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Lex Fullarton takes a closer look at the three pillars of the sustainable development framework known as the “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL). The concept of the TBL is that for a project to be sustainable it must not simply be profitable in economic terms, but it must also benefit society and enhance the natural environment. In the twenty-first century, the greatest threat to Earth’s natural environment and the population of the planet is the rise of greenhouse gas emissions caused from burning fossil fuel as an energy source. The rise of GHG emissions has resulted in a rise in the ambient air temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and is resulting in a significant change in climatic conditions on Earth.

Fullarton scrutinizes the problem of getting industry and governments to understand the significance of creating harmony within the TBL. One of the main problems is that partisan politics tends to fragment the factors of the TBL rather than bring them together. Fullarton takes a strong stand in suggesting that taxation systems, which have traditionally been viewed primarily as a means of raising government finance, can be effectively applied to influence industrial and consumer attitudes towards transiting away from polluting fossil-fuel energy sources towards non-polluting renewable energy use.

Helmut Meier‘s study of pro- and anti-slavery texts from 1784–1825 focuses on understanding the distinct image of Africans in the British debate on the slave trade and slavery as such. Starting from the premise that, at the threshold from the early to the late modern period, the distinct image of Africans as slaves was instrumental in universalizing a Eurocentric concept of capitalist wage labor both at the colonial centres and margins, Meier argues that, by portraying African slaves as suffering wretches, especially anti-slavery texts created colonial Others in an indistinct zone between inclusion and exclusion from humanity. The discourse on slavery thus constructs African slaves as mimetic Others which could subsequently become the objects of a discourse of colonial reform and ‘betterment.’

This book explores the war writings of Patrick MacGill, James Hanley, and Liam O’Flaherty, working class, Roman Catholic Irishmen, all of whom fought in the First World War as privates and who, collectively, it is argued, constitute a distinct trio of war writers. Through discussions focusing upon class, camaraderie, violence, religion, trauma, and the body, this book considers these Irish soldiers within a cultural, social, and historical context. Central to this examination is the idea that the motives for enlistment and the experience of army labor and even combat was such that military service was perceived as work rather than a duty or vocation undertaken in support of any prevailing doctrines of patriotism or sacrifice. The men’s Catholicism also shaped their aesthetic and philosophical responses to the war, even while the war conversely troubled their faith or confirmed their religious skepticism. The war writing of these men is located within both an Irish and a pan-European literary working class tradition, thereby permitting the texts to be viewed within a wider context than literature of the First World War, and from a perspective that goes beyond Ireland and Britain. These characteristics shape a perspective on the conflict very different from that of the canonical officer-writers, men such as Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, or Edmund Blunden, whose work is considered alongside those of the three Irish soldier-writers.

In 2012, soon after his election to a third presidential term as president, following a four-year stint as prime minister (to avoid modifying the constitution), and in the wake of an unprecedented wave of popular protests, Vladimir Putin issued his “May Decrees.” Notable among them was the government’s commitment to increase the salaries of doctors, scientific researchers and university teachers to double the average in their respective regions by 2018. But then on December 30 of that year, the government issued a “road map” for education, revealing that the salary increases in higher education would be paid for, not by significant new government funding, but by “optimization,” which would eliminate 44% of the current teaching positions in higher education. This was justified in part by a forecasted drop in student enrollment.
Thus opened a new, accelerated period of reform of higher education. David Mandel examines the impact of these reforms on the condition of Russia’s university teachers and the collective efforts of some teachers, a small minority, to organize themselves in an independent trade union to defend their professional interests and their vision of higher education.
Apart from the subject’s intrinsic interest, an in-depth examination of this specific aspect of social policy provides valuable insight into the nature of the Russian state as well as into the condition of “civil society,” in particular the popular classes, to which Russian university teachers belong according to their socio-economic situation, if not necessarily their self-image.

This book provides a critical survey of the literature on the Vietnam War and is intended both for academic and general readers. Earlier works of this kind constantly recycled criticism of a half-dozen of the same works. In this study, the aim was to discuss a much greater number of works, including a few that have never been discussed. To appeal to non-academic readers, Lit-Crit jargon was kept to a minimum, and parallels with earlier works of war literature, especially those of the two world wars, were established.