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This book is the first biographical account of Sebastian Masuda written in English. Sebastian Masuda is a Japanese creator and artist who is globally known as the king of Japanese “Kawaii” (cute) subculture which originated in Harajuku. His continuous pursuit of the concept of kawaii is his lifetime passion and mission, and his work is always characterized by bright neon colors that led to the emergence of Decora fashion. He wears several hats in the field of fashion, art, and entertainment and uses colorful and kawaii elements as his creative foundation. He treats kawaii styles as explicit, non-violent forms of rebellion and resistance like many other youth subcultures in Japan that express themselves in unconventional fashion. One needs courage to walk down the street wearing bright, flashy clothes and accessories from head to toe.
As an artist, Masuda has created prominent art pieces, such as a giant Hello Kitty sculpture in New York and a giant Doraemon statue made out of fluffy yarn in Singapore. As a designer, he has designed the décor of Kawaii Monster Café in Harajuku and Sushidelic, a sushi restaurant, in New York. He also runs a store, 6%DokiDoki, which has its own clothing line. As an entertainment producer, he has collaborated with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, a Japanese singer and pop culture icon, and produced her first music video.
This book traces a strong impact of Masudaʼs difficult and lonely childhood and upbringing and complex family background on his creative endeavors that attract millions of youngsters that are also going through personal hardships. Masuda went through his teenage years spending time alone in the library reading books which made him observant and perceptive. This book also delves into his deep understanding of kawaii with intricate layers of interpretations which are often misunderstood and misconstrued as simply being cute, girlie, and infantile. Kawaii is not just an adjective but a lifestyle, philosophy, and ideology.

This book is the first biographical account of Sebastian Masuda written in English. Sebastian Masuda is a Japanese creator and artist who is globally known as the king of Japanese “Kawaii” (cute) subculture which originated in Harajuku. His continuous pursuit of the concept of kawaii is his lifetime passion and mission, and his work is always characterized by bright neon colors that led to the emergence of Decora fashion. He wears several hats in the field of fashion, art, and entertainment and uses colorful and kawaii elements as his creative foundation. He treats kawaii styles as explicit, non-violent forms of rebellion and resistance like many other youth subcultures in Japan that express themselves in unconventional fashion. One needs courage to walk down the street wearing bright, flashy clothes and accessories from head to toe.
As an artist, Masuda has created prominent art pieces, such as a giant Hello Kitty sculpture in New York and a giant Doraemon statue made out of fluffy yarn in Singapore. As a designer, he has designed the décor of Kawaii Monster Café in Harajuku and Sushidelic, a sushi restaurant, in New York. He also runs a store, 6%DokiDoki, which has its own clothing line. As an entertainment producer, he has collaborated with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, a Japanese singer and pop culture icon, and produced her first music video.
This book traces a strong impact of Masudaʼs difficult and lonely childhood and upbringing and complex family background on his creative endeavors that attract millions of youngsters that are also going through personal hardships. Masuda went through his teenage years spending time alone in the library reading books which made him observant and perceptive. This book also delves into his deep understanding of kawaii with intricate layers of interpretations which are often misunderstood and misconstrued as simply being cute, girlie, and infantile. Kawaii is not just an adjective but a lifestyle, philosophy, and ideology.

Whilst debates over secret agents and the public revelation of lists of former collaborators have fascinated both post-Communist societies and the wider world, it is surprising how little has been written either on the nature of Communist-era collaboration or the processes through which post-Communist societies have sought to make sense of what collaboration was, and how it should be dealt with in the present. This is surprising given the amount of work that has been produced on the themes of resistance and victimization.

Unlike more popular (and often lurid) accounts of collaboration, which naturalise the concept as an obvious and incontestable characterization of Communist-era behaviour, ‘Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe’ rather interrogates the ways in which Post-Socialist cultures produce the idea of, and knowledge about, ‘collaborators’. It addresses those institutions which produce the concept and examines the function, social representation and history of secret police archives and institutes of national memory that create these histories of collaboration. This work seeks to provide a more nuanced historical conception of ‘collaboration’, expanding the concept towards broader frameworks of cooperation and political participation in order to facilitate a better understanding of the maintenance of Eastern European Communist regimes.

This work contends that secret police files are too often used to provide a one dimensional historical account of the ‘mechanisms of oppression’. It demonstrates, through case studies, how secret police files can be used to produce more subtle social and cultural histories of the socialist dictatorships. Of particular importance is the focus on the microhistorical. Contributions here explore the motivations and moralities of becoming an agent, the personal decisions and social consequences such steps involved as well as the everyday milieus in which agents lived and were active. This book analyses communities of cooperation, with particular focus on local and mid-level party organizations, organs of the church organs and artist or intellectual networks. Ranging across differing categories of collaborators and different social milieux across East-Central Europe, this work provides a comparative account of collaboration and participation with a range hitherto unavailable.

One evening Pilar, the novel’s Spanish protagonist, returns from work to discover that her husband, Eyüp, has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from the home they share in Barcelona. She learns from the police the following morning that he has boarded a plane for Istanbul, the city of his birth that he has not visited since he left it almost two decades previously. Mystified as to what could have provoked such uncharacteristic behaviour, and assailed by her own insecurities, she decides to follow him there and bring him back. Packing a tiny bag with just a few clothes and the dream diary that Eyüp’s psychologist has asked him to keep in an attempt to get to the bottom of what has been perturbing his sleep, she sets off for Istanbul, where she will embark on a journey of painful discovery. Meeting Eyüp’s dysfunctional family, from which he has been as good as estranged since before she has known him, and his friends, and seeing the city where he grew up for the first time, she will piece together the clues to uncover the horrifying truth about what drove Eyüp away.

Each chapter is narrated from the perspective of a different character, beginning with Pilar, and continuing with Müesser, Eyüp’s long suffering and resigned unmarried elder sister, Veysel, Eyüp’s belligerent and embittered elder brother, Perihan, Veysel’s spiteful, mean-spirited wife, and two minor characters, Bülent, Veysel’s twelve year old son, and Bünyamin, Perihan’s younger brother. Each chapter is followed by a dream from Eyüp’s dream diary. These dreams, which begin very frivolously, grow progressively more serious as Eyüp remembers more and more of his dreams, until the disturbing climax which ends the novel.

This engaging collection of Bruce F. Kawin’s most important film essays (1977–2011) is accompanied by his interviews with Lillian Gish (1978) and Howard Hawks (1976). The Hawks interview is particularly concerned with his work with William Faulkner and their friendship. The Gish interview emphasizes her role as a producer in the 1920s. The essays take up such topics as violence and sexual politics in film, the relations between horror and science fiction, the growth of video and digital cinema and their effects on both film and film scholarship, the politics of film theory, narration in film, and the relations between film and literature.

Kawin’s film essays and reviews have appeared in “Take One,” “Film Quarterly,” “American Book Review” and elsewhere. Until the publication of this volume, most of them were out of print and unavailable online. Among the most significant articles reprinted here are “Me Tarzan, You Junk,” “The Montage Element in Faulkner’s Fiction,” “The Mummy’s Pool,” “The Whole World Is Watching,” and “Late Show on the Telescreen:  Film Studies and the Bottom Line.” The book includes close readings of films from “La Jetée” to “The Wizard of Oz” and reviews of films from “Full Metal Jacket” to “The Fury.”

The essays take up some of the most interesting aspects of film, from the effect of film violence on viewers to the changes brought by digital cinema, while remaining readable and free of jargon. As critic Howie Movshovitz says in the Foreword, “his writing is utterly, utterly clear.” Original and independent, the book is free of attachment to any school of criticism or theory, and is dedicated to the fresh and open-minded appreciation of movies.

This engaging collection of Bruce F. Kawin’s most important film essays (1977–2011) is accompanied by his interviews with Lillian Gish (1978) and Howard Hawks (1976). The Hawks interview is particularly concerned with his work with William Faulkner and their friendship. The Gish interview emphasizes her role as a producer in the 1920s. The essays take up such topics as violence and sexual politics in film, the relations between horror and science fiction, the growth of video and digital cinema and their effects on both film and film scholarship, the politics of film theory, narration in film, and the relations between film and literature.

Kawin’s film essays and reviews have appeared in “Take One,” “Film Quarterly,” “American Book Review” and elsewhere. Until the publication of this volume, most of them were out of print and unavailable online. Among the most significant articles reprinted here are “Me Tarzan, You Junk,” “The Montage Element in Faulkner’s Fiction,” “The Mummy’s Pool,” “The Whole World Is Watching,” and “Late Show on the Telescreen:  Film Studies and the Bottom Line.” The book includes close readings of films from “La Jetée” to “The Wizard of Oz” and reviews of films from “Full Metal Jacket” to “The Fury.”

The essays take up some of the most interesting aspects of film, from the effect of film violence on viewers to the changes brought by digital cinema, while remaining readable and free of jargon. As critic Howie Movshovitz says in the Foreword, “his writing is utterly, utterly clear.” Original and independent, the book is free of attachment to any school of criticism or theory, and is dedicated to the fresh and open-minded appreciation of movies.

William Hazlitt had concluded in 1815 that a Quaker poet would be ‘a literary phenomenon’ – how could a marginal sect renowned for their plain dress, sober ways and proscription of pleasures produce imaginative literature? To conceive such a writer would be a paradox. Yet the career of Bernard Barton, a prolific poet of the 1820s and 1830s, presented the Romantic era with just such a phenomenon. Instantly recognisable to his contemporaries as the Quaker poet, Barton drew on the styles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century – Cowper, Wordsworth, Crabbe – to fashion verse under a Quaker muse. His diverse poetic output is unified by a tender emotional warmth, a picturesque love for the Suffolk countryside and a self-consciously modest but nevertheless sophisticated authorship. 

This is the first ever modern edition of Barton’s poetry, providing freshly edited texts from the original print sources and a comprehensive scholarly treatment encompassing critical commentary, detailed notes and textual variations. Capturing the full range of his career from the 1810s to 1840s, it includes generous selections of nature poetry, religious verse, texts of sociability and friendship, ekphrastic compositions, political writings and a long extract from his radically pacifist elegy to Napoleon. The book also includes a selection of invaluable contextual material, such as periodical reviews and Barton’s own prefaces, as well as a substantial essay introducing Barton and his times.

In a time when the nineteenth-century literary canon is in a continual process of expansion and revision, this unusual and striking poet, working from the position of a religious minority and yet fully engaging the mainstream poetic traditions of his day, deserves to be rediscovered, and this edition achieves precisely this.

William Hazlitt had concluded in 1815 that a Quaker poet would be ‘a literary phenomenon’ – how could a marginal sect renowned for their plain dress, sober ways and proscription of pleasures produce imaginative literature? To conceive such a writer would be a paradox. Yet the career of Bernard Barton, a prolific poet of the 1820s and 1830s, presented the Romantic era with just such a phenomenon. Instantly recognisable to his contemporaries as the Quaker poet, Barton drew on the styles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century – Cowper, Wordsworth, Crabbe – to fashion verse under a Quaker muse. His diverse poetic output is unified by a tender emotional warmth, a picturesque love for the Suffolk countryside and a self-consciously modest but nevertheless sophisticated authorship. 

This is the first ever modern edition of Barton’s poetry, providing freshly edited texts from the original print sources and a comprehensive scholarly treatment encompassing critical commentary, detailed notes and textual variations. Capturing the full range of his career from the 1810s to 1840s, it includes generous selections of nature poetry, religious verse, texts of sociability and friendship, ekphrastic compositions, political writings and a long extract from his radically pacifist elegy to Napoleon. The book also includes a selection of invaluable contextual material, such as periodical reviews and Barton’s own prefaces, as well as a substantial essay introducing Barton and his times.

In a time when the nineteenth-century literary canon is in a continual process of expansion and revision, this unusual and striking poet, working from the position of a religious minority and yet fully engaging the mainstream poetic traditions of his day, deserves to be rediscovered, and this edition achieves precisely this.

A study in the literature of selfhood across time, Self-Haunting analyses how the Gnostics, the Romantics, Kierkegaard, Beckett and Ashbery dramatize the self’s struggle to fulfill an ideal of integrity and autonomy that will not let it go.

The book has an introduction outlining the conceptual framework that gives meaning to the six collected texts that follow. This framework derives from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. He stated that ‘everything is social,’ which means that all discourses have to be understood in their own terms (as ‘structured structures’) and in relation to the social conditions in which they developed (‘structuring structures’). As social individuals we are constrained by the structures defining our situation but we also have the capacity to alter those structures. With particular reference to the ‘field’ of politics, the Introduction considers theoretically the nature of the ‘presentation of self’ (Goffman) of citizens and the nature of parliamentary democracy as ‘presentation’ or ‘representation’ (as discussed in Habermas: The structural transformation of the public sphere).

The six main chapters reproduce texts written or spoken about politics at intervals in the period from 1960 until 2020. Brief introductions to each chapter will contextualise these texts both in terms of their significance in my developing awareness of political discourse and also in terms of the historically changing nature of the field of politics itself in the United Kingdom. Having an a-political upbringing, the author suggests that he gradually acquired a political competence but, equally, developed the view that the domination of political discourse has become exclusive and that there is now a need to reassert social relations in society and to recognize the extent to which political activity sustains the social control of a privileged minority.

The book has an Epilogue which considers some recent arguments about ‘populism’ and also reflects on the extent to which the ‘new normal’ heralded by some for a post-Covid future has the capacity to circumscribe the influence of politics. The author reflects on whether deployment of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’ - the process by which the attitudes of the few are imposed on the many – might lead to the possible resurgence of social movements which are sceptical about political power. The author suggests that there may be a need for a new ‘quietism’ as advanced by Fénelon in the court of Louis XIV at the end of the 17th century and as considered by Richard Rorty in “Naturalism and quietism” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics, 2007. 

The book has an introduction outlining the conceptual framework that gives meaning to the six collected texts that follow. This framework derives from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. He stated that ‘everything is social,’ which means that all discourses have to be understood in their own terms (as ‘structured structures’) and in relation to the social conditions in which they developed (‘structuring structures’). As social individuals we are constrained by the structures defining our situation but we also have the capacity to alter those structures. With particular reference to the ‘field’ of politics, the Introduction considers theoretically the nature of the ‘presentation of self’ (Goffman) of citizens and the nature of parliamentary democracy as ‘presentation’ or ‘representation’ (as discussed in Habermas: The structural transformation of the public sphere).

The six main chapters reproduce texts written or spoken about politics at intervals in the period from 1960 until 2020. Brief introductions to each chapter will contextualise these texts both in terms of their significance in my developing awareness of political discourse and also in terms of the historically changing nature of the field of politics itself in the United Kingdom. Having an a-political upbringing, the author suggests that he gradually acquired a political competence but, equally, developed the view that the domination of political discourse has become exclusive and that there is now a need to reassert social relations in society and to recognize the extent to which political activity sustains the social control of a privileged minority.

The book has an Epilogue which considers some recent arguments about ‘populism’ and also reflects on the extent to which the ‘new normal’ heralded by some for a post-Covid future has the capacity to circumscribe the influence of politics. The author reflects on whether deployment of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’ - the process by which the attitudes of the few are imposed on the many – might lead to the possible resurgence of social movements which are sceptical about political power. The author suggests that there may be a need for a new ‘quietism’ as advanced by Fénelon in the court of Louis XIV at the end of the 17th century and as considered by Richard Rorty in “Naturalism and quietism” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics, 2007. 

Self-Presentation and Self-Praise in Open Communication Digital Enterprises presents the findings of an interdisciplinary study of the ‘self-entrepreneurial self’ and, in particular, the rationale behind its need to self-present under the current socio-economic and business conditions. It addresses the complex landscape of the levels, typologies, categories, triggers, as well as both internal and external factors impacting self-praise in the context of a digital workplace (with the focus on enterprise social media) and professional networking platforms. 

In order to reflect the complexity of the topic at hand and interconnectivity of the constructs addressed, insights from such fields as socioeconomics, sociology, social psychology (specifically identity studies), software and services (IT sector), business intelligence and business analytics, digital media communication, organisational behaviour or corporate communication are thus combined with a mixed qualitative-quantitative methodological approach utilised to provide an in-depth exploration of the evolving constructs.

From the broader socio-economic perspective of hyper globalisation, the impact of the neoliberalism economy on workplace relations, and ultimately on employee behaviour, are considered first to lay the background and introduce the relevant concepts. 

Self-presentation and in particular self-praise are considered in their multiple forms against the backdrop of precarious work relations dictated by neoliberalism, leading, among other things, to self-exploitation, but also to putting self-interest above anything else.

The focus is placed on the triggers and manifestations of the social self (how a person thinks the others perceive them) and the situational self (a person’s self-image in a specific situation) in the digital workplace, where individual (cultural) values are frequently overridden by those dictated by a given corporate culture, as aligned with the prevailing market conditions. These in turn impact workplace or employee identity. 

This exploratory and explanatory study contributes to a rather limited number of research endeavours on self-praise, conducted within narrow disciplines and specific frameworks, with the particular research gap being a lack of studies on self-presentational and self-praise activities in the corporate environment, which can primarily be observed in the virtual context of enterprise social media (ESM) and such tools of remote communication as conference calls or collaboration software, but also on professional networking platforms. Here situational antecedents (broadly what occurred before) and the audience (with their reactions) to such self-promotional activities serve as main prerequisites, thus completing the frame of analysis.

Self-Presentation and Self-Praise in Open Communication Digital Enterprises presents the findings of an interdisciplinary study of the ‘self-entrepreneurial self’ and, in particular, the rationale behind its need to self-present under the current socio-economic and business conditions. It addresses the complex landscape of the levels, typologies, categories, triggers, as well as both internal and external factors impacting self-praise in the context of a digital workplace (with the focus on enterprise social media) and professional networking platforms. 

In order to reflect the complexity of the topic at hand and interconnectivity of the constructs addressed, insights from such fields as socioeconomics, sociology, social psychology (specifically identity studies), software and services (IT sector), business intelligence and business analytics, digital media communication, organisational behaviour or corporate communication are thus combined with a mixed qualitative-quantitative methodological approach utilised to provide an in-depth exploration of the evolving constructs.

From the broader socio-economic perspective of hyper globalisation, the impact of the neoliberalism economy on workplace relations, and ultimately on employee behaviour, are considered first to lay the background and introduce the relevant concepts. 

Self-presentation and in particular self-praise are considered in their multiple forms against the backdrop of precarious work relations dictated by neoliberalism, leading, among other things, to self-exploitation, but also to putting self-interest above anything else.

The focus is placed on the triggers and manifestations of the social self (how a person thinks the others perceive them) and the situational self (a person’s self-image in a specific situation) in the digital workplace, where individual (cultural) values are frequently overridden by those dictated by a given corporate culture, as aligned with the prevailing market conditions. These in turn impact workplace or employee identity. 

This exploratory and explanatory study contributes to a rather limited number of research endeavours on self-praise, conducted within narrow disciplines and specific frameworks, with the particular research gap being a lack of studies on self-presentational and self-praise activities in the corporate environment, which can primarily be observed in the virtual context of enterprise social media (ESM) and such tools of remote communication as conference calls or collaboration software, but also on professional networking platforms. Here situational antecedents (broadly what occurred before) and the audience (with their reactions) to such self-promotional activities serve as main prerequisites, thus completing the frame of analysis.

The book interprets Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, focusing on language, logic, and the sense of propositions, then examines its ethical and value-oriented themes. It analyzes the work’s concluding remarks on ethics, situating them within its scientific worldview and highlighting parallels with authors Wittgenstein read and admired, presenting an enduring conception of the ethical.

Spanning a decade of Michael Marder’s contributions as a public intellectual, Senses of Upheavals documents a period of exceptional global turmoil. Thrown into mayhem by right-wing populisms and a pandemic, combined with skyrocketing economic inequalities and worsening environmental crises, the world is on the verge of collapse. Could revolutionary practical-intellectual proposals to learn how to coexist from plants or to rethink the very meaning of energy chart the way to a better, more livable, and, perhaps, calmer world? Nonetheless, such proposals themselves constitute nothing short of an upheaval in philosophy, plant sciences, and environmental studies. We are doomed to upheavals, it seems; the point is not to deflect, but to choose judiciously among them.

Spanning a decade of Michael Marder’s contributions as a public intellectual, Senses of Upheavals documents a period of exceptional global turmoil. Thrown into mayhem by right-wing populisms and a pandemic, combined with skyrocketing economic inequalities and worsening environmental crises, the world is on the verge of collapse. Could revolutionary practical-intellectual proposals to learn how to coexist from plants or to rethink the very meaning of energy chart the way to a better, more livable, and, perhaps, calmer world? Nonetheless, such proposals themselves constitute nothing short of an upheaval in philosophy, plant sciences, and environmental studies. We are doomed to upheavals, it seems; the point is not to deflect, but to choose judiciously among them.

The Pandemic, the wars, the crisis of political institutions, and the expansion of the intensive use of social networks have impacted the elaboration of phantoms and fantasies that emerge from the modifications of the politics of the bodies and politics of emotions: today—what more than never?—the sensibilities are changing on a global scale.

Emotions and politics of sensibilities registered in the current process of colonization of the inner planet imply the urgency of relieving the forms that its impacts acquire in the daily life of a global scale that becomes trans-globalization.

Trans-globalization is characterized by the modification of three basic features of the structuring processes on a planetary scale: (a) the unnoticed acceptance of the global extension of the banalization of the good, the politics of perversion, and the logic of waste; (b) the return of the question/tension/paradox of sovereignty as a physical device for international mediation of virtual transnational commodification; and (c) the acceleration of the so-called energy transition.

The considerably large critical literature on Bollywood cinema is marked by an absence as it has not engaged fully with the ways in which songs lead to the memorial construction of films and how a spectator connects with films through their songs. The studies tended to deflect the emotional dimension of songs, their internal lyrical structure and their intertextual connections in favour of readings that treat songs as subsidiary to other formal elements. Consequently, there was little understanding of songs and their complex relationship with the narrative of the film. To address this absence, this book begins by taking a look at the prior history of Bollywood songs since the arrival of talkies with the film Alam Ara (1931). The chapter takes the reader through the journey of film songs from synchronous singing and music during production to non-diegetic music and the playback singer. In addition, the somewhat disparate filmic milieu of history, emotion and ethics, much of which are drawn from traditional texts, served to affirm the values of a secular India. Melodrama, mediated via Indian theories of sentimentality, became one of the key colonial discourses through which the politico-social order was critiqued and Indianness celebrated.
The book then raises the question, ‘Can one speak about periods?’ After defending periodisation in this instance because it does have heuristic value, the argument is given added support by positing melodrama as the dominant dramatic mode of Indian Hindi (Bollywood) cinema of the Golden Age. The term ‘melodrama’ is used to designate a film genre marked by sentimental songs that appeal to the heightened emotions of the spectator. Because emotionality is central to the concept of melodrama, a consideration of how emotions may be theorised is also given. The Indian classical concept of rasa is examined to provide a theoretical frame that is both historical and indigenous. Sentimental and melodramatic emotion ultimately enhanced cinema’s ethical role in building a post-colonial nation – a nation that was emerging from the trauma of partition as well as the excesses of colonisation. However, by focusing with holistic lens on the period in question – the ‘Golden Age’ – the book finesses the value of periodisation in this instance. Frame analyses of a sample of song sequences from a variety of films are used to demonstrate the roles of various song registers and the way these different registers (as identified in the appendices) work within the narrative. The argument for a connection between songs and narrative in the period is strengthened by an examination of the elements of song picturisation, most notably body movement, mise-en-scènes, lyrics, vocal expression, lighting, shots and music. A close examination of these elements reinforced the links between felt emotion and the melodramatic form in the Golden Age. Furthermore, it is argued that while Indian theories of emotional responses – notably rasa theory – recognised the place of cathartic outpouring in any dramatic presentation, the shape and structure of Bollywood cinema was indebted to the melodramatic imaginary that came to India with British colonisation. The archival material on English novels read in colonial times indicated that novels dealing with the ‘man of feeling’, novels such as Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), provided the melodramatic structures within which native structures of feeling (as in the varied rasas) may be given felt presence. That structure and its emotional pulling power dictated cinema and especially the cinema of the Golden Age. There are direct links between Devdas (1935), a seminal film based on a sentimental Bengali novel, and Pyaasa (1957), and these links speak to the presence of English discourses of sentimentality. Such was their pervasive power, indeed their affective intensities and strength, that no film of the ‘Golden Age of Bollywood’ escaped from their enervating and ineluctable presence.
The argument of the book – as indicated above – is followed through with references to many films. The instance of the ‘Islamicate’ film Mughal-e-Azam (1960) is taken up as an example of the power and pervasiveness of the melodramatic temper and the role of songs even when the cinematic genre is that of an epic. A close, paradigmatic reading of this film shows how the evocative power of sentimentality, emotional capital and the genre of melodrama invades an historical narrative and transforms history. To give greater depth to the place of songs, sentimentality and melodrama, the book turns to the two exceptional auteurs of the Golden Age, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt. Between them, these two auteurs demonstrate a range of filmic articulations of songs in Hindi cinema, and their films illustrate, in an exemplary fashion, the role of songs in carrying the melodramatic and sentimental narrative of a film. The Hindi film auteur, as producer, director and actor, not only imposes his special style on his films but is visible on the screen itself.
This book is primarily concerned with songs from the Golden Age of Hindi cinema – 1951–1963 – a period in Hindi film history when emotion, sentiment and melodrama were regularly combined to create ‘affective intensities’. The registers, moods and, in some cases, ragas of songs have been examined over a broad corpus of examples to identify their effect on the spectator, their role in the narrative of the film and their thematisation associated with specific emotional states. In so doing, the book theorises sentimentality and melodrama in the context of Hindi film songs to more fully identify the nature of sentimentality and to more fully understand the way songs play a role in the melodramatic form.

The central theme of Sexual Bargaining in the Digital Era is the ongoing (historic and present) struggle between the theocratically oriented Old Lights who insist on using the law to continue to impose the Old Normal (ON) on all other citizens—including the New Lights. The latter are progressives, feminists and others who advocate the notion that there is a social and economic “fit” between the New Normal (NN) and the emerging Digital Era. New Lights also argue that NN is exceedingly more beneficial for less advantaged persons (including those of color) than is ON. 

The Old Lights argue from a traditional religious standpoint. To help impose their theocratic view of the Family, they have recently joined forces with the extreme right-wing elements of the Republican party. That union of reactionary religion with reactionary politics is particularly detrimental to the well-being of less-advantaged persons.

The book also describes public policies and programs advocated by New Lights which are aimed at benefiting less-advantaged persons in particular (though not exclusively). Included are “Ideation Centers.” That is the contemporary label replacing the traditional label of “school.” Traditional schools were linked with the Industrial Age, but now tend to falter when it comes to preparing children/youth (especially less-advantaged) for the Digital Era.

Ideation centers are publicly funded sites whose central objective is to coach students in what some economists describe as ideation skills/capabilities—critical/creative thinking, negotiation and problem solving. Those are the very skills necessary to do well in the Digital Era and thus it is essential that less-advantaged children/youth have ready access to the centers. Those skills are also required to negotiate primary relationships (PR) effectively. Hence, ideation centers fulfil vital functions for both the public/economic/work world, and also for the personal world of PR.

Furthermore, in order to do well in the Digital Era women must be what the book calls “autonomous.” Indeed, the notion of growing numbers of women becoming autonomous is pivotal to the whole idea of NN. An autonomous woman is, first of all, in control of, or sovereign over what Marx/Engels called the “means of production.” Economic production refers to the kinds of educational and occupational experiences which enable her, among other things, to be economically independent (able to support herself and any dependants)—apart from a partner if need be.

Alongside production is reproduction. The autonomous woman controls not only the economic sphere of her life but also the sexual/reproductive sphere. The two spheres reinforce one another—control in one sphere enhances control over the other: Women who control their sexual/reproductive sphere are better able to control their economic sphere and vice versa. Needless to say, control over reproduction requires ready access to the most effective methods of contraception and access to safe abortion. For less-advantaged women, the costs of either or both would be borne by the state. 

Written by a practising poet and novelist who has close experience of the subject matter and has published creative work in the areas being examined, Sexual Violence and Literary Art is a wide-ranging study, covering carefully selected works from Ovid through Shakespeare, to Pope, Richardson, Shelley, Hardy, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov and beyond. It addresses the necessary complicity of any representation in what is represented, by examining ways in which canonical male writers have attempted to evoke and address representations of sexual violence in poetry, prose fiction, and poetic drama. Representation has to involve itself with what is represented, and, in this sense, it is not possible to address in literature sexual violence without taking on the complicity of the representation with what is represented. The chosen works of literary art are understood not only as locations in which the showing of pain and cruelty inflicted through sexually acts occurs, but also as occasions to activate means at these writings’ disposal to work upon those representations of pain and cruelty towards possible readerly benefits. The book draws substantially upon recent criticism and theory written by philosophers, theorists, art historians, and literary critics including Martha Nussbaum, Catharine A. MacKinnon, Susan J. Brison, Mary D. Garrard, Nancy J. Vickers, and Coppélia Kahn. Writers may very well wish to determine the cultural meaning and ideological implications of their work, but for many reasons, including the necessary role of reader response and interpretation in the literary process, the meaning of a work cannot be entirely or finally fixed. Among the consequences of this is the fact that interpretations of literary works are always transactional negotiations with circumscribed perspectives. In light of these convictions, Sexual Violence and Literary Art subjects the literary artworks it addresses to close scrutiny derived from various generations of women’s writing on rape and upon the critical vicissitudes of the works studied. While recognising only too well the continuing presence of male violence in sexual relationships, this book’s aims include the identification of what roles literary art may play in its understanding, amelioration, and transformation. In these ways it offers a response to historical problems incurred through the inheritance of damage caused by the exercise of unequal power relations, and it offers an account of how literary art may work to overcome them.

Arthur Asa Berger’s Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errorsuses semiotics along with a psychoanalytic approach to offer a granular analysis of one of Shakespeare’s funniest and most interesting comedies.

It is distinctive in that it offers a discussion of the basic techniques found in comic literature of all kinds and applies these techniques to events in the play. It also offers a discussion of the basic theories of humor and a syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis of the play.

It provides an overview of the theories of humor, what the author calls why theories, to provide a general understanding of how humor works. This is contrasted with his 45 techniques which deal with what makes people laugh.

All is not well with the law on rape. It is rarely reported and even when it is, it is rarely prosecuted. Victims are deterred for a range of reasons, but these include a fear that it will never be possible to prove the rape has occurred and that the trial will be traumatic. Even when the case proceeds to trial, victims perceive that it is they, rather than the perpetrator, who is the one on trial. The past sexual behaviour of the victim,; the clothes she was wearing,; the people she socialised with and the places she visited are all used as tools to claim that in fact the victim consented to the rape. Reforms are needed.
In this book, we explore how changing the definition of rape will help tackle some of these problems. We argue there needs to be a shift in the focus of the rape trial: away from asking whether the victim consented, to focus on whether the defendant. Rather than focusing on the way the victim dresses, behaviour in response to the rape, the focus will be on what the defendant believed justified him engaging in a sexual behaviour.
At the heart of our proposal is the claim that having sex comes with responsibilities. In particular, a responsibility to ensure you have reasonable grounds to believe the other consents. Without that consent, a very serious wrong is being done. The central legal focus should therefore be on whether the defendant had sufficiently good reasons to proceed with having sex.

Shots to the Heart explores how the work of the film actor inspires, provokes, and refigures our feelings and thoughts about the cinema. The book closely considers the art of film performance, the combined effect of actors’ gestures, movements, and expressions, in relation to the viewer’s sensitive and creative eye. As discrete moments of performative incarnation onscreen slowly accumulate, actors also become figures of meaning. For many viewers, the screen figures which result from performance are simply called “characters.” But in thinking about cinema, the words “character” and “characterization” signal post-experiential abstractions: when we quickly identify characters or summarize characterization after seeing a movie, we are leaping over the emotions felt through our loving attention to the bodies flitting through a film. Such concepts can never replace a careful regard for what actors onscreen are actually doing, moment by moment, gesture by gesture. Shots to the Heart is finally not too concerned with the narrative machinations within which these gestures are inscribed, and even resists the attempt to assemble these descriptions of performance into a “full” account of the film as a whole. What Shots to the Heart does is let little moments of performance live on, in writing, as they are strung together alongside performative fragments from other films, in a kind of alternative, cinephilic account of what was felt as actors moved on the screen before us.

The collected essays in this book are the result of a series of workshops held at the University of Cagliari in Italy. In this work, the authors aim at reconstructing the evolution of a key concept of traditional Indian grammar: Pāṇini’s zero. The book investigates how certain patterns of description account for exceptions in the currently presupposed one-to-one symmetry between the semantic and the phono-morphological level of language. This work also deals with some powerful mechanisms of rule extension, which are valuable for different contexts of rule arrangement, such as the ritual model. The interpretative model laid down in the introduction proves strong and suggestive enough to allow subsequent articles in the book to make incursions into other traditions and cultures. The potentialities of aniconic expression in the artistic field are explored, together with the outcomes of this theory.

The collected essays in this book are the result of a series of workshops held at the University of Cagliari in Italy. In this work, the authors aim at reconstructing the evolution of a key concept of traditional Indian grammar: Pāṇini’s zero. The book investigates how certain patterns of description account for exceptions in the currently presupposed one-to-one symmetry between the semantic and the phono-morphological level of language. This work also deals with some powerful mechanisms of rule extension, which are valuable for different contexts of rule arrangement, such as the ritual model. The interpretative model laid down in the introduction proves strong and suggestive enough to allow subsequent articles in the book to make incursions into other traditions and cultures. The potentialities of aniconic expression in the artistic field are explored, together with the outcomes of this theory.

Originally published in 1860, the formative Gothic novel ‘Sir Rohan’s Ghost’ by Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921), one of nineteenth-century America’s most significant woman writers, relates the tale of a tormented British aristocrat who struggles to retain his sanity while suffering horrifying visitations from the spectre of his dead lover amid the agonies of an already fragile mind. Setting her tale in the enigmatic Sir Rohan’s beautiful-yet-decaying estate, Spofford immerses readers in a ghost story that marries lush imagery with an atmosphere of impending, mysterious doom.

Upon its initial publication, a reviewer writing for ‘The Baltimore Sun’ deemed ‘Sir Rohan’s Ghost’ as ‘a strange, weird production, fascinating and exciting […] A work of genius and not without moral significance’. Dating from a time when women writers like Spofford were increasingly making their voices heard by reshaping the character of popular American literature, ‘Sir Rohan’s Ghost’ remains to this day an engaging and important work of Gothic fiction.

Spofford was, in her time, one of the most popular writers in America, and her work garnered praise from such notable literary figures as Henry James, T. W. Higginson and Emily Dickinson (who admitted she found some of Spofford’s writing frightening). ‘Sir Rohan’s Ghost’ is, then, a rare mid-nineteenth-century Gothic novel by an influential American woman author. It is also – simply put – a good read.

‘Sisters and the English Household’ revalues unmarried adult sisters in nineteenth-century English literature as positive figures of legal and economic autonomy representing productive labour in the domestic space. As a crucial site of contested values, the adult unmarried sister carries the discursive weight of sustained public debates about ideals of domesticity in nineteenth-century England. Engaging scholarly histories of the family, and providing a detailed account of the 70-year Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister controversy, Wallace traces an alternative domesticity anchored by adult sibling relations through Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals; William Wordsworth’s poetry; Mary Lamb’s essay ‘On Needle-Work‘; and novels by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Dinah Mulock Craik and George Eliot. Recognizing adult sibling relationships, and the figure of the adult unmarried sibling in the household, as primary and generative rather than contingent and dependent, and recognizing material economy and law as fundamental sources of sibling identity, ‘Sisters and the English Household’ resets the conditions for literary critical discussions of sibling relations in nineteenth-century England.

In the twenty-first century, literary scholars have increasingly explored the significant historical distance between the ways we name, plot and characterize sibling relations, and the quite different ways that pre-twentieth-century writers and readers might have done so. Yet, as Mary Jean Corbett and Naomi Tadmor have separately argued, efforts to historicize our understanding of English families over the crucial transitional period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been weakened by scholars’ reliance on terms and ideas that assume stable, universally human familial structures and relations. When we focus on the sibling relation, this reliance proves particularly limiting, driving continuing tendencies to define ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in terms of sexual, specifically conjugal relations that reinscribe those stabilizing concepts, or to subsume the sibling relation into other categories, eliding its potential primacy in ‘family’.

‘Sisters and the English Household’ works to escape these lingering critical limitations through two innovations: a reframing of efforts to historicize ‘family’ as a further historicizing of ‘domesticity’ that renders it multiple and fluid rather than monolithic; and a turn towards the unmarried adult sister as a figure of legal and economic autonomy representing productive labour in the domestic space. The book traces two distinct nineteenth-century ideals of domesticity, one of which understood sibling fortunes as fruitfully intertwined through the full extent of the siblings' lives (corporate domesticity), while the other expected the domestic, material and, to some extent, emotional separation of adult siblings from their birth-homes and from each other (industrial domesticity). The second configuration, although counterbalanced by persistent idealizations of the first, sibling-anchored model, was gradually and unevenly ascendant through the period. As households came to be primarily defined by the relations between spouses, and between parents and children, the mutual householding and devotion of siblings, once expected features of family life, began to seem extraordinary. More specifically, as a domestic space defined by the apparent exclusion of productive labour was increasingly idealized, the adult unmarried sister in the house became an object of intense cultural scrutiny, her troubling autonomy rendering her the crucial figure in the English nineteenth-century’s protracted cultural negotiation of familial, household and domestic ideals. The sister's autonomy also drove a gradually increasing imperative to exclude adult unmarried siblings from the households of their married siblings, an imperative figured as expatriation from the homely and national ‘domestic’ space.

A primary focus of this book is on the impact of time and memory as they intersect and constitute the spaces of theatre. These spaces include more traditional sites of theatre, such as those involving stages and curtains, actors and audiences, as well as those other theatres or spaces of performance that range from performance and installation art, to the performance of a string quartet, and from the writing of performance, to the performance of writing. What unites them is the presence of time as the constant and corrosive agent of theatrical absence, a vanishing site that finally affirms these theatres as theatres of thought, as spaces of thoughtful and mirroring reflection.

With such time in mind, attention is directed toward theatre’s own blurred and porous boundaries and, implicitly, that most conventional theatrical form, the proscenium itself, evoking questions such as: where does the performance begin and where does it end? Who is watching and who is being watched? And what, as time takes its toll, is there to be seen at all? For it is from this demarcating line of representation that – like a ‘line in the sand’ – such spaces of thought, theatrical or not, largely determine where the various forms of representation begin and end, where time is told of others, and where time is finally told of each of us.

Louise Bryant and her husband John Reed were among a relatively small group of Americans who participated in one of the most important events of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution of 1917. As first-hand observers, they attended meetings of the revolutionaries, were present at teh Winter Palace as it was under attack, and witnesssed  the surrender of the palace guards. Over the next weeks, they saw a new regime emerge and met manu of tis most important figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Kollontai. Bryant returned home in 1918 and immediately began working on the book that would becime Six Red Months in Russia. Unfortunately for Bryant, her sec and her relationship with Reed overshadowed her talent as a writer and the depth of her observations of this historic event. But Bryant deserves better; she had her oen voice and was a skilled observer and journalist in her own right. While Reed's book is certainly a significant work, it contains little personal commentary. Bryant's account, by comparison, is also a documentation of the revolution, but it goes farther than Reed's in many wants, adding interpretation to observation. Bryant communicates what life was like during the days of the revolution - the people, the food, the excitement, the fear. She is also keenly aware of her American audience and speaks directly to them, urging them to pay attention to this world-changing moment in history and not to be fooled by the misinformation about Bolshevism and the new regime. Six Red Months in Russia conveys Bryant's understanding of the revolution, and reminds us of the utter enthusiasm that many Russians, and Americans, felt for socialism and its yet-untainted, utopian ideals. This new edition of Bryant's book is annotated and set in its appropriate historical context to create a more accessible text for modern readers on the anniversary of this truly world-changing event. 

Louise Bryant and her husband John Reed were among a relatively small group of Americans who participated in one of the most important events of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution of 1917. As first-hand observers, they attended meetings of the revolutionaries, were present at teh Winter Palace as it was under attack, and witnesssed  the surrender of the palace guards. Over the next weeks, they saw a new regime emerge and met manu of tis most important figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Kollontai. Bryant returned home in 1918 and immediately began working on the book that would becime Six Red Months in Russia. Unfortunately for Bryant, her sec and her relationship with Reed overshadowed her talent as a writer and the depth of her observations of this historic event. But Bryant deserves better; she had her oen voice and was a skilled observer and journalist in her own right. While Reed's book is certainly a significant work, it contains little personal commentary. Bryant's account, by comparison, is also a documentation of the revolution, but it goes farther than Reed's in many wants, adding interpretation to observation. Bryant communicates what life was like during the days of the revolution - the people, the food, the excitement, the fear. She is also keenly aware of her American audience and speaks directly to them, urging them to pay attention to this world-changing moment in history and not to be fooled by the misinformation about Bolshevism and the new regime. Six Red Months in Russia conveys Bryant's understanding of the revolution, and reminds us of the utter enthusiasm that many Russians, and Americans, felt for socialism and its yet-untainted, utopian ideals. This new edition of Bryant's book is annotated and set in its appropriate historical context to create a more accessible text for modern readers on the anniversary of this truly world-changing event. 

Unlike many partisan accounts of the nineteen sixties this book aims to give a considered explanation of the context in which the sixties radical movements arose and, also, their significance from the standpoint of various nations' actors, often ignored by North American and West European standpoints. Secondly, it examines how the radical decade sowed the seeds of various liberation or 'rights movements' – initially in the West but also globally as movements became increasingly diffused. Contributors' varied international backgrounds and specialities provide expertise in examining the international context. Thirdly, many nineteen sixties' radicals' values and strategies recur in contemporary social movements; albeit in different technological and, post 9/11, political and cultural environments. Unravelling similarities and differences is a key theme. Fourthly, many participants in sixties radicalism saw it as 'cultural' as well as 'political' and in some historical treatments as primarily or 'only' cultural. Detailed examinations of this perspective involve critical discussion – particularly in the light of the allegedly 'mere' (i.e. apolitical) cultural hedonism and escapism of youth in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Contrarily, the contributions here assess resonances between the radical/libertarian emphasis on civil society 'freedoms' in sixties' cultural radicalism and, arguably, today’s more self-consciously political global human rights movement. The conclusion suggests that, in some senses, the sixties live on today in discursive and political themes.

Unlike many partisan accounts of the nineteen sixties this book aims to give a considered explanation of the context in which the sixties radical movements arose and, also, their significance from the standpoint of various nations' actors, often ignored by North American and West European standpoints. Secondly, it examines how the radical decade sowed the seeds of various liberation or 'rights movements' – initially in the West but also globally as movements became increasingly diffused. Contributors' varied international backgrounds and specialities provide expertise in examining the international context. Thirdly, many nineteen sixties' radicals' values and strategies recur in contemporary social movements; albeit in different technological and, post 9/11, political and cultural environments. Unravelling similarities and differences is a key theme. Fourthly, many participants in sixties radicalism saw it as 'cultural' as well as 'political' and in some historical treatments as primarily or 'only' cultural. Detailed examinations of this perspective involve critical discussion – particularly in the light of the allegedly 'mere' (i.e. apolitical) cultural hedonism and escapism of youth in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Contrarily, the contributions here assess resonances between the radical/libertarian emphasis on civil society 'freedoms' in sixties' cultural radicalism and, arguably, today’s more self-consciously political global human rights movement. The conclusion suggests that, in some senses, the sixties live on today in discursive and political themes.

The book looks at the turn of the century, when organized soccer began to be played in a systematic way by the European community of Rio and São Paulo, mostly by the British. It shows that the new sport was embraced by these people as a way to celebrate their culture, and to imitate the activities of the elite schools in Britain that became quite popular throughout Europe. Young Brazilians from the elite also embraced the sport as a way of sharing a popular European sport that was identified with what was respected as a white/upper class activity. In this way making a distinction from the lower and darker populations. Making this distinction was important in this moment of post-emancipation, affirming the superiority of the upper/white class. It was also important for the European residents of Brazil in order to distinguish themselves from Brazilians (colonial mentality). Football was one aspect of the modernity that these two cities were craving to achieve.

The book highlights the impact of European-based racial assumptions on the development of professional soccer. It provides a broad discussion on how the official discourse after 1930 was one of conciliation, claiming that Brazil was not European, but unique due to its racial mixing. This idea began to be promoted by artists and intellectuals as an attempt to Brazilianize the country, but it was soon embraced by politicians with the leadership of President Getulio Vargas in an attempt to create a unified national identity. In this context, futebol was also unique in relation to European football because of its mulatoism. Although this new attitude would influence social and racial barriers within football to fall, racism did not end, nor did Brazil become a racial democracy – as it has been claimed by many. 

The book looks at the turn of the century, when organized soccer began to be played in a systematic way by the European community of Rio and São Paulo, mostly by the British. It shows that the new sport was embraced by these people as a way to celebrate their culture, and to imitate the activities of the elite schools in Britain that became quite popular throughout Europe. Young Brazilians from the elite also embraced the sport as a way of sharing a popular European sport that was identified with what was respected as a white/upper class activity. In this way making a distinction from the lower and darker populations. Making this distinction was important in this moment of post-emancipation, affirming the superiority of the upper/white class. It was also important for the European residents of Brazil in order to distinguish themselves from Brazilians (colonial mentality). Football was one aspect of the modernity that these two cities were craving to achieve.

The book highlights the impact of European-based racial assumptions on the development of professional soccer. It provides a broad discussion on how the official discourse after 1930 was one of conciliation, claiming that Brazil was not European, but unique due to its racial mixing. This idea began to be promoted by artists and intellectuals as an attempt to Brazilianize the country, but it was soon embraced by politicians with the leadership of President Getulio Vargas in an attempt to create a unified national identity. In this context, futebol was also unique in relation to European football because of its mulatoism. Although this new attitude would influence social and racial barriers within football to fall, racism did not end, nor did Brazil become a racial democracy – as it has been claimed by many. 

Dignity has a remarkable resonance in contemporary life. It is used as a touchstone to mark out what is deemed good, right or proper. In all walks of public life dignity is invoked as having a talismanic power to distil the final essence of human existence. Yet, in such public discourse, largely uninformed by the signal role dignity has played in ethical thought, we rarely become acquainted with the source of dignity's imputed magical powers. ‘Social Thought and Rival Claims to the Moral Ideal of Dignity’ is a sustained attempt to rectify this oversight by following the fortunes of the idea of dignity from its humble origins until it comes to represent in our time a universal ethical ideal.

Beginning by tracing the source of dignity’s occult status from its earliest appearance in the life and thought of ancient Greece, ‘Social Thought and Rival Claims to the Moral Ideal of Dignity’ proceeds to identify dignity in the theological ethics of early Christianity through to the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern period, where dignity appears for the first time in secular thought. The second part of the book picks up the growing debate in the Enlightenment and romantic period and from that point onwards concentrates on following closely the unfolding significance of the idea and ideal of dignity in the classical thought of philosophy and sociology and in more recent perspectives.

In exploring the legacy from such sources, ‘Social Thought and Rival Claims to the Moral Ideal of Dignity’ distinguishes dignity from other related ethical notions such as respect for persons, duty and compassion as they appear on the respective agendas of distributive justice, human (and animal) rights and natural law and citizenship. The course of the discussion illustrates just how wide ranging recourse to dignity has become as an ethical ideal and explores the reasons behind its resurgent modern deployment. Ironically, while the concept of dignity has, indeed, begun to feature in a range of recent public policy debates, insights from evolutionary psychology and biology tell a very different tale: that dignity is quite misconceived. ‘Social Thought and Rival Claims to the Moral Ideal of Dignity’ culminates in an analysis of the reasons behind dignity’s recently acquired negative connotation.

This book concerns HIV prevention.  The authors argue that until the world focuses its attention on the social issues carried and revealed by AIDS, it is unlikely that HIV transmission will be eradicated or even significantly reduced. Currently we are witnessing the remedicalisation or the continuing biomedicalisation of HIV prevention, which began in earnest in 1996/7 after the development of successful HIV treatment. This biomedical trajectory continues with the increasing push to use HIV treatments as prevention, and it appears to have undermined what has been – at least in many countries – a successful prevention response.

This book’s argument is that at least until such time as biomedicine develops an effective prophylactic vaccine and a cure for HIV, the world must rely on the everyday responses of people and communities to combat the virus. Effective HIV prevention hinges on communities and the social practices forged by these communities that reduce the risk of HIV-transmission (primarily safe sexual and safe drug injection practices); people’s willingness to be identified as infected with HIV (HIV testing practices); and, for people living with HIV, people’s commitment to keeping AIDS at bay (HIV treatment practices).

Combating HIV also relies on governments to ensure access to HIV prevention tools, including condoms and sterile needles and syringes, as well as to biomedical prevention technologies including those derived from successful antiretroviral treatment (ART) – pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), microbicides and post exposure prophylaxis (PEP), and male circumcision.  It requires that governments develop robust health infrastructures to support and enable regular HIV testing and provide access to treatments for those living with HIV. Effective HIV prevention needs governments to adopt pragmatic policies that are not deflected by moralistic or conservative ideologies. Effective responses to HIV, on the part of communities, health professionals and governments are all underpinned by public discussion about sex, sexuality and drug use. More broadly, combating HIV depends on civil society resisting HIV stigma and discrimination against those infected and affected by HIV, and enabling people and communities to discuss sex, sexuality and drug use in ways that promote the development and adoption of safe sexual and drug injection practices.

This book concerns HIV prevention.  The authors argue that until the world focuses its attention on the social issues carried and revealed by AIDS, it is unlikely that HIV transmission will be eradicated or even significantly reduced. Currently we are witnessing the remedicalisation or the continuing biomedicalisation of HIV prevention, which began in earnest in 1996/7 after the development of successful HIV treatment. This biomedical trajectory continues with the increasing push to use HIV treatments as prevention, and it appears to have undermined what has been – at least in many countries – a successful prevention response.

This book’s argument is that at least until such time as biomedicine develops an effective prophylactic vaccine and a cure for HIV, the world must rely on the everyday responses of people and communities to combat the virus. Effective HIV prevention hinges on communities and the social practices forged by these communities that reduce the risk of HIV-transmission (primarily safe sexual and safe drug injection practices); people’s willingness to be identified as infected with HIV (HIV testing practices); and, for people living with HIV, people’s commitment to keeping AIDS at bay (HIV treatment practices).

Combating HIV also relies on governments to ensure access to HIV prevention tools, including condoms and sterile needles and syringes, as well as to biomedical prevention technologies including those derived from successful antiretroviral treatment (ART) – pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), microbicides and post exposure prophylaxis (PEP), and male circumcision.  It requires that governments develop robust health infrastructures to support and enable regular HIV testing and provide access to treatments for those living with HIV. Effective HIV prevention needs governments to adopt pragmatic policies that are not deflected by moralistic or conservative ideologies. Effective responses to HIV, on the part of communities, health professionals and governments are all underpinned by public discussion about sex, sexuality and drug use. More broadly, combating HIV depends on civil society resisting HIV stigma and discrimination against those infected and affected by HIV, and enabling people and communities to discuss sex, sexuality and drug use in ways that promote the development and adoption of safe sexual and drug injection practices.

This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. The overarching topic is the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, but the authors are interested not so much in highlighting the generalised, top-down mechanism of the project, as in the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. Research shows that in practice the introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-and-take with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Those in charge negotiated the precarious terrain of local cultural and political controversies, caught between tradition and innovation in some countries, or, in others, between a sincere interest in the new concept of art and a complete refusal to accept new rules. Paradoxically, among all the different experiences of introducing, importing imposing Socialist Realism in the specific national contexts, the one thing in common is that each case was a response to the local conditions, a process of working through the challenge of inscribing a staunch theory into the daily reality of an unfamiliar country, language and culture.

The general approach shared by the authors is based on the premise of there having been a mutual influence between the various forces engaged in the process – be it between the ‘host cultures’ and ‘the centre’ (i.e., the Soviet authorities), traditional groups and advocates of artistic innovations, similar creative movements in different countries, or political rivals and various interest groups from the literary milieu. But the interrelationship between the texts in this collection is also dialogic: selected with a view of complementing each other, often offering different perspectives on the same issue. Thus, the socialist realist episode in the Yugoslav arts and letters can be regarded either as a short episode, a foundation of the national myth, or a chapter in the ongoing rivalry between competing parties in the creation of a national canon (Peruško, Norris, Ivić). The Czech case can be seen as exemplary strenghtening of traditional pre-war censorship mechanisms or as an awkward attempt to accommodate the Soviet version of a new positive hero (Janáček, Schmarc). The role of leftist intellectuals returning from exile, their interactions with Soviet representatives, as well as the framing of these interactions in the national cultural debate in East Germany and Hungary were both similar and distinctly different (Hartmann, Fehervary, Robinson, Skradol; Scheibner, Kalmár, Balázs). Even in the case of the loyal Soviet satellite Bulgaria, Soviet style institutions can be analysed differently, depending on whether one takes a synchronic view at the time of their imposition, or a diachronic view, observing their evolution over time (Volokitina, Doinov). At the same time, Soviet efforts directed at the creation of a unified socialist cultural sphere were quite versatile, and by no means limited to activites in specific countries (Zubok, Djagalov, Ponomarev). Finally, when it comes to the demise of Socialist Realism as a Pan-European project, having a country-specific perspective next to a more general, European picture is productive for an assessment of the true significance of the events in question (Dobrenko, Günther).

The texts are divided into sections which reflect the organising principle of the volume: an overview with a focus on specific case-studies and an analysis of distinct particularities with attention to what patterns of negotiation and adaptation were being developed in the process. Most of the contributions rely on archival resources, often previously unexplored, and all of them place the issue they are concerned with into a broader institutional, social and cultural context.

Sociology as a discipline has a history of two centuries which has varied between countries. Its presence across the world is felt now more than ever. Over the years, sociology has been established as a discipline and contributed to the advancement of knowledge about society through scientific research. This facilitated the development of knowledge in other areas and disciplines as well. What sociology is doing globally, the contributions it has made to our knowledge of society and social phenomena, and the direction in which it is moving are of interest to both academics and the general public. There are many books that describe the
global character of sociology, but a fully research-based empirical work is yet to arrive on the market. This book fills that gap. It is about sociologies around the world. Viewed from a global perspective, this research-based study examines the world of sociology and its global features and trends. Specifically, the book deals with the trends in sociology; the broad and general areas of fields, subfields and research areas; the prominent, flourishing, emerging and/or declining areas of sociology; the origin of sociological knowledge; geographical regions and countries; the characteristics of global sociology in terms of language, research methodology, disciplinary backgrounds, interdisciplinarity and authorship; the relationships between the country of affiliation of authors and research areas; the effects of gender of the author and its interrelationships with the discipline, department, research areas and collaboration. The book will be an important resource for students, teachers, practitioners, researchers and the public. - The aim of this book is to examine the world of sociology and its global features and trends. It is viewed from a global perspective and exercises sociologies in different parts of the world which are integral. More specifically, the study examines sociology through sociological research, across countries where the discipline exists. The book deals with themes such as sociologies in the world, major research areas in sociology, collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and contemporary challenges, pertinent issues and debates. The book has eight chapters. - The topics the book deals with include the trends in sociology as inferred from sociology publications; the broad and general research areas that are evident in sociology at the global level; the prominent, flourishing, declining and/or emerging areas of sociology; the origin of sociological knowledge—geographical regions and countries; the characteristics of global sociology in terms of language, research methodology, disciplinary backgrounds, interdisciplinarity and authorship; the relationships between the country of affiliation of authors and research areas; the differences in the departmental affiliation and disciplinary backgrounds of authors; the gender of the author and its interrelationships with the discipline, department, research areas and collaboration; the effect of gender, discipline and collaboration of authors on the impact of sociology; and the key outlets and the location of the outlets of sociological research.

This book examines contemporary globalization, its local impact and counter-reactions to it both thematically and epistemologically. The starting point is an outline of the distinguishing features of contemporary globalization, their (dis)continuities with historically earlier forms of long-distance connections, and their relevance to both recent and long-established sociological debates. Through a series of thematic case studies, Sociology in Times of Glocalization traces the methodological and conceptual innovations underway to capture the politically heterogeneous responses to our global interconnectedness, which are (re)shaping individual and collective self-understandings, localities, regions, nation-states, as well as diasporic communities at present. The discussion thereby also shows that multiple global ‘flows’, neo-nationalist as well as other forms of identity politics jointly constitute our era’s constitutive, if highly contradictory characteristics.

The book’s most distinguishing feature is to be found in its central analytical move. Having identified the building blocks of today’s complex, multi-dimensional and contradictory forms of ‘glocalization’, it approaches those epistemologically: that is, by asking how globalization and the various reactions to it can be approached, captured and understood sociologically. This requires nuanced methodological reflections on how social scientific claims to knowledge are generated in the specific contexts under investigation. Put differently, the book unfolds around two core-issues: first, the question as to what contemporary, ‘glocalizing’ realities entail; second, the yet more challenging, hitherto underexplored question as to how social scientists can recognize, depict and make sense of such historically novel realities and experiences.

Located in the interface between the thematic and the methodological, the book offers discussions of particular global flows and of specific reactions to them. The thematic foci in question pertain to localities affected by rapid infrastructural change; the economic realm and consumerism; experiences of migration; social change in urban settings; cultural practices such as street art that negotiate both global and local events and phenomena; and digital technology. The critical discussions offered underscore that contemporary globalization cannot be understood as merely a set of new structures of globally interconnected ‘nodes’. Instead, enduring, often deepening inequalities and ever more rigid exclusions, the fears and anxieties they generate, and the identity politics they give rise to, are all shown to be defining features of our world today. To develop these insights, the book draws on and critically synthesizes a range of existing social theory, relevant empirical studies and illustrations, and ongoing methodological debates.

Since the Kyoto Protocol’s signing in 1997 the United States has been the world’s most prominent climate change outlaw. In the United States, air pollution policymaking starts and ends with the states, whose governmental units implement federal programs.

But we find ourselves in uncharted waters in the United States when it comes to state–federal relations in climate change: many states have developed climate change and renewable energy policies ahead of the national government, and lacking an overarching climate change law, the US Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to employ a little-used part of the Clean Air Act – which revolves around state plans rather than uniform national standards – to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from large stationary sources like power plants.

Taking on these challenges, Thomson proposes a framework for climate change policy in the United States called “sophisticated interdependence” that will help foster the coalition-building so desperately needed in the US climate change arena. This framework rests on a nine-state analysis of state-level economic and political forces in the United States and on comparative descriptions of climate change and renewable energy programs in Germany and Brazil, both strong federal democracies and key players in the global climate change policy arena.

Since the Kyoto Protocol’s signing in 1997 the United States has been the world’s most prominent climate change outlaw. In the United States, air pollution policymaking starts and ends with the states, whose governmental units implement federal programs.

But we find ourselves in uncharted waters in the United States when it comes to state–federal relations in climate change: many states have developed climate change and renewable energy policies ahead of the national government, and lacking an overarching climate change law, the US Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to employ a little-used part of the Clean Air Act – which revolves around state plans rather than uniform national standards – to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from large stationary sources like power plants.

Taking on these challenges, Thomson proposes a framework for climate change policy in the United States called “sophisticated interdependence” that will help foster the coalition-building so desperately needed in the US climate change arena. This framework rests on a nine-state analysis of state-level economic and political forces in the United States and on comparative descriptions of climate change and renewable energy programs in Germany and Brazil, both strong federal democracies and key players in the global climate change policy arena.

This book is about the presence of music in novels. More specifically, it is about music in the early modern novel, with an emphasis on seventeenth-century musical prose from The Netherlands. The essay provides a concise and an accessible introduction into the subject and presents an overview of this compelling and fascinating new research area.

In recent years the interest in this subject has substantially increased both among literary critics―who coined a special term for the phenomenon and speak of ‘music novels’―and academics, who started doing systematic and in-depth musico-literary research. Initially, the research was focused mainly on the influence of music in novels from the period around 1900, the works by modernist writers like Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Later, also the novelistic oeuvre of twentieth- and twenty-first-century ‘musical’ authors like Milan Kundera, Simon Vestdijk and Toni Morrison became subject of study. It is remarkable that up until now the presence of musical elements in prose works from earlier centuries received almost no attention from academic researchers. This essay wants to contribute to filling this lacuna.

The book offers the reader an impression and overview of this intriguing interdisciplinary field. First, it presents an exploration of the role and function of musical elements in seventeenth-century Dutch prose fiction. Many examples from primary literature are discussed and are consistently considered in the light of contemporary European developments. Secondly, the publication serves as an introduction to a fascinating new research area, that is at an international level, too, virtually unexplored. This makes it the first transnational study devoted to musical practices in the Golden Age novel. Accordingly, the text investigates several options for future research.

This book is a pioneering work that examines cultural diversity policies in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru over the past 15 years. The book offers a critical analysis of the rationalities and concepts underpinning these policies, exposing their inherent contradictions and the social forces that have both supported and resisted their implementation. By highlighting the struggles of marginalized groups in their pursuit of social, economic, and political equality, it reveals the deep intersections between culture, identity, and power.
The book situates these discussions within the broader context of Latin America’s colonial legacy and ongoing decolonization efforts. It demonstrates how the region’s nation-states, often founded on myths of cultural homogeneity, have grappled with the complex realities of diverse populations. Through detailed case studies, the book showcases how cultural diversity has become a powerful tool for social empowerment, particularly among racialized groups and other marginalized communities. It also offers insights into the evolution of these policies, tracing the ways in which they have responded to grassroots movements and the global discourse on cultural citizenship.
Furthermore, this work contributes to global debates by positioning Latin America as a key player in rethinking cultural policies that promote diversity, justice, and inclusion. It reflects on the lessons learned from observing these policies, urging readers to consider the broader implications for social cohesion and inclusive development. This work not only provides a thorough analysis of Latin America’s unique contributions to cultural policy but also underscores the urgent need for more dynamic, intercultural approaches to address the challenges of the 21st century.

This book is the product of an ongoing dialogue among 47 experts from a diverse range of expertise and backgrounds, including thought leaders from the ranks of policymakers, academics and civil society. These thought leaders and visionaries discuss the likely longer-range trajectories of South Asia’s future as a region, focusing particularly on current regional trends, possible futures and the key factors that will determine whether these trajectories are positive or negative for the region.

Will we even be talking about a “South Asian region” 50 years from now? And will the region still be seen as a threat to global stability? This future-oriented exploration tackles these questions whilst departing from a purely security-based analysis to include factors such as development and human well-being, seeking to shed light on a whole spectrum of current issues that will affect the region into the future.

The essays in this book organically inform the collection’s coherent and nuanced outlook on the region, which offers both an introspective and globally aware perspective of the outcomes of the region’s development. The volume fills the gap in studies on South Asia by exploring its regional identity, as well as the potential of present conditions to impact the future of South Asia and the rest of the world.

This book is the product of an ongoing dialogue among 47 experts from a diverse range of expertise and backgrounds, including thought leaders from the ranks of policymakers, academics and civil society. These thought leaders and visionaries discuss the likely longer-range trajectories of South Asia’s future as a region, focusing particularly on current regional trends, possible futures and the key factors that will determine whether these trajectories are positive or negative for the region.

Will we even be talking about a “South Asian region” 50 years from now? And will the region still be seen as a threat to global stability? This future-oriented exploration tackles these questions whilst departing from a purely security-based analysis to include factors such as development and human well-being, seeking to shed light on a whole spectrum of current issues that will affect the region into the future.

The essays in this book organically inform the collection’s coherent and nuanced outlook on the region, which offers both an introspective and globally aware perspective of the outcomes of the region’s development. The volume fills the gap in studies on South Asia by exploring its regional identity, as well as the potential of present conditions to impact the future of South Asia and the rest of the world.

'South Asian Media Cultures' is a collection of essays that pulls together field-based audience and textual research in areas such as the politics of new media, contemporary television and film in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and their audiences. Through a careful analysis of the various media cultures and practices from across South Asia, this collection addresses pertinent issues such as how discourses on gender, nationalism, ethnicity and class are being expressed by mainstream media texts across South Asia, and how different groups within the public discern meanings from such discourses.

With this collection, Banaji aims to reduce the reliance on commercial Hindi cinema ('Bollywood') for reference on the politics and history of South Asian Media. Instead, key current research and theoretical debate are presented in an accessible manner. They are organised around three clear themes: 'Audiences, meanings and social contexts', which focuses on the responses of particular social groups to specific media formats, ideas or genres; 'Media Discourse, Identity and Politics', which discusses the complex links between media representations and socio-political identities; and 'Alternative Producers: New Media, Politics and Civic Participation', which describes and assesses the various civic practices and possibilities opened up in South Asia by digital and mobile communications.

'South Asian Media Cultures' is a collection of essays that pulls together field-based audience and textual research in areas such as the politics of new media, contemporary television and film in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and their audiences. Through a careful analysis of the various media cultures and practices from across South Asia, this collection addresses pertinent issues such as how discourses on gender, nationalism, ethnicity and class are being expressed by mainstream media texts across South Asia, and how different groups within the public discern meanings from such discourses.

With this collection, Banaji aims to reduce the reliance on commercial Hindi cinema ('Bollywood') for reference on the politics and history of South Asian Media. Instead, key current research and theoretical debate are presented in an accessible manner. They are organised around three clear themes: 'Audiences, meanings and social contexts', which focuses on the responses of particular social groups to specific media formats, ideas or genres; 'Media Discourse, Identity and Politics', which discusses the complex links between media representations and socio-political identities; and 'Alternative Producers: New Media, Politics and Civic Participation', which describes and assesses the various civic practices and possibilities opened up in South Asia by digital and mobile communications.

'South of the Crisis' examines why and how global capitalism has entered a phase of unsustainable crises of accumulation and legitimacy, and looks at various solutions to such crises, from mild reform to radical overhaul.

The book then examines the various scenarios from a Latin American perspective, arguing that the continent is a 'garden of forking paths' rather than a homogeneous area, and that different countries are likely to try diverse experiments in adapting to the crisis - with significantly different outcomes.

One common challenge faced by all Latin American countries, albeit with different modalities, is how to achieve economic growth with social inclusion. Corradi investigates the pros and cons of different policy solutions to the challenge of inclusion.

'South of the Crisis' examines why and how global capitalism has entered a phase of unsustainable crises of accumulation and legitimacy, and looks at various solutions to such crises, from mild reform to radical overhaul.

The book then examines the various scenarios from a Latin American perspective, arguing that the continent is a 'garden of forking paths' rather than a homogeneous area, and that different countries are likely to try diverse experiments in adapting to the crisis - with significantly different outcomes.

One common challenge faced by all Latin American countries, albeit with different modalities, is how to achieve economic growth with social inclusion. Corradi investigates the pros and cons of different policy solutions to the challenge of inclusion.

This book is a contribution to the international trade and economic development literature and is based on a decade of joint research and collaboration on South–South economic relations. Given the increasing focus on the economic power of some developing countries, for example the 2013 Human Development Report’s “Rise of the South”, it is particularly appropriate and timely. [NP] The book’s findings are based on rigorous empirical examination of South–South trade and finance and it provides an even-handed assessment from the perspective of long-term development goals rather than mainstream welfare approaches or ideological/theoretical worldview. [NP] This work directly engages with the ‘new developmentalism’ literature that has challenged the neoliberal orthodoxy and its policy approach, which focuses on liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. It also engages with literature by examining whether the increase in South–South trade facilitates or inhibits the possibilities for developmentalist economic policy in developing countries. The book shows concrete and positive results from South–South trade particularly related to industrial development and also documents how South–South trade is dominated by large developing countries and that South–South trade liberalization may be counterproductive.

This book is a contribution to the international trade and economic development literature and is based on a decade of joint research and collaboration on South–South economic relations. Given the increasing focus on the economic power of some developing countries, for example the 2013 Human Development Report’s “Rise of the South”, it is particularly appropriate and timely. [NP] The book’s findings are based on rigorous empirical examination of South–South trade and finance and it provides an even-handed assessment from the perspective of long-term development goals rather than mainstream welfare approaches or ideological/theoretical worldview. [NP] This work directly engages with the ‘new developmentalism’ literature that has challenged the neoliberal orthodoxy and its policy approach, which focuses on liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. It also engages with literature by examining whether the increase in South–South trade facilitates or inhibits the possibilities for developmentalist economic policy in developing countries. The book shows concrete and positive results from South–South trade particularly related to industrial development and also documents how South–South trade is dominated by large developing countries and that South–South trade liberalization may be counterproductive.

Did Spanish explorers really discover the sunken city of Atlantis or one of the lost tribes of Israel in the site of Aztec Mexico? Did classical writers foretell the discovery of America? Was Baja California really an island or a peninsula—and did romances of chivalry contain the answer? Were Amazon women hiding in Guiana and where was the location of the fabled golden city, El Dorado? Who was more powerful, Apollo or Diana, and which claimant nation, Spain or England, would win the game of empire? These were some of the questions English writers, historians, and polemicists asked through their engagement with Spanish romance. By exploring England’s fanatical consumption of so-called books of the brave conquistadors, this book shows how the idea of English empire took root in and through literature. 

The chapters in this book represent separate case studies regarding the use of romance strategies and tales of love and arms more generally in the imperialist myth-making of early modern England against the threat of imperial Spain, particularly those which were first used by Spanish authors to justify Spain’s own imperialist designs. With interwoven readings of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, Ben Jonson and Peter Heylyn, this book shows how the English colonial mindset developed through a concerted conversation with the reality of Spain’s presence in the colonial world, particularly in the historically contentious sites of Mexico, Peru, Guiana, California and Australia, producing emergent discourses of English nationalism and proto-imperialism as contextually contingent responses to the Spanish problem. By uncovering long-neglected Spanish romantic influences on canonical English works, this book also tracks for the first time the unique social, political and cultural circumstances of English hysteria with Spanish romance that primed the success of Don Quixote of la Mancha in England.

Did Spanish explorers really discover the sunken city of Atlantis or one of the lost tribes of Israel in the site of Aztec Mexico? Did classical writers foretell the discovery of America? Was Baja California really an island or a peninsula—and did romances of chivalry contain the answer? Were Amazon women hiding in Guiana and where was the location of the fabled golden city, El Dorado? Who was more powerful, Apollo or Diana, and which claimant nation, Spain or England, would win the game of empire? These were some of the questions English writers, historians, and polemicists asked through their engagement with Spanish romance. By exploring England’s fanatical consumption of so-called books of the brave conquistadors, this book shows how the idea of English empire took root in and through literature. 

The chapters in this book represent separate case studies regarding the use of romance strategies and tales of love and arms more generally in the imperialist myth-making of early modern England against the threat of imperial Spain, particularly those which were first used by Spanish authors to justify Spain’s own imperialist designs. With interwoven readings of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, Ben Jonson and Peter Heylyn, this book shows how the English colonial mindset developed through a concerted conversation with the reality of Spain’s presence in the colonial world, particularly in the historically contentious sites of Mexico, Peru, Guiana, California and Australia, producing emergent discourses of English nationalism and proto-imperialism as contextually contingent responses to the Spanish problem. By uncovering long-neglected Spanish romantic influences on canonical English works, this book also tracks for the first time the unique social, political and cultural circumstances of English hysteria with Spanish romance that primed the success of Don Quixote of la Mancha in England.

There have been a great many books written on military intelligence and the secret services rooted in the twentieth century; however there is very little covering the activities of the men involved in the establishment of this fascinating institution. Its origins lie in the British Army: from the beginnings in the Topographical Department to the Boer War, when various factors made the foundation work of the eventual MI5 (founded in 1909) possible. Incredibly, there were two vast armies in the 1840s, both serving the state and Queen, yet no formally organized military intelligence bureau. Such ignorance of the enemy brought about many botched and bloody encounters, such as the notorious ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’. The thrilling story of the various intelligence sources for the armed forces throughout the Victorian period is one of individuals, adventurers and small, ad hoc bodies set up by commanders when the need arose.

Stephen Wade’s enthralling book reveals the unsteady foundations of one of the country’s most prominent and renowned organizations, tracing the various elements that gradually composed the intelligence and political branches of Britain’s Secret Service.

Peter Guy Winch (1926 – 1997) was one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the 20th Century. He is best known for his early work on the philosophy of the social sciences, in particular his monograph On the Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (ISS), which generated controversy within both philosophical and social scientific circles. In that work and subsequent publications, Winch argued against the presupposition that social relations could be understood using only the conceptual tools of the natural sciences. Winch would later come to regret the reputation ISS garnered him, which was a mixture of roughly equal degrees fame and infamy. In part this regret stemmed from the (as it seemed to him) uncharitable light in which ISS was read by its many critics. In part it was because that book overshadowed all of his subsequent work. And alongside his writings on the philosophy of the social sciences, his interests ranged widely. He published a groundbreaking study of the philosophy of Simone Weil, entitled Simone Weil: The Just Balance (Winch 1989). In his critical review of that work, Rowan Williams praised Winch for “writing a book whose main purpose is to make us think with Weil, and in so doing recognise her as a philosopher.” Alongside these interests, Winch also published numerous essays in many areas including ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of religion and philosophical logic, most of which are collected together in two volumes of essays published during his lifetime, Ethics and Action (1972) and Trying to Make Sense (1987). Shortly before his death, he was turning his attention to a book manuscript on the problem of political authority. 

This volume unites Peter Winch’s previously unpublished work on Baruch de Spinoza. The primary source for the text is a series of seminars on Spinoza that Winch gave, first at the University of Swansea in 1982 and then at King’s College London in 1989. Audio recordings of the majority of the Swansea seminars have survived. The editors have transcribed these, edited them for coherence, style and clarity, and supplemented them with material drawn from Winch’s typescripts and preparatory notebooks. What emerges is an original interpretation of Spinoza’s work that demonstrates his continued relevance to contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and establishes connections to other philosophers - not only Spinoza’s predecessors such as Descartes, but also to the philosophical views of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Simone Weil.

There is currently a resurgence of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy, and this volume will contribute to burgeoning debates within that field. Winch’s account of Spinoza is uncommon insofar as it takes as central to Spinoza’s project his conceptions of meaning, understanding and language, and directly connecting these to his ethical concerns. At the same time, Winch makes useful links to modern debates in ways that throw helpful light on Spinoza. As well as issues which are central to the philosophy of language, these include debates on the nature of the mind, naturalism and the place of the human being within the natural world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Western-style playhouses were found in every Indian city. Professional drama troupes held crowds spellbound with their spectacular productions. From this colorful world of entertainment come the autobiographies in this book. The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights are here translated into English for the first time.

The most famous, Jayshankar Sundari, was a female impersonator of the highest order. Fida Husain Narsi also played women’s parts, until gaining great fame for his role as a Hindu saint. Two others, Narayan Prasad Betab and Radheshyam Kathavachak, wrote landmark dramas that ushered in the mythological genre, intertwining politics and religion with popular performance.

These men were schooled not in the classroom but in large theatrical companies run by Parsi entrepreneurs. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humor, offer an unparalleled window onto a vanished world, where India’s late-colonial vernacular culture and early cinema history come alive. From another perspective, these narratives are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.

This book includes four substantive chapters on the history of the Parsi theatre, debates over autobiography in the Indian context, strategies for reading autobiography in general, and responses to these specific texts. The apparatus, based on the translator’s extensive research, includes notes on personages, performances, texts, vernacular usage, and cultural institutions.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Western-style playhouses were found in every Indian city. Professional drama troupes held crowds spellbound with their spectacular productions. From this colorful world of entertainment come the autobiographies in this book. The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights are here translated into English for the first time.

The most famous, Jayshankar Sundari, was a female impersonator of the highest order. Fida Husain Narsi also played women’s parts, until gaining great fame for his role as a Hindu saint. Two others, Narayan Prasad Betab and Radheshyam Kathavachak, wrote landmark dramas that ushered in the mythological genre, intertwining politics and religion with popular performance.

These men were schooled not in the classroom but in large theatrical companies run by Parsi entrepreneurs. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humor, offer an unparalleled window onto a vanished world, where India’s late-colonial vernacular culture and early cinema history come alive. From another perspective, these narratives are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.

This book includes four substantive chapters on the history of the Parsi theatre, debates over autobiography in the Indian context, strategies for reading autobiography in general, and responses to these specific texts. The apparatus, based on the translator’s extensive research, includes notes on personages, performances, texts, vernacular usage, and cultural institutions.

"Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography” examines theatrical biography as a nascent genre in eighteenth-century England. This study suggests a visible—but not impermeable—teleology from Thomas Davies to James Boaden in the development of theatrical biography as a professional enterprise. Chapter One explores Davies, the first significant biographer to throw off the shadows of anonymity and weld his own image to his subject, David Garrick. The second chapter traces three biographies of Charles Macklin written by biographers dueling amongst themselves for the right to tell Macklin’s story in the post-Davies competitive market. Finally, the third chapter tells the story of the serial biographer James Boaden’s attempts to build a professional reputation for himself as a biographer and prominent participatory character in the multiple “Lives” he tells, including those of John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, Dorothy Jordan, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In each instance of producing a theatrical biography, the author is confronted not only with his duty to represent the actor, but the need to do so in an original, compelling manner that sets his account apart from other contenders and guarantees the permanency of his account as a treasured artifact of the stage rather than a disposable commodity.

The willful encouragement of viewing literary materiality as an antidote to ephemeral stage-business leads in turn to the absorption of prior biographical works and letters by authors, and reverberates in their readers’ quests to augment their copies of theatrical biographies through adding playbills, marginal notes, etchings, paintings, newspaper clippings, and even funerary souvenirs that not only testified to their interest in the stage, but secured their existence as well by evidence of participation. Thus, the author at once guaranteed the thespian’s legacy would live on while hitching his own likelihood of being remembered to the actor. The audience followed suit by adding their own personal touches, forming a palimpsest of participants. Drawing heavily on primary sources, then-contemporary reviews, and archival material in the form of extra-illustrated or “scrapbooked” editions of the biographies, this book is invested in the ways that the increasing emphasis on materiality was designed to consolidate, but often challenged, the biographer’s authority.

The book provides an introduction to theatrical biography as an immensely popular genre in the eighteenth century that deserves more scholarly attention. Currently, theatrical biography is usually overlooked or encountered solely in excerpts offered to advance individual research goals; the texts are perceived as repositories of facts or the odd opinion, more akin to a reference work than anything innately artistic. This study’s contribution is to read these biographies in context, exploring their participation in a developing poetics of a new artistic subgenre, from the content of the works and the concerns of its authors to the responses that these biographies elicited from their readers.

How did European colonization transform the organization of territory in South Asia? “Statemaking and Territory in South Asia: Lessons from the Anglo–Gorkha War (1814–1816)” seeks to connect two historical junctures at which the idea of the modern state as a geographically discernible and territorially circumscribed entity emerged in colonial South Asia.

The volume first examines the territorial disputes that emerged along the common frontiers of the Himalayan kingdom of Gorkha (present-day Nepal) and the English East India Company that eventually led to the Anglo–Gorkha War of 1814–1816. The volume argues that these disputes arose out of older tribute, taxation and property relationships that left their territories perpetually intermixed and with ill-defined boundaries. Following the war, the British sought to end this territorial illegibility by defining the joint boundary of the two states, rendering it linear and distinct.

Secondly, the volume also reveals the long-drawn-out process whereby the colonial state, through various cartographic projects and changes in administrative routines, attempted to rearrange its internal administrative divisions in an effort to create the geographical template of the modern state. This template would occupy a definite portion of the earth’s surface and with non-overlapping divisions and subdivisions.

How did European colonization transform the organization of territory in South Asia? “Statemaking and Territory in South Asia: Lessons from the Anglo–Gorkha War (1814–1816)” seeks to connect two historical junctures at which the idea of the modern state as a geographically discernible and territorially circumscribed entity emerged in colonial South Asia.

The volume first examines the territorial disputes that emerged along the common frontiers of the Himalayan kingdom of Gorkha (present-day Nepal) and the English East India Company that eventually led to the Anglo–Gorkha War of 1814–1816. The volume argues that these disputes arose out of older tribute, taxation and property relationships that left their territories perpetually intermixed and with ill-defined boundaries. Following the war, the British sought to end this territorial illegibility by defining the joint boundary of the two states, rendering it linear and distinct.

Secondly, the volume also reveals the long-drawn-out process whereby the colonial state, through various cartographic projects and changes in administrative routines, attempted to rearrange its internal administrative divisions in an effort to create the geographical template of the modern state. This template would occupy a definite portion of the earth’s surface and with non-overlapping divisions and subdivisions.

Statistics and the use of numbers, in general, are becoming increasingly important in journalism, this to the point that it cannot be overemphasised. In the age of the so-called big data, journalists’ engagement with numbers is seen as the Holy Grail to save the news media from declining streams of revenues, hyper-fragmentation of audiences and the de-politicisation of society in general. Indeed, for some the interaction between journalists and numbers is the future. These voices often refer to the ‘datafication’ of news – and society in general – and vehemently call for the incorporation of statistics and data into journalism practice as a way of improving the quality of news. They see in the ‘data revolution’ a real possibility to revolutionise the way journalism is done, making news stories more comprehensive, relevant, accessible and engaging. It is a quest that pretends to use numbers to enhance journalism and provide better public service journalism. To be sure, many journalists are now expected to deal and examine big and small numbers almost on a daily basis at least in ways that they were not asked to do in the past. This against the pressure of time, declining resources and growing masses of quantitative information related to economic, political and social phenomena (including scientific and academic research reports, public opinion data, political polls, and official and non-official datasets, among others). 

Therefore, it is impossible today to disassociate the discussion about quality in the news from the use of numbers. In this sense, there are important questions to ask: How do journalists use statistics to articulate news? What are the reasons and rationale behind incorporating numbers in the news? Are news stories really better because they present the audience particular numbers or data? Does the incorporation of statistics make news stories more comprehensive and accessible? The book is an attempt to answer this along other more fundamental questions such as: What do we understand by quality in the news? Is data really the future for journalism?

In this book, we aim at challenging some common assumptions about how journalists engage and use statistics in their quest for quality news. In doing so, it seeks to improve our understanding about the usage of data and statistics as a primary means for the construction of social reality. This is a task, in our view, that is urgent in times of ‘post-truth’ politics and the rise of ‘fake news’. In this sense, the quest to produce ‘quality’ news, which seems to require incorporating statistics and engaging with data, as laudable and straightforward as it sounds, is instead far more problematic and complex than what is often accounted for.

To start with, the notion of ‘quality’ in the news remains not only elusive but also contentious. On the one hand, as it is argued here, the notion of ‘quality news’ and ‘quality news providers’ has centred around the normative claims of journalism being a public service to society; something that, as we will argue, is questionable both factually and historically. On the other, there is ample evidence to suggest that contrary to the common assumptions statistics do not necessarily bring accessibility, reliability, validity nor credibility to the news stories. Indeed, based on extensive research and drawing from original data, the book explores the use of statistics within the practice of journalism through the lenses of five quality dimensions: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, interpretability and accessibility. According to the authors, by studying each dimension as a threshold that seeks to guarantee the quality of information in news it is possible to understand the whole journalistic workflow, from production to consumption, on how statistics are articulated throughout in order to substantiate quality news stories. The authors highlight the dichotomy between the normative and professional aspirations of journalism, whereby statistics help support the quality of news, and there is a desire to strengthen the ability of storytellers (journalists) through the use of numbers. The book tries to underpin the tensions and issues around journalism and statistics. The central point made is that while the concept of quality and its dimensions remains a theoretical aspiration among journalists, what they really aim to achieve is ultimately credibility and authority. Hence, drawing from this last dichotomy we argue that not only the use of statistics automatically translates into quality journalism but that in some occasions it even hinders the possibility of greater civic engagement with the news.

Statistics and the use of numbers, in general, are becoming increasingly important in journalism, this to the point that it cannot be overemphasised. In the age of the so-called big data, journalists’ engagement with numbers is seen as the Holy Grail to save the news media from declining streams of revenues, hyper-fragmentation of audiences and the de-politicisation of society in general. Indeed, for some the interaction between journalists and numbers is the future. These voices often refer to the ‘datafication’ of news – and society in general – and vehemently call for the incorporation of statistics and data into journalism practice as a way of improving the quality of news. They see in the ‘data revolution’ a real possibility to revolutionise the way journalism is done, making news stories more comprehensive, relevant, accessible and engaging. It is a quest that pretends to use numbers to enhance journalism and provide better public service journalism. To be sure, many journalists are now expected to deal and examine big and small numbers almost on a daily basis at least in ways that they were not asked to do in the past. This against the pressure of time, declining resources and growing masses of quantitative information related to economic, political and social phenomena (including scientific and academic research reports, public opinion data, political polls, and official and non-official datasets, among others). 

Therefore, it is impossible today to disassociate the discussion about quality in the news from the use of numbers. In this sense, there are important questions to ask: How do journalists use statistics to articulate news? What are the reasons and rationale behind incorporating numbers in the news? Are news stories really better because they present the audience particular numbers or data? Does the incorporation of statistics make news stories more comprehensive and accessible? The book is an attempt to answer this along other more fundamental questions such as: What do we understand by quality in the news? Is data really the future for journalism?

In this book, we aim at challenging some common assumptions about how journalists engage and use statistics in their quest for quality news. In doing so, it seeks to improve our understanding about the usage of data and statistics as a primary means for the construction of social reality. This is a task, in our view, that is urgent in times of ‘post-truth’ politics and the rise of ‘fake news’. In this sense, the quest to produce ‘quality’ news, which seems to require incorporating statistics and engaging with data, as laudable and straightforward as it sounds, is instead far more problematic and complex than what is often accounted for.

To start with, the notion of ‘quality’ in the news remains not only elusive but also contentious. On the one hand, as it is argued here, the notion of ‘quality news’ and ‘quality news providers’ has centred around the normative claims of journalism being a public service to society; something that, as we will argue, is questionable both factually and historically. On the other, there is ample evidence to suggest that contrary to the common assumptions statistics do not necessarily bring accessibility, reliability, validity nor credibility to the news stories. Indeed, based on extensive research and drawing from original data, the book explores the use of statistics within the practice of journalism through the lenses of five quality dimensions: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, interpretability and accessibility. According to the authors, by studying each dimension as a threshold that seeks to guarantee the quality of information in news it is possible to understand the whole journalistic workflow, from production to consumption, on how statistics are articulated throughout in order to substantiate quality news stories. The authors highlight the dichotomy between the normative and professional aspirations of journalism, whereby statistics help support the quality of news, and there is a desire to strengthen the ability of storytellers (journalists) through the use of numbers. The book tries to underpin the tensions and issues around journalism and statistics. The central point made is that while the concept of quality and its dimensions remains a theoretical aspiration among journalists, what they really aim to achieve is ultimately credibility and authority. Hence, drawing from this last dichotomy we argue that not only the use of statistics automatically translates into quality journalism but that in some occasions it even hinders the possibility of greater civic engagement with the news.

‘Stephen Wall, “Trollope and Character” (1988) and Other Essays on Victorian Literature’, with an introduction by Nicholas Shrimpton, gathers together the principal publications of the distinguished scholar-critic Stephen Wall. Wall was widely regarded for his writings on the Victorian novel, and this book contains all his major writings about Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, including the full text of his book-length study ‘Trollope and Character’ (1988) and a history of Dickens's reception. Alongside these texts are included Wall's reflections on Jane Austen and George Eliot and on other aspects of nineteenth-century fiction, as well as his influential essay on the ways in which English novels should be edited. Together, the essays communicate the mixture of learning, human sympathy, critical intelligence and dry wit that made Wall's voice so distinctive and trusted.

This book is unique in its dedicated tackling of the subject of death in the work of Jean Baudrillard. Through new readings of his work, juxtaposed with philosophical (Schopenhauer, Kant) and artistic (Jeremy Millar, Ron Mueck) examples along with films (Norte, the End of History; Ida), the book makes so patently clear the importance of Baudrillard’s tendency to poeticize, his core indebtedness to Georges Bataille, Alfred Jarry, and others, and his reliance on paradox. Ultimately, Stratagem of the Corpse is less a making sense of death and more a transcript of what occurred when death made sense of us, a reverse thanatology in which death delineates the variant forms of our encroachment, not so much death as seen by Baudrillard but Baudrillard as seen by death.

Examples of Baudrillardian simulacra, depersonalization, detachment, violence, obscenity, Baudrillard’s notion of the ‘perfect crime’, and nihilism are incisively discussed. The book makes a compelling case for why Baudrillard is relevant and necessary.

This book is unique in its dedicated tackling of the subject of death in the work of Jean Baudrillard. Through new readings of his work, juxtaposed with philosophical (Schopenhauer, Kant) and artistic (Jeremy Millar, Ron Mueck) examples along with films (Norte, the End of History; Ida), the book makes so patently clear the importance of Baudrillard’s tendency to poeticize, his core indebtedness to Georges Bataille, Alfred Jarry, and others, and his reliance on paradox. Ultimately, Stratagem of the Corpse is less a making sense of death and more a transcript of what occurred when death made sense of us, a reverse thanatology in which death delineates the variant forms of our encroachment, not so much death as seen by Baudrillard but Baudrillard as seen by death.

Examples of Baudrillardian simulacra, depersonalization, detachment, violence, obscenity, Baudrillard’s notion of the ‘perfect crime’, and nihilism are incisively discussed. The book makes a compelling case for why Baudrillard is relevant and necessary.

This book contains fifteen chapters organized thematically around key themes but in a non-cumulative way. This means readers can randomly sample topics and sections of the book or dive into a single essay covering one specific issue in more detail (such as biases, mistakes, strategy, foresight, talent or teams). Either way, readers can assess if they agree with the approaches offered or perhaps favor different perspectives. If the latter, they may wish to discuss the issues with some colleagues informally during a break or examine the case more formally  in team building exercises to raise the organization’s strategic IQ.

Sampling the collected sub-sections and chapters (whether in small bites or as one read-through) will help managers refine their own approaches to strategic thinking and leadership. Also, it will help align them better with colleagues or partners who come from different backgrounds, functional responsibilities or cultural orientations. It will soon become apparent to readers that the overall approach to business problems presented is very much behavioral. This means that each essay or case starts by identifying important management problems in some realistic business settings. Before offering any conceptual perspectives or prescriptive advice, each essay seeks to better understand the behavioral context of the problems addressed.

This varied case approach seeks to provide practical insights, tips or even full solutions, but not until the essence of the problem and its broader organizational and cultural settings are sufficiently understood. Offering prescriptions without first getting well-grounded behavioual descriptions tend to result in failed interventions. Normative advice that is drawn from text books rather than real slices of life often amount to  boxing with shadows on the wall rather than solving the real issues. As such, this book aims to illustrate for managers and leaders how to frame thorny management issues by (i) clearly defining a distinct business problem, (ii) viewing it through multiple lenses and (iii) creatively exploring pragmatic solutions for the short and long runs.

This book contains fifteen chapters organized thematically around key themes but in a non-cumulative way. This means readers can randomly sample topics and sections of the book or dive into a single essay covering one specific issue in more detail (such as biases, mistakes, strategy, foresight, talent or teams). Either way, readers can assess if they agree with the approaches offered or perhaps favor different perspectives. If the latter, they may wish to discuss the issues with some colleagues informally during a break or examine the case more formally  in team building exercises to raise the organization’s strategic IQ.

Sampling the collected sub-sections and chapters (whether in small bites or as one read-through) will help managers refine their own approaches to strategic thinking and leadership. Also, it will help align them better with colleagues or partners who come from different backgrounds, functional responsibilities or cultural orientations. It will soon become apparent to readers that the overall approach to business problems presented is very much behavioral. This means that each essay or case starts by identifying important management problems in some realistic business settings. Before offering any conceptual perspectives or prescriptive advice, each essay seeks to better understand the behavioral context of the problems addressed.

This varied case approach seeks to provide practical insights, tips or even full solutions, but not until the essence of the problem and its broader organizational and cultural settings are sufficiently understood. Offering prescriptions without first getting well-grounded behavioual descriptions tend to result in failed interventions. Normative advice that is drawn from text books rather than real slices of life often amount to  boxing with shadows on the wall rather than solving the real issues. As such, this book aims to illustrate for managers and leaders how to frame thorny management issues by (i) clearly defining a distinct business problem, (ii) viewing it through multiple lenses and (iii) creatively exploring pragmatic solutions for the short and long runs.

Down the ages warriors have told the stories about their powers and their deeds. And some of their stories have made it into print––those of Black Elk, a Sioux shaman; Two Leggings and Plenty Coups, Crow Indians; Wolf Chief, the eagle hunter; Tukup and Tariri, shrinkers of heads; and others from North America, New Guinea, the island of Alor, the highlands of Luzon and even a Bedouin.

H. David Brumble’s ‘Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies’ introduces readers to all these warrior autobiographies—and to the memoirs of warriors who live just down the block: Carl Joyeaux’s ‘Out of the Burning’, Colton Simpson’s ‘Inside the Crips’, Nathan McCall’s ‘Makes Me Wanna Holler’ and Sanyika Shakur’s ‘Monster’. Gangbangers, Brumble argues, have told life stories that are eerily like the life stories that come to us from warrior tribes. He suggests that gangbangers were so alienated from the larger society that they reinvented something very similar to the tribal-warrior cultures right in the asphalt heart of American cities.

Grisly, probing and resonant with the voices of generations of fighters, ‘Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies’ is an unsettling work of cross-disciplinary scholarship.

A famous White European male named Eugen Sandow (1867–1925) toured colonial South Africa and South, Southeast, and East Asia in 1904–1905 during a period of European imperial anxiety and rising Asian confidence and nationalism. He was renowned as the world’s “perfect” and “strongest” man at the turn of the 20th century, and he was the British Museum’s model in 1901 for the ideal Caucasian male. Sandow’s tour of Afro-Asia might seem like a straightforward tale about a European strongman, entertainer, and entrepreneur bringing a supposedly superior, scientifically developed White body and British entertainment to Africa and Asia using modern rail, steamship, and telegraphic services, but there is much more to the story.

Looking beyond the exuberant “Sandow crazes” in large colonial cities such as Johannesburg, Calcutta, Singapore, and Hong Kong, the book highlights complex processes of cross-cultural exchange that were occurring. These were characterized by flows and counterflows of ideas and practices about exercise and health despite existing political, military, and economic power imbalances. Africans and Asians interested in fitness, physical culture, and male strength were able to ignore, challenge, or assimilate Sandow’s claims about the superiority of his system, his body and manliness, and his status as the world’s “perfect man.”

This study of Sandow’s 1904–1905 world tour uncovers and analyzes issues of representation and cultural exchange regarding physical culture, the body, gender, and race in a global imperial context. It also highlights some of the trials and tribulations of globalization in the early 1900s, and it reminds readers of the important history of “demimonde” showbusiness and entertainment initiatives (including music hall, variety shows, and the circus) in colonial Africa and Asia, as well as in the wider British Empire.

The overarching aim of “Structure, Agency, Biotechnology: The Case of the Rothamsted GM Wheat Trials” is to propose a way of filling the analytical gap found in the current literature by offering an original theoretical framework. This framework is able to assess both the content and context of the scientific field without resorting either to deterministic or to what theorists refer to as “conflationist strategies.” In order to demonstrate the heuristic value of the framework, the 2012 GM wheat field trials carried out by Rothamsted Research, often associated with the “second push” of agribiotech firms to bring Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to the UK, areassessed, and key aspects of the experiment areunderscored. At the same time, the broader institutional arrangements, key ideological constructs and the social order are examined, and a reframing of the controversy which moves beyond the simplistic conceptualization of it being a case of science versus politics is suggested. The volume also proposes a clear set of guidelines, which stem from the methodological and theoretical deep structure of the suggested framework but do not demand prior theoretical knowledge, which can be used by a wider audience engaged with biotechnology. This audience can draw on the guidelines either for reasons of developing a critical understanding of particular situations or for initiating the process of sustained dialogue between involved parties. These two dimensions are of great significance for practical policy orientations.

The overarching aim of “Structure, Agency, Biotechnology: The Case of the Rothamsted GM Wheat Trials” is to propose a way of filling the analytical gap found in the current literature by offering an original theoretical framework. This framework is able to assess both the content and context of the scientific field without resorting either to deterministic or to what theorists refer to as “conflationist strategies.” In order to demonstrate the heuristic value of the framework, the 2012 GM wheat field trials carried out by Rothamsted Research, often associated with the “second push” of agribiotech firms to bring Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to the UK, areassessed, and key aspects of the experiment areunderscored. At the same time, the broader institutional arrangements, key ideological constructs and the social order are examined, and a reframing of the controversy which moves beyond the simplistic conceptualization of it being a case of science versus politics is suggested. The volume also proposes a clear set of guidelines, which stem from the methodological and theoretical deep structure of the suggested framework but do not demand prior theoretical knowledge, which can be used by a wider audience engaged with biotechnology. This audience can draw on the guidelines either for reasons of developing a critical understanding of particular situations or for initiating the process of sustained dialogue between involved parties. These two dimensions are of great significance for practical policy orientations.

Examines six African American writers who use the cultural and historical past to imagine a different present and future

In belonging to an oppressed/colonized racial group in the West, where their voices, humanity, history, culture, reality, and subjectivity are perpetually challenged, distorted, and/or erased, African American writers since the 1960s (and earlier) have struggled to be heard and represented. Yet, despite the racism, terror, trauma, and dehumanization, they, in revisiting, reclaiming, and reassessing their African and African American history and culture, used their decolonized imaginations and agency to reconfigure their history, subjectivity, and reality, and to invoke a fuller sense of the African American in the present.
With the transformative Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, African American writers and historians formulated a challenge to the social, political, psychological, educational, literary, and cultural institutions within American society. A window was open for African American writers to imagine other possibilities, to find truths in alternative paradigms. Therefore, they were thinking in very new, vibrant ways. Some African American writers since the 1960s began to creatively and imaginatively re-invent or exhume from the repressed and/or excluded historical, spiritual, and cultural past, new ways of living and making sense of the world.
This manuscript examines six African American writers—Richard Wright (Native Son), James Baldwin (Another Country), Ishmael Reed (Flight to Canada), Paule Marshall (Praisesong for the Widow), Toni Cade Bambara (The Salt Eaters), and Ntozake Shange (Liliane)—who deconstruct or demystify established models of modern American literature to build the foundation of a different African American literature. Using the usable values from the African and African-derived cultures and spiritual beliefs, in the present, they reconcile modern living with the great usable values of the past. They define African Americans as subjects becoming fulfilled, rather than as reduced stereotypes.

The themes dealt with here include some of the most pressing issues for the Chinese and those who interact with China: the impact of China’s development on the world economic system and on its environment, the likely future stability of China, the very existence of a unified China and the fault lines along which this entity might break apart in the years ahead, and an assessment of the future of the one-party system and what might replace it. Jonathan Fenby’s enlightening foreword perfectly frames this engaging and timely exploration of one of the world’s most fascinating cultures.

The main sources for an understanding of classical Hindu law are the Sanskrit treatises on religious and legal duties, known as the Dharmaśāstras. In this collection of his major studies in the field, Ludo Rocher presents analytical and interpretive essays on a wide range of topics, from general themes such as the nature of Hindu law and Anglo-Hindu law to technical matters including word studies and text criticism. Rocher’s deep engagement with the language and worldview of the authors in the Dharmaśāstra tradition yields distinctive and corrective contributions to the field, which are informed by knowledge both of the Indian grammatical tradition and of Roman and civil law.

Davis’s introduction presents an interpretative account of Rocher’s many contributions to the field, organized around the themes that recur in his work, and examines his key advances, both methodological and substantive. Comparisons and contrasts between Rocher’s ideas and those of his Indological colleagues serve to place him in the context of a scholarly tradition, while Rocher’s fundamental view that the Dharmaśāstra is first and foremost a scholarly and scholastic tradition, rather than a practical legal one, is also explored.

This invaluable collection serves both as a summary review of the ideas of Rocher, a leading authority in the field, and as a critical evaluation of the impact of these ideas on the present study of law and Indology.

The main sources for an understanding of classical Hindu law are the Sanskrit treatises on religious and legal duties, known as the Dharmaśāstras. In this collection of his major studies in the field, Ludo Rocher presents analytical and interpretive essays on a wide range of topics, from general themes such as the nature of Hindu law and Anglo-Hindu law to technical matters including word studies and text criticism. Rocher’s deep engagement with the language and worldview of the authors in the Dharmaśāstra tradition yields distinctive and corrective contributions to the field, which are informed by knowledge both of the Indian grammatical tradition and of Roman and civil law.

Davis’s introduction presents an interpretative account of Rocher’s many contributions to the field, organized around the themes that recur in his work, and examines his key advances, both methodological and substantive. Comparisons and contrasts between Rocher’s ideas and those of his Indological colleagues serve to place him in the context of a scholarly tradition, while Rocher’s fundamental view that the Dharmaśāstra is first and foremost a scholarly and scholastic tradition, rather than a practical legal one, is also explored.

This invaluable collection serves both as a summary review of the ideas of Rocher, a leading authority in the field, and as a critical evaluation of the impact of these ideas on the present study of law and Indology.

The volume is the first outcome of an international project aiming towards a complete critical edition of the Kasikavrtti (7th c. CE) of Jayaditya and Vamana, the oldest surviving complete commentary on the Astadhyayi of Panini (ca. 4th c. BCE). The first phase, culminating in the critical edition of the Kasika’s initial section devoted to the Pratyaharasutras, the ‘rules for abbreviations’, was jointly coordinated by the editors together with Professor Saroja Bhate (Pune), a Paninian scholar of global renown. The first part of the volume presents the critical edition of the Pratyaharasutra section by Bhate, Haag and Vergiani, along with a description of the manuscripts collated, an annotated English translation by the editors, and the editors’ contributions dealing with the history of the Kasikavrtti’s editions and the currently available textual sources, as well as the methodology and results of the first phase of the project. In the second part, various authors discuss theoretical, historical and methodological topics ranging from the historical importance of the Kasika and its relation with the seminal Mahabhasya of Patanjali, to a comparison with the corresponding section in the Candavrtti, the evidence of Bhartrhari’s influence on the Kasika, and the copyists’ invocations and the incipit attested in the Kasikavrtti manuscripts.

‘Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata’ is the first attempt at a scientific study of the Carvaka/Lokayata, the materialist system of philosophy that flourished in ancient India between the eighth and twelfth centuries CE, and which has since disappeared. Despite the paucity of material relating to the Carvaka, a reconstruction of its basic tenets reveals it to be the lone contender standing against the perceived binary of pro-Vedic Brahminical schools on the one hand, and the non-Vedic Buddhist and Jain schools on the other.

This study seeks to disprove certain notions about the Carvaka/Lokayata, particularly that the Carvaka-s did not approve of any instrument of cognition other than perception, and that they advocated unalloyed sensualism and hedonism. In contrast, this volume offers evidence to show that the Carvaka-s, despite their difference of opinion in other areas, did admit inference in so far as it was grounded on perception. Furthermore, the author argues that the common belief that ‘all materialists are nothing but sensualists’ is a misconception, as no authentic Carvaka aphorisms have been cited by the movement’s opponents to support this view.

This study also seeks to establish the fact that a pre-Carvaka school of materialism existed in India, although there is no way to prove that the Carvaka system grew out of it. Yet if the evidence provided by the ‘Manimekalai’ – and indirectly supported by the ‘Mahabharata’ – is admitted, it could be suggested that the two schools existed simultaneously.

The purpose of this research is to give a voice to nameless and countless stories that represent the personal lived experiences of Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the US. The authors believe that telling our own stories from our own perspectives is important and empowering because when others tell our stories there are omissions and misrepresentations and a lot of stereotyping. 

This book seeks to produce a more specific description of Sub-Saharan African immigration in the US by recording our reflections, experiences, and strategies of coping, as well as those of the participants. We hope that the insights gained from the research in this book will be used by immigrant communities, academic institutions, and governmental agencies in advocating for immigration policies that positively impact the lived experiences of Sub-Saharan African immigrants, and in planning support interventions. 

Their voices are heard as they narrate their experiences, which are presented in the book under major themes that emerged from the interviews. These include how and why Sub-Saharan Africans immigrate to the United States of America (USA), their perceptions before, during and after the process of immigration, the challenges they face as they adjust, adapt, and settle in the USA, and the coping strategies they devise. The authors argue that issues of identity and lack of platforms where they can express their concerns as Sub-Saharan African immigrants and be heard are lacking. The authors are also using a phenomenological qualitative approach of collecting and interpreting participants’ personal narratives and their lived experiences

Subaltern Narratives in Fiji Hindi Literature is the first study of fiction written in Fiji Hindi. Its target texts are two extraordinary novels Ḍaukā Purān [‘A Subaltern Tale’] (2001) and Fiji Maa [‘Mother of a Thousand’] (2018) by the Fiji Indian writer Subramani. They are massive novels (respectively 500 and 1,000 pages long) written in the devanāgarī (Sanskrit) script. They are examples of subaltern writing that do not exist, as a legitimation of the subaltern voice, anywhere else in the world. The novels constitute the silent underside of world literature, whose foundational form – the picaresque – it adapts and interrogates. For postcolonial, diaspora and subaltern scholars, they are defining (indeed definitive) texts without which their theories remain incomplete. Theories require mastery of primary texts and these subaltern novels, ‘heroic’ compositions as they are in the vernacular, offer a challenge to the theorist.

The argument of the book takes off from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s well-known declaration (later modified) that ‘The subaltern cannot speak’. Through a close examination of the two novels – and with extensive translations of passages transliterated in the roman script – it is argued that the subaltern does speak but in her own language. The subaltern speech acts in the Fiji Hindi demotic (itself an amalgam of Hindi dialects with borrowings from English and Fijian) are both private and public: private in the sense that the language (which is not to be confused with Creole English or Patois French) is an outcome of a specific historically conditioned Fiji Indian plantation experience, and public in the sense that it can be read and understood by speakers and readers of standard Hindi.

Combining deep sensitivity to language and art, the book makes a very bold claim: these books are world literary texts to which the same kind of exhaustive criticism may be applied that one would with any other great work of literature. This book brings to the reader something that has never been done before. It challenges the subaltern theorist by stipulating (axiomatically) that to understand the subaltern, one must understand her own language and not depend on redacted accounts of their experiences in metropolitan or privileged languages be they French and English or Hindi and Arabic.

Sport in South Asia has a long and varied history that is often dramatic, sometimes violent, and which always promises to reveal much about the broader currents that have shaped culture and society. Some 100 years ago, an Indian became the star of England's cricket team, an 'Untouchable' was offered a contract in the English domestic cricket league, and an Indian win in a football match against an English Regiment was celebrated by a crowd of 60,000 as a nationalist victory. Almost a century on, the dead body of an Indian wrestler was paraded at the front of a Hindu crowd in order to incite the attacks on the Muslim neighbourhood that sparked the Aligarh riots in which almost a hundred people were killed, and in 1998, 141,000 fans attended the derby match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal in Calcutta, one of the largest ever crowds at a football game anywhere in the world. These stories contain elements of colonialism and show the rise of nationalism and the emergence of communalism; other examples show how the establishment of nationhood in a post-colonial world, the challenge of the regions to the political centre and the impacts of globalization and economic liberalization have all left their mark on the development of sport in South Asia. Quite simply, South Asian history and society have transformed sports in the region while at the same time such games and activities have often shaped the development of South Asia. This unique volume is both an introduction to the sporting histories of the region and an exploration of the relationships between sport, history and society in South Asia.

Sport in South Asia has a long and varied history that is often dramatic, sometimes violent, and which always promises to reveal much about the broader currents that have shaped culture and society. Some 100 years ago, an Indian became the star of England's cricket team, an 'Untouchable' was offered a contract in the English domestic cricket league, and an Indian win in a football match against an English Regiment was celebrated by a crowd of 60,000 as a nationalist victory. Almost a century on, the dead body of an Indian wrestler was paraded at the front of a Hindu crowd in order to incite the attacks on the Muslim neighbourhood that sparked the Aligarh riots in which almost a hundred people were killed, and in 1998, 141,000 fans attended the derby match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal in Calcutta, one of the largest ever crowds at a football game anywhere in the world. These stories contain elements of colonialism and show the rise of nationalism and the emergence of communalism; other examples show how the establishment of nationhood in a post-colonial world, the challenge of the regions to the political centre and the impacts of globalization and economic liberalization have all left their mark on the development of sport in South Asia. Quite simply, South Asian history and society have transformed sports in the region while at the same time such games and activities have often shaped the development of South Asia. This unique volume is both an introduction to the sporting histories of the region and an exploration of the relationships between sport, history and society in South Asia.

The contemporary social science in general and economics in particular are dominated by the method of logical positivism in the British tradition. In contrast to the British philosophy, ‘Subjectivism and Interpretative Methodology in Theory and Practice’ adopts subjectivism and interpretation methodology to understand human behavior and social action.

Unlike positivism, this subjectivist approach, with its root in German idealism, takes human experience as the sole foundation of factual knowledge. All objective facts have to be interpreted and evaluated by human minds. In this approach, experience, knowledge, expectation, plans, errors and revision of plans are key elements.

Specifically, this volume uses the subjectivist approach originated in Max Weber’s interpretation method, Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge to understand economic and social phenomena. The method brings human agency back into the forefront of analysis, adding new insights not only in economics and management, but also in sociology, politics, psychology and organizational behavior.

‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ focuses on the dynamic interaction between suburbs and suburbia as this emerges in a century-long series of Australian novels – in works by Christina Stead, George Johnston, Elizabeth Harrower, Patrick White, Christos Tsiolkas and many other twentieth-century and contemporary writers. It puts the often trenchantly anti-suburban rhetoric found in these novels in dialogue with their evocative rendering of suburban place and time.

In the process, ‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ rethinks perennial literary and cultural debates about suburbia – in Australia and elsewhere. It does so by putting fictional ‘suburbs’ (their multitude of imagined interiors, homes, streets, forms and lives over time) into dialogue with cosmopolitan resistance towards the very idea of ‘suburbia’ as an amnesic and conformist cultural wasteland. ‘Suburban space, the novel and Australian modernity’ explores the generative collision produced in novels between the sensory remembered terrain of the primal suburb and wider cultural critiques of suburbia. It is through such contradictions that novels create resonant mental maps of suburban place and time. Australian novels, in other words, serve as a prism through which suburbs – real and imagined, remembered and utterly transformed – can be glimpsed sidelong.

‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ is a coinage that highlights both the persistence and the renovation of literary forms by means of the suburb. The suburbs prompt writers to experiment with the forms of the novel. The very scale of the suburb is productive, enabling narratives to slide readily from microcosm to macrocosm, from the domestic interior to the globe. Like suburbia, the novel is a form that is both generic and specific, circulating transnationally yet taking root locally. 'Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ enacts a retrospective of Australian literary suburbia that reorients understanding of the political, cultural and literary significance of the suburbs. Novels about suburbs often play with time, looking into the past in order to summon what is lost. ‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ enacts a retrospective of Australian literary suburbia that reorients understanding of the political, cultural and literary significance of the suburbs.

Malcolm Grow’s commentary presents us with a fascinating personal account of wartime experience, one that highlights a number of pertinent issues of Russia’s experience of total war. While military historiography is replete with studies of battle plans and strategies, troop movements, numbers of casualties, territorial gains, and decisions of state actors, war is so much more than these, as a fundamentally human experience. Unlike most other foreigners’ accounts of Russia’s war, written by journalists, diplomats, or civilian observers who spent little, if any, time at the “front,” Grow’s narrative provides a firsthand perspective of someone embedded with the Russian troops. Although his primary duty as a regimental doctor was medical care of wounded and ill soldiers, Grow’s narrative focuses much attention on combat, particularly his experiences observing operations from the trenches—even occasionally being drawn into the fighting. His narrative clearly reveals how lines of separation between combatants and non-combatants were blurred on the Eastern Front, where the war was highly mobile and divisions between “front” and “rear” were difficult to maintain. As a result, medical personnel were exposed to dangers, deprivations, and physical and psychological traumas that paralleled the experiences of combatants. Grow also offers his observations of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and their effects on the army. Although he does so through a distinctly American lens and thus reflects some (mis)conceptions held by Americans and other Westerners, his narrative also defies some of these conventions, and provides us with a unique and intimate look at life on the Russian front.

Malcolm Grow’s commentary presents us with a fascinating personal account of wartime experience, one that highlights a number of pertinent issues of Russia’s experience of total war. While military historiography is replete with studies of battle plans and strategies, troop movements, numbers of casualties, territorial gains, and decisions of state actors, war is so much more than these, as a fundamentally human experience. Unlike most other foreigners’ accounts of Russia’s war, written by journalists, diplomats, or civilian observers who spent little, if any, time at the “front,” Grow’s narrative provides a firsthand perspective of someone embedded with the Russian troops. Although his primary duty as a regimental doctor was medical care of wounded and ill soldiers, Grow’s narrative focuses much attention on combat, particularly his experiences observing operations from the trenches—even occasionally being drawn into the fighting. His narrative clearly reveals how lines of separation between combatants and non-combatants were blurred on the Eastern Front, where the war was highly mobile and divisions between “front” and “rear” were difficult to maintain. As a result, medical personnel were exposed to dangers, deprivations, and physical and psychological traumas that paralleled the experiences of combatants. Grow also offers his observations of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and their effects on the army. Although he does so through a distinctly American lens and thus reflects some (mis)conceptions held by Americans and other Westerners, his narrative also defies some of these conventions, and provides us with a unique and intimate look at life on the Russian front.

Now widely recognized as one of the most effective methods for training future surgeons, simulation has become an integral part of the multidimensional landscape that makes up a surgical education curriculum, and its role in surgical training only continues to grow. But no matter how advanced or complex the simulation tool, it is of little use without a knowledgeable educator and a well-prepared curriculum.

This book provides an overview of the current status of simulation-based training in various surgical disciplines and explains the science of surgical education, from developing a simulation programme to properly assess surgeons-in-training, to transferring the skills acquired through simulation into real-life settings. As such, the book can be used as a guide for understanding the basics of surgical education and the growing role played by simulation-based training.

Human life cannot be reduced to market transactions and human beings cannot only be treated as economic actors. When the power of the market increases, human beings will always try to protect themselves. Given the differences that exist in social and cultural traditions, these protective responses are likely to differ from one society to the other. This is why, even in a global market, diversity is always likely to persist. This book investigates the question of economic globalization - whether it is likely to lead to full convergence between political models and ways of life, or whether, even in a completely globalized world economy, there is likely to be scope for alternative solutions. But in a fully globalized world, how will we survive capitalism?

Human life cannot be reduced to market transactions and human beings cannot only be treated as economic actors. When the power of the market increases, human beings will always try to protect themselves. Given the differences that exist in social and cultural traditions, these protective responses are likely to differ from one society to the other. This is why, even in a global market, diversity is always likely to persist. This book investigates the question of economic globalization - whether it is likely to lead to full convergence between political models and ways of life, or whether, even in a completely globalized world economy, there is likely to be scope for alternative solutions. But in a fully globalized world, how will we survive capitalism?

During the last 150 years, we have stressed the oceans, warmed the planet and overextended almost every natural resource. To create real change will require a generation of leaders and businesses that think and act differently. "Sustainability Is the New Advantage" identifies the skill sets, best practices, and new ideas needed to teach a new generation to start, grow, and manage sustainable organizations.

The shift to more sustainable business practices is the third act in the age of the corporation. Research tells us that during major market transitions, early adopters reign. That means only 15%–20% of businesses will make a bold transition to a sustainable business model during the next five to ten years. Everyone else will likely make incremental changes with less risk.

Transformation is a difficult process for any company and ‘Sustainability Is the New Advantage’ offers a straightforward process for sustainability champions to advocate for accelerated change. Each company that succeeds in becoming a sustainable business is a collective win for the business community as well as future generations. To paraphrase Gandhi, we each need to be the change we want to see in the world.

During the last 150 years, we have stressed the oceans, warmed the planet and overextended almost every natural resource. To create real change will require a generation of leaders and businesses that think and act differently. "Sustainability Is the New Advantage" identifies the skill sets, best practices, and new ideas needed to teach a new generation to start, grow, and manage sustainable organizations.

The shift to more sustainable business practices is the third act in the age of the corporation. Research tells us that during major market transitions, early adopters reign. That means only 15%–20% of businesses will make a bold transition to a sustainable business model during the next five to ten years. Everyone else will likely make incremental changes with less risk.

Transformation is a difficult process for any company and ‘Sustainability Is the New Advantage’ offers a straightforward process for sustainability champions to advocate for accelerated change. Each company that succeeds in becoming a sustainable business is a collective win for the business community as well as future generations. To paraphrase Gandhi, we each need to be the change we want to see in the world.

This book offers an updated view of interconnected issues such as sustainable development, well-being and environmental dynamics in advanced economies, delineating a broad interpretation of complex (local) development paths reviewing theoretical approaches and providing paradigmatic examples.

Northeast Asia, a major region in Asia covering China, Korea (South and North Korea), Japan, Mongolia, and the Southeast corner of Russia, is economically one of the most vibrant areas in the world, with a rich array of economic opportunities. Yet, it is simultaneously one of the world’s most politically and militarily unstable regions, creating a global security risk. This risk was made apparent by North Korea’s nuclear crisis, which was followed by a series of its nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches from 2016 to 2017. Although the worst-case scenario may have been avoided by a summit meeting between the heads of South and North Korea on April 27, 2018, and another summit between the United States and North Korea on June 12, 2018, substantial uncertainty and the risk of a major military conflict remains.

Although less dramatic and visible to the outside world, other political and military tensions among constituent countries in Northeast Asia, with their deep historical origins dating back centuries, are also significant. These tensions have been demonstrated by persistent territorial disputes, lack of reconciliation on the question of war crimes during World War II, increasing disparities in political influence and military power among Northeast Asian countries as a result of China's ascension, and increasing uncertainty in the region due to the potential instability of North Korea. These problems create a risk of destabilizing Northeast Asia with a substantial global impact.

Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia examines the causes of these complex tensions in Northeast Asia and their underlying political, historic, military, and economic developments. It further discusses their political-economic implications for the world and explores possible solutions to build lasting peace in the region. This book offers a unique approach to these important issues by examining the perspectives of each constituent country in Northeast Asia: China, South and North Korea, Japan, and Mongolia, and their respective roles in the region. Major global powers, such as the United States and Russia, have also closely engaged in the political and economic affairs of the region through a network of alliances, diplomacy, trade, and investment. The book discusses the influence of these external powers, their political and economic objectives in the region, their strategies, and the dynamics that their engagement has brought to the region. Both South Korea and North Korea have sought reunification of the Korean peninsula, which will have a substantial impact on the region. The book examines its justification, feasibility and effects for the region. The book also discusses the role of Mongolia in the context of the power dynamics in Northeast Asia. A relatively small country, in terms of its population, Mongolia has rarely been examined in this context; Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia makes a fresh assessment on its potential role.

Northeast Asia, a major region in Asia covering China, Korea (South and North Korea), Japan, Mongolia, and the Southeast corner of Russia, is economically one of the most vibrant areas in the world, with a rich array of economic opportunities. Yet, it is simultaneously one of the world’s most politically and militarily unstable regions, creating a global security risk. This risk was made apparent by North Korea’s nuclear crisis, which was followed by a series of its nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches from 2016 to 2017. Although the worst-case scenario may have been avoided by a summit meeting between the heads of South and North Korea on April 27, 2018, and another summit between the United States and North Korea on June 12, 2018, substantial uncertainty and the risk of a major military conflict remains.

Although less dramatic and visible to the outside world, other political and military tensions among constituent countries in Northeast Asia, with their deep historical origins dating back centuries, are also significant. These tensions have been demonstrated by persistent territorial disputes, lack of reconciliation on the question of war crimes during World War II, increasing disparities in political influence and military power among Northeast Asian countries as a result of China's ascension, and increasing uncertainty in the region due to the potential instability of North Korea. These problems create a risk of destabilizing Northeast Asia with a substantial global impact.

Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia examines the causes of these complex tensions in Northeast Asia and their underlying political, historic, military, and economic developments. It further discusses their political-economic implications for the world and explores possible solutions to build lasting peace in the region. This book offers a unique approach to these important issues by examining the perspectives of each constituent country in Northeast Asia: China, South and North Korea, Japan, and Mongolia, and their respective roles in the region. Major global powers, such as the United States and Russia, have also closely engaged in the political and economic affairs of the region through a network of alliances, diplomacy, trade, and investment. The book discusses the influence of these external powers, their political and economic objectives in the region, their strategies, and the dynamics that their engagement has brought to the region. Both South Korea and North Korea have sought reunification of the Korean peninsula, which will have a substantial impact on the region. The book examines its justification, feasibility and effects for the region. The book also discusses the role of Mongolia in the context of the power dynamics in Northeast Asia. A relatively small country, in terms of its population, Mongolia has rarely been examined in this context; Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia makes a fresh assessment on its potential role.

The book explores the Gothic tradition in Swedish literature – including Swedish-language literature by Finland-Swedish writers. It aims to give an overview of the development of Swedish Gothic from the Romantic age until today, and to highlight the characteristic features of the Swedish tradition of Gothic in relation to transnational developments, in particular in relation to the Anglo-American tradition. By using a contextualising comparative perspective, it highlights the most prevalent and prominent feature of Swedish Gothic, the significance of the Nordic landscape, the wilderness and local folklore. In Swedish fiction, the Gothic castle is replaced by the wilderness, and the monster is representative of untamed nature and a barbaric past. The terror is not pointing to the medieval period but is located in pre-Christian, pagan times. Especially in today’s Gothic narratives, the presence of mythical creatures and nature beings, such as trolls, tomtes, or vittras, enhances the Gothic atmosphere. Another domestic trend since the mid-nineteenth century, which has become increasingly popular in the last decade, is Gothic crime stories, where the formula of a modern detective story is combined with a Gothic mystery plot. In these stories, supernatural creatures and the interference of paranormal powers constantly obstruct the modern crime investigation. Another predominant feature of Swedish Gothic that will be expanded on is its use of gendered and female monsters. In these kinds of narratives, Swedish writers and filmmakers manipulated the established Gothic conventions of female Gothic in order to make societal anxieties and gender issues visible.

Drawing on a theoretical framework of gender theory and intersectionality, mainly theories on gender, race and eco-criticism, in combination with a transnational perspective used in today’s comparative literature, the book explores the characteristics of Swedish Gothic. It analyses and contextualises a selection of individual narratives to explore in what way representative Swedish writers modify, transform and domesticize the established Gothic conventions. One chapter is devoted to the significance of the Nordic wilderness and the use of local folklore. Next chapter explores the dominance of gendered female monsters and in what way female and male writers adapt the Gothic elements and aesthetics to a Swedish context. The last chapter on Gothic crime expands on the use of Gothic modes and aesthetics to explore the working of the human mind in relation to crime, repressed collective memories, and cultural taboos. 

Why do people queue up and break the bank to watch fantasy movies? Why do some fictional characters and mythical creatures arrest our mind and senses? Why do some images and tales affect us so deeply, so much so that we see them all around and inside us? From heroic journeys to uncanny feelings to invincible goddesses, ‘Symbols and Myth- Making in Modernity’ investigates the metaphoric power of symbols in human imagination today and in the past. The book traces how ever-present cross-cultural symbols, residing in ancient rites, masterpieces of Renaissance, Sufi poetry, religion and myths, erupt in popular culture today, including in cinema, books, visual art, music and politics.
The book unpacks a post-Jungian, phenomenological theory of deep culture that nourishes human perception of reality through symbols and myths. It describes how complex symbols such as those in ancient myths, religions or modern popular culture should be seen as multivalent, irreplaceable, shared to the extent that they carry significance across cultures and times and pointing to interiority or inner transformation, including as compensation or as affirmation. Moreover, the most popular and common symbols are not fantasized by individuals but are rather grasped or intuited from the culture they live in. Symbols are manifest in popular culture yet simultaneously hidden so that their significance becomes apparent only with appropriate conceptual lenses which carries signification beyond the literal object itself. Art and rituals are the societal vessels that disclose the depth of the symbol and its relevance to daily life.
Symbols have always been situated within a system of meaning — a mytho-logia. But moderns have largely lost conscious access to a mythology. This offers mythology for our time, illustrating its relevance in modern rituals of popular movies, religion and politics. Dismantling literalism and disturbing our view of the world, at each step the book unpacks how people relate to the world through symbols, how symbols play out in the modern world, and the work they do in transforming the self. At the same time, deep culture is helpful in pointing to ruptures — where modern myths stumble — thereby leading to new analyses of emerging societal crises and identifying new potential solutions.

Following the Nationalist defeat on the mainland in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers retreated to Taiwan, forming the Republic of China (ROC). To many it seemed almost certain that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would attack and take Taiwan, perhaps as early as summer 1950. Control over a number of offshore islands, especially Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Mazu) became a deciding factor in whether the PRC could invade Taiwan or, conversely, the ROC could invade the mainland. Twice in the 1950s tensions peaked, during the first (1954–55) and second (1958) Taiwan Strait crises. During both these events the U.S. government intervened diplomatically and militarily. 

This work provides a short, but highly relevant, history of the Taiwan Strait, and its significance today. This small body of water—often compared to the English Channel—separates the PRC and Taiwan and has been the location for periodic military tensions, some threatening to end in war. During the 1950s, the two outbreaks appeared like they might result in a global war. During the evacuation of the Dachen Islands, for example, the U.S.Navy sent seven aircraft carriers and was authorized to nuke three Chinese coastal cities if the PLA tried to interfere. 

In the modern era, the Taiwan Strait separates democratic Taiwan from the authoritarian PRC. This study will discuss the origins of these conflicts, the military aspects of the confrontations, and, in particular, the complicated and largely secret diplomatic negotiations—including two previously unknown Eisenhower-Chiang secret agreements—going on behind the scenes between the U.S. government and the nationalist government in Taiwan. This book ends with a short discussion of the ongoing Covid crisis, and how the PRC might take advantage of this crisis to extend its political and, eventually, military control over Taiwan.

Following the Nationalist defeat on the mainland in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers retreated to Taiwan, forming the Republic of China (ROC). To many it seemed almost certain that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would attack and take Taiwan, perhaps as early as summer 1950. Control over a number of offshore islands, especially Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Mazu) became a deciding factor in whether the PRC could invade Taiwan or, conversely, the ROC could invade the mainland. Twice in the 1950s tensions peaked, during the first (1954–55) and second (1958) Taiwan Strait crises. During both these events the U.S. government intervened diplomatically and militarily. 

This work provides a short, but highly relevant, history of the Taiwan Strait, and its significance today. This small body of water—often compared to the English Channel—separates the PRC and Taiwan and has been the location for periodic military tensions, some threatening to end in war. During the 1950s, the two outbreaks appeared like they might result in a global war. During the evacuation of the Dachen Islands, for example, the U.S.Navy sent seven aircraft carriers and was authorized to nuke three Chinese coastal cities if the PLA tried to interfere. 

In the modern era, the Taiwan Strait separates democratic Taiwan from the authoritarian PRC. This study will discuss the origins of these conflicts, the military aspects of the confrontations, and, in particular, the complicated and largely secret diplomatic negotiations—including two previously unknown Eisenhower-Chiang secret agreements—going on behind the scenes between the U.S. government and the nationalist government in Taiwan. This book ends with a short discussion of the ongoing Covid crisis, and how the PRC might take advantage of this crisis to extend its political and, eventually, military control over Taiwan.

The long-awaited convergence of climate, economic, political, intellectual, faith and social failures gives many reasons for despair. The authors of this volume have spent their lives around the trauma of race and poverty in South Africa and the United States working with Nobel prize winners and those in townships and tenements. We have learned that hope is not delusional and accountability not naïve. But one must think clearly and deeply, untethered from the inadequate simplicities and false choices. We must be here now, with eyes wide open for when systems break down, as so many are today, knowing that they also break open new space for creative action.
The authors lead the global web of thinker-doers through the Leading Causes of Life Initiative and national networks in Africa, Europe and the United States. They find coherence among profound thinking from fields never brought into alignment before drawn from by economists, mycelial researchers, anthropologists and health sciences working in the Artic to South Africa, and the tough neighbourhoods in between. This includes a consideration of the human capacities that allow us to act in and transform the world we inhabit, of the radical nature of joy in the face of despair, of the judgement of Nemesis on hubris and privilege, of the ‘value of everything’ contra price as definitive, of the idea of involution as distinguished from evolution, of the concept of ‘meshworks’ in our entanglement with others, and, finally, of the ‘theatre of the soul’ as the unity of the physical, the psychological, the political and the spiritual.
Sharply sensitive to the urgency of careful thought and wise action, the authors help us see that life does find a way towards deep accountability for the life of complex human ecosystems. They ask us to take responsibility for this as a key to human flourishing and well-being.

The long-awaited convergence of climate, economic, political, intellectual, faith and social failures gives many reasons for despair. The authors of this volume have spent their lives around the trauma of race and poverty in South Africa and the United States working with Nobel prize winners and those in townships and tenements. We have learned that hope is not delusional and accountability not naïve. But one must think clearly and deeply, untethered from the inadequate simplicities and false choices. We must be here now, with eyes wide open for when systems break down, as so many are today, knowing that they also break open new space for creative action.
The authors lead the global web of thinker-doers through the Leading Causes of Life Initiative and national networks in Africa, Europe and the United States. They find coherence among profound thinking from fields never brought into alignment before drawn from by economists, mycelial researchers, anthropologists and health sciences working in the Artic to South Africa, and the tough neighbourhoods in between. This includes a consideration of the human capacities that allow us to act in and transform the world we inhabit, of the radical nature of joy in the face of despair, of the judgement of Nemesis on hubris and privilege, of the ‘value of everything’ contra price as definitive, of the idea of involution as distinguished from evolution, of the concept of ‘meshworks’ in our entanglement with others, and, finally, of the ‘theatre of the soul’ as the unity of the physical, the psychological, the political and the spiritual.
Sharply sensitive to the urgency of careful thought and wise action, the authors help us see that life does find a way towards deep accountability for the life of complex human ecosystems. They ask us to take responsibility for this as a key to human flourishing and well-being.