its putative obsolescence, this text sets out to challenge two aspects of this avoidance. On the one hand, Theory has been set aside in the name of identity politics, that is, the proposition that its intellectual pertinence has been overshadowed by a sense of political urgency construed as at odds with Theory. Theory itself has assumed an identity, a profile. On the other hand, implicit within the avoidance of Theory is a concept of “context” that calls for reflection. Resisting the tendency to treat context as either negligible or obvious, this text sets out to trace, in the when and where of Theory, the rudiments of a “sociographic” (think “historiographic”) account of context. In relation to it, the reading that is Theory can be usefully situated as part of a politics of higher education in the era of the global crisis of the university.

This argument is advanced through a series of readings that produce eccentric, sociographic accounts of important (some quite unusual) texts or performances of Theory. As such they enact an attention to reading that is advanced as an instance of “offering” as called for in the title.

“On Beckett: Essays and Criticism” is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize–winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett.

More has been written about Samuel Beckett than about any other writer of this century – countless books and articles dealing with him are in print, and the progression continues geometrically. “On Beckett” brings together some of the most perceptive writings from the vast amount of scrutiny that has been lavished on the man; in addition to widely read essays there are contributions from more obscure sources, viewpoints not frequently seen. Together they allow the reader to enter the world of a writer whose work has left an impact on the consciousness of our time perhaps unmatched by that of any other recent creative imagination.

The contributors include the names of most of the minds of the twentieth century who have grappled in print with the meaning of the Beckett phenomenon. Among them are many of the artists who had a major role in bringing Beckett’s work to the stage and who worked side-by-side with Beckett, such as Alan Schneider, Roger Blin, Herbert Blau and Jackie MacGowran. Also included are some of the foremost writers of our time, whose encounter with the work of Beckett has produced lasting commentary, such as Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Martin Esslin. Among the noted Beckett scholars found here are Ruby Cohn, Walter D. Asmus, and James Knowlson. An interview with Susan Sontag and William S. Burroughs completes the book.

“On Beckett: Essays and Criticism” is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize–winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett.

More has been written about Samuel Beckett than about any other writer of this century – countless books and articles dealing with him are in print, and the progression continues geometrically. “On Beckett” brings together some of the most perceptive writings from the vast amount of scrutiny that has been lavished on the man; in addition to widely read essays there are contributions from more obscure sources, viewpoints not frequently seen. Together they allow the reader to enter the world of a writer whose work has left an impact on the consciousness of our time perhaps unmatched by that of any other recent creative imagination.

The contributors include the names of most of the minds of the twentieth century who have grappled in print with the meaning of the Beckett phenomenon. Among them are many of the artists who had a major role in bringing Beckett’s work to the stage and who worked side-by-side with Beckett, such as Alan Schneider, Roger Blin, Herbert Blau and Jackie MacGowran. Also included are some of the foremost writers of our time, whose encounter with the work of Beckett has produced lasting commentary, such as Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Martin Esslin. Among the noted Beckett scholars found here are Ruby Cohn, Walter D. Asmus, and James Knowlson. An interview with Susan Sontag and William S. Burroughs completes the book.

Against the backdrop of today’s renewed uncertainty over the present economic system, this timely volume presents Martin Luther’s contribution to the modern economic sciences, providing a detailed introduction and revised translation of his major pamphlet on economic matters, ‘On Commerce and Usury’ (‘Von Kauffshandlung vnd Wucher’, 1524). In his teachings on indulgences Luther picked up on the question of hoarding money, and was among the earliest voices in early modern Europe calling for an ‘ethical’ economics. Luther’s work prefigured many later contributions to modern economic theory, from the mercantilists and cameralists to the German Historical School.

Luther was, apparently, quite near to what the British economist J. M. Keynes developed as a ‘general theory’ in 1936, relating the power of spendthrift and a pro-active state which made people consume and invest in the economy. And Luther was always very clear about the basic fact that – in order for the economy to work well and society to flourish – markets need rules. Luther’s prescience and enduring relevance are brought to the fore in Philipp Robinson Rössner’s authoritative introduction and notes.

Violence exploding in public spaces, corruption by political figures and economic elites, the will of the people thwarted in both elections and votes in the senate, military misadventures abroad, and rampant economic inequality at home diminishing a shared sense of the common good – in sum, a republic in disarray. These descriptions are not only familiar from ancient Roman political and social life but are also recognizable to any United States citizen who follows the news and American civic life. On the Republic proceeds chronologically through the fall of the Roman Republic beginning in 133 BCE and continuing down to around 14 CE, providing a continuous narrative of the fall of the Roman Republic juxtaposed with the contemporary political landscape of the United States.

On the Republic focuses on four constellations of lessons that represent the most significant things which the fall of the Roman Republic has to teach us at this time: the dangers of political violence, the inability of individuals and institutions to save us, the finality of the loss of freedom, and lastly the importance of civic virtue. In 20 short chapters, On the Republic explores how the United States now faces many of the same challenges that toppled the Roman Republic - political divisions, economic inequality, and creeping authoritarianism. How we respond to these challenges today will determine the future of American democracy.

On the Republic is not a book about the fall of ancient Rome to so-called barbarians overrunning the border. It addresses the fall of a democratic society (the Roman Republic) into an autocracy (the Roman empire). This is not a book about sexual debauchery and gluttony, but a serious reading of political events that had serious consequences. On the Republic offers modern readers lessons that, while sobering, can also empower them to participate in political life in new ways. History is a means not to predict the future, but rather to stir the civic imagination of its readers.

Violence exploding in public spaces, corruption by political figures and economic elites, the will of the people thwarted in both elections and votes in the senate, military misadventures abroad, and rampant economic inequality at home diminishing a shared sense of the common good – in sum, a republic in disarray. These descriptions are not only familiar from ancient Roman political and social life but are also recognizable to any United States citizen who follows the news and American civic life. On the Republic proceeds chronologically through the fall of the Roman Republic beginning in 133 BCE and continuing down to around 14 CE, providing a continuous narrative of the fall of the Roman Republic juxtaposed with the contemporary political landscape of the United States.

On the Republic focuses on four constellations of lessons that represent the most significant things which the fall of the Roman Republic has to teach us at this time: the dangers of political violence, the inability of individuals and institutions to save us, the finality of the loss of freedom, and lastly the importance of civic virtue. In 20 short chapters, On the Republic explores how the United States now faces many of the same challenges that toppled the Roman Republic - political divisions, economic inequality, and creeping authoritarianism. How we respond to these challenges today will determine the future of American democracy.

On the Republic is not a book about the fall of ancient Rome to so-called barbarians overrunning the border. It addresses the fall of a democratic society (the Roman Republic) into an autocracy (the Roman empire). This is not a book about sexual debauchery and gluttony, but a serious reading of political events that had serious consequences. On the Republic offers modern readers lessons that, while sobering, can also empower them to participate in political life in new ways. History is a means not to predict the future, but rather to stir the civic imagination of its readers.

In this selection of essays written for a variety of publications and platforms throughout the 1990s (essays, program notes, conferences), Nicole Brenez sets out and applies the tenets of what she dubs the “figurative analysis” of cinema. As the title suggests, her two main interests could broadly be summarized as the “figure” (in general) and the “body” (in particular). An actor performing on screen is, of course, a body, but Brenez goes beyond psychological or purely dramatic considerations, studying how formal elements such as framing, lighting, and editing determine what a body is and an audience’s perception of it as well as how cinematic devices can be used to create new bodies – as in the science fiction films of the 1990s that posit hybrid, post-human forms. At the same time, a body can also be a collective of individuals or even themes and motifs brought together via cinematic means.
The term “figure” also has a broad and rich meaning in Brenez’s work, informing concepts such as “figural analysis,” “figural economy,” “figurative invention,” or pure “figuration.” While glimpses of these concepts have appeared in scattered translations over the years, this collection represents the first comprehensive and expansive selection of her writings on cinema in English.
Brenez is interested in the myriad of shapes that figures take in film: shadows, silhouettes, and contours, but also themes and motifs, and how these are visually and aurally manifested. She is especially interested in the ways in which an individual film produces these figures or figurative constellations. Laying out a methodology in the book’s introduction (a letter to John Ford biographer Tag Gallagher), Brenez goes on to analyze and interpret the myriad of figures found in movies by filmmakers ranging from John Woo to Paul Sharits as well as classics by Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. At once rigorous and open, the originality of the films Brenez studies and her very stimulating intuitions and connections, has produced one of the major studies of cinema of the late 20th century.

In this selection of essays written for a variety of publications and platforms throughout the 1990s (essays, program notes, conferences), Nicole Brenez sets out and applies the tenets of what she dubs the “figurative analysis” of cinema. As the title suggests, her two main interests could broadly be summarized as the “figure” (in general) and the “body” (in particular). An actor performing on screen is, of course, a body, but Brenez goes beyond psychological or purely dramatic considerations, studying how formal elements such as framing, lighting, and editing determine what a body is and an audience’s perception of it as well as how cinematic devices can be used to create new bodies – as in the science fiction films of the 1990s that posit hybrid, post-human forms. At the same time, a body can also be a collective of individuals or even themes and motifs brought together via cinematic means.
The term “figure” also has a broad and rich meaning in Brenez’s work, informing concepts such as “figural analysis,” “figural economy,” “figurative invention,” or pure “figuration.” While glimpses of these concepts have appeared in scattered translations over the years, this collection represents the first comprehensive and expansive selection of her writings on cinema in English.
Brenez is interested in the myriad of shapes that figures take in film: shadows, silhouettes, and contours, but also themes and motifs, and how these are visually and aurally manifested. She is especially interested in the ways in which an individual film produces these figures or figurative constellations. Laying out a methodology in the book’s introduction (a letter to John Ford biographer Tag Gallagher), Brenez goes on to analyze and interpret the myriad of figures found in movies by filmmakers ranging from John Woo to Paul Sharits as well as classics by Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. At once rigorous and open, the originality of the films Brenez studies and her very stimulating intuitions and connections, has produced one of the major studies of cinema of the late 20th century.

The highest art of operational leadership is that of making timely and sound decisions. The act of exercising command consists of making decisions and ordering their execution.

This collection of essays incorporates the insight of an international group of experts to explore the impact of neoliberal ideology upon political, social and economic domains, as well as institutions such as the prison, healthcare and education systems and the voluntary sector. Examining the effects of the emergence of late-modern capitalism in the 1970s, the articles look at how the reaction against post-war Keynesian ideology manifested itself in each of these areas. This neoliberal resurgence has been characterised by competition and free markets, individual and family responsibility, and socioeconomic policies that engender social insecurity, resulting in economic freedom for the few and a strong law-and-order state for those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Abandoning the all-encompassing, supportive attitude deemed necessary in the immediate aftermath of wartime instability, the neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility has resulted in numerous social and moral dislocations, including harsher attitudes toward crime and punishment. The essays included in ‘Organising Neoliberalism: Markets, Privatisation and Justice’ explore how neoliberal ideology permeates nearly all aspects of modern life, and produce strong arguments for resistance against it.

This collection of essays incorporates the insight of an international group of experts to explore the impact of neoliberal ideology upon political, social and economic domains, as well as institutions such as the prison, healthcare and education systems and the voluntary sector. Examining the effects of the emergence of late-modern capitalism in the 1970s, the articles look at how the reaction against post-war Keynesian ideology manifested itself in each of these areas. This neoliberal resurgence has been characterised by competition and free markets, individual and family responsibility, and socioeconomic policies that engender social insecurity, resulting in economic freedom for the few and a strong law-and-order state for those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Abandoning the all-encompassing, supportive attitude deemed necessary in the immediate aftermath of wartime instability, the neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility has resulted in numerous social and moral dislocations, including harsher attitudes toward crime and punishment. The essays included in ‘Organising Neoliberalism: Markets, Privatisation and Justice’ explore how neoliberal ideology permeates nearly all aspects of modern life, and produce strong arguments for resistance against it.

Ahmedi’s History of the Kings of the Ottoman Lineage and Their Holy Raid(s) against the Infidels is the foundation text for the study of the rise of the Ottoman State. Virtually every scholarly work dealing with the subject refers to his versified account of the early Ottomans. Even though it encompasses only a limited period of the Ottoman dynastic history, its importance derives from the fact that it is the oldest annalistic account of Ottoman history that has come down to us. Because the earliest Ottomans left no accounts of themselves, Ahmedi’s work became the key source—though almost always without a proper reading of the text—for subsequent theories regarding the social and political structure of the early Ottoman State.

The overwhelming religiosity found in Ahmedi’s poem on the Ottomans continues to stir debate among historians. However, his fourteenth-century representation of the ways Ottomans adapted Islam to conform with beliefs of their past reflected a specifically Turkish interpretation of Islam. We can follow that approach in the actions and writings of leaders and poets of succeeding generations of Ottomans all the way to the eighteenth century—that approach was framed by a medieval inheritance whose discursive characteristics continued for centuries. Ahmedi was a discourse-founder and his aim was to represent the Ottoman rulers as pious Muslims.

An understanding of Ahmedi’s representation of the role of Islam among the early Ottomans requires careful contemplation not only by putting the discursive characteristics of his predominantly religious text under a literary and philological microscope but also by making an attempt to place his representation within the much larger context of the making of Turkish Islam in Anatolia. Also, in the writing of histories during the Middle Ages, it was neither unusual nor abnormal to integrate religious concepts as “historical facts.” The medieval author always endeavored to find a creative way of amalgamating the two through the numerous literary devices that were available to him. Theories on the nature and identity of Ahmedi’s text, as well as on the launching of the Ottoman enterprise, surely will continue to evolve in the coming decades—especially when the ongoing Karacahisar excavations in Eskişehir provide us with the archeological record to reconstruct more thoroughly the Ottoman past. Regardless, what we find in the earliest history of the Ottoman State is a pious representation of its founders and a fictional glorification of the jihad as its ideology which continued in subsequent centuries.

This book tackles, for the first time, the complex issues surrounding the phenomenon of orphanage tourism, which is a growing and highly lucrative tourism niche in Nepal and several other economically developing countries. The book explores the occurrence of orphanage tourism in Nepal – how it is experienced, understood, sustained, opposed and, crucially, how it shapes the lives of the children involved. Rather than exploring the motives of tourists who engage in volunteering in orphanages while on holiday as so much extant literature does, the book examines the factors that contribute to the emergence of commercial orphanages and the experiences of the children involved. A central concern is to illustrate the inadequate ways in which orphanage tourism is understood, framed and politicised, especially in terms of who is blamed for its prevalence and how various Western entities position themselves as agents of rescue. By examining Nepal’s socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape, as well as the role of Western international development and structural adjustment and the impacts of tourism, the book presents a deeper and more complete picture of the emergence of orphanage tourism and other forms of child labour.
Furthermore, by examining the everyday realities of life in Nepal, especially for children and young adults who grew up in contact with Western volunteers in commercial orphanages, the simplistic depiction of orphans as victims, who need saving from villains by heroes, is dismantled. The book is especially focused on showing how the historical and everyday realities of life for children compelled to work are all too often ignored, obscured and distorted in the interventionist discourse that is beginning to surround orphanage tourism. I will argue that common orphan tropes, imbued with desperation and vulnerability, are circulated, in no small way, towards predominantly fulfilling the agendas of various Western parties.

In this highly readable book, Doyle McCarthy covers some of the main ways that emotions have become important in our global societies. She explains that emotional culture is important for understanding today’s world, its markets, its politics and its mass media. To live today is to be emotionally intelligent in our relations and in our workplaces. In the modern age, global capitalism and mass media have shaped our emotions and made us more emotional. Public life has become a place where we search out emotional happenings: at shopping malls, concerts, sports events, memorials to death and disaster and in the pursuit of sports.

In this highly readable book, Doyle McCarthy covers some of the main ways that emotions have become important in our global societies. She explains that emotional culture is important for understanding today’s world, its markets, its politics and its mass media. To live today is to be emotionally intelligent in our relations and in our workplaces. In the modern age, global capitalism and mass media have shaped our emotions and made us more emotional. Public life has become a place where we search out emotional happenings: at shopping malls, concerts, sports events, memorials to death and disaster and in the pursuit of sports.

This book is an overview and analysis of the global tradition of the outlaw hero. The mythology and history of the outlaw hero is traced from the Roman Empire to the present, showing how both real and mythic figures have influenced social, political, economic and cultural outcomes in many times and places. The book also looks at the contemporary continuations of the outlaw hero mythology, not only in popular culture and everyday life, but also in the current outbreak of global terrorism.

The book also presents a more general argument related to the importance of understanding folk and popular mythologies in historical contexts. Outlaw heroes have a strong purchase in high and popular culture, appearing in film, books, plays, music, drama, art, even ballet. To simply ignore and discard such powerful expressions without understanding their origins, persistence and especially their ongoing cultural consequences, is to refuse the opportunity to comprehend some profoundly important aspects of human behaviour. These issues are pursued through discussion of the processes through which real and mythical outlaw heroes are romanticised, sentimentalised, sanitised, commodified and mythologised. The result is a new position in the continuing controversy over the existence the ‘social bandit’ that highlights the central role of mythology in the creation and perpetuation of outlaw heroes.

The essays in this volume demonstrate how the Rossettis – from the celebrated Dante Gabriel and Christina to the comparatively neglected Maria and William – drew upon a shared cultural experience, and describe how each contributed to the intellectual debates of the age and played a substantial role in their various fields. Bringing together significant contributions from some of the most renowned experts on the Rossettis, 'Outsiders Looking In' provides important new perspectives on this talented family and their brilliant legacy.

The essays in this volume demonstrate how the Rossettis – from the celebrated Dante Gabriel and Christina to the comparatively neglected Maria and William – drew upon a shared cultural experience, and describe how each contributed to the intellectual debates of the age and played a substantial role in their various fields. Bringing together significant contributions from some of the most renowned experts on the Rossettis, 'Outsiders Looking In' provides important new perspectives on this talented family and their brilliant legacy.

Inspired by Max Weber’s thesis on the Protestant ethic, ‘Overseas Chinese Christian Entrepreneurs in Modern China’ sets out to understand the role and influence of Christianity on Overseas Chinese businesspeople working in contemporary China. Through its in-depth interviews and participant observations (involving 60 Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the United States), the text discusses how Christianity has come to fulfill an increasingly visible and dynamic function in the country, most notably as a new source of business morality.

Recognizing that China’s economic transition toward a market-oriented economy was not initiated by Christians (or indeed any other religious group), this volume demonstrates the importance of exploring the impact of religious ethics on economics at micro and organizational levels, via the subjective understandings of individuals and small businesses. Significant but often neglected facets of Weber’s thesis arise as a result. Of key importance is the issue of gender differences within the Christian ethos – a crucial aspect of the Protestant ethic that has yet to be systematically studied, but which offers great potential to enhance our understanding of Weber’s work. As a result, the text’s novel application of Weberian sociology to the context of contemporary China can be seen to offer a double return, elucidating both the theory and its subject.

Inspired by Max Weber’s thesis on the Protestant ethic, ‘Overseas Chinese Christian Entrepreneurs in Modern China’ sets out to understand the role and influence of Christianity on Overseas Chinese businesspeople working in contemporary China. Through its in-depth interviews and participant observations (involving 60 Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the United States), the text discusses how Christianity has come to fulfill an increasingly visible and dynamic function in the country, most notably as a new source of business morality.

Recognizing that China’s economic transition toward a market-oriented economy was not initiated by Christians (or indeed any other religious group), this volume demonstrates the importance of exploring the impact of religious ethics on economics at micro and organizational levels, via the subjective understandings of individuals and small businesses. Significant but often neglected facets of Weber’s thesis arise as a result. Of key importance is the issue of gender differences within the Christian ethos – a crucial aspect of the Protestant ethic that has yet to be systematically studied, but which offers great potential to enhance our understanding of Weber’s work. As a result, the text’s novel application of Weberian sociology to the context of contemporary China can be seen to offer a double return, elucidating both the theory and its subject.

'P. S. O'Hegarty (1879-1955)' provides a well-researched and engaging biography of a major figure within Irish nationalist politics. Standing at the epicentre of Ireland's revolution, this ardent separatist provided much original thinking on the central concerns of his day. Using O’Hegarty's fertile mind and prodigious literary works as a guide, this book explores the far-reaching political and cultural issues of early 20th century Ireland, such as what is meant by 'nation' and national identity, cultural and political tolerance, Republican Liberalism, and the nature (as well as the clash) of religion and the state. Of these and other important subjects still relevant today, O'Hegarty was a prolific writer and essayist, notably championing liberal and progressive ideas far ahead of his separatist contemporaries. Spanning Ireland’s cultural and political revolution in the early 20th century, his career offers interesting insights into this crucial period, as well as the social and political clime of the Free State.  His writings cast a keen and often iconoclastic eye on the developing Irish nation he helped create both as a noted Civil Servant and a social and literary critic.

Given that O’Hegarty is a name known to many Irish specialists, this full review of his separatist career will be a welcome addition to the growing canon of historical biographies of previously overlooked leading figures in this period. This biography also breaks new ground in revealing unknown aspects of this great figure's personality and life story. O'Hegarty has remained largely absent in the literature dealing with a revolutionary period to which he greatly contributed. O'Hegarty counted among his inner circle political heavyweights such as Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, IRB leader Michael Collins, and Bulmer Hobson, arguably the individual with whom he stood closest in political outlook. Despite sometimes quarrelling, O'Hegarty remained a source of wise counsel to all these men. Admired by both Griffith and Collins, O'Hegarty was privy to many private conversations and documents that reveal exciting new source material for the study of this crucial period relevant in shaping modern Ireland. Working within hugely influential movements such as Sinn Féin, the IRB, and the Gaelic League, P. S. O'Hegarty was often the thrusting sword from which the most stinging precise blows landed against the Irish Party and British rule in Ireland.

'P. S. O'Hegarty (1879-1955)' provides a well-researched and engaging biography of a major figure within Irish nationalist politics. Standing at the epicentre of Ireland's revolution, this ardent separatist provided much original thinking on the central concerns of his day. Using O’Hegarty's fertile mind and prodigious literary works as a guide, this book explores the far-reaching political and cultural issues of early 20th century Ireland, such as what is meant by 'nation' and national identity, cultural and political tolerance, Republican Liberalism, and the nature (as well as the clash) of religion and the state. Of these and other important subjects still relevant today, O'Hegarty was a prolific writer and essayist, notably championing liberal and progressive ideas far ahead of his separatist contemporaries. Spanning Ireland’s cultural and political revolution in the early 20th century, his career offers interesting insights into this crucial period, as well as the social and political clime of the Free State.  His writings cast a keen and often iconoclastic eye on the developing Irish nation he helped create both as a noted Civil Servant and a social and literary critic.

Given that O’Hegarty is a name known to many Irish specialists, this full review of his separatist career will be a welcome addition to the growing canon of historical biographies of previously overlooked leading figures in this period. This biography also breaks new ground in revealing unknown aspects of this great figure's personality and life story. O'Hegarty has remained largely absent in the literature dealing with a revolutionary period to which he greatly contributed. O'Hegarty counted among his inner circle political heavyweights such as Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, IRB leader Michael Collins, and Bulmer Hobson, arguably the individual with whom he stood closest in political outlook. Despite sometimes quarrelling, O'Hegarty remained a source of wise counsel to all these men. Admired by both Griffith and Collins, O'Hegarty was privy to many private conversations and documents that reveal exciting new source material for the study of this crucial period relevant in shaping modern Ireland. Working within hugely influential movements such as Sinn Féin, the IRB, and the Gaelic League, P. S. O'Hegarty was often the thrusting sword from which the most stinging precise blows landed against the Irish Party and British rule in Ireland.

“Paradoxes of Populism” argues that populism, far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism, should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. The book demonstrates that populism, in its many varieties, is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself––confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies and turning the world inside out. This book definitively engages with real-world challenges that the age of populism, the Second Coming of Nationalism, poses in liberal democracies states as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia.

The book argues that contrary to its self-image, populism does not represent a return to a peaceful, well-ordered and secure place of identity, progress and belonging, but, first, the introduction of irreconcilable division into the domestic arena; second, the breakdown of trust and civilized communication between governors and governed elites and people; and third, the exposure of the increasing powerlessness of the international order.

“Paradoxes of Populism” is a book about the fantasies, promises and contradictions of populism, as also about its backgrounds and causes in liberal democracies. While demonstrating its many varieties, the book explains populism’s rising popularity and steers the reader through the many myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

An anthology that presents 25 years of Lou Marinoff’s work addressing foundational paradoxes and dilemmas in rational choice, probability, and utility theory, offering original analyses of and/or resolutions to classic problems like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Newcomb’s Problem, and the Two Envelopes Problem

This unique anthology reflects the author’s resolutions of some of the most perplexing, interesting, and widely discussed problems arising in rational choice theory, probability theory, and utility theory. It spans 25 years of his research and publications in these related fields. Part One treats the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). It disproves Axelrod’s and Hamilton’s landmark but mistaken claim (Science, 1981) that Rapoport’s legendary Tit-for-Tat is an evolutionarily stable strategy and introduces a family of optimal strategies for iterated computer tournaments. Their members maximize expected utilities, embodying the properties of provocability, forgiveness, and exploitiveness. The leading member outperforms Tit-for-Tat. However, members of this family surprisingly fail to perform well against their own twins and siblings, thus reinforcing Axelrod’s lemma that there is no “best” strategy for iterated PDs independent of the competing population.
Part Two decouples Newcomb’s problem from Braess’s paradox, the Cohen–Kelly queuing paradox, and the PD, thus illustrating (contra Irvine, 1993) that Braess’s paradox does not resolve Newcomb’s problem. It then describes an innovative experiment with rationality in cyberspace, analogous to Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. The experiment shows that ostensibly “rational” actors consistently make irrational choices, even (and sometimes especially) when their irrationality is revealed to them. Part Two concludes with a computer model that reveals why some players always defect in non-cooperative games, holding implications for social and political stability. The model shows that even an initial majority of 67% cooperators can degenerate into a 100% non-cooperative population, while higher initial percentages of cooperators can maintain majority cooperation yet must still endure “resistant” nuclei of permanently defecting players.
Part Three presents a (1994) resolution of Bertrand’s random chord paradox, which still stands among the most convincing treatments since the problem was originally posed in 1889. A recent noteworthy challenge (Shackel, 2024) is summarized with a response. Part Three then dissects divergent solutions by Elga and Lewis to the perplexing Sleeping Beauty problem, presenting new arguments against Elga’s solution that decide the issue in favor of Lewis. Part Three ends by decisively resolving the notorious Two Envelopes paradox—still hotly debated after more than 30 years—by exposing a fundamental and fatal mis-application of the Principle of Indifference.
Part Four takes up a moral question debated by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Kant—“Should one lie to a highway robber to gain one’s release?”—and in so doing exposes a fissure in Gauthier’s otherwise well-received ethics of constrained maximization. It then develops a holistic interpretation of meaning, using a reverse Turing test to rebut if not disprove the Strong AI thesis. The central question is not how well Turing machines can simulate human intelligence; rather, how badly humans can fail to simulate machine intelligence. Finally, Part Four explores amusingly counter-intuitive ontological implications of an old Cambridge challenge puzzle—The Coconut Problem—including an ingenious but “impossible” negative solution by quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli.

‘Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia’ brings together Pakistan and Afghanistan as two inseparable entities by investigating areas such as the evolution and persistence of the Taliban, quest for Pashtun identity, the ambivalent status of the tribal region and the state of civic clusters on both sides. In addition to their relations with the United States and the EU, a due attention has been devoted to regional realties while looking at relations with India and China. The study explores vital disciplines of ethnography, history, Islamic studies, and international relations and benefits from a wide variety of source material. The volume takes into account the salient subjects including political Islam, nature and extent of violence since 9/11, failure of Western policies in the region, the Drone warfare, and the emergence of new regimes in Kabul, Islamabad and Delhi offering fresh opportunities as well as new threat perceptions.

‘Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia’ brings together Pakistan and Afghanistan as two inseparable entities by investigating areas such as the evolution and persistence of the Taliban, quest for Pashtun identity, the ambivalent status of the tribal region and the state of civic clusters on both sides. In addition to their relations with the United States and the EU, a due attention has been devoted to regional realties while looking at relations with India and China. The study explores vital disciplines of ethnography, history, Islamic studies, and international relations and benefits from a wide variety of source material. The volume takes into account the salient subjects including political Islam, nature and extent of violence since 9/11, failure of Western policies in the region, the Drone warfare, and the emergence of new regimes in Kabul, Islamabad and Delhi offering fresh opportunities as well as new threat perceptions.

A wide-ranging collection of concise essays, ‘Past Forward’ introduces core features of Korean history that illuminate current issues and pressing concerns, including recent political upheavals, social developments and cultural shifts. Adapted from Kyung Moon Hwang’s regular columns in the ‘Korea Times’ of Seoul, the essays forward interpretative points concerning historical debates and controversies in order to generate thinking about the ongoing impact of the past on the present, and vice versa: how Korea’s present circumstances reflect and shape the evolving understanding of its past. In taking the reader on a compelling journey through history, ‘Past Forward’ paints a distinctive, fascinating portrait of Korea and Koreans both yesterday and today.

Containing both extensive chronological and subject tables of contents, the essays are grouped into themes demonstrating a particular facet of the recurring connections between the past and the present. In addition, the book contains a timeline of contents that situates the essays in chronological context and a subject index. While all the self-contained essays introduce particular facets of Korean history and society, they are free of jargon and written for the general reader.

A wide-ranging collection of concise essays, ‘Past Forward’ introduces core features of Korean history that illuminate current issues and pressing concerns, including recent political upheavals, social developments and cultural shifts. Adapted from Kyung Moon Hwang’s regular columns in the ‘Korea Times’ of Seoul, the essays forward interpretative points concerning historical debates and controversies in order to generate thinking about the ongoing impact of the past on the present, and vice versa: how Korea’s present circumstances reflect and shape the evolving understanding of its past. In taking the reader on a compelling journey through history, ‘Past Forward’ paints a distinctive, fascinating portrait of Korea and Koreans both yesterday and today.

Containing both extensive chronological and subject tables of contents, the essays are grouped into themes demonstrating a particular facet of the recurring connections between the past and the present. In addition, the book contains a timeline of contents that situates the essays in chronological context and a subject index. While all the self-contained essays introduce particular facets of Korean history and society, they are free of jargon and written for the general reader.

This book sets forth how the “greening” of Wharton’s private and public writings contributes to exciting strands in cultural geography and recent postcolonial theory: for example, biological and political constructions of citizenship, mobility, race, and nation; hospitality and hostility toward the “Other”; fraught experiences of exile and competing conceptions of home/land; trans/national selfhood; the figure of the nomad, the outcast, or the wanderer. Ultimately, it will address this question: What are the issues, broadly speaking what motivates an ecocriticism, how does that address the challenges of cultural geography, why can we uncover meaning by turning to Wharton? The argument made is that a reading of Wharton’s fiction can help reveal how to understand those issues. This book situates Wharton as an author who is acutely responsive to pastoral tropes and terrain, among other species of spaces. She addresses the affective and geographical resonances of such sites, especially sparsely populated localities and landforms—voguish mountain resorts, private ornamental gardens, lush public parks, monumental and “sham” ruins—which offered pampered American socialites a brief escape from the “welter.” I wish to complicate popular perceptions of “Wharton’s world”—reinforced by numerous handsomely produced cinematic and television adaptations of her novels—as one rooted in often-opulent domestic interiors with their waspish social cliques, strict rules of politesse, and elaborate hierarchies.

Indeed, one of the central aims of this book is to treat pastoral as a kind of palimpsest—a “parchment” upon which successive generations of artist-pilgrims have etched their impressions, constantly revising its imagery, formal procedures, and lyrical effects. This notion of the palimpsest also reinforces how my research seeks to extend the range of Wharton studies. First of all, my close reading of selected texts adds another “layer” of sophistication to the ever-evolving field of ecocriticism, whose core ideas and critical standpoints have assumed both an urgency and galvanizing potency given the seismic upheaval to our material localities around the globe—some of the most damaging tornadoes in US history; flooding in the American Midwest; devastating earthquakes in Haiti, China, and Japan; stronger and more extensive wildfires in the American Southwest.

Climate change is like no other challenge we have ever faced. We have seen technology change driven by computers and information systems. The rate of change is determined by market acceptance and economics. We have also witnessed social changes in areas like voting rights, civil rights, child labor and gender equality. However, these social transformations have been much slower and in many cases are only partially accepted even after a century or more of effort. 

Climate change is unique because global warming doesn’t care if we agree with the science, and it doesn’t slow down because we are unwilling to act. The science is not driven by our focus on quarterly earnings and is not determined by public opinion. 

The purpose of Pathways to Action is to engage the reader in ideas about accelerating action. How can we prioritize certain approaches that allow for faster change at an industrial level? What are the biggest targets? Who can do more? What is the blueprint for action? The actions we take or don’t take will be this generation’s legacy for our children and grandchildren.

Patrick White (1912–1990) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973 and remains one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. This book represents new work by an outstanding list of White scholars from around the globe. White’s centenary revived mainstream interest in White in Australia and included a major exhibition on his life at the National Library of Australia. So too did the discovery of a highly significant hoard of hitherto unknown papers which were released by White’s literary executor Barbara Mobbs in 2006. The book aims to carry this momentum outwards to the rest of the world.

The contributors’ research is lodged in forwards-oriented methodologies and expressed in accessible language. On the whole, the collection is notable for its acknowledgement of White’s homosexuality in relation to the development of his literary style, in its consideration of the way his writing ‘works’ on/with readers, and for its contextualizing of his life and oeuvre in relation to London and to London life.

The title of the book reflects the effect on White scholarship of the newly discovered papers, the focus of numerous chapters on the farcical and ‘knockabout’ qualities of White’s work, and the contributors’ intention to inspire further work on White from a rising generation of scholars of twentieth-century literature beyond Australia.

Patrick White (1912–1990) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973 and remains one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. This book represents new work by an outstanding list of White scholars from around the globe. White’s centenary revived mainstream interest in White in Australia and included a major exhibition on his life at the National Library of Australia. So too did the discovery of a highly significant hoard of hitherto unknown papers which were released by White’s literary executor Barbara Mobbs in 2006. The book aims to carry this momentum outwards to the rest of the world.

The contributors’ research is lodged in forwards-oriented methodologies and expressed in accessible language. On the whole, the collection is notable for its acknowledgement of White’s homosexuality in relation to the development of his literary style, in its consideration of the way his writing ‘works’ on/with readers, and for its contextualizing of his life and oeuvre in relation to London and to London life.

The title of the book reflects the effect on White scholarship of the newly discovered papers, the focus of numerous chapters on the farcical and ‘knockabout’ qualities of White’s work, and the contributors’ intention to inspire further work on White from a rising generation of scholars of twentieth-century literature beyond Australia.

This study participates in the ongoing scholarly effort to re-appraise the penny dreadful phenomenon as a cornerstone of literary history and of popular culture, both within the nineteenth century and the development of Victorian popular fiction and beyond its specific context. The growing presence of these cheap entertaining Victorian texts in contemporary popular culture – through television series, musicals and literature – signals that it is high time to bestow more systematic and comprehensive attention to these publications. To do so, Penny Dreadfuls: The Circulation Patterns of a Victorian Popular Literature conceptualises the notion of circulation as a tool for analysis.
This book considers different aspects of circulation. The weaponisation of the penny dreadfuls’ successful circulation by its critics highlights tensions in the literary marketplace over the hegemonic discourse of what should and should not be read, which mirror the broader issue of contemporary changes on a social, cultural and political level. In addition, the penny dreadfuls’ consumption patterns and behaviour within the literary marketplace and within society are also marked by their circulation between different historically popular genres: within the network of late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century literature and culture, they refuse to remain within clear boundaries and constantly reinvent themselves at the intersection of several trends that constituted the popular, such as oral storytelling, sensationalism and the Gothic. Beyond the nineteenth century, their patterns of circulation develop diachronically, too, in the open-ended circulation of the penny dreadfuls across time through neo-Victorianism and the gradual transformation of the penny dreadfuls into a cultural reference.
Through the lens of the concept of circulation which pervades the penny dreadfuls’ history and content, this book reassesses the impact of the penny dreadfuls on nineteenth-century print culture and entertainment, as well as on contemporary popular culture. This book demonstrates the importance of these publications to better understand broader notions of popular culture and to keep deconstructing such binaries as ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Further than sales numbers, circulation interweaves numerous aspects of popular culture and of this publishing phenomenon. An analysis of these patterns helps decode many aspects of the penny dreadfuls’ life and afterlife, as it reveals how their material aspect is intimately interwoven with their seriality, their cultural significance, the reactions they provoked and their actual content. The resulting picture informs us about the nineteenth century’s social history and culture, about class warfare and political change, and about the evolution of literature over the past two hundred and fifty years.

The diverse essays in this book reflect Jonathan Steinberg’s methodological pluralism and insatiable curiosity for historical questions which cross disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Animating students, colleagues, friends and wider audiences with his enthusiasm for ‘thinking about the past’ was his vocation, one that he pursued with unmatched enthusiasm. Through this collection of essays, the book hopes to convey something of the intellectual range, analytical purchase and moral purpose of his historical writing and teaching.

One feature of Steinberg’s inspiring and charismatic lectures was his unique ability to combine an analysis – always fresh, never pre-cooked – of big historical structures and trends with an acute awareness of the importance of individual personalities. Jonathan Steinberg also believed in contingency, the importance of chance, and was keen to reject any form of historical determinism. The third salient feature of his work was his sense of moral purpose. He understood history as a hermeneutic science and was appropriately cautious about the epistemological status of historical claims, but he nevertheless saw the correctness of historical arguments and the probity of historical claims to be moral as well as empirical questions. His ethical sensibilities, his openness to interdisciplinary work and the humane and nuanced understanding of human motivation equipped him to tackle some of the most difficult subjects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history.

This annotated bibliography of nineteenth-century British periodicals, complete with a detailed subject index, reveals how Victorian commentaries on journalism shaped the discourse on the origins and contemporary character of the domestic, imperial and foreign press. Drawn from a wide range of publications that represent diverse political, economic, religious, social and literary views, this book contains over 4,500 entries, and features extracts from over 40 nineteenth-century periodicals.

The featured articles discuss both the prior and the contemporary press, from annuals to dailies, and examine topics such as circulation, content, audience and personnel. These nineteenth-century commentaries offer both a thorough and influential analysis of their journalistic milieu, presenting statistics on sales and descriptions of advertising, passing judgment on space allocations, pinpointing different readerships, and identifying individuals who engaged with the press either exclusively or occasionally.

The essays also examine the impact of outside forces – including technology, taxation, capitalism and compulsory education – whilst assessments of the press abroad add the further considerations of geography, ethnicity, resources and restraints to the collective analysis. Most importantly, the bibliography demonstrates that columnists routinely articulated ideas about the purpose of the press, yet rarely recognized the illogic of prioritizing public good and private profit simultaneously. The volume thus highlights implicitly a universal characteristic of journalism: its fractious, ambiguous, conflicting behavior – an endemic trait that appears to have survived well into the twenty-first century.

This annotated bibliography of nineteenth-century British periodicals, complete with a detailed subject index, reveals how Victorian commentaries on journalism shaped the discourse on the origins and contemporary character of the domestic, imperial and foreign press. Drawn from a wide range of publications that represent diverse political, economic, religious, social and literary views, this book contains over 4,500 entries, and features extracts from over 40 nineteenth-century periodicals.

The featured articles discuss both the prior and the contemporary press, from annuals to dailies, and examine topics such as circulation, content, audience and personnel. These nineteenth-century commentaries offer both a thorough and influential analysis of their journalistic milieu, presenting statistics on sales and descriptions of advertising, passing judgment on space allocations, pinpointing different readerships, and identifying individuals who engaged with the press either exclusively or occasionally.

The essays also examine the impact of outside forces – including technology, taxation, capitalism and compulsory education – whilst assessments of the press abroad add the further considerations of geography, ethnicity, resources and restraints to the collective analysis. Most importantly, the bibliography demonstrates that columnists routinely articulated ideas about the purpose of the press, yet rarely recognized the illogic of prioritizing public good and private profit simultaneously. The volume thus highlights implicitly a universal characteristic of journalism: its fractious, ambiguous, conflicting behavior – an endemic trait that appears to have survived well into the twenty-first century.

Highlights the crucial role of Constitutional Amendments in shaping American history, rights, and social justice, presenting their development and impact in an accessible and engaging way.

The debt we owe to the brilliant men who drafted their Constitution is incalculable. Recognizing that, with the passage of time, their document would likely require modifications, the Framers included provisions for amending the Constitution. The twenty-seven amendments that have been ratified to date have played a pivotal role in the continuing effort to perfect our Constitution. This book looks at U.S. history and the American experience through the lens of our Constitutional Amendments. It discusses why each Amendment was adopted, the importance of each Amendment, how the Amendments have been interpreted, and the impact they have had on American society. The Amendments are too important to be treated as afterthoughts, and this book seeks to rectify that by giving them the attention they deserve.
The Amendments have shaped and continue to shape the development of our nation. They guarantee the fundamental rights and liberties that Americans enjoy. They tell America’s story from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage, and to granting young men and women who are old enough to fight and even die for their country, the right to vote. The Amendments play a vital role in the quest for gender and racial equity, and the continuing struggle to achieve social justice. The story of the Amendments includes America’s dalliance with abstinence, the fourteen years of prohibition. They detail the changes in presidential elections, succession, and term limits; the direct election of senators; and the imposition of a federal income tax.
The Amendments are the result of the American people’s continuing efforts to perfect our Constitution, first through Acts of Congress, then through ratifications by State Legislatures, and finally by judicial review and interpretation.

Highlights the crucial role of Constitutional Amendments in shaping American history, rights, and social justice, presenting their development and impact in an accessible and engaging way.

The debt we owe to the brilliant men who drafted their Constitution is incalculable. Recognizing that, with the passage of time, their document would likely require modifications, the Framers included provisions for amending the Constitution. The twenty-seven amendments that have been ratified to date have played a pivotal role in the continuing effort to perfect our Constitution. This book looks at U.S. history and the American experience through the lens of our Constitutional Amendments. It discusses why each Amendment was adopted, the importance of each Amendment, how the Amendments have been interpreted, and the impact they have had on American society. The Amendments are too important to be treated as afterthoughts, and this book seeks to rectify that by giving them the attention they deserve.
The Amendments have shaped and continue to shape the development of our nation. They guarantee the fundamental rights and liberties that Americans enjoy. They tell America’s story from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage, and to granting young men and women who are old enough to fight and even die for their country, the right to vote. The Amendments play a vital role in the quest for gender and racial equity, and the continuing struggle to achieve social justice. The story of the Amendments includes America’s dalliance with abstinence, the fourteen years of prohibition. They detail the changes in presidential elections, succession, and term limits; the direct election of senators; and the imposition of a federal income tax.
The Amendments are the result of the American people’s continuing efforts to perfect our Constitution, first through Acts of Congress, then through ratifications by State Legislatures, and finally by judicial review and interpretation.

Usually, discourses on the planetary evolution and the movements of slaves remain restricted within the narratives and scholarships of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and hardly engage with the evolution, movements, and shifts about the Indian Ocean World (IOW) slave trade. But multiple published, unpublished, authored, and non-authored historical documents like the historical records of Greco-Egyptian monk Cosmos Indicopleustes (sixthcentury BC), the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (firstcentury CE), the travelogues of Ibn Battuta (fourteenthcentury), historical records of Tome Pires (sixteenthcentury), accounts of British historians William Hawkins and Sir Thomas Roe (seventeenthcentury), accounts of French historian Abbe Carre (seventeenthcentury), accounts of French Lieutenant de Grandpre (nineteenthcentury), and many more mention about the trade relations between India and different parts for Africa. The items of trade involved exotic stones, exotic spices, domestic objects, and local people.

Despite the existence of these diverse archival documents on the IOW trade activities, any discourses on the IOW continue to remain an understatement. The narratives on the IOW, to a vast extent, have been shaped by Western/colonial historians, who have imaginatively constructed the IOW within separate geographical, cultural, epistemological, and ontological enclaves. Based on these socio-historical arguments, this book unearths how Siddis in Gujarat and the South African Indians in South Africa preserve their ancestral memories through spiritual, culinary, and musical practices on the one side, and generate creolized socio-cultural spaces of collective decolonial resistance and well-being on the other.

This exacting study makes the case that a diverse range of theatre, film and activism engaged in the portrayal or participation of asylum seekers and refugees since 2001 has been informed by and contributed to the consolidation of ‘irregular’ noncitizenship as a cornerstone idea in contemporary Australian political and social life. This idea has been reified as a direct consequence of the asylum seeker–related public discourse that has been prominent in twenty-first century Australia, to the extent that it has become impossible to imagine what Australia means without it. ‘Performing Noncitizenship’ is the first book-length study of its kind to focus on Australia’s urgent and fraught asylum politics, and its implications extend beyond one country’s problems. To date, there has been little attention paid to theatre and performance’s implicatedness in how irregular noncitizenship has been taken up in Western neoliberal democracies as a core diagnosis for the ills of a precarious social and economic status quo. This study is unique among studies of asylum seeker and refugee representation in theatre, film and activism in its interest in the ways representations of asylum seekers are informed by and inform identity politics among citizens. The book’s purpose is to identify and illuminate the increasing leverage of noncitizenship as a marker of twenty-first century human illegitimacy.

This exacting study makes the case that a diverse range of theatre, film and activism engaged in the portrayal or participation of asylum seekers and refugees since 2001 has been informed by and contributed to the consolidation of ‘irregular’ noncitizenship as a cornerstone idea in contemporary Australian political and social life. This idea has been reified as a direct consequence of the asylum seeker–related public discourse that has been prominent in twenty-first century Australia, to the extent that it has become impossible to imagine what Australia means without it. ‘Performing Noncitizenship’ is the first book-length study of its kind to focus on Australia’s urgent and fraught asylum politics, and its implications extend beyond one country’s problems. To date, there has been little attention paid to theatre and performance’s implicatedness in how irregular noncitizenship has been taken up in Western neoliberal democracies as a core diagnosis for the ills of a precarious social and economic status quo. This study is unique among studies of asylum seeker and refugee representation in theatre, film and activism in its interest in the ways representations of asylum seekers are informed by and inform identity politics among citizens. The book’s purpose is to identify and illuminate the increasing leverage of noncitizenship as a marker of twenty-first century human illegitimacy.

This book discusses what it means to “perform the State,” what this action means in relation to the country of Iran and how these various performances are represented. The concept of the “State” as a modern phenomenon has had a powerful impact on the formation of the individual and collective, as well as on determining how political entities are perceived in their interactions with one another in the current global arena.

“Performing the State” refers to an individual (or a group of persons) who re-enacts rituals, ceremonies, customs, traditions and laws, or who dons certain guises, that either accomplish the State’s goals or rebel against them as a form of critique. This anthology examines various approaches to determining the Iranian State via the performativity of persons, with the intention of illuminating how social practices, ideologies and identities are shaped, represented, visualized, circulated and repeated – not only nationally but also worldwide. 

This book discusses what it means to “perform the State,” what this action means in relation to the country of Iran and how these various performances are represented. The concept of the “State” as a modern phenomenon has had a powerful impact on the formation of the individual and collective, as well as on determining how political entities are perceived in their interactions with one another in the current global arena.

“Performing the State” refers to an individual (or a group of persons) who re-enacts rituals, ceremonies, customs, traditions and laws, or who dons certain guises, that either accomplish the State’s goals or rebel against them as a form of critique. This anthology examines various approaches to determining the Iranian State via the performativity of persons, with the intention of illuminating how social practices, ideologies and identities are shaped, represented, visualized, circulated and repeated – not only nationally but also worldwide. 

Albert Aftalion’s exploration into the theory of periodic, general economic crises in an industrial economy outlines a conceptual framework based upon the distinction between the structural conditions that make a crisis possible and the historical triggers that give any particular crisis its specific character. This distinction is key to Aftalion’s theory and policy of the medium term and makes his contribution a forerunner of the principle of contextual emergence in complex dynamics.

This approach allows Aftalion to distinguish between different, but hierarchically related, causal layers: (i) the fundamental relationship between production and needs: capital formation is a necessary condition in order to achieve an equilibrium between production and needs compatible with increasing (or non-diminishing) per capita welfare; (ii) the more historically specific causal layer at which the lengthening of production processes as a result of the increasing utilization of fixed capital items becomes a central feature and makes it necessary to allow for adjustment periods during which the economic system is out of equilibrium and lack of time co-ordination between production and needs may generate crises; (iii) the most specific level of causation at which different institutional arrangements (e.g., private- versus social-ownership economy) determine the response patterns of individuals and groups to the mismatches characterizing out-of-equilibrium situations.

Aftalion’s approach highlights causal pluralism in economic dynamics while emphasizing that the different causal triggers are systematically related to one another in a hierarchical way. This intertwining of causal layers is especially relevant in the medium term, which makes the context of medium-term policy decisions the most difficult to detect and, at the same time, of critical importance to the success of policy measures.

This brilliant, vivid and impressionistic series of sketches, formed during her 1892 stay in Persia, is Gertrude Bell's first published work. Infused with a distinctive orientalism, 'Persian Pictures' is an evocative, virtuosic meditation, moving sinuously between Persia's heroic, complex, mythical past and its present decline; the public face of Tehran and the otherworldly 'secret, mysterious life of the East', the lives of its women, its enclosed, quasi-medieval gardens; from the bustling cities to the lonely wastelands of Khorasan. Bell's documentation of Muharram – the month of mourning for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed – and Ramadan, display a mind finely attuned to the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity, East and West. 'Persian Pictures' is both travelogue and meditation, an elegiac and beautifully observed account of a spellbinding land.

The literature that references personal data collection risks is growing amidst international scandals, notably the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook interference in the Brexit referendum and 2016 US Presidential election as well as other elections in countries throughout our world. Questions of fundamental importance to the study and practice of international relations are being asked as concerns are expressed, including the most pressing that speak to accountability, the ethics of use in local areas, and the impact on the vulnerable populations that information and communications technologies (ICTs) promise to serve. Yet, the editors observe that in key texts written to teach international relations, less mention is made of personal data collection risks in countries around the globe. This book addresses this significant omission in the literature. The editors and contributors to this volume consider the limitations of existing theories in international relations to address the present context, as personal data collection risks become more significant in a COVID-19 world.

The literature that references personal data collection risks is growing amidst international scandals, notably the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook interference in the Brexit referendum and 2016 US Presidential election as well as other elections in countries throughout our world. Questions of fundamental importance to the study and practice of international relations are being asked as concerns are expressed, including the most pressing that speak to accountability, the ethics of use in local areas, and the impact on the vulnerable populations that information and communications technologies (ICTs) promise to serve. Yet, the editors observe that in key texts written to teach international relations, less mention is made of personal data collection risks in countries around the globe. This book addresses this significant omission in the literature. The editors and contributors to this volume consider the limitations of existing theories in international relations to address the present context, as personal data collection risks become more significant in a COVID-19 world.

Peruvian Foreign Policy in the Modern Era is a chronological treatment of Peruvian foreign policy from 1990 to the present. It focuses on the impact of domestic politics, economic interests, security concerns, and alliance diplomacy on contemporary Peruvian foreign policy.

For 200 years, the foreign policy of Peru has focused on the achievement of core objectives central to the well-being of any state, including sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic independence, national security, and continental solidarity. In pursuit of these objectives, the content and direction of Peruvian foreign policy was heavily influenced by the conflicting demands of independence and interdependence as determined by multiple internal and external forces. An examination of Peruvian foreign policy in the modern era reveals the full extent to which it continues to be characterized by a strong linkage between domestic and foreign concerns with domestic considerations often influencing, if not determining, aspects of the nation’s international posture. Violence also remains integral to the Peruvian political system with external policy often a reflection of domestic politics. Finally, the location and size of Peru, the export-led nature of its economy, and the relationships it developed with regional and international powers remain strong influences on contemporary Peruvian foreign policy. In common with many states, sovereignty, territorial integrity, regionalism, continental solidarity, and economic independence remained core goals of Peruvian foreign policy after independence. In recent times, successive Peruvian governments have continued to address these and related issues in a foreign policy grounded in pragmatism and notable for its emphasis on a rational combination of continuity and change. The Fujimori administration (1990–2000) set the stage for this shift in the direction, tone, and content of the nation’s foreign policy, and the Toledo administration and its successors refined and built upon the initiatives launched by Fujimori. 

The pursuit of collective happiness was considered a utopian ideal that structured many aspects of Soviet culture, a fact recognized by numerous scholars in various disciplines ranging from cultural and literary studies to sociology and political science. Several groundbreaking studies in the literary and cultural history of the former Soviet Union have changed our understanding of the Soviet past. However, none of these studies has paid attention to an important theme in the cultural history of Soviet society – the pursuit of happiness. Although specialists in Soviet culture repeatedly invoke various manifestations of happiness in works of literature and film in their research, it has yet to be investigated as the subject of a full-fledged independent study.

‘Petrified Utopia’ redresses this inexplicable omission. This collection of essays introduces the Western reader to the most representative ideas of happiness, and the common practices of its pursuit that shaped Soviet everyday life and cultural discourse from the early post-revolutionary years to the later period of Stalinist and post-Stalinist culture. The collection presents different manifestations of happiness in literature and visual culture – from children’s literature to the official and high literary cannon, from architecture to fine arts, from postcards to cookbooks, and from the culture of consumerism to product-paradise in Soviet posters. ‘Petrified Utopia’ features articles by the leading specialists in the study of Soviet culture from the UK, the US, Germany and Italy, and addresses the perplexing lack of scholarship on this important issue.

The pursuit of collective happiness was considered a utopian ideal that structured many aspects of Soviet culture, a fact recognized by numerous scholars in various disciplines ranging from cultural and literary studies to sociology and political science. Several groundbreaking studies in the literary and cultural history of the former Soviet Union have changed our understanding of the Soviet past. However, none of these studies has paid attention to an important theme in the cultural history of Soviet society – the pursuit of happiness. Although specialists in Soviet culture repeatedly invoke various manifestations of happiness in works of literature and film in their research, it has yet to be investigated as the subject of a full-fledged independent study.

‘Petrified Utopia’ redresses this inexplicable omission. This collection of essays introduces the Western reader to the most representative ideas of happiness, and the common practices of its pursuit that shaped Soviet everyday life and cultural discourse from the early post-revolutionary years to the later period of Stalinist and post-Stalinist culture. The collection presents different manifestations of happiness in literature and visual culture – from children’s literature to the official and high literary cannon, from architecture to fine arts, from postcards to cookbooks, and from the culture of consumerism to product-paradise in Soviet posters. ‘Petrified Utopia’ features articles by the leading specialists in the study of Soviet culture from the UK, the US, Germany and Italy, and addresses the perplexing lack of scholarship on this important issue.

The Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata, completed between 1933 and 1966, represents a landmark in the textual history of an epic with a nearly 1500-year history. Not only is the epic massive (70,000 verses in the constituted text, with approximately another 24,000 in the Vulgate) verses, but in its various recensions, versions, retellings, and translations it also presents a unique view of the history of texts, narratives, ideas, and their relation to a culture. Yet in spite of the fact that this text has been widely adopted as the standard Mahābhārata text by scholars, there is as yet no work that clarifies the details of the process by which this text was established. Scholars seeking clarification on the manuscripts used or the principles followed in arriving at the Critical Text must either rely on informal scattered hints found throughout academic literature or read the volumes themselves and attempt to follow what the editor did and why he did so at each stage.

This book is the first work that presents a comprehensive review of the Critical Edition, with overviews of the stemmata (textual trees) drawn up, how the logic of the stemmata determined editorial choices, and an in-depth analysis of strengths and drawbacks of the Critical Edition. Not only is this work an invaluable asset to any scholar working on the Mahābhārata today using the Critical Edition, but the publication of an English translation of the Critical Edition by Chicago University Press also makes this book an urgent desideratum.

Furthermore, this volume provides an overview of both historical and contemporary views on the Critical Edition and clarifies strengths and weaknesses in the arguments for and against the text. This book simultaneously surveys the history of Western interpretive approaches to the Indian epic and evaluates them in terms of their cogency and tenability using the tools of textual criticism. It thus subjects many prejudices of nineteenth-century scholarship (e.g., the thesis of a heroic Indo-European epic culture) to a penetrating critique. Intended as a companion volume to our book The Nay Science: A History of German Indology (Oxford University Press), this book is set to become the definitive guide to Mahābhārata textual criticism. As both a guide into the arcane details of textual criticism and a standard reference work on the Mahābhārata manuscript tradition, this book addresses a vital need in scholarship today.

Examines episodes of philosophical embarrassment, highlighting how Hume, Wittgenstein, and others grappled with critiques that undermined philosophy’s foundations, leading to redefinitions of its aims and cautionary responses to scientism and self-deception

This book consists of diverse essays held together by the thread of embarrassment that runs through them. Sometimes, embarrassment is front and center as when we discuss its conceptual features; at other times, its presence is oblique, as when we take a closer look at Rousseau’s existential outrage at the very idea of a culture of embarrassment; or when we look at Darwin’s theory and George Eliot’s critique of it. We unearth deeply buried embarrassments in the history of philosophy treating them as useful entry points into the major figures from an unusual if not idiosyncratic angle. All this raises a somewhat different but important line of enquiry, one that is meta-philosophical. Hume and Wittgenstein are our prime examples of philosophers who are aware that they and their subject have undone themselves and thus have been thoroughly embarrassed. What are the upshots, they ask, for philosophers and their subject? Perhaps this issue is the answer to Rousseau’s tantrums: embarrassment is useful. Throughout the book, we have many things to say about its uses and its abuses. One question this raises for us is how to proceed in philosophy with equipment that tends to run off the rails with considerable regularity. Do we proceed with all modesty, alive to these facts about us and ready to be embarrassed the next time our reach exceeds our grasp? Or do we, as the early Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Quine seem to have done, radically revise key elements of the philosophical project—the pursuit of truth and objectivity in all matters, for example—in an attempt to avoid future embarrassments? If you narrow your subject, and if you are competent in that narrowness, you can avoid embarrassment and achieve your modest goals. Such a course is in keeping with the approach of modern philosophy, since it has taken science as a model of sorts. However, when science exceeds its competence, claiming it can solve any and every problem, it loses its experimental modesty, and we no longer have science but scientism. It should come as no surprise, then, that one of our essays is a set of reflections on Wittgenstein’s cautionary remarks about the embarrassments of scientism and his warnings about the related inclination to self-deception. A definition, Kant remarked, should come toward the end rather than at the beginning of an investigation; hence, in the final essay, we provide a perspicuous overview of embarrassment.

‘Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies: Why Do Things with Texts, and What to Do with Them?’ takes up key meta-questions in the humanities, with focus on contemporary literary studies, philosophically examines the nature of knowledge therein as well as the implications of certain popular critical approaches, and addresses the effervescent question of ‘relevance’. In contrast to usual works on literary theory, or on philosophy of literature for that matter, this book presents an integrated meta-reasoning on the foundational questions of literary studies from an interdisciplinary perspective – in a manner of intertextual informality. It endeavours to articulate a rationale for the humanities in general and literary studies in particular. It philosophically examines the implications of, and assumptions behind, three popular tendencies in contemporary literary criticism – textual deconstruction, ideological criticism and constructivism. It also introduces the reader to possibilities of non-reductive reasoning with regard to the relation between the aesthetic and the political. With his multidisciplinary background, doctoral degree on an encyclopedic author who extended the frontiers of fiction with his highly experimental writings (James Joyce) and past engagements with vital issues in the humanities/literature, Jibu George is in a position to deal with foundational questions therein. The book endeavours to fill the gap between theory and practice; its metacritical reflections redefine the way critics interpret texts, teachers teach them, students study them and researchers grapple with their research problems. It also proposes an array of new concepts for the understanding of literature which have a significance beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

‘Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies: Why Do Things with Texts, and What to Do with Them?’ takes up key meta-questions in the humanities, with focus on contemporary literary studies, philosophically examines the nature of knowledge therein as well as the implications of certain popular critical approaches, and addresses the effervescent question of ‘relevance’. In contrast to usual works on literary theory, or on philosophy of literature for that matter, this book presents an integrated meta-reasoning on the foundational questions of literary studies from an interdisciplinary perspective – in a manner of intertextual informality. It endeavours to articulate a rationale for the humanities in general and literary studies in particular. It philosophically examines the implications of, and assumptions behind, three popular tendencies in contemporary literary criticism – textual deconstruction, ideological criticism and constructivism. It also introduces the reader to possibilities of non-reductive reasoning with regard to the relation between the aesthetic and the political. With his multidisciplinary background, doctoral degree on an encyclopedic author who extended the frontiers of fiction with his highly experimental writings (James Joyce) and past engagements with vital issues in the humanities/literature, Jibu George is in a position to deal with foundational questions therein. The book endeavours to fill the gap between theory and practice; its metacritical reflections redefine the way critics interpret texts, teachers teach them, students study them and researchers grapple with their research problems. It also proposes an array of new concepts for the understanding of literature which have a significance beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Anthropology and philosophy have long been intellectual companions; the borders between the two disciplines have always been permeable. For example, anthropologies inspired by Durkheim are ultimately indebted to Kant; Evans-Pritchard’s ideas are stamped with R. G. Collingwood’s Hegelian philosophy; Gluckman was stimulated by Whitehead’s process philosophy; and Bourdieu drew inspiration from Wittgenstein and Pascal, amongst others. Yet the fuller history and implications of philosophical influences in anthropology are largely unaddressed.

In this volume, the contributors address the shifting effect philosophy has on anthropology. They investigate the impact of the philosophical presuppositions of anthropology, as well as the presuppositions themselves, using a comparative-cultural point of view – ethnography. Furthermore, by considering anthropologies in conjunction with philosophies, and philosophies with anthropologies, the volume helps illuminate the present trajectories of thought in postcolonialist, non-ethnocentric and creative directions that were previously ignored by the contemporary social sciences. As a cross-disciplinary study, the volume questions both the rigidity of intellectual and disciplinary boundaries and attempts to evade it by encouraging many different voices and perspectives to create a thought-provoking dialogue.

The original essays in ‘Philosophy and Anthropology: Border Crossings and Transformations’ discuss the three-fold division within the anthropological engagement with philosophy, the sources and history of philosophical anthropology, and its current applications and links with other contemporary intellectual movements. This volume seeks to engage with real social and humanitarian issues of the current age and create an innovative discipline: philosophical anthropology.

Anthropology and philosophy have long been intellectual companions; the borders between the two disciplines have always been permeable. For example, anthropologies inspired by Durkheim are ultimately indebted to Kant; Evans-Pritchard’s ideas are stamped with R. G. Collingwood’s Hegelian philosophy; Gluckman was stimulated by Whitehead’s process philosophy; and Bourdieu drew inspiration from Wittgenstein and Pascal, amongst others. Yet the fuller history and implications of philosophical influences in anthropology are largely unaddressed.

In this volume, the contributors address the shifting effect philosophy has on anthropology. They investigate the impact of the philosophical presuppositions of anthropology, as well as the presuppositions themselves, using a comparative-cultural point of view – ethnography. Furthermore, by considering anthropologies in conjunction with philosophies, and philosophies with anthropologies, the volume helps illuminate the present trajectories of thought in postcolonialist, non-ethnocentric and creative directions that were previously ignored by the contemporary social sciences. As a cross-disciplinary study, the volume questions both the rigidity of intellectual and disciplinary boundaries and attempts to evade it by encouraging many different voices and perspectives to create a thought-provoking dialogue.

The original essays in ‘Philosophy and Anthropology: Border Crossings and Transformations’ discuss the three-fold division within the anthropological engagement with philosophy, the sources and history of philosophical anthropology, and its current applications and links with other contemporary intellectual movements. This volume seeks to engage with real social and humanitarian issues of the current age and create an innovative discipline: philosophical anthropology.

Explores how decision making, grounded in modal logic, shapes a person’s relationship to the world by transforming their possibilities, values and perspectives – forming the basis of a philosophy of life

Philosophy of life is an overarching value and conceptual framework that gives context and meaning to practical philosophy, including the practical interventions aimed at enhancing the quality of life. This includes philosophical counselling and all kinds of psychotherapy. However, the tendency of disciplinary specialisation has led to a general neglect of the firm rootedness of psychotherapy in logic and philosophy generally. This book shows how conventional psychotherapy today uncritically rests on propositional logic and elucidates the consequences of that logical blind spot for the nature and content of the interventions and psychotherapeutic view of one’s lifeworld.

A particular quality of modal logic in practical philosophy, and in psychotherapy as a form of practical philosophy, is experientially very different from the common perception of theoretical logic, which is formal and mathematical. However, when modal logic is applied to philosophy of life, and especially to psychotherapy, it shows opulent colours and a capacity to transform seemingly hopeless situations, frozen in determining, non-permissive circumstances. Modal Integrative Psychotherapy as a modal logic–driven psychotherapy method illustrates how philosophy of life plays a role as an intervention strategy to improve quality of life.

The book shows how psychotherapy grows from philosophy and articulates a particular practical philosophy that, rather than cancelling psychology as a discipline and psychotherapy as a profession, leads them to a stage of philosophical deliberation that has liberating, emancipating and empowering effects through the application of logical modality of otherwise irresolvable life issues. Such a perspective depicts life plans, life goals and life strategy as elements that determine the philosophical foundations of a quest for good life that project philosophy of life as living practice, including helping oneself and helping others through psychotherapeutic and at once philosophical interventions.

Australian photographer and film maker Frank Hurley became an international celebrity through his reporting of the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, the First and Second World Wars, the England-Australia air race of 1919, and his own expeditions to Papua in the 1920s. This book is an account of his stage and screen practice in the context of early twentieth-century mass media.

‘Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity’ is not a biography of Frank Hurley the man; it is instead an examination of the social life of the many marvellous and meaningful things he made as a professional photographer and film maker in the early twentieth century: the negatives, photographic prints, lantern slides, stereographs, films, diaries and newspaper articles. His stage and screen practices offer an insight into Australia’s engagement with the romance and wonder of international modernity in the early years of the twentieth century. The level of description at which this volume works is not that of personality or the originary events of Hurley’s life – the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, and the First and Second World Wars – but the media events he worked so hard and so professionally to create. He called them his ‘synchronized lecture entertainments’.

These media events were at once national and international; they involved Hurley in an entire culture industry comprising many kinds of personnel, practices and texts that were constantly in movement along global lines of travel and communication, and in a variety of institutional locations around the world. This raises complex questions both about the authorship of Hurley’s photographic and filmic texts – which were often produced and presented by other people – and about their ontology, since they were in a more or less constant state of re-assemblage in response to changing market opportunities. This unique study re-imagines, from inside the quiet and stillness of the archive, the prior social life of Hurley’s creations as they were once accelerated through the complicated topography of the early twentieth century’s rapidly internationalizing mass media landscape. As a way to conceive of that space and the social life of the people and things within it, this study uses the concept of ‘colonial modernity’.

Australian photographer and film maker Frank Hurley became an international celebrity through his reporting of the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, the First and Second World Wars, the England-Australia air race of 1919, and his own expeditions to Papua in the 1920s. This book is an account of his stage and screen practice in the context of early twentieth-century mass media.

‘Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity’ is not a biography of Frank Hurley the man; it is instead an examination of the social life of the many marvellous and meaningful things he made as a professional photographer and film maker in the early twentieth century: the negatives, photographic prints, lantern slides, stereographs, films, diaries and newspaper articles. His stage and screen practices offer an insight into Australia’s engagement with the romance and wonder of international modernity in the early years of the twentieth century. The level of description at which this volume works is not that of personality or the originary events of Hurley’s life – the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, and the First and Second World Wars – but the media events he worked so hard and so professionally to create. He called them his ‘synchronized lecture entertainments’.

These media events were at once national and international; they involved Hurley in an entire culture industry comprising many kinds of personnel, practices and texts that were constantly in movement along global lines of travel and communication, and in a variety of institutional locations around the world. This raises complex questions both about the authorship of Hurley’s photographic and filmic texts – which were often produced and presented by other people – and about their ontology, since they were in a more or less constant state of re-assemblage in response to changing market opportunities. This unique study re-imagines, from inside the quiet and stillness of the archive, the prior social life of Hurley’s creations as they were once accelerated through the complicated topography of the early twentieth century’s rapidly internationalizing mass media landscape. As a way to conceive of that space and the social life of the people and things within it, this study uses the concept of ‘colonial modernity’.

This study investigates the capacity of Shakespeare’s texts – obviously destined for stage performances – to generate images and mental colours in the readers’ and in the spectators’ minds. Such notions as Ut pictura poesis and the paragoneare discussed in the first part of this book, along with the function and nature of colours. After discussing the sets of correspondences and the major differences between texts and images, the author presents and analyzes some of his own illustrations of Shakespearean characters. Jean-Louis Claret, both a university professor specialized in Shakespeare’s theatre and an illustrator, proposes to shed light on the process that led him from the perusal of the written text to the visualization of visages. The voice of poets is unconventionally called upon to shed light on the complex mechanisms he describes.
The second part of this book deals with an analysis of the author’s illustrations. As a university scholar, Jean-Louis Claret has naturally fed on literary criticism, but he tries nonetheless to put forth original approaches to Shakespeare. The use of poets’ voices in his demonstration contributes to the development of an original and innovative contribution to Shakespearean criticism. The illustrator traces in the texts the sparks that his mind fanned into mental images which he strove in turn to make into visual pictures. He tries to determine how textual elements (the mention of colours, details, names, etc.) can generate visions, and he devotes special attention to the effect of sound correspondences and prosody.
Poetry is given pride of place in this book that focuses on the power of words and on the mechanisms of evocation that affect both readers and theatregoers.

This project centers on one of the material drivers of local democratic processes. Too often in public, scholarly, and policy debates, conversations about participatory democracy devolve into voting rights, formal governance procedures, and other relatively abstract processes. While important, this point of view can often obscure the very immediate and material concerns of citizens, urban residents, and others that are simultaneously “citizens” of communities of varying geographic scales when it comes to – for example – the roads they travel, the electricity they consume, the schools they attend, and the water they use. The intention of this book is to examine the daily urban infrastructure needs of citizens, especially under rapid growth contexts, as a window into the broader concern with participation in governance, development, and visioning the future. 

The central premise of the book, as well as the key lesson for readers, is that public works and infrastructure are the backbone of democratic processes, and that democratic processes begin at the very local level. Without it, the process of collective governance fades beyond the immediacy of daily life. The process of imagining, financing, building, using and demolishing large, material projects such as bridges, sanitation systems and water systems in particular places are, on the one hand, an important technological and design problem. On the other hand, they are the physical manifestations of social, political, and economic relationships reflected in society, as the famous urbanist Lewis Mumford once noted (1937). The extent to which communities build physical infrastructure and which types of it says a lot about how those communities organize themselves. At the same time, the formal and informal loyalties and relationships among a community influence the types of built environment and infrastructure they get. 

Using this premise, the book describes several case studies from Southeast Asia that illustrate the embeddedness of governance structures in the built infrastructure as a way to encourage readers to consider the material, built environment stakes involved with participatory democracy as well as the importance of democratic participation in the visioning, building, and management of large-scale urban projects.

‘Planting the Seeds of Research’ explores why by the beginnings of the twentieth century the United States dominated agricultural production worldwide. The thesis is that the ultimate investments made by the United States Department of Agriculture and State governments created the research structure that made American agriculture spectacularly successful. The social commitment, by business, government and farmers built the productive capabilities that generated sustainable prosperity in American agriculture. The ultimate investment in agriculture enabled Americans over time to spend less of their disposable income on food and more on other goods and services, and compete in international agricultural markets.

‘Planting the Seeds of Research’ explores why by the beginnings of the twentieth century the United States dominated agricultural production worldwide. The thesis is that the ultimate investments made by the United States Department of Agriculture and State governments created the research structure that made American agriculture spectacularly successful. The social commitment, by business, government and farmers built the productive capabilities that generated sustainable prosperity in American agriculture. The ultimate investment in agriculture enabled Americans over time to spend less of their disposable income on food and more on other goods and services, and compete in international agricultural markets.

"Poetic Innovation in Wordsworth 1825–1833" uses extensive manuscript study of Wordsworth’s poems to present, for the first time, an account of his poetics during the supposedly "fallow" years, 1825-1833. Wordsworth wrote no manifestos during the later years and as a result the book turns to a manuscript page, unique among his dozens of notebooks, that when read spatially and in conjunction with other manuscripts and poems from the same period reveals a poetics in the making. ‘Poetic Innovation in Wordsworth 1825–1833’ develops a radical process of reading and interpreting, relying less on discursive prose and more on the conscious acknowledgement of the play of signifiers on the manuscript page that has led Robinson to capture a "world" of Wordsworth (1825–1833) beginning with the manuscript and spreading outwards to include the geography and topography relevant to his writing, the dwellings in which he worked, the well-known cottage industry of amanuenses who helped him produce his poems, the contemporary journals and poems of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, and the social issues (Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform) that often occasioned them. Finally, the book presents a cluster of more-or-less unread poems but most worthy of inclusion in the Wordsworth canon.

In order to emulate for readers Wordsworth’s spatial vision of poetry and the poetic process, and the often-playful experience of reading these manuscripts, Robinson has, with the collaboration of book designer and award-winning scholar of the image in modern fiction Karen Jacobs, developed a book design that stresses a paratext (including footnotes) so that the reader is asked to read across as much as to read vertically. The poems presented and discussed in the text appear with an image background to enhance the idea that poems themselves are events in space. Images, both of geographical and architectural space and of highlightings of manuscript detail, saturate the text as a whole. Finally, the intensity and simultaneous playfulness of Wordsworth’s nearly obsessive revisionary process has dictated the production of twenty-two original ‘found’ poems based on materials from Wordsworth’s manuscripts; these also appear throughout the book against an image background.

The book’s design, by Karen Jacobs, echoes Robinson’s argument that Wordsmith’s late poetry both involves and evokes multi-layered responses.