Anthem Press

'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture: The History of Understanding and Understanding of History' explores the interrelationships between individual and cultural historical dynamics in interpreting texts, using key concepts from Bakhtin's theory of dialogics. This ambitious volume discusses the limits of fixed monologic discourses and the benefits of fluid dialogic discourses, and provides a cultural and psychological analysis of the epic Indian text the 'Mahabharata'. The problem addressed by 'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture' is not just how we understand and narrate history, but also how the very mechanism by which we understand and narrate history itself has a history. This volume is about the interplay of several histories – that of the individual, individual's past relationship to the text, which in turn is dependent on the nature of encounters they have had in the past, and the history of the text, and the very history of understanding.

'Economics for People and the Planet' brings together recent essays by James K. Boyce on the environment, inequality, and the economy.

Part One, Rethinking Economics and the Environment, challenges some common assumptions, including the beliefs that economic growth is incompatible with environmental sustainability, capitalist firms single-mindedly pursue profits, and human beings are inherently bad for nature.

Part Two, Environmental Injustice, opens with the author’s 2017 Leontief Prize lecture, and discusses how inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power shape both the distribution of environmental harm and the magnitude of environmental degradation.

Part Three, The Political Economy of Climate Policy, addresses the pre-eminent environmental challenge of our time, highlighting how progressive climate policies not only can benefit future generations worldwide but also can improve health and economic well-being today in the countries adopting them.

The audiobook version of Economics for People and the Planet features new chapters on the Green New Deal and the environmental costs of inequality. Foreword by Manuel Pastor.

Ali Kadri examines how over the last three decades the Arab world has undergone a process of developmental descent, or de-development. He defines de-development as the purposeful deconstruction of developing entities. The Arab world has lost its wars and its society restructured to absorb the terms of defeat masquerading as development policies under neoliberalism. Foremost in this process of de-development are the policies of de-industrialisation that have laid to waste the production of knowledge, created a fully compradorial ruling class that relies on commerce and international finance for its reproduction, as opposed to nationally based production, and halted the primary engine of job creation. The Arab mode of accumulation has come to be based on commerce in a manner similar to that of the pre-capitalist age along with its cultural decay. Kadri attributes the Arab world’s developmental failure not only to imperialist hegemony over oil, but also to the rising role of financialisation, which goes hand in hand with the wars of encroachment that were already stripping the Arab world of its resources. War for war’s sake has become a tributary to the world economy, argues Kadri, and like oil, there is neither a shortage of war nor a shortage of the conditions to make new war in the Arab world.

After decades of isolation, Albania was catapulted into capitalism in 1991. Until then, ideological hardliners had run the country and denounced their former Soviet and Eastern Bloc allies as 'revisionists' for falling away from Stalinist principles. Yet after the collapse of socialism, Albania quickly embarked on an ambitious program of political and economic reform. The postsocialist governments created private ownership in land, liberalized markets, and opened the country’s borders to movements of goods, capital, and people. Such radical  measures stood out, even in comparison with other postsocialist countries. For instance, the postsocialist governments did not restitute collective farmland to pre-collectivization owners as elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe; instead farmland was distributed in equal shares to the current agricultural labor force, giving Albania the highest degree of individual land ownership found in Eastern Europe. Postsocialist market reforms were no less radical, and as a result of trade liberalization, Albania became inundated by imports. This caused more commercially-minded farmers to compete against highly subsidized EU production, while the majority of land users largely withdrew from agricultural markets. They turned instead to a mixed approach to farming characterized by a low degree of commercialization and high subsistence production. The constraints rural people faced in agriculture, together with the loss of off-farm employment due to the collapse of state-run rural industries, caused one of the world’s highest rates of emigration, reaching more than 40 per cent in some areas.

'Rent from the Land' examines the effects of these massive political and economic changes of postsocialism on rural society and environment in Albania. Stahl argues that the postsocialist transformations led to changes in the creation and distribution of resource rent, which shifted land users' incentives and productive decision-making and ultimately led to environmental change. The book brings together five years of research on Albanian transformation, and breaks new ground by discussing postsocialist transformation from a political ecology perspective.

Wittgenstein is acknowledged as one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth-century, but he is often considered to be difficult to read, let alone to understand. In this Beginner’s Guide, Peter Hacker, a leading authority on the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein and author of a dozen books on the subject, introduces a selection of the leading ideas in Wittgenstein’s masterwork, the Philosophical Investigations. The Guide presupposes no philosophical knowledge, only curiosity and a willingness to shed prejudices. It presents a magisterial understanding of the Investigations in an accessible and witty form.

The approach is bold: the seventeen chapters alternate between authorial lecture and dialogue between the author and an imaginary interlocutor. It is both dialectical and didactic. The interlocutor challenges Wittgenstein’s ideas as presented by the lecturer, and his questions are answered, his qualms resolved, and his challenges rebutted. Innumerable objections are canvassed and patiently refuted or dissolved by comprehensive argument.

Nothing comparable to this exists in the literature on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s revolutionary ideas are presented for the widest possible audience in all their profundity in a style that is both intellectually stimulating and entertaining.

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

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

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

In this fully updated second edition of 'A History of Russia' Vol. II, Walter G. Moss has significantly revised his text and bibliography to reflect new research findings and controversies on numerous subjects. He has also brought the history up-to-date by revising the post-Soviet material, which now covers events from the end of 1991 up to the present day. This new edition retains the features of the successful first edition that have made it a popular choice in universities and colleges throughout the US, Canada and around the world. Moss’s accessible history includes full treatments of politics, economics, foreign affairs and wars, and also of everyday life, women, legal developments, religion, literature, art and popular culture. In addition, it provides many other features that have proven successful with both academics and students, including a well-organized and clearly written text, references to varying historical viewpoints, numerous illustrations and maps that supplement and amplify the text, fully updated bibliographies accompanying each chapter as well as a general bibliography of more comprehensive works, a glossary and a chronology of important events. Moss's 'A History of Russia' will appeal to academics, students and general readers alike.

“The Transformation of Capacity in International Development” examines the transformation of capacity as a concept within the global development agenda through an analysis of USAID projects and policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 1977 and 2017. It traces the evolution of donor discourses from the Cold War through the Global War on Terror, exposing the tensions within donor agendas between market, human rights and security-based narratives and discourses. As the global development agenda subsumes major areas of international debate defined by competing objectives, these tensions are absorbed, obscured and depoliticized with the transformation of capacity.

The transformation of capacity unveils donor approaches to building capacity as a form of statemaking, involving development projects as a tactic for building networks between centralized, national spaces (accessible and held accountable to the “international community” of states) and subnational environments harboring transnational militant threats to global security. Through an examination of the USAID example, this book exposes how the donor attempt to develop the capacity of “fragile” states and to manage transnational militancy reveals a fundamental struggle over the ownership and future of global governance and development.

As the US-led war in Afghanistan approaches 20 years, the failure of capacity development requires a fundamental reexamination of the priorities of the international community and development efforts in conflict zones. In exposing the transformation of capacity, the present volume contributes to our understanding of how human rights and security approaches to development have been obscured by the transformation of a popular concept within development. This transformation--involving shifts in policy and political agendas over time--reveals the fundamental tensions between donors and recipients as they work to build sustainable networks and institutions that ensure security, justice, greater access to opportunity and basic human rights of those caught in the crosshairs of global conflict. When we look at how the human rights agenda becomes warped in practice alongside the shifting tides of the global security objectives of the United States, we see the obscuring political power of major concepts of practice such as capacity. As scholars and practitioners consider the future direction of human rights approaches to development, this book informs alternative approaches to the failure of the status quo.

This Dictionary is a guide to the literary terms most relevant to students and readers of English literature today, thorough on the essentials and generous in its intellectual scope. With terms as wide-ranging in theme as 'emphasis', 'ekphrasis', 'ecocriticism' and 'epithalamion' the definitions are always lively and precise in equipping students and general readers with a genuinely useful critical vocabulary. Above all, it directs readers to make full use of terms, in navigating the confusing world of literary criticism and discovering the concepts behind terms. It does this with the help of fresh examples, literary timeline and up-to-date bibliography (with recommended websites). Extensive cross-referencing is linked to a thematic index that makes it simple to find related terms (e.g. technical terms for repetition; names for six- or seven-line stanzas) and is explicit about the exact distinctions between such terms as 'metonym' and 'synecdoche', or 'couplet' and 'distich'.

In addition to teaching key terms, the Dictionary identifies the thinking and unresolved controversies surrounding them, and offers fresh insights and directions for future reading. It seeks to challenge as well as complement the reader’s own ideas about literature. It is a Dictionary for the twenty-first century, both in its broad view of literature in English and its emphasis on readers enjoying poetry, prose and drama.

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

This volume brings together original and timely writings by internationally renowned scholars that reflect on the current trajectories of global capitalism and, in the light of these, consider likely, possible or desirable futures. Essays focus to varying degrees on developing distinctive theoretical frameworks and using them to clarify both the history of the present political economy and how progressive political economic trends might be extended from the present into the future. A distinctive feature of the collection is its effort to develop new mediations between theory and history, a deeply problematic relationship in the social sciences. These contributions offer original perspectives both to theory construction and to the use of theory in historical analysis. In short, this volume provides theory-informed writing that contextualizes empirical research on current world-historic events and trends with an eye towards realizing a future of human, social and economic betterment.

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

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

Journalist, novelist, poet, artist and art critic, essayist, theologian, propagandist, philosopher, and creator of the wily old Father Brown – G. K. Chesterton is one of the most beguiling authors of the early twentieth century. When asked to perform a lecture tour in 1921, Chesterton was in a slump of depression. He had recently lost his brother to the First World War and his wavering faith in the face of the horrors of the conflict only intensified his malaise. ‘What I Saw in America’ tells us as much about the author and his particular views as it does about his destination. Indeed, Chesterton’s personalised observations – his aversion to imperialism, capitalism, Anglo-Americanism and his commitment to democracy and fraternity – are distinguished by the piercing wit for which he is famed.

Many of Chesterton’s reflections are timeless and startlingly prescient. He was highly critical of both the naïve immigration policies and the grinding dehumanisation brought about by the growth of the economy. Nonetheless, he was enthralled by the glorious ideals of the nation – founded on principles of equality, democracy and freedom – even if the essence of these ideals had been lost somewhere along the way. ‘What I Saw in America’ ranks among the finest of Chesterton’s works, containing all of the author’s virtues and vices: his wry humour, sympathy and intelligence playing devilishly against an irrepressible mischievousness.

After a long and hard day at work, which had taken him to Larnaca, Antonios Triantafyllides, a leading lawyer recently appointed to the Cypriot government’s Advisory Council, arrived at his Nicosia home in the cool evening of 12 January 1934, only to be shot by an unknown assailant. He died the next morning. Twelve months later, Stavros Christodoulou was charged, but acquitted of the murder. Considered political, the murder has been a taboo subject for Cypriot society and historians alike, and a cold case that nobody has seemingly taken any interest in solving let alone in exploring (at least publicly), that is, until now.

This book offers a theory on who was behind the assassination of Antonios Triantafyllides, the FIRST attempt to break open and explain an 87-year-old cold case.In doing so, it explores both the relationship between the British colonial authorities and the Cypriot political elites, and the various divisions within the latter. Triantafyllides supported enosis, the union of Cyprus with Greece, but after over a decade of involvement in nationalist politics without results, he decided that the only way to achieve it was to cooperate with the British. This change occurred by the 1931 crisis, which culminated in the burning of the government house in Nicosia in October and led to a British crackdown, including the suspension of the constitution, abolition of the Legislative Council and the deporting of leading nationalists. In October 1933, the British decided to establish an Advisory Council of leading Cypriots. Triantafyllides, who had, albeit briefly, served in the elected Legislative Council and the nominated Executive Council, accepted the invitation. He attended one meeting before being shot. The British initially suspected the extreme nationalists and banished five of them, then blamed a communist conspiracy, but the man charged was acquitted. 

This book creates and analyses a ‘community of records’ to show that by reading both with and especially against the grain, it is probable that those responsible were radical right-wing nationalist extremists. Thus, for historical criminologists and crime investigators, the exploration of the sources examined could serve as a model of forensic analysis of cold cases. For those interested in the British Empire, the book shows how the British authorities had no real control over extremist nationalist politics and political violence in the 1930s no more than they did in the 1950s, and they were unable to protect those individuals willing to work with them to better the country. In fact, as numerous historians have attested, during the campaign by EOKA between April 1955 and March 1959, more Greek Cypriot civilians were murdered than any other target group.  For those with an interest in Cypriot history, this book will make startling and uncomfortable revelations about the so-called National Liberation Movement in Cyprus and suggest that the violence that gripped the island from the 1950s and led to partition could have been avoided had not for the assassination of arguably the most capable and astute politician produced, at least until that time, in the island.

‘Diagnosing the Indonesian Economy: Toward Inclusive and Green Growth’ commences with a broad overview of Indonesia’s development since the 1960s. The analytical frameworks for the study, which were developed at Harvard University and ADB, are then used in an attempt to identify the constraints that most severely bind the country’s development, and therefore the priorities for policy implementation and/or reform. The country’s macroeconomic management and monetary policy since the Asian financial crisis is reviewed. The challenges of Indonesia’s slow industrial transformation and small industry sector are described, as are their implications for poverty reduction efforts. The challenges Indonesia faces in developing its infrastructure are set out, e.g., the country’s diverse topography, archipelagic nature, and monopolies. Human capital, an essential element in both growth and poverty reduction, is analyzed for the country, including the improvements in enrolments and gender balance, and the limitations the poor face to accessing education. Indonesia’s record on poverty reduction is traced, as are the efforts to improve it. The links between employment creation and poverty reduction are presented, with a focus on the pressing issue of youth employment. The impact and status of the decentralization effort and efforts to fine-tune it are discussed. Last, the rather dismal status of the country’s environment and natural resources management and the emerging impacts of climate change are summed up.

Indonesia’s national development plan for 2005–2025 sets a vision of a country that is self-reliant, has a highly educated population with capable human resources, has no discrimination, and is prosperous enough to fulfil its population’s needs. This will require high levels of economic growth that is both socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable. The volume identifies that in order to overcome the binding constraints to this growth, Indonesia needs to improve its infrastructure, enhance the education system to provide a more capable workforce, revive its manufacturing sector to open up employment, and facilitate these efforts through substantially improved governance and institutions. Furthermore, this growth must be accomplished in a manner that is harmonious and not destructive to the environment and natural resource base.

Regional integration is gathering momentum in Asia. This study examines the diverse experience of regional integration of South and East Asian economies during the last two decades and offers lessons for latecomers. The global economic crisis is expected to merely dampen rather than halt the pace of Asian integration. Global recovery will give renewed impetus to Asian integration. East and South Asia include the world’s largest and most dynamic open economies alongside several least developed countries. Using a set of country cases based on a similar framework, the study addresses an important policy question: how can each country’s integration with its neighbors and more distant regional economies be improved? Of the eight country studies, five are from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and three are from East Asia (the People’s Republic of China, Thailand, and Singapore). The country cases—which differ by per capita income, country size and location—provide fascinating insights on the relationship between regional economic performance and strategies for regional integration at the country level.

The field of poster studies is vast, but it is surprising how little work has been done till date on the fundamental structures – semiotic and semantic – that underpin the visual messages posters produce. Most studies of posters focus either on their history; on specific themes – politics, travel, sport, cinema; or on their status as collectable items. Though such approaches are valid, they hardly account for the specificity of the poster’s appeal or for the complex semiotic and cultural issues poster art raises. This book sets out to tackle these latter issues since they are fundamental both to the deeper significance and to the wider appeal of the poster as a cultural form. 

In doing so it focuses on the field of airline travel posters which developed precisely in the period of the twentieth century (1920–1970) that coincided with the onset of mass travel. The romance and excitement of fast travel to exotic destinations stimulated some memorable poster images that today have lost none of their magic. Since posters are cultural signs, to understand better how they work and the value attached to them even after their commercial or political message has been communicated, it is useful to analyse them in terms of both their sociocultural histories and their semiological structures. What this book sets out to do is to combine these approaches in such a way as to enhance the viewer/reader’s understanding of both the cultural and the semiological aspects of the poster and to show how the interaction of these aspects produces the specific quality of its messages.

Although posters are essentially word/image constructs, little attention has been paid to this fundamental aspect of their semiological structures. While Roland Barthes (1964) and other structuralist semioticians of the 1960s and 1970s –in France in particular – have made inroads into what is at stake in the poster’s word/ image structure, this book pursues the implications of this for the rhetoric of persuasion that is activated by the poster in fulfilling its dual function as provider of information and agent of seduction. For the poster, from the start of the twentieth century, has established a conventional repertory of textual/visual motifs that it has applied across a wide range of communicative functions – political, commercial and artistic. The aim of this book is to analyse the way these motifs are structured since they reveal much about the way cultural messages are produced and the way the poster is able to promote both a specific, product-centred message and aesthetic pleasure through a multiplicity of connotations.

The struggle for Chechnya has come to international prominence in recent years through a string of high-profile atrocities such as the hostage seizures at Beslan and the Dubrovka theatre IN Moscow. For the first time, Western, Russian and Chechen perspectives on the conflict are brought together in a single, authoritative new volume, in which leading experts from all sides of the crisis provide a unique insight into its causes and contexts.

'Chechnya: from Past to Future' creates a historical framework against which the most pressing issues raised by the Chechen struggle are considered, including the rights and wrongs of Chechen secessionism, the role of Islamic and Western international agencies in defending human rights, the conduct of the war, changing perceptions of the war against the backdrop of international terrorism, democracy in Chechnya itself and the uncertain fate of democracy in Russia as a whole.

Today’s ‘doctrine of choice’ assures adults that they are competent to make serious personal decisions about healthcare, education and retirement plans. At the same time, most people are convinced that they are so ignorant of economics that they are not capable of holding an informed opinion, and that economic issues must be left to experts. The so-called experts of the mainstream economics profession claim to have profound, inaccessible knowledge; in fact they understand little and obscure almost everything.

Understanding the economy is not simple, but it is no more complicated than understanding the political system sufficiently to cast a vote. In straightforward language, John F. Weeks exposes the myths of mainstream economics and explains why current economic policies fail to serve the vast majority of people in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. He demonstrates that austerity policies have little theoretical basis and achieve nothing but inequality and misery. He goes on to explain how the current deficit and debt ‘crises’ in the United States and Europe are ideologically manufactured, unnecessary and simple to overcome. Drawing on examples from around the world, this book provides a bold alternative to the economics of the 1%. Their failure to serve the interests of the many results from their devoted service to the few.

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

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

“Decolonizing the Diet” challenges the common claim that native American communities were decimated after 1492 because they lived in “virgin soils” that were distinct from those in the Old World. Comparing the European transition from Paleolithic hunting and gathering with native American subsistence strategies before and after 1492, this book offers a new way of understanding the link between biology, ecology and history. After examining the history and bioarchaeology of ancient Europe, the ancient Near East, ancient native America and Europe during the medieval Black Death, this book sets out to understand the subsequent collision between indigenous peoples and Europeans in North America from 1492 to the present day. Synthesizing the latest work in the science of nutrition, immunity, and evolutionary genetics with cutting edge scholarship on the history of indigenous North America, this book highlights a fundamental model of human demographic destruction—Human populations have been able to recover from mass epidemics within a century, whatever their genetic heritage. They fail to recover from epidemics when their ability to hunt, gather and farm nutritionally dense plants and animals is diminished by war, colonization and cultural destruction. The history of native America before and after 1492 clearly shows that biological immunity is contingent on historical context, not least in relation to the protection or destruction of long-evolved nutritional building blocks that underlie human immunity.

“Decolonizing the Diet” cautions against assuming that certain communities are more prone to metabolic syndromes and infectious diseases, whether due to genetic differences or a comparative lack of exposure to specific pathogens. This book refocuses our understanding on the ways in which human interventions—particularly in food production, nutritional accessibility and ecology—have exacerbated demographic decline in the face of disease; both in terms of reduced immunity prior to infection and reduced ability to fight pathogenic invasion.

“Decolonizing the Diet” provides a framework to approach contemporary health dilemmas, both inside and outside native America. Many developed nations now face a medical crisis: so-called “diseases of civilization” have been linked to an evolutionary mismatch between our ancient genetic heritage and our present social, nutritional and ecological environments. The disastrous European intervention in native American life after 1492 brought about a similar—though of course far more destructive— mismatch between biological needs and societal context. The curtailment of nutritional diversity is related to declining immunity in the face of infectious disease, to diminishing fertility and to the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndromes such as diabetes. “Decolonizing the Diet” thus intervenes in a series of historical and contemporary debates that now extend beyond native America—while noting the specific destruction wrought on indigenous nutritional systems after 1492.

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.

• Americans perceive the many political dilemmas in our society and corruption in our government, but few understand the causes of these problems. After explaining the constitutional roots of declining governing capacity in our federal system, this book sets out a comprehensive agenda of 25 amendments that can attract wide support across the political spectrum. The “top 10” proposals include reforms to make elections more competitive, reliable, and fair, such as ranked choice voting (“instant runoffs”); semi-open primary races with fixed dates rotating among all states; an anti-gerrymandering formula to make congressional elections more competitive; improved access to the polls through a national voter registry and voter rights; limits to campaign donations and political advertising. 
• Instead of considering them piecemeal, we should understand how the needed amendments form a systemic overhaul that includes major improvements to the House and Senate. This requires a ban on filibusters, creative ways to fix unequal representation in the House of Representatives, and restoring popular access to legislators. Improving the judiciary requires an 18-year term on the Supreme Court and appellate courts, firm deadlines for confirmation votes to reduce partisan pressures on the judiciary, and clarification of judicial review. A national civics education curriculum and fair-and-balanced requirements for mass media would make it much harder to manipulate people through misinformation campaigns.
• The book also argues for direct election of the president, Puerto Rico statehood, and ways to fix our current radical inequalities of voter influence in the Senate. Several common-sense “good government” reforms will reduce corruption. These include mandated financial disclosures; a requirement for federal legislators and officers to hold their assets in blind trusts; penalties for campaigns using stolen information; limits to the president’s pardoning powers; and clearer grounds for impeachment. Beyond the filibuster, there are further steps to break gridlock in Congress and fix the budget process. 
• Finally, we need to improve the amendment process itself, and clarify how a national convention should work as an alternative to Congress for proposing amendments for ratification. When called by 38 states, a convention can reach national compromise on a whole package of amendments to restore responsive, efficient, and effective government.

Julia Wedgwood (1833-1913) was a leading Victorian female non-fiction writer who ventured fearlessly into the reserved territory of the Victorian “man of letters”, writing about the Classical world, Darwinism, German Biblical criticism, moral philosophy, theology and science as well as literature and history. Her successful debut as a novelist was halted by her father’s objections. Non-fiction proved a more congenial métier and she was a regular contributor to the Spectator, Contemporary Review and other upmarket periodicals. Her books include The Moral Ideal and The Message of Israel and biographies of John Wesley and her great grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood.

Based on her extensive correspondence this biography also considers the tensions in her family life, the challenges she faced in establishing an unconventional, independent household and the impact of her deafness. Her wide, eclectic circle of friends included Harriet Martineau, Mrs Gaskell, her uncle Charles Darwin and his family, Browning who might have married her, F.D. Maurice, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Arthur Munby, Mary Everest Boole, Richard Hutton and the young E.M. Forster. She also played a significant role in Victorian feminism. 

Amongst the many themes explored are the pioneering days of women’s higher education and first wave feminism, feminist theology and the significance of female friendships, Christian Socialism, Darwinism, idealism and Victorian agnosticism, spiritualism, antivivisectionism, periodical writing, perceptions of the Classical world, the impact of German Biblical criticism and the Wedgwood family’s sense of itself and its history.

As the age of social media progresses, the Asia Pacific, like the rest of the world, is experiencing an increase in cultural diversity and global connection. Those within the region are witnessing rapid social and cultural changes. As individuals and groups navigate through an increasingly mobile, transnational and multicultural ethnographic landscape, social media provides a sense of belonging for these networked communities.

Social media allows individuals and groups to map and redefine their evolving communal and national identities and thus form sometimes new, vibrant and necessary communities to help create individual and group belonging and agency. While creating a sense of belonging and agency in their respective homeland(s), individuals and groups are also able to connect to global networks. Recognising these layered and intertwined complexities governing societal and cultural cohesion, the authors in this collection each discuss the innate challenges of the social media era on culture, identity and social interaction. This original empirical work documents social media as a user platform for the expression of individual and collective identities.

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

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

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

This volume of essays is based on a conference held in July 2009 at Trinity College, Cambridge to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Edward FitzGerald (1809) and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of his ‘Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’ (1859). The ‘Rubáiyát’, loosely based on the verses attributed to the eleventh-century Persian writer, Omar Khayyám, has become one of the most widely known poems in the world, republished virtually every year from 1879 (the year of FitzGerald’s fourth edition) to the present day, and translated into over eighty different languages. And yet, with a few exceptions, it has been systematically ignored or at best patronized by the academic establishment. This volume sets out to explore the reasons for both the popularity and the neglect. Broadly speaking, the essays are divided into two main blocks. The first six chapters focus primarily on the poem’s literary qualities (including consideration of its place in the tradition of verse translation into English, the idea of ‘nothingness’, and ‘syntax and sexuality’), the last five on aspects of its reception (including essays on the late-Victorian Omar Khayyám Club, on American parodies, and on the many illustrated editions). They are linked by three essays that address key ‘facilitators’ in the poem’s transmission (including the significant but neglected issue of cheap reprints).

‘Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers’ is an edited collection of essays from leading authorities in the field of Victorian literature and science, including Gillian Beer and George Levine. The academic study of the interpenetration of Victorian literature and science has grown to be one of the largest and most dynamic areas in Victorian studies: in this collection, leading exponents in the field consider recent developments. The major figures and exact contemporaries, Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are considered, in the company of John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, Richard Owen, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde and others. Throughout, the stress is on the ways in which these writers read and were influenced by each other. Our current understanding of this complex cultural dialogue is illustrated here in a single accessible volume of essays by established scholars in this dynamic academic interdiscipline.

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.

Urban Crisis, Urban Hope resurrects the concept of the city and its neighbourhoods as a crucible for new ideas and a site of innovative action when cities in the UK are struggling with an unfolding crisis, exacerbated by a policy vacuum and lack of strategic vision about how to resolve a series of growing divisions, social problems and injustices. It celebrates what is being achieved against the odds. But it also recognises the desperate need for support, resources and complementary visions at urban and national scales, and sets out an agenda to meet this need.

The collection of essays brings together leading thinkers and doers from across the spectrum of policy and practice to present both critical analysis and an agenda for action. It seeks to reinvigorate a sense of the city as a space where more progressive and fairer futures can be imagined, planned and realised. It aims to challenge stultifying discourses of incremental bureaucratic devolution that frame and delimit current urban debates. It alerts policymakers and the public to the unfolding crisis that has been allowed to develop in our cities and rehumanises the debate on urban futures to focus on citizenship and wellbeing in an age of precarity.

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.

A high school honors student with no police record encounters the police outside his home. He emerges from the confrontation bruised and beaten. The police charge him with serious crimes; he swears he did nothing wrong. When the story becomes public, an American city faces protests, deep division and a long quest for justice.

"A City Divided" tells the story of the case involving 18-year-old Jordan Miles and three Pittsburgh Police officers. The book takes an in-depth look at the opposing stories, and at race and the fear it incites, to find answers. What happened between the police and the teen, and what went wrong? Can the courts respond in a way that finds a just solution? And how can we prevent these tragedies in the future?

David Harris, a resident of Pittsburgh and the Sally Ann Semenko Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, describes what happened, explaining how a case that began with a young black man walking around the block in his own neighborhood turned Pittsburgh inside out, resulted in two investigations of the police officers and two federal trials. Harris, who has written, published and conducted research at the intersection of race, criminal justice and the law for almost thirty years, explains not just what happened but why, what the stakes are and, most importantly, what we must do differently to avoid these public safety catastrophes.

This delightful text combines the practicalities of a travel guide with the revealing observations of social journalism. ‘How to Enjoy Paris in 1842’ covers a wide range of subjects, from the history of the great city to contemporary commerce, conveyed by a witty, often satirical narrative reminiscent of Jonathan Swift. The author guides the reader on a leisurely walk around the monuments and attractions of the capital, bringing to life a vibrant and mesmerising city. Hervé’s narrative voice is engaging in that it constantly appeals to the reader, inviting their participation in his Parisian experience, and succeeds in combining anecdotal humour with witty observations of both the French and British. His Paris is populated by caricatures worthy of Dickens, the city familiarized through the inclusion of personal anecdotes performed by stereotypes still recognizable now. This fascinating book provides today's reader with a real sense of how much and how little things have changed in the intervening century and a half.

The Elizabethan popular audience had a natural love of clowning, slapstick and the mayhem that was released when the rules of society were relaxed, broken or subverted. A play set on Midsummer Night and structured as a dream was going to be fun and full of the resonances associated with a festal day that had age old overtones of love, marriage, misrule and jolllity. Midsummer was traditionally celebrated with dancing and feasting and always involved secret assignations in the woods later when it was dark. Indeed, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play with a bit of everything – magic, moonlight, mayhem, love’s mad entanglements, fairies, mistakes, mechanicals as mummers, all set in the spookiness of the woods at midnight - and all of it provoking laughter.

The business of comedy was more important and serious than simply raising a laugh. It has always served a much graver purpose than mere humorous entertainment, but has also been regarded by religious, moral and cultural guardians as a lesser form than tragedy and a morally questionable one. In a world where society was strictly stratified even the arts had hierarchies. In painting devotional studies (Annunciations, Nativities, Crucifixions) were thought to be the highest endeavour, and historical subjects were thought superior to landscape and portraiture. Grotesque topics of common life (card-playing, village dances, tavern scenes) were thought of as very low art. In literature the epic poem, tragic drama, religious poetry, history plays, even lyrics and love verses were thought of as higher forms than mere comedy. Though the plays of Terence and Plautus were studied, translated and performed by schoolboys and undergraduates, and the satires of Juvenal and Horace were similarly on educational syllabuses, comedy was regarded with suspicion. It was thought to be a too vulgar form, too associated with the bourgeoisie and the commoners, too concerned with trickery, knavery and sex.

 It would not be amiss to re-title the play A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare, for, though matters in Athens are complicated and tense enough, the escape to the woods releases all manner of dark things and makes the entanglements even worse. The piece can be acted in two ways. The traditional approach has been to display it as a fast-moving, action-packed, farcical romp, a carnival of silliness; a light-hearted celebration of human foolishness, full of mistakes and misperceptions, nonsense and laughter, but turning out all right in the end, and not to be taken seriously as it is only a playful entertainment. It may also be seen as a play where oppressiveness, manipulation, misplaced love, hatred and menace dominate and the inconstancy of the human heart is disturbingly exposed. Hermia escapes from Egeus’ dictatorial threats only to find herself (and her complacent assumption of happiness to come in exile) at the mercy of forces she cannot control and does not understand. What happens in the woods is unsettling and represents the more frightening fears that lurk in the psyche and emerge in dreams. It is the woods that provoke the dream/nightmare element.

'Travelling Home' provides a detailed analysis of the contribution that the mid twentieth-century 'Walkabout' magazine made to Australia’s cultural history.  Spanning five central decades of the twentieth century (1934-1974), 'Walkabout' was integral to Australia’s sense of itself as a nation. By advocating travel—both vicarious and actual—'Walkabout' encouraged settler Australians to broaden their image of the nation and its place in the Pacific region. In this way, 'Walkabout' explicitly aimed to make its readers feel at home in their country, as well as including a diverse picture of Aboriginal and Pacific cultures. Like National Geographic in the United States, Walkabout presented a cornucopia of images and information that was accessible to a broad readership.

Given its wide availability and distribution, together with its accessible and entertaining content, 'Walkabout' changed how Australia was perceived, and the magazine is recalled with nostalgic fondness by most if not all of its former readers. Many urban readers learnt about Indigenous peoples and cultures through the many articles on these topics, and although these representations now seem dated and at times discriminatory, they provide a lens through which to see how contemporary attitudes about race and difference were defined and negotiated.

Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, 'Travelling Home' engages with key questions in literary, cultural, and Australian studies about national identity and modernity. The book’s diverse topics demonstrate how 'Walkabout' canvassed subtle and shifting fields of representation. Grounded in the archival history of the magazine’s production, the book addresses questions key to Australian cultural history. These include an investigation of middle-brow print culture and the writers who contributed to Walkabout, and the role of 'Walkabout' in presenting diverse and often conflicting information about Indigenous and other non-white cultures. Other chapters examine how popular natural history enabled scientists and readers alike to define an unique Australian landscape, and to debate how a modernising nation could preserve its bush while advocating industrial and agricultural development. While the nation is central to 'Walkabout' magazine’s imagined world, Australia is always understood to be part of the Pacific region in complex ways that included neo-colonialism, and Pacific content was prominent in the magazine. Through complex and nuanced readings of Australian literary and cultural history, 'Travelling Home' reveals how vernacular understandings of key issues in Australia’s cultural history were developed and debated in this accessible and entertaining magazine.

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. 

This book presents the very first analysis of male homosexuality in modern rural Thailand that is based on sociological/anthropological research directly with 25 young same-sex attracted men. It explores changes in the way men view and describe their sexuality over time by interviewing them three times over a period of around 18 months. The men are followed during an important transition in their lives: the end of their high school years and the end (in most cases) of their life as a child with parents or extended family at a rural home. Nearly all decided to move to a city to continue their education or to find work. Some also had stints with sex work in one of Thailand’s well-known centers for prostitution. For nearly all men, this transition brought them into contact with new ideas about gender and sexuality, and many experienced an abrupt increase in their opportunities to have sex, leading to a readjustment of their moral universes. The young men in the study were still in the process of figuring out who they were/wanted to be, and many contradictions emerged in their narratives over the period of data collection. These contradictions, and the way they were resolved, presented an opportunity to critically explore the way the social structures in which these young men operate influence the way they think and explain their own sexual/gendered selves, and how changes in these social structures affect their sense of self.

A number of explanatory ‘lenses’ are used in the different book chapters that zoom in on different structuring/explanatory frameworks for making sense of gender and sexuality in Thai cultural contexts, as used and applied by the study participants. The first is Buddhism. Buddhist beliefs and traditional ideas about karma, fate, hierarchy, family, masculinity and femininity played important roles in the young men’s childhood understandings about homosexuality and same-sex relations–  especially in terms of their cause and morality. The second lens for understanding male homosexuality in Thailand is gender, where men are divided into feminine-oriented bottoms and masculine-oriented tops. A third lens is modernity/the desire to develop and grow, closely linked to Thailand’s globalizing economy and the increasing role of the Internet and social media. The Internet functioned as an important ‘playground’, a platform for trying-out different presentations of the self via Facebook and chat applications – and in many men this resulted in a rejection of their previous self-presentation as effeminate, which they gradually started to associate with being backwards, rural and ‘traditional’. The fourth lens is related to economy. Many of the young men in the study searched for romantic relationships based on complementarity and were looking for boyfriends who had something they did not have—money, a better position in society, or ‘wisdom’/the ability to guide. Most of the more effeminate men saw their sexuality as valuable, and several of the study participants described in this book – especially those coming from poor families – engaged in sex work and used their youth and beauty to find a wealthy long-term partner, in the hope of lifting their families out of poverty, towards a more prosperous future. The fifth lens is nationalism, or more specifically the concept of ‘being a good Thai’; gradually the young men learned that the Thai sense of self and the importance of performing one’s role as a ‘good’ son in public can be used as a strategy to cover-up private behaviors and desires. The sixth and final lens is family. Being ‘good’, respecting elders and elder siblings, financially supporting (grand-)parents, having good manners, meaning ‘acting appropriately in time and space’, gave the young men a way to retain the respect and support of elders and seniors, and determined how they dealt with (non-)disclosure of their sexuality to their families and others and explained their ability and desire to remain part of the mainstream of society. In the final chapter, a discussion about three critical concerns pertaining the health and wellbeing of same-sex attracted Thai men are discussed in the light of this proposed model: the ongoing HIV epidemic, mental health and LGBTI rights. 

Overall, this book presents significant new insights about the Thai sex/gender system, particularly on how it is affected by processes of globalization and the ascent of the Internet and mobile phones as tools for dating and romance.

This study examines the significant roles of five women poets, in order of chronology: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, Mary Bailey, Caroline Leakey, Emily Manning, and Louisa Lawson. The work of these poets can outline the development of women’s poetry in Australia and internationally across the nineteenth century, and their inclusion radically alters current scholarship, rethinking the ways in which women poets, feminist politics, and the legacies of Romanticism relate to colonial poetry. Colonial poetry in Australia has generally been interpreted through a lens of oppositionality or insularity. 

These poets are examined through a transnational frame, which foregrounds challenges to women’s subjugation, and oppression relating to class, and race. Since studies of colonial Australian women writers have tended to focus on those writing novels or journals, women’s poetry of the period has received less critical attention. The highly gender-conscious writing of these poets reflects knowledgeable and innovative political dialogues that consistently demonstrate the global context of colonial women’s poetry. These poets often took what may be considered a cosmopolitan approach, which extended beyond British or emergent Australian nationalisms, in which gender was recognised as a unifying category far more than nation or Empire, extending their interests across ancient cultures, including Greek, Roman, and Indian, Italian, North American, French as well as European cultures, and sometimes incorporating discourses around slavery, indigeneity, and New- and Old-World dichotomies. 

This book is concerned with the related historical relationships of women’s political writing and gender to colonialism, literary romanticism, and emerging national identities. Themes explored in this study, demonstrating these poets’ access to a political discourse of gender and class, include abolitionism, Hellenism, eroticism and spiritualism. In prioritising the contributions of women, particularly through print culture, this study seeks to recognise colonial Australian women’s poetry as a transnational literature, politicised by its engagement with imperialist and nationalist discourses at a transnational level.

Thomas Pennant of Downing, Flintshire (1726–1798), naturalist, antiquarian and self-styled ‘Curious Traveller’, published accounts of his pioneering travels in Scotland and Wales to wide acclaim between 1769 and 1784, directly inspiring Dr Johnson, James Boswell and hundreds of subsequent tourists. A keen observer and cataloguer of plants, birds, minerals and animals, Pennant corresponded with a trans-continental network of natural scientists (Linnaeus, Simon Pallas, Joseph Banks, Gilbert White), and was similarly well-connected with leading British antiquarians (William Borlase, Francis Grose, Richard Gough). Frequently cited as witness or authority across a wide range of disciplines, Pennant’s texts have seldom been themselves the focus of critical attention. There is as yet no biography of Pennant, nor any edition of his prolific correspondence with many of the leading minds of the European Enlightenment.

The ‘Tours’ were widely read and much imitated. As annotated copies reveal, readers were far from passive in their responses to the text, and ‘local knowledge’ would occasionally be summoned to challenge or correct them. But Pennant indisputably helped bring about a richer, more complex understanding of the multiple histories and cultures of Britain at a time when ‘Britishness’ was itself a fragile and developing concept. Because the ‘Tours’ drew on a vast network of informants (often incorporating material wholesale), they are, as texts, fascinatingly multi-voiced: many of the period’s political tensions run through them.

This volume of eleven essays seeks to address the comparative neglect of Pennant’s travel writing by bringing together researchers from literary criticism, art history, Celtic studies, archaeology and natural history. Attentive to the visual as well as textual aspects of his topographical enquiries, it demonstrates how much there is to be said about the cross-currents (some pulling in quite contrary directions) in Pennant’s work. In so doing they rehabilitate a neglected aspect of the Enlightenment in relation to questions of British identity, offering a new assessment of an important chapter in the development of domestic travel writing.

Volkan is the vice director of an important financial company. He achieved success young, and has spent his life indulging in the worldly pleasures money can buy. But for all the fun money and success can bring, he has started to feel like something is missing from his life.

On his way home from a business trip to Europe, Volkan realizes he has picked up the wrong suitcase—one full of women’s clothing and priceless antiques. Enter Melike Eda, the owner of the suitcase—a jewellery maker, antiques expert, and an antiquities smuggler. She and Volkan hit it off, but will they be able to fill the empty spaces in each other’s lives?

Volkan also meets Eylem, a poet and blogger, who inspires him to make changes in his life. She has run away to the big city to escape her past, but things aren’t so easy for her as she struggles to make enough money and take care of her dependent sister.

‘Saffron Yellow’ follows the stories of these three people as they make their way through life, trying to find meaning and love.