Anthem Press

Bringing together the ideas of many philosophers, among others Hegel, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Deleuze and Derrida, the book aims to give a coherent synthesis of ideas about change and aims to see how one can take a process view of various features of humanity, such as knowledge, relations between people, language and morality, and how, vice versa, that might contribute to process philosophy. Beginning with evolution and moving on to consider knowledge in its dynamic aspect of learning, the book takes a process view of the individual and society.

Generalised Darwinism is discussed not only in terms of biology but also in economics, organisation, language and science in terms of interactors and replicators. The key processes of variety generation, selection and transmission are fundamentally different from those in biology. Therefore, a theory of knowledge and its change is presented that in some ways is similar to evolution but also different in important ways. This theory discusses neural Darwinism. It proposes how discovery might work, in a cycle of discovery, in an interchange of stability and change, and how differences in cognition work in the combination of different sources (cognitive distance). This theory is applied to knowledge, organisations and science. The discussion explains and applies the notions of entropy and organisational focus. Recognising that absolute, objective truth is problematic, it discusses the notion of warranted assertion. The notions of sense and reference are discussed in an explanation of meaning, and the notions of order and variety in terms of langue and parole, and the role of parole in poetry. The change of meaning is further developed in terms of the hermeneutic circle to deal with order and change of meaning. It uses the notion of a script and the hypothesis of an object bias.

Ethics and morality are explored by how the individual constructs their identity and develops in their tension between authenticity and conformity in society. Aristotle’s multiple causality of action is employed to discuss power and sources of dependence and ways to deal with them. Networks as a source of identity and the decentralisation of governance to communities are discussed along with the notion of restorative justice. The concluding chapter considers the historical development and the different forms of ethics and morality, in relation to institutions, and how in evolution an instinct for benevolence has developed and is related to the intrinsic next to extrinsic value of relationships.

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

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

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

As the first study of its kind, this book offers a new understanding of progressive women’s poetry in Urdu and the legacy of postcolonial politics. It underlines Urdu’s linguistic hybridities, the context of the zenana, reform, and rekhti to illustrate how the modernising impulse under colonial rule impacted women as subjects in textual form. It argues that canonical texts for sharif women from Mirat-ul Arus to Umrao Jan Ada need to be looked at alongside women’s diaries and autobiographies so that we have an overall picture of gendered lives from imaginative fiction, memoirs and biographies.

In the late nineteenth century, ideas of the cosmopolitan and local were in conversation with the secular and sacred across different Indian literatures. Emerging poets from the zenana can be traced back to Zahida Khatun Sherwania from Aligarh and Haya Lakhnavi from Lucknow who had very unique trajectories as sharif women. With the rise of anti-colonial nationalism, the Indian women’s movement gathered force and those who had previously been confined to the private sphere took their place in public as speaking subjects. The influence of the Left, Marxist thought and resistance against colonial rule fired the Progressive Writers Movement in the 1930s. The pioneering writer and activist Rashid Jahan was at the helm of the movement mediating women’s voices through a scientific and rational lens. She was succeeded by Ismat Chughtai, who like her contemporary Saadat Hasan Manto courted controversy by writing openly about sexualities and class. With the onset of partition, as the progressive writers were split across two nations, they carried with them the vision of a secular borderless world. In Pakistan, Urdu became an ideological ground for state formation, and Urdu writers came under state surveillance in the Cold War era. The study picks up the story of progressive women poets in Pakistan to try and understand their response to emerging dominant narratives of nation, community and gender. How did national politics and an ideological Islamisation that was at odds with a secular separation of church and state affect their writing? 

Despite the disintegration of the Progressive Writers Movement and the official closure of the Left in Pakistan, the author argues that an exceptional legacy can be found in the voices of distinctive women poets including Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Sara Shagufta, Parvin Shakir, Fahmida Riaz and Kishwar Naheed. Their poems offer new metaphors and symbols borrowing from feminist thought and a hybrid Islamicate culture. Riaz and Naheed joined forces with the women’s movement in Pakistan in the 1980s and caused some discomfort amongst Urdu literary circles with their writing. Celebrated across both sides of the border, their poetry and politics is less well known than the verse of the progressive poet par excellence Faiz Ahmed Faiz or the hard hitting lyrics of Habib Jalib. The book demonstrates how they manipulate and appropriate a national language as mother tongue speakers to enunciate a middle ground between the sacred and secular. In doing so they offer a new aesthetic that is inspired by activism and influenced by feminist philosophy. 

Julia Tanney’s Meaning, Mind, and Action mounts an overarching challenge to widely held presuppositions within the practice of philosophy in its classical ‘analytic’ forms as well as in its ‘naturalist’ and ‘cognitivist’ turns, expanding upon those introduced in Rules, Reason and Self-Knowledge (2013).

Influenced by arguments of Wittgenstein, Ryle, and others, Tanney confronts the ‘platitudes’ or unalterable starting points that implicitly or explicitly ground mainstream, philosophical theorising, beginning with the ideas first, that the meaning of a complex, natural language expression such as a sentence is determined by its structure and second, that the meaning of its constituents and that such content—which must remain stable across contexts—is needed to accommodate logical transformations (embeddings in, say, negational, conditional, or propositional attitude contexts) and inferential reasoning. Opposing the ideas that this semantic or propositional content is the bearer of truth or falsehood and that to grasp a concept is to be equipped with rules which fix the relation between an expression and its reference or extension, Tanney argues, by contrast, that our practices are logically prior to their codifications. Explanations, justifications, or the appeal to principles, rules, norms are not on the same logical footing as the moves they endorse; in particular, our successful linguistic practices are not causally explained by a prior grasp of ‘meanings’. Further, to appreciate the indefinite elasticity of most, if not all, natural language expressions is to accept that there may be nothing in common by which we call a thing by the same name. Not only does this subvert the idea that the essence of our concepts can be revealed by contextually transcendent application conditions; it undermines the idea that they function to signify facts, properties, events, or relations whose nature is to be revealed by metaphysical or philosophical-scientific speculation. Construing them so would destroy the saying and explanatory power of the expressions subsumed by these concept-nouns in natural language discourses.

The papers in this volume can be roughly divided between ‘the philosophy of mind’ and ‘the philosophy of language’. They are, however, united by the idea that this standard philosophical classification stands in the way of clear thinking about many of the core issues. With this, they are united by the idea that the notion of a human being must be central to any philosophical discussion of issues in this area, and by an insistence on an inescapably ethical dimension of any adequate discussion of these issues. None of the papers is well described as ‘exegetical’, but most of them are, in one way or another, papers about Wittgenstein, and all of them are discussions of themes central to his later work and strongly influenced by it. While the debt to Wittgenstein is enormous, many of the papers involve significant criticisms of ideas widely drawn from him, and some of these criticisms may have application to Wittgenstein himself.

The discussions of ‘the philosophy of mind’ are marked by an emphasis on the individual’s relations with others and, with that, by a detailed attention given to the human bodily form. Within the bodily form, the face is, both visually and through the voice, the locus of expression of our thoughts and feelings, and so central to our recognition of each other as beings who have thoughts and feelings. With this, it is central to the ‘attitude towards a soul’ of which Wittgenstein speaks: a phrase that highlights the centrality of an ethical dimension to any adequate philosophical treatment of our understanding of others. My relation to other creatures – both human and non-human – is distorted by the idea of an underpinning of the kind proposed in ‘the argument from analogy’; but it is distorted, too, by the idea (that we may take from Wittgenstein) that our seeing similarities between we human beings and dogs or giant squids is a condition of our ability to ascribe pain or fear to such creatures. A ‘phenomenological’ treatment of our perception of faces may be helpful in breaking down pervasive philosophical prejudices here. The irreducible sense in which the smile that we see is a smile on this face is intimately connected with Wittgenstein’s insistence on the importance of context for an ascription of thoughts and feelings: an insistence that brings out a fundamental incoherence in dominant, ‘reductive’, treatments of the notion of a persisting individual. This incoherence is intimately tied to a failure to leave a place for the notion of a particular individual, as opposed to kinds (transferable properties), in our thought about those whom we know and care for; and, with that, a failure to leave a place for anything recognisable as love. 

The notion of a human being links the discussions of mind and language through the relation between two themes in Wittgenstein: (i) the way in which the human enters into our thinking (‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’); (ii) the way in which our thinking is a reflection of our humanity. These relations are distorted by the emphasis on ‘rule following’ and the appeal to the idea of continuing an arithmetical series that has had a central place in discussions of language originating from Wittgenstein. Approaches from this perspective fail to do justice to the idea of speech as a form of interaction between people. Rush Rhees suggests that conversation provides a better model for thinking about language. To share a language with someone is to be able to speak with her. One aspect of Wittgenstein’s ‘attitude towards a soul’ is the demand to seek forms of contact with others: including, centrally, interaction in speech with others. Such interaction is crucially dependent on trust, and on the effort to sustain conversation in the face of the unlimited possibilities of its collapse: possibilities that find expression in philosophy in various forms of scepticism. Wittgenstein’s appeal to the idea that ‘justification comes to an end’ is potentially misleading in that it may obscure the possibilities of sustaining discussion in the face of such potential collapse. While much of what we say may run into the sand if pursued in certain directions, we may take one of the tasks of philosophy to be that of bringing out possibilities of a sense of forms we would not have anticipated: and so enhancing the links between us that are involved in conversation. We do well here to shift from the familiar question ‘What conditions must something satisfy in order to be a language?’ to the question ‘What is it seriously to think of – to acknowledge in practice - an individual or group as speaking?’ A focus on this question may cast in a clearer light the character and importance of questions about the language capacities of non-human creatures. The issues here are only well understood if we recognize the primacy of the ethical in our relations to such creatures: a point well illustrated by a remarkable study of the language capacities of bonobo.

The word “occupation” is not heard in classrooms on the Hebrew University campus, at the heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem. The “war outside” is not spoken of. Israeli and Palestinian students unsettle this denial for the first time in a practice-led course on human rights in the reality around them. 

Readers join the students for a walking tour of the Palestinian neighborhoods surrounding the Mt. Scopus campus to explore the complex relations between education, civil engagement, and the occupation. A short walk from the campus of the best university in Israel and one that is outstanding by global standards takes us to the neighboring village of Issawiyye. Here readers learn with the students about the poor education in East Jerusalem, where most youth have no access to higher education. The tour continues to Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood bordering the campus, where, after four decades of legal procedures, the Israeli courts authorized the police to evict Palestinian families from their homes so that Jewish settlers could occupy them. The tour then takes the students and readers to the abandoned village of Lifta. Here, in the magnificent historical village, Israeli and Palestinian students debate the 1948 Nakba and their own denial.

Back into the classroom on campus, when the past and present are discussed and the pain of others is acknowledged, Palestinian and Israeli students who engage with one another for the first time can share hope.

This book provides a sociological examination of gender issues concerning the evolving place and role of women in the world of heavy metal. Grounded in feminist theories of gender difference and in close dialogue with relevant thematic studies from various perspectives, the study specifically analyzes how women are perceived to ‘do gender’ by members of the heavy metal community, which has traditionally been largely composed of men and is commonly known for its hypermasculine qualities.

Relying on semi-structured interviews with self-identified fans of heavy metal, this work reveals that the respondents describe their music subculture as traditionally dominated by men. Yet, they also note distinct signs of the progress women have made in entering into and participating within the heavy metal culture on terms aspiring to equality with the men of their music community. 

Despite the changes that are perceived as legitimately positive for women, both in the world of heavy metal and in terms of women’s broader standing in society, gendered conditions driven by masculinity continue to exist for women in heavy metal. Even as women are slowly yet steadily finding their way to develop what might one day become, but as of now not yet is, a realized and acknowledged identity and culture of heavy metal feminism, patterns of masculinity continue to hamper gender equity in this area of popular culture.

Human liberation has become an epochal challenge in today’s world, requiring not only emancipation from oppressive structures but also from the oppressive self.  It is a multidimensional struggle and aspiration in which knowledge – self, social and spiritual – can play a transformative role. ‘Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations’ undertakes such a journey of transformation, and seeks to rethink knowledge vis-à-vis the familiar themes of human interest, critical theory, enlightenment, ethnography, democracy, pluralism, rationality, secularism and cosmopolitanism.

Knowledge today is imprisoned not only in structures of domination but also in varieties of dualisms – expert and the lay, cognitive and emotional – and thus we are in need of a new art of cultivating non-duality and wholeness. The present book seeks to nurture the garden of liberatory and transformational knowledge by presenting alternative pathways gathered from many different global locations and traditions. Discussing diverse thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo, Jürgen Habermas, Erasmus, Kant, Tocqueville, Gandhi, Foucault, Daya Krishna, Ramachandra Gandhi and Martha Nussbaum, this text seeks to rethink some important themes in the contemporary discourse of knowledge, including: knowledge as power; knowledge as emancipatory interest; evolution; rationality; power; freedom; anthropology; history; law; compassion and confrontation; epistemology; ontology; political consumerism and responsible consumption; civil society and self-development; and rights.

Offering a groundbreaking and interdisciplinary exploration of ideas about social transformation, ‘Knowledge and Human Liberation’ bridges both Eastern and Western philosophy to create a definition of transformative knowledge that defies Eurocentric thinking. Via the discourses of sociology, philosophy, religion and spirituality, the text rethinks the relationship between knowledge production and ideas to offer a unique perspective on the issue of human liberation in today’s oppressive world. The volume also features a Foreword by John Clammer (United Nations University, Tokyo) and an Afterword by Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame).

A Marxist scholar and historian, Irfan Habib has been a towering presence in the Indian intellectual scene for over four decades. His formidable intellectual reputation, established in the sixties with the publication of 'The Agrarian System of Mughal India', broadened as he became an authority in the entire area of Indian history from ancient to modern. Professor Habib's undiminished commitment to the cause of socialism is reflected in these highly original and bold analyses of Marxist historiography and theories of socialist construction.

This volume comprises essays from scholars around the world representing the wide variety of Habib's interests and contributions. Ranging from history to politics and economics, the essays cover both the medieval period and modern India, as well as theories for the future of this emerging superpower. This special edition also features an essay by Irfan Habib, originally published as 'The Economic History of Medieval India: A Survey', covering the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara economy and the economy of Mughal India.

This monograph is concerned with what it sees as two complementary phenomena: that of contemporary writers of fiction who seem to have turned their backs on the traditional novel in favour of what might be termed a radical realism, alongside a more general movement towards and interest in auto/biography and memoir in the post-truth era. By reviewing the work of four authors whose trajectory to date represents engagement with novelistic as well as auto/biographical forms, it reconsiders differences between ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’, as they pertain to both production and reception, including issues of generic categorization, the prevalence or exclusion of specific textual markers, and readerly expectations in navigating diverse and shifting literary cultures.

The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Min Kamp (My Struggle) series is considered in English translation in relation to its cross-cultural reception; it is also placed within the context of Knausgaard’s oeuvre as a whole. Some parallels between the work of Knausgaard and that of Rachel Cusk are drawn, though in the case of the latter the focus is not so much on the memoirs but on the Outline trilogy that followed the trilogy of memoirs and the extent to which it represents both a departure from and a continuation of some of the concerns expressed in previous non-fictional works with a specific focus on Aftermath. 

Comparison of Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiographical debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, with her memoir entitled Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? allows for close textual reading of scenes initially treated in novelistic form and revisited in the memoir permitting discussion of points of similarity and difference in their treatment in relation to the constraints and affordances of genre, where these apply. Discussion of Xiaolu Guo’s memoir, Once Upon A Time in the East, focusses both on its cross-cultural reception and on the place of the memoir within the Guo corpus.In some ways all four writers are less concerned with traditional aspects of story and more concerned to deploy a range of forms, including narrative, to serve their interest in broader questions of truth, agency and self-understanding. 

This critical study examines the theme of interpersonal encounter in a range of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century travel writing written in French and Italian. Structured typologically, each chapter focuses on a typical activity that brings traveller-protagonists into contact with those they encounter: guiding and interpreting, hosting, staring and photography, challenging, and accompanying. Drawing on a wide variety of writing, the study offers a unique focus on this central but overlooked aspect of travel, demonstrating the key place that encounter occupies in the contemporary travel culture.

With reference to the literary critical study of travel writing, sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of tourism, as well as research in French and Italian area studies, the volume locates encounter firmly within the context of modern tourism. Elucidating the nature of encounter in unprecedented ways, the study demonstrates how the treatment of encounter determines the generic boundaries of travel writing and how narratives of encounter reveal the gap between ideals and practices in travel. The volume also analyses the dynamics between the traveller and ‘travellee’, as they are represented in narrative form, re-evaluating traditional notions of the traveller’s power and examining the potential for travellee agency, with particular reference to discourses of authenticity and ethics.

Social Ecology is an emerging concept situated in the field of critical social theory and new integrative sciences that addresses the complex and interrelated relationship between nature and society, offering a perspective on how environmental issues are embedded in a social context. Border landscapes are loosely defined as interstitial spaces between territories or societies, in conflict or in competition, with fixed or moving boundaries. Scholars involved in Critical Border Studies employ interdisciplinary approaches to the study of borders, often charting new territories (scapes) to analyze and intervene in the complex geography of border zones. Adding to the flourishing literature and rising interest in borders, this volume on the social ecology of border landscapes examines case studies and examples of projects that highlight such borders within a social-ecological framework. Social Ecology as a critical social theory was originally founded by Murray Bookchin as a critique of social, political and anti-ecological trends. Other proponents of a social-ecological approach (such as Samantha Stone-Jovicich, and Michael Fabinyi, Louisa Evans, and Simon J Foale) use a less idealistic approach to social ecology than that of Bookchin, urging us to consider the important role of space and its bio-geophysical characteristics that spur both ecological and social change. This attention to locally-defined spaces—be it along the Israeli wall, former Berlin wall or the Korean Demilitarized Zone— yields important human-environmental interactions and consequences that form the basis for a social ecological interpretation of environmental adaptation and change. Social ecology as a framework has expanded to include Social-Ecological Systems (SES), which emerged from critical social and resilience theories as a means of addressing the adaptive and complex structures and processes of the social and natural world.

This edited volume is a collection of essays from a wide range of disciplines that address social-ecological systems, namely in the marginal spaces, landscapes and territorial interfaces of border zones. From theoretical and conceptual presentations on social ecology and its related actions or agency, to case studies and concrete projects and initiatives, the book uncovers a thread of contemporary thought and action on the important emerging field of border ecologies within the larger realm of critical border studies. The authors are worldwide scholars and practitioners from the fields of politics, ecological and environmental sciences, social sciences, geography, and urban and landscape planning. The publication explores how social agency (i.e. social action) can activate ecological processes and systems, creating new sustainable landscapes across tangible and intangible territorial rifts. To overcome the negative impacts of border creation and/or behaviors, the tangible and territorial, as well as the intangible social and cognitive manifestations of the rift must be addressed.

A practical, easy-to-read guide that aims to help undergraduate students cope with the demands of English and Creative Writing degrees.

Written by lecturers and industry professionals with decades of experience in writing and higher education, this book also includes hints and tips from previous students. Find out what your tutors are looking for when marking your work, how to avoid common pitfalls, what the difference between clear and creative writing is, how to organise and behave on your work placement, and how to structure and research that all-important first assignment.

This guide demystifies academic language and marking processes so that you can make the most of your degree.

‘The Constitution of Shelley’s Poetry’ is a close philosophical reading of ‘Prometheus Unbound’ from the perspective of the argument or drama of language played out in its pages. At its heart a four-chapter reading of ‘Prometheus Unbound’, the book is punctuated with readings of other Shelley works and prefaced with two earlier chapters: one on 'Mont Blanc' and 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', the companion poems inaugurating Shelley’s poetic maturity; the other on 'Ode to the West Wind' originally published with ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and here represented as 'signature' Shelley. The book’s one most distinguishing feature, from which several others derive, is its bringing the power and pertinence of Stanley Cavell’s thought to Shelley’s poetry and to his explicitly articulated philosophical interest in language.

The book urges and practises close reading, but it provides philosophical grounds for this ostensibly old-fashioned approach, and it implicitly proposes an understanding of language very different from those now most generally assumed in literary studies. The book’s bringing of Cavell’s thought to Shelley’s poetry would make two related but distinguishable contributions. There is, first of all, the reading of Shelley’s poetry, which is new and persuasive both in many of its local moments and in its overall thrust. Second, there is the practical demonstration of the relevance and yield of Cavell’s thought for literary studies.

The expansion of Mumbai over the last four centuries has been documented in great detail by both contemporary writers and historians, yet this narrative stands out as an alternative, unique and authentic voice. Quite simply, it is a book about the city like no other. Govind Narayan’s ‘Mumbaiche Varnan’ was the first full account of Mumbai in any language, written just before the explosive growth and renovation of the city.

Guiding the reader on a tour of the sights and sounds of an emerging city struggling to shake off colonialism and wrestling with the formation of its own budding identity, Narayan’s beguiling book offers descriptions of Mumbai’s daily life, its people and its institutions: the parts of the whole that come together to create this diverse and vivacious place. In addition to a detailed structural overview, the author provides a ground level account of the street life and market places rife with gambling and criminal activity. In every sense, this valuable text is a rare and enthralling glimpse into a fascinating period and place otherwise lost to time.

Translated into English for the first time, and fully illustrated and with a detailed glossary and biography of the author, this edition does full justice to this remarkable historical document.

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019) was one of the most influential yet controversial sociologists of the past half-century, known for both his central theoretical contribution of the “world-system” perspective and his wide-ranging empirical investigations into world capitalism, modernity, globalization, nationalism, development, Eurocentrism, anti-systemic movements and social change, among many other topics. Given Wallerstein’s recent passing – as well as his abiding call to “unthink” or “open” the orthodox social sciences – the time is ripe to reflect upon the depth and breadth of his legacy, and to examine the enduring relevance and acuity of his life and writings. The Anthem Companion to Immanuel Wallerstein offers an authoritative overview of Wallerstein’s contribution to political and historical sociology; critical and novel readings of central themes in Wallerstein’s work; and up-to-date assessments of debates regarding Wallerstein’s impact on the social sciences and humanities.

In the Companion, an international assembly of leading interpreters explore a wide range of Wallerstein’s work from a variety of sociological angles and situate his scholarly contributions in relation to contemporary world challenges. The contributions in this book place Wallerstein’s prolific output at the center of their analyses in order to elucidate both world-systems analysis as a theoretical and methodological approach, and the world-system itself as a complex sociological phenomenon. The chapters first explore the context and genesis of Wallerstein’s intellectual development, the central sociological, historical and political concepts Wallerstein devised and deployed to make sense of the modern world-system, and the key contributions he made to sociological analysis, before then taking up the question of how Wallerstein’s work can be critically utilized in light of new global challenges such as decolonization, gender inequality, climate change, pandemic capitalism, and the changing character of geopolitics in the 21st century world-system.

Overall, The Anthem Companion to Immanuel Wallerstein provides the most convenient and accessible guide to Wallerstein currently available for students, teachers, and researchers across the social sciences and humanities.

Yoshio Kita’s hopelessness and lack of faith in his future as an ordinary and lonely company worker crystallizes into a decision to take his own life, in what he calls ‘execution by Death by Choice’. His only remaining problem is how to spend both his remaining self-allocated seven days on earth and all his worldly money, in this darkly comic exploration of the cult of suicide in Japan, a country with one of the world’s highest rates of suicide. From fine dining with a former porn actress to insuring his life, from pursuing his ex-girlfriend to an entanglement with an assassin, Yoshio’s last seven days on earth take on unexpected twists and turns as Shimada asks his readers what it means to have the freedom to end your own life, and what becomes truly important when your days are numbered – even if it is by free choice.

Sensitively translated by Meredith McKinney, this tale of a very modern Japan is now for the first time available to English readers.   Sensitively translated by Meredith McKinney, this tale of a very modern Japan is now for the first time available to English readers.  

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.

The Roxburghe Club, founded in 1812, has an unbroken publishing history from 1814 to the present day. Since the Club’s edition of ‘Havelok the Dane’ appeared in 1828, the Roxburghe has gained a reputation as a producer of beautifully printed editions of manuscripts and reprinted early books. The founding period of the Club, however, has been viewed with less approval, often seen as a frivolous, unscholarly period of wasted years when little of value was produced by a membership composed of dilettante aristocrats.

This work offers a new narrative of the formative years of the Roxburghe Club, for the bibliomania of the Romantic period and for early nineteenth-century antiquarian culture and its relationship to the emergent popularity and status of English vernacular literature. It addresses what is shown to be a long-repeated myth: what the Club was and whether its scholarship and editing of early English literature merited respect or mockery. The book covers the make-up and membership of the Club including social and political affinities, literary and scholarly achievements and the substantial contribution made by the Club to widening awareness and understanding of earlier English writers and the establishment of a canon of English literature. This revised history offers an alternative narrative for the move between antiquarian and scholarly areas of influence in the study of English literature, and offers a plausible mechanism for the growing acceptance of vernacular English literature, both in academia and in a more general cultural sense.

'Rural India Facing the 21st Century' is a unique study of rural development in South India, concluded over a twenty-year period. Set against the context of international, national and state policies, the book focuses on a wide number of themes, including the stagnation of the ‘green revolution’, growing differentiation and inequality, the ecological crisis, resistance to reform, corruption and the enduring need for state intervention in rural development. Written by an international team of young scholars under the direction of Dr Harris-White, 'Rural India Facing the 21st Century' draws together a profound analysis of a broad range of issues to provide a masterly overview of overall rural development. Its highly original methodology and findings will be of considerable interest for development policy.

This book presentsa comprehensive but succinct overview of the theoretical background, major concepts, perspectives, and contemporary application and debates in social stratification. It begins by considering what stratification means, discussing forms of social inequality as historical constructions. The book then moves into the theories that shape how people think about the division of a social order into different positions. It examines ear;uviews of social inequality by different thinkers. The book then examines how the sociological theories set frameworks for thinking about stratification and suggests an environmental approach as a way of unifying these theories. 

After a detailed consideration of the key concepts of stratification, the book focuses on contemporary stratification, using the United States as an example. A growing economic divide is one of the most notable features of the contemporary situation. The main features of this situation are globalization and the dominance of technology-finance as environmental features, an increase in immigration and demographic change, and a cultural divide linked to economic and demographic change. 

The book goes further into contemporary stratification with a discussion of the categorical inequalities of race and ethnicity, gender, social class, and intersectional combinations. It then considers possible causes of inequality, including discrimination, culture, education, and social networks. A concluding chapter considers questions of politics and power and possible policy responses to stratification. This chapter ends by encouraging readers to think about the redistribution of social, political, and economic resources.

'London: A Pilgrimage' was conceived in 1868 by the journalist and playwright Blanchard Jerrold. Accompanied by the famous artist Gustave Doré, Jerrold prowled every corner of the heaving metropolis, sometimes with plain-clothes police for protection. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is a forgotten classic of social journalism, a frank and brutal look at the poverty striken, gin-swilling London of the nineteenth century, written in a perceptive, bold and gripping style.

180 incredible etchings by Doré escort Jerrold on his odyssey through the pulsating city, into the Lambeth gas works, seedy opium dens and grubby bathing houses; peering curiously into the desperate lives of the flower sellers, lavender girls and organ grinders. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is an enlightening work that brings to life the chaotic and gloomy past of a great city on the cusp of modern times.

Peter Ackroyd's excellent introduction sheds further light on the period and the context in which Jerrold and Doré felt compelled to reveal to the world the squalor into which London was slowly sinking.

The publication of the National Atlas of Finland in 1899 marks the beginning of the era of the modern national atlas. It is a period that coincides neatly with the twentieth century. The modern national atlas mirrors and embodies some of the important themes of this turbulent century, including the complex connections between nation, state and territory, the rise of state-sponsored science; the growth of nation-states; the geography of biopolitics. 

Between 1900 and 2000, more than seventy countries produced a national atlas, an official or quasi-official rendering of the nation-state in maps and accompanying text. A useful working definition of a national atlas is “a generally comprehensive, officially sanctioned single-country atlas.” This book considers the reasons behind and characteristics of this state-sponsored cartographic explosion. The changing form of the national atlas provides an intriguing window into the connections between science, state, territory and power.

The primary material for this study is a close reading of thirty-seven of these national atlases from countries across the world. They represent a wide range of countries from rich to poor, progressive to regressive, and capitalist to communist. In total, these atlases provide a range of different state arrangements and national experiences. 

It is the period just before the First World War. The multilingual, multifaith and multicultural Ottoman Empire is facing ruin and annihilation. Şehsuvar Sami is a young man from the city of Salonika whose dream is to move to Paris with his lover Ester and become a writer. However, the uprisings that begin in July 1908 in the Balkans are set to change his destiny, just as they will change the destiny of the entire country. A bit part in an assassination eventually turns him into one of the uprising’s most feared hitmen. Caught between his love of literature and the dark world of politics and struggling to find the strength to resist the pull of history, Şehsuvar ends up becoming a key figure in the new government’s intelligence network. His aim now is not to write novels that will draw people into a world of decency and beauty but to carry out his duties as a servant of the nation and defend his country, even if that means committing murder, mass murder. The reasoning is simple: in order to create a strong and independent country, one must be ready to commit atrocities.

Taking place in Istanbul, Salonika, Paris and Macedonia between 1908 and 1926, ‘Farewell, My Beautiful Homeland’ is the story of lives that have been turned upside down by rebellion, revolution and war. It is the story of the Greek declaration of independence, of the Jews of Salonika being forced into exile, of the Bulgarians fighting for their independence and of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the struggle to create a new nation out of its crumbling ruins. It is also the story of one man’s search for his true calling amidst the chaos of a turbulent historical era, the story of a man caught between his love for his country and his love for his woman. ‘Farewell, My Beautiful Homeland’ is a story of unfulfilled dreams and the call of history. And underpinning it all is one fundamental question, one fundamental struggle: which takes precedence – the state or the people?

In April 1968, ten months after the Arab defeat of the 1967 June War, Aref El-Rayess’s Dimaʾ wa Hurriyya (Blood and Freedom) opened to the public in the exhibition hall of the L’Orient newspaper headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon. The 5th of June, or, The Changing of Horses, a realist mural painting on canvas, was the exhibition’s centerpiece. With this artwork, El-Rayess declared his commitment to national liberation and socialist revolution. The Changing of Horses was presented and received as an allegory of political commitment, but the slips, silences, and repetitions in the public reception point to its excessive, disturbing, and fundamentally uncanny character. In Commitment in the Artistic Practice of Aref El-Rayess, the first comprehensive study of the work, Natasha Gasparian weaves together a social art history from the artist’s writings, exhibition reviews, guestbook comments, personal correspondences and testimonies, as well as social, political, and aesthetic shifts, particularly as they related to the debates on commitment (iltizam) in the aftermath of the June 1967 war. By attempting to reconstruct this history of the artwork and tracing the caesuras in the discourse around it, Gasparian exposes the social antagonism that is repressed and obfuscated in the idealized narrative sustained by El-Rayess and his audiences. She argues that the oversight in the reception—the critics’ and audiences’ inability to see—attests to the delay in grasping the work historically and signals its avant-gardism.

‘Hometown Hamburg’ explores the problem of social order in modern German urban history. It argues that institutionalized normative structures are the bedrock of temporal continuity in German history. In an era of various linguistic and cultural ‘turns’ historians have lost the theoretical and analytical ability to explain events over the long term. Their accounts and explanations of human activity and historical processes usually rest on an unexamined behaviourist psychological model where simple instrumental self-interest drives individual decision-making. As a result they reduce communal social action to individual preferences conditioned by external contingent events.

Such an epistemological viewpoint has prevented historians from taking seriously the notion and reality of a ‘bürgerliche’ social order, not in the sense of a bourgeois-dominated class system, but in terms of what the historian Mack Walker has defined as a “hometown” conception of communal solidarity. Belief in the value of a bürgerliche social order has provided the institutionalized basis for the remarkable continuity of German and Hamburg handicraft over time. Its norms and values have been shared by forces from all strata of society, who, like artisans, were committed to a ‘rooted’ notion of local community that in Walker’s terminology preserved the ‘webs and walls’ of occupational estate cohesion and parity in the face of ‘outsiders’ (Standeslose) or ‘disturbers’ (Störer).

The corporate politics of both occupational estate and the bürgerliche social order in which it was embedded played a key role in the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism, and may yet endanger democracy in Germany once again. The division of Hamburg and Germany into irreconcilable social and moral trenches, to use Jürgen Kocka’s trenchant phraseology, based on adversarial images of social good and social community, produced, in the words of the sociologists Rainer C. Baum and Frank J. Lechner, a society of extreme ‘value dissensus’, whose members were essentially ‘moral strangers’ to each other. It was in this anomic context that National Socialism became an acceptable political alternative. Nazi spokesmen intrinsically understood the meaning of Walker’s ‘webs and walls’ of local community and opposed those whom they defined as disturbers of domestic peace and social harmony. National Socialism was able to offer a cross-section of social and economic groups, stretching in a city-state like Hamburg from a free trading commercial elite through the artisan master in his workshop into the ranks of the craft-trained skilled worker in the shipyard and factory, complete and comfortable integration into a very familiar hometown social order – one that they grew up with, whose logic they could understand, whose morality they could trust and whose roots reflected the continuity of history.

Sociologists and social theorists use the term ‘social’ frequently. We talk of social relations, social media, social networks, social factors, and so on, as well as ‘the social’. But do we always know what we mean or what we are invoking when we deploy the term ‘social’?

The concept of the ‘social’ has often been treated as almost self-explanatory, inherited from the works of the instigators of sociology and social theory who, it is assumed, all meant the same thing by the term. ‘Rethinking the Social’ argues that this is not the case, and that there are major differences between their approaches. This the first book to systematically analyse the different concepts of the social developed by Durkheim, Marx and Weber. It examines how the concept of the social became unproblematic for twentieth-century writers and suggests that debates surrounding this concept remain very much alive. Building on A. N. Whitehead’s work, Halewood develops a novel ‘philosophy of the social’.

This book gives the first no-nonsense, hands-on account of the financing principles and perspectives for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), the new kid on the block in the battle against climate change. NAMAs are finding their own identity, and most importantly, finding a new financial basis without relying on a carbon market and carbon credit. While the NAMA model may be the right instrument at the right time, it is spawned from the climate change negotiation sphere that continues to suffer from its lack of interaction with the other spheres involved in its actual deployment. Despite 20 years of negotiations, a barrier remains between concept and action. The disconnect is first and foremost between the political sphere and the private-sector sphere, and is particularly rooted in the understanding – or misunderstanding – of finance. This book bridges the gap by addressing policymaking and private sector financing in one volume. It disarms myths, hides nothing behind political correctness and applies a good measure of common sense to advance guidance for the financing of actions that will allow developing countries, having become the prime source of greenhouse gas emissions, to contribute to the global battle against climate change.

The sumptuous Topkapı Palace in eighteenth century Istanbul is a place of breathtaking splendour where human foibles, love, lust and above all greed reign supreme in the lives of a sultan, a painter, a grand vizier and some of the world’s most beautiful women. [NP] Imperial favour has raised a graceful blossom to the symbol of a time that history would later name the Tulip Era. Sultan Ahmed III reigns over a still vast empire as his close companion and Chief Imperial Painter Levnî creates exquisite works of art. But real power lies with his trusted Grand Vizier İbrahim Pasha. In the background, the radiant denizens of the imperial harem fight for supremacy in their cloistered universe. [NP] How will history record Sultan Ahmed III? Hedonist, aesthete or reformer? What will happen to his descendants? [NP] Levnî barely remembers his own Christian family before he was selected as a child tribute and raised into high office by the mighty Ottoman Empire. But who is he really? [NP] Will the Grand Vizier’s quest for ultimate power yield results? [NP] How does an imperial wife justify her own wickedness? [NP] And conversely, what makes another so loyal for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer? [NP] For whose shadow will the tulip gardens long when their world comes crashing down? [NP] 'Unto the Tulip Gardens: My Shadow' is a novel founded on historical fact woven by the silken yarn of imagination. 

The pace of growth in the Philippines is slower than that of many neighbouring countries, and despite increasing growth in the period before the current global financial crisis, domestic investment remained weak, and had a declining share in gross domestic product. Understanding limits to growth in the Philippines’ economy and how they may be counteracted is crucial for policy makers seeking to encourage economic development.

‘Diagnosing the Philippine Economy’ investigates the binding constraints on economic development, by following a growth diagnostics approach. Articles within this collection cover the areas of macroeconomic management; trade, investments, and production; infrastructure, human capital; equity and the social sector; poverty reduction efforts; and governance and political institutions. The studies’ findings provide insight for politicians, academicians, and economists into the issues and their potential solutions.

The Unspoken Morality of Childhood: Family, Friendship, Self-Esteem and the Wisdom of the Everyday reflects the thoughts of a senior ethicist. Each essay begins with a homey essay about the kind of everyday event that happens to everyone and then proceeds to discuss the ethical issues raised by such an event. The manuscript is interdisciplinary, located at the intersection of ethics, political psychology, moral psychology, philosophy, and political science/political theory. It uses stories to teach ethics and falls in the virtue ethics approach to ethics, making it perfect as a supplementary text for introductory courses to philosophy, moral psychology and political theory.

The manuscript discusses complex ethical concepts such as identity, agency, self-esteem, forgiveness, relations with our parents, dealing with loss, the moral imagination, and a wide range of other issues that people confront every day.

One of the essays, “Walnut”, tells a story about the author’s visiting her grandparents in a small, Midwestern town. This is turned into a discussion of the need for roots, how children formulate their sense of self, and how politicians like Donald Trump can turn the love of family and nostalgia for the past into a vicious tool in politics in which clever politicians exploit fears of foreigners and people who are “not like us.” Another essay describes a tired mother reading a piece of science fiction late at night, given to her by one of her children. A story by Olivia Butler asks why a black woman should be interested in science fiction and shows the value of the moral imagination, as science fiction reveals how those who can imagine alternate realities can then alert us to new possibilities, and better worlds. As Robert Kennedy was wont to ask: Some see the world as it is, and ask why. I imagine the world as it could be, and ask why not? The essay uses this prompt to discuss the importance of the moral imagination and the ability some have to conceptualize their way out of a dilemma that can plague others.

Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour have been accorded little critical examination, the sole exception being the explanation in the Tractatus of the logical impossibility of a point in the visual field having two colours simultaneously, a gap the present work is primarily meant to fill. Remarks on Colour, a compilation of writings on the subject drafted in the last fifteen months of Wittgenstein’s life, is subjected to sustained critical scrutiny and is shown that it does not deserve to languish in the limbo to which it has been mostly consigned, but it indeed is deeper and more illuminating than other more studied writings, to say nothing of peripheral writings on ethics, aesthetics and religion.

The Remarks would warrant a careful look if only because it is, as it has been billed, ‘one of the few documents which shows [Wittgenstein] concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue’. But it also deserves special consideration and is worth grappling with since it shows Wittgenstein thinking through a problem from scratch and, what is still less common, without knowing where he will end up. In particular no other extended stretch of writing so clearly shows him as engaged in an unconstrained investigation of a topic of huge general interest and setting the agenda for philosophers, indeed as pioneering a still insufficiently investigated subject. And following in his footsteps pays since it brings to light a great deal about how he approaches philosophy and proves to be a good way into the philosophy.

Wittgenstein’s once said: ‘Sometimes a sentence can be understood only if it is read at the right tempo’, and the present work takes him at his word and accords him the courtesy of treating his own sentences as ‘all to be read slowly’. His remarks are examined one by one in the order he wrote them rather than the order they appear in the published text with close attention to his toing-and-froing and changes of tack. The result is a picture of a serious philosopher at work, one grappling with rare scrupulousness to a series of problems. Just as importantly one sees that the thrust of his deliberations is routinely misidentified, that there are significant similarities as well as significant differences between his late and early thinking about colour, and that much folklore, both laudatory and disparaging, that has sprung up regarding the thinness of his reasoning and the thickness of his conclusions is substantially off-base.

Australia has a fascinating history of visions. As the antipode to Europe, the continent has provided a radically different and uniquely fertile ground for envisioning places, spaces and societies. ‘The Antipodal Utopia’ evaluates this complex intellectual history by mapping out how Western visions of Australia evolved from antiquity to the modern period, with particular focus on the long nineteenth century. The book is underpinned by the provocative argument that due to its unique ‘antipodality’ (its antipodal relationship with Europe), Australia is imagined as a particular form of utopia – but since one person’s utopia is, more often than not, another’s dystopia, Australia’s utopian quality is both complex and highly ambiguous. Drawing on the rich field of utopian studies, ‘The Antipodal Utopia’ provides an original and insightful study of Australia’s place in the Western imagination and makes meaningful conceptual and analytical contributions to the fields of utopian theory, Australian studies and intellectual history.

If governments and policymakers agree on the principles of responsibility to protect (R2P), then why do they continue to ignore them and deal with violations of human rights ineffectively? ‘Responsibility to Protect and Prevent: Principles, Promises and Practicalities’ explores the evolution of R2P, a principle which – according to its supporters – has evolved into a new type of responsive norm for how the international community should react to serious and deliberate human rights violations. Arguing that the R2P ethos has been misunderstood and used ineffectively, this work defends the validity of R2P and urges for a more practical understanding that moves beyond theory.

The progression of R2P from an initial concept to formal ratification has been a very difficult one, with a great deal of disagreement over its validity as a substantive norm in international affairs. The disagreement is not that protection or prevention are unimportant, nor that the international community does not have at least some responsibility to try to stop extreme human rights violations. Rather, it is primarily about how the fine-sounding R2P principles are supposed to work in practice, and the utility of such principles when governments and policymakers continue to ignore the basic premise of protection.

This volume presents a number of important arguments that are directly related to the state vs. human security debate, with a critical analysis of the nexus between the protection verses prevention theses Through the case study of the Libyan Crisis, Janzekovic and Silander offer an example of the discrepancy and confusion regarding how R2P should be applied in practice, and support the claim that prevention should be more than an adjunct to protection.

The aim of this book is to broaden our understanding of technological change by adopting the concept of technological retrogression. With reference to concrete cases of technological retrogression a new conceptual framework is developed. Extensive fieldwork in Sri Lanka and Malaysia forms the empirical fundament. A new method of reconstructing technological change is furthermore developed. The book contains a detailed account of the work history method, which is designed to capture changes over time where there are no statistical data available. The book contains a thorough examination of central theories of socio-economic transitions in developing countries, searching for an explanation of instances where modernization reverses. 

The exposition aims at contrasting retrogressive economic dynamics of technological change to progressive dynamics as developed by Schumpeter. At one extreme in the dimension of technological change, capital-strong production units innovate their way out of the recession through technological progress, adopting more advanced production equipment that improves productivity. Following Schumpeterian progressive dynamics, virtuous spirals of growth result. At the other end we find the producers that resort to technological retrogression, which secures survival, but which result in low labour productivity, diminishing the possibility of capital accumulation and thus modernization that could form an escape from poverty. Vicious spirals of decline result, which is the book’s main object of analysis. The theory is, thus, a contribution to understanding the anatomy of recessions.

The contention is, thus, that a choice of technology of production may lead to reduced productivity and economic decline. The concept of technological change should, therefore, not be equated solely with productivity improvements and economic development. Producers who experience technological retrogression may find themselves in the paradoxical situation of earning more by producing less, a paradox which is addressed in this book. Furthermore, where technological retrogression involves a return to organization of production of the past, this may affect the political leverage of labour, curbing social progress. Reversal of modernization, technological and organizational, is linked closely to marginalization of producers and increased social inequality. Lock-in of producers, both technologically and geographically, into activities characterised by diminishing returns, is considered a major precondition of technological retrogression. Therefore, the phenomenon is thought most likely to occur during periods of economic decline, recessions or during prolonged crises.

Almost all industrial countries have undergone strategies to maintain, or improve, competitiveness in order to improve the standard of living of their population, particularly during the last quarter-century or so. But how have they treated developing countries? ‘Competitiveness and Development’ explains how developing countries can attain competitiveness at a high level of development, examines the possibilities and constraints in achieving it, and proposes remedial measures at the national and international levels.

The author Mehdi Shafaeddin illustrates how developed countries impose restrictive policies on developing countries through international financial institutions and the WTO, as well as regional and bilateral agreements, thereby limiting their policy space for promoting dynamic comparative advantage in order to achieve competitiveness at a high level of development. Such policies, the author argues, lock developing countries that are at the early stages of development in specialization in primary commodities, or at best simple processing and assembly operations in accordance with their static comparative advantage.

To support this argument, the author critically examines the neoclassical theory of economics, which is the philosophy behind the principle of static comparative advantage as well as the policy stances of international financial institutions and the WTO. The author also reviews the historical experience of developed countries through industrialization, development and achieving competitiveness based on the principle of dynamic comparative advantage. In this context, he explains the importance of trade and industrial policies and the role of government in human resource development, innovation and technological development. To illustrate his case, the author compares the contrasting experiences of China and Mexico since the 1980s, during which time globalization has been intensified.

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) was one of the preeminent sociologists of his time. He is widely recognized for his major contributions to a number of fields, including general sociology, sociology of organizations, industrial sociology, sociology of law, and moral sociology. He was a Professor of Sociology (and later a Professor of Law and Sociology) at the University of California, Berkeley from 1952 until his (notional) retirement in 1984. He founded the Center for the Study of Law and Society (in 1961) and the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program (in 1978), both at UC Berkeley. The Law and Society Center and the JSP Program are still thriving. Over the years they have brought legions of students and scholars from all over the world to Berkeley, and then sent them in turn to many of the world’s great universities.

Selznick published his first book, TVA and the Grass Roots, in 1949; his last book, A Humanist Science, appeared in 2008. In between he wrote The Organizational Weapon (1952); Leadership in Administration (1957); Law, Society, and Industrial Justice (1969); Law and Society in Transition (1978, with Philippe Nonet); The Moral Commonwealth (1992), which he considered his magnum opus; and The Communitarian Persuasion (2002). These books, and the numerous contributions he published in edited volumes and academic journals, reflect the exceptionally broad scope of his interests. His intellectual strength also stands out in Sociology, the textbook he wrote together with Leonard Broom. This textbook came out in 1955 and went through seven editions, the last one published in 1981. For some thirty years, it was the best sold sociology textbook, not just in the United States but worldwide.

In the ten chapters of The Anthem Companion to Philip Selznick, three recurrent themes stand out. First, in all chapters much attention is devoted to Selznick’s impressive professional and intellectual range and to his lasting influence in a number of major fields of sociology. Second, throughout these ten chapters, the question recurs whether Selznick markedly changed his sociological or political perspectives in the course of his career, or whether there is a basic continuity and coherence in his preoccupations and convictions throughout his life. Third, while in the first chapter Selznick’s intellectual predisposition is linked to the particular circumstances of his younger years and student days, and in the last chapter it is argued that Selznick’s distinctive intellectual perspective can best be ascribed to his “ecumenical sensibility,” all the chapters in between make substantive contributions to revealing the importance of the humanist impulse underlying Selznick’s sociology.

In order to capture the spirit of this towering sociologist, this man of all seasons, the book devotes one of the chapters to a historical symposium, in which Selznick himself responds to critics of his magnum opus, The Moral Commonwealth. The other nine chapters of this volume have a different background. They embody the legacy of Selznick’s humanist science. They come from different corners of the academic world: sociology, organization studies, law, political science, philosophy. But they all cross disciplinary boundaries, bridge disciplinary divides, and display an awareness of and respect for Selznick’s humanist sensibility. Selznick would have felt very comfortable in this company. In that sense, all the chapters of The Anthem Companion to Philip Selznick are true companions to Selznick’s sociology.

This critical study examines the theme of interpersonal encounter in a range of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century travel writing written in French and Italian. Structured typologically, each chapter focuses on a typical activity that brings traveller-protagonists into contact with those they encounter: guiding and interpreting, hosting, staring and photography, challenging, and accompanying. Drawing on a wide variety of writing, the study offers a unique focus on this central but overlooked aspect of travel, demonstrating the key place that encounter occupies in the contemporary travel culture.

With reference to the literary critical study of travel writing, sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of tourism, as well as research in French and Italian area studies, the volume locates encounter firmly within the context of modern tourism. Elucidating the nature of encounter in unprecedented ways, the study demonstrates how the treatment of encounter determines the generic boundaries of travel writing and how narratives of encounter reveal the gap between ideals and practices in travel. The volume also analyses the dynamics between the traveller and ‘travellee’, as they are represented in narrative form, re-evaluating traditional notions of the traveller’s power and examining the potential for travellee agency, with particular reference to discourses of authenticity and ethics.

The core concern underlying the various problems in applied ethics is that of human rights. While most writings on human rights deal with its legal, political and socio-economic aspects, this collection instead addresses the philosophical aspect which has hitherto been neglected. Furthermore, the book explores the Indian counterpart of the idea of human rights which can be found in the notion of 'dharma'.

The text addresses issues of conceptual analysis as well as contextual applications of the idea of human rights and its fine nuances. It also contains papers which analyze the concept of 'dharma', raising questions on whether this concept can do 'double duty' for the notions of human rights as well as the notion of human duties. The collection offers papers on human rights issues of different categories of people, including ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women, mentally ill people and prisoners. The papers in this volume also afford grounds for comparative study.

This book provides a sociological examination of gender issues concerning the evolving place and role of women in the world of heavy metal. Grounded in feminist theories of gender difference and in close dialogue with relevant thematic studies from various perspectives, the study specifically analyzes how women are perceived to ‘do gender’ by members of the heavy metal community, which has traditionally been largely composed of men and is commonly known for its hypermasculine qualities.

Relying on semi-structured interviews with self-identified fans of heavy metal, this work reveals that the respondents describe their music subculture as traditionally dominated by men. Yet, they also note distinct signs of the progress women have made in entering into and participating within the heavy metal culture on terms aspiring to equality with the men of their music community. 

Despite the changes that are perceived as legitimately positive for women, both in the world of heavy metal and in terms of women’s broader standing in society, gendered conditions driven by masculinity continue to exist for women in heavy metal. Even as women are slowly yet steadily finding their way to develop what might one day become, but as of now not yet is, a realized and acknowledged identity and culture of heavy metal feminism, patterns of masculinity continue to hamper gender equity in this area of popular culture.

“Textuality, Culture and Scripture,” a study of the necessary and close relations between the three concepts, puts forward three main arguments. The first is that Western modernity retained the necessary role of texts and textuality in culture well into the twentieth century, although decreasingly so, until their role was increasingly displaced by materialist assumptions and theories. Taking as its starting point the so-called textual turn in cultural theory, the first argument is for the necessary role of textuality in understandings of culture.

The second argument is that textuaity is necessary in and for cultural, group and personal identities and that the texts of primary importance for identity can be related to what is generally thought of as “scripture.” It moves on to posit “scripture,” so understood, as a necessary category in an adequate textual theory and relates textuality and “scripture” to identity, primarily in terms of the potentials of texts for relating constancy and change to one another. 

The third argument is that the Bible has been and continues to be for so many people their “scripture” because it provides what people, groups and, at times, also cultures need to have as identity or an adequate worldview, especially the relation created by biblical texts between stability or constancy and change or disruption. The book concludes with the proposal that textual locations or identities can be evaluated for whether or not they provide ways by which past and future, tradition and innovation, or constancy and change are related to one another.

The expansion of Mumbai over the last four centuries has been documented in great detail by both contemporary writers and historians, yet this narrative stands out as an alternative, unique and authentic voice. Quite simply, it is a book about the city like no other. Govind Narayan’s ‘Mumbaiche Varnan’ was the first full account of Mumbai in any language, written just before the explosive growth and renovation of the city.

Guiding the reader on a tour of the sights and sounds of an emerging city struggling to shake off colonialism and wrestling with the formation of its own budding identity, Narayan’s beguiling book offers descriptions of Mumbai’s daily life, its people and its institutions: the parts of the whole that come together to create this diverse and vivacious place. In addition to a detailed structural overview, the author provides a ground level account of the street life and market places rife with gambling and criminal activity. In every sense, this valuable text is a rare and enthralling glimpse into a fascinating period and place otherwise lost to time.

Translated into English for the first time, and fully illustrated and with a detailed glossary and biography of the author, this edition does full justice to this remarkable historical document.

In Kolkata’s traditional potter quarter of Kumartuli, a modern and a competitive market oriented approach to life is concealed behind tradition. Among the potters inhabiting the dirt-floored workshops of this caste-based neighbourhood, the history of a modern and economicly neoliberal-minded India unfolds. To these contemporary potters, caste is in their blood, caste is about being a creative and independent artist, and caste is about business as they engage in a competitive market to sell their artworks. This ethnographic study presents an analysis of these potters’ lives and the related commodification and instrumentalization of caste. An important insight is that Kumartuli consists of a group of artisans turned artists who do not display passive responses to colonial and capitalist encounters. On the contrary, this monograph unearths an ingenious and business-minded group that engages actively with the modern and economic developments of society at large, and, in the process, redefines the concept of caste identity. This study suggests a new academic direction for the study of modern India, and of caste in particular, through an empirically grounded portrayal of the synthesis of traditional categories and contemporary realities.

In Kolkata’s traditional potter quarter of Kumartuli, a modern and a competitive market oriented approach to life is concealed behind tradition. Among the potters inhabiting the dirt-floored workshops of this caste-based neighbourhood, the history of a modern and economicly neoliberal-minded India unfolds. To these contemporary potters, caste is in their blood, caste is about being a creative and independent artist, and caste is about business as they engage in a competitive market to sell their artworks. This ethnographic study presents an analysis of these potters’ lives and the related commodification and instrumentalization of caste. An important insight is that Kumartuli consists of a group of artisans turned artists who do not display passive responses to colonial and capitalist encounters. On the contrary, this monograph unearths an ingenious and business-minded group that engages actively with the modern and economic developments of society at large, and, in the process, redefines the concept of caste identity. This study suggests a new academic direction for the study of modern India, and of caste in particular, through an empirically grounded portrayal of the synthesis of traditional categories and contemporary realities.

The use of smartphones displays many facets of contemporary mobility. Smartphones and those applications downloaded to the device enhance connectivity in regard to socialisation, entertainment, transactions, networking, activism, and mobilisation. While the device and applications help community building and boost a sense of belonging, they also generate alienation, exclusion and marginalisation. Such online mobility of capital, commodity, idea and emotion visualised on smartphones cannot take place without the parallel existence of technological, sociopolitical and economic infrastructure that is established in the physical world offline. In this light, this book argues that the use of smartphones, and the constant switch between online and offline, has meshed virtual, social and physical mobilities together. However, such inseparability is yet to break down the boundary that marks their distinctive and discrete existence. Put simply, the absence, loss, outage, switch-off, unaffordability, or confiscation of the device can easily obstruct this meshed mobility. Interrogating what causes these obstructions will highlight the indispensable role played by the material and social infrastructure in this meshed mobility as well as the embedded structural constraints. It is equally important to look at migration and mobility beyond the points of departure and destination and trace the process in between, as scholarship in migration studies has advocated. Thus, this book offers an insight into the compression and tension between online and offline and the interlaced modes of mobility. On the whole, the articles included in this book aim to answer two critical questions: (1) How does the use of smartphones by migrants and the people connected with them generate new modes of mobility? (2) How do online activities and offline infrastructure interact and result in this compression? 

In answering these two questions, the authors seek to understand how the online–offline divide and the shift between physical and virtual worlds affect East Asian migrants’ activities. They investigate how these migrants’ mobility patterns are changing through such compression and tension between online and offline. The book will show how smartphones and the associated applications facilitate the expression of emotions and search for intimate relationships, expedite the movement of capital and commodity, enable public communication and social action and solicit political allegiance to the state or political parties. This spontaneous mobility in the virtual space visualised on smartphones obscures the physical separation between origin and destination. It also generates the space in between for network making and mobilisation. On the other hand, physical and virtual mobilities continue to be constrained by the tangible and intangible infrastructure created and administered by the state and the market. That is, not only is the ability of people, capital, commodities and ideas to cross borders regulated by the state, but the transmission of data related to these movements, in the forms of text, sound, image, graphics, or video, is also at the mercy of the operation of the infrastructure built by the state and the market. In sum, opportunities and resources emerge from this parallel between online and offline. However, their constant compression also limits personal agency and generates new restrictions or reifies existing constraints.

Lockdown, a measure enforced by governments around the world to suppress the spread of Covid-19, has made the compression between online and offline a daily reality. Whilse contemporary mobility continues to be overshadowed by this ‘new normal’, this edited volume seeks to re-examine the mobility and migration in the increasingly overlapping virtual, social and physical spaces. To achieve this goal, this volume offers an interdisciplinary lens through which to grasp the symbiosis between migration and ICT and underlines how countries in East Asia, Europe and North America are connected via migrants’ use of smartphones. Owing to this compression between the virtual and physical worlds, migrants, with their various skills, class, gender, sexuality and age, perform their intimacy, entrepreneurship and activism in relation to their fellow migrants, family members, partners, clients and the state at the crossroads between online and offline spaces. The use of smartphones enables them to exert their agency, empower others and conduct businesses not only for financial gains but also to satisfy their sense of care and morality, and interact with their governments’ political agendas. Presenting these cutting-edge findings drawn from East Asian migrants’ everyday experiences and practices, this book will make a lasting contribution to an emerging migration scholarship intersecting transnationalism, virtuality and mobility. 

This first of three volumes focuses on the evolution of Bengal's economy and society over the entire pre-colonial period beginning from pre-historic days. There is no documented, authentic history of Bengal. Indeed, more of the early history of India can be learned from the writings of other nationals. Yet even this material is very much related to chronologies of regimes and local to urban settlements and centres of trade. There remains little or no information on the villages where the vast majority lived and still live. Furthermore, until this work, little or no consideration has been given to the hugely influential period between Vasco de Gama's journey to India in 1498 and the battle of Palashi in 1757, a period in which the Mughal Empire held political power while the English, Dutch, French and Danes and other European nations grasped and held on to economic power. Much has been written on the Mughal Empire, but little of the role of the European trading companies in the two and a half centuries preceding Clive's victory. This book addresses that void and seeks also to explore the political, social and historical context in Bengal that facilitated the transfer of power into European hands. Given such a lack of source information, the author examines oral history, carried from generation to generation, recognizing their fallibility, but using those histories to corroborate what is known from other sources – from archaeological findings (coins, inscriptions, copper plates) through (invariably biased or localized) accounts from travellers, to economic, agricultural and ecological factors – relating them to known chronological events to provide a well-rounded history and, indeed, a study that uncovers the roots of the many issues in the colonial and post-colonial eras.

The collected essays from noteworthy dramatists and scholars in this book represent new ways of understanding theater in the Middle East not as geographical but transcultural spaces of performance. What distinguishes this book from previous works is that it offers new analysis on a range of theatrical practices across a region, by and large, ignored for its history of traditions and cultures, and it does so by emphasizing diverse performances in changing contexts. Topics include Arab, Iranian, Israeli, diasporic theatres from pedagogical perspectives to reinvention of traditions, from translation practices to political resistance through various performances from the nineteenth century to the present. 

The book is, therefore, concerned with not just the theatrical content of specific or range of plays in a variety of mediums, from stage to the radio, but also political implications, changing imaginaries of home and exile, and practices of identity through a range of performances in both local and translocal settings. The book argues that there are indigenous performers, ranging from actors to producers and audiences, who (re)make theatre through the reinvention of traditions, pedagogy, media, and translation. The book also shows that while all theatre is performance what precisely “performance” means is contingent to the lived context of audiences and performers who make theatre in its diverse forms and also in response to conflict, war, occupation, patriarchy, home, and exile.

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

Today, in an age of globalization, religion represents a potent force in the lives of billions of people worldwide. Yet when social theorists examine the impact of globalization on contemporary religious movements, they tend to focus on issues such as Islamic fundamentalism and threats to US or global security. This collection of essays takes a different approach, analyzing – with special reference to Asia – religion through lived experience. The key issues covered in the volume include: how religious impulses contribute to globalization; how religious groups and organizations repackage traditional beliefs for transcultural appeal; how religious adherents cope with external threats to identity; how new technologies are reshaping the nature of religious beliefs and images; and how local and global religious influences blend and/or clash. Far from religion being a subject of peripheral concern to globalization, the contributors demonstrate that from the most basic level of our interactions with the natural environment to the socio-political behavior of the “great religions” – and even to the profusion of folk and pop culture phenomena – the influence of religion upon globalization, and vice versa, is apparent at all levels.

The story of German gothic literature is that of the meteoric rise of a popular literary style that critics nonetheless considered an unwelcome intruder, often dismissing it as the pulpy mimicry of British forerunners and as a “plague ship of German letters” (Charles Maturin), from its beginnings with the German art ballad or Kunst ballade of Herder, Goethe, Bürger, and Hölty in the 1770s and 1780s to the gothic prose works of Schiller, Goethe and Kleist, et al. In particular, the German novella was the object of some suspicion, and, as Schiller complained of his gothic bestseller Der Geisterseher in 1788, the prose author was considered the unloved, “half-brother of the poet.” Kleist was ashamed to be associated with the disreputable genre, deriding the tendency of late-eighteenth-century literature toward stories about “knights with ghosts.” Focusing on its gothic character, no less an authority than Coleridge dismissed German Sturm und Drang and Romantic literature as merely derivative of the gloomy works of Young, Hervey, Richardson and Walpole. In her novel Northanger Abbey (1818), Austen characterizes the 1790s as a decade of “horrid” novels so stereotypically gothic and German that its most popular works constitute self-parodies on both counts. Despite the English roots of gothic literature touched on above and its increased prominence in England from 1790–1820, by the 1820s, gothic tales were so clearly established as “German Stories”—thus the title of a three-volume British collection of 1826—that Poe felt the need to reclaim the genre for all humanity in 1839: “I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul […].” The rest is literary history: gothic literature, and in particular German gothic short prose literature, has proven to be among the most resonant hypotexts, adapted and re-adapted in Anglo-American and European literature and film to the present day. This volume seeks to reevaluate German gothic literature after the wave of publications on the subject that renewed scholarly interest in these texts in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

The Roxburghe Club, founded in 1812, has an unbroken publishing history from 1814 to the present day. Since the Club’s edition of ‘Havelok the Dane’ appeared in 1828, the Roxburghe has gained a reputation as a producer of beautifully printed editions of manuscripts and reprinted early books. The founding period of the Club, however, has been viewed with less approval, often seen as a frivolous, unscholarly period of wasted years when little of value was produced by a membership composed of dilettante aristocrats.

This work offers a new narrative of the formative years of the Roxburghe Club, for the bibliomania of the Romantic period and for early nineteenth-century antiquarian culture and its relationship to the emergent popularity and status of English vernacular literature. It addresses what is shown to be a long-repeated myth: what the Club was and whether its scholarship and editing of early English literature merited respect or mockery. The book covers the make-up and membership of the Club including social and political affinities, literary and scholarly achievements and the substantial contribution made by the Club to widening awareness and understanding of earlier English writers and the establishment of a canon of English literature. This revised history offers an alternative narrative for the move between antiquarian and scholarly areas of influence in the study of English literature, and offers a plausible mechanism for the growing acceptance of vernacular English literature, both in academia and in a more general cultural sense.

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.

In considering Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot', a novel less easily defined in terms of plot and ideas than his other major fictional works, Sarah Young addresses problems in the novel unresolved by previous interpretations, and in doing so fills a significant gap in Dostoevsky studies. 'Dostoevsky's The Idiot and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative' provides an innovative theoretical framework for an analysis that integrates structural and narratological considerations with thematic (religious and ethical) aspects, by focusing on the characters' interactivity as the most fundamental level on which the ethical systems of the novel are enacted. It examines the questions of what ethical bases are put forward by the novel, what faith-issues and philosophical world-views they derive from, and how, in terms of structuring and narration rather than simply thematically, they are presented in the novel. For the first time, through the concept of scripting, the author shows how the ethical becomes the foundation for the narratological in The Idiot. No other book on Dostoevsky has addressed the question of ethics, which is so important to the study of Dostoevsky, particularly in the light of recent work on the religious dimension of his novels, within the context of narrative and Bakhtinian dialogue. This substantial new work will appeal to academics, postgraduates and undergraduates working on Dostoevsky and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian novel in general; as well as scholars in the fields of literary theory, including Bakhtin studies, narratology, literature and ethics.

Sociologists and social theorists use the term ‘social’ frequently. We talk of social relations, social media, social networks, social factors, and so on, as well as ‘the social’. But do we always know what we mean or what we are invoking when we deploy the term ‘social’?

The concept of the ‘social’ has often been treated as almost self-explanatory, inherited from the works of the instigators of sociology and social theory who, it is assumed, all meant the same thing by the term. ‘Rethinking the Social’ argues that this is not the case, and that there are major differences between their approaches. This the first book to systematically analyse the different concepts of the social developed by Durkheim, Marx and Weber. It examines how the concept of the social became unproblematic for twentieth-century writers and suggests that debates surrounding this concept remain very much alive. Building on A. N. Whitehead’s work, Halewood develops a novel ‘philosophy of the social’.

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.

Can ethics be hacked? Can new and unexpected meaning be found in or behind established traditions of moral discourse? Does not the digital transformation challenge us to develop a digital ethics that is just as disruptive and transformative as the technologies it proposes to regulate? Would ethical hacking be the same as hacking ethics? This book attempts to answer these questions. The occasion for this attempt is the digital transformation, the advent of a global network society, the big data revolution, datafication, and whatever other terms come to mind to describe our present historical moment. In the face of this changing reality, ethics has attempted to become digital ethics. No area of personal or social life is not conditioned by the digital and everything that it stands for and everything it brings with it. Marx would probably have been overjoyed to learn that very soon there will be no more workers since robots will do the work, that everyone will own the means of production, that is, their own creativity and skills, and that a sharing economy will largely replace capitalism. But would he be happy about the prospects of a posthuman or even transhuman world in which not only intelligence but also agency and identity are distributed among heterogeneous networks of humans and nonhumans? Would he be happy at the prospect of a data-driven society in which decisions are made based on evidence and not intuition, gut feelings, cognitive bias, prejudice, experience, and inherited assumptions? Indeed, not only Marx but practically no theory or world view that has arisen within the modern period, including ethics, finds itself able to cope with the new digital world order. Instead, we are experiencing in all areas the defensive reaction of Western industrial society to the disruptive influences of digital technologies. The world is changing. The digital transformation disrupts traditional forms of order, whether it be the order of knowledge, the order of cooperative action in social organizations, or the self-understanding of human existence.

The world of Western modernity is disappearing and a new world, let us call it a global network society, is emerging in its stead. For established institutions and habits of thought, this is a threatening and highly uncertain situation. Facing up to this situation does indeed have an ethical dimension; it does call for ethics. But an adequate moral response to this situation is not and cannot be merely applying traditional values and norms to digital technologies. Nonetheless, the current discourse of digital ethics consists almost entirely of attempts to apply traditional normative ethics to the development and deployment of new technologies. The thesis of this book is that no amounts of rights and duties, of moral norms and ethical imperatives, no list of ethical guidelines or principles of good AI or ethical big data are going to have the slightest effect if they do not leave the presuppositions, convictions, and traditions of Western industrial society behind and embark upon exploring a new world with new values and new forms of responsibility and accountability. This is the challenge of hacking digital ethics. The hack, from this point of view, consists of breaking into the codes of traditional moral discourse and redesigning things so that something like digital ethics can appear unconcealed from the outworn and concealing veil of modernity. 

Perhaps, despite all the publicity and attention, the hasty founding of institutes, centers, and departments for digital ethics, the activism of non-profit organizations, and the flood of guidelines, declarations, and programs supporting ethical design, development, and deployment of technology there currently is no such thing as digital ethics. There is only modern Western ethics, that is, ethics that arose within modern Western society, that is, within a no longer viable social order and a passing historical moment. It could be that a uniquely digital ethics is waiting for the hack to come into view for the first time. One could even go so far as to claim that ethics today is fundamentally dependent upon the hack and not the other way around. It is not hacking that needs ethics; it is ethics that needs hacking. Could such an endeavor be judged by the standards it leaves behind? Can the global network society be judged by the standards of Western industrial society? What new norms take the place of the old ones? And what does ethics become, when it no longer answers to the questions of the world in which it was formed, which defined what it was, and which, whether we like it or not, no longer exists? This book is an attempt to answer these questions and open up the possibility of a digital ethics capable of addressing the problems of the global network society.

‘Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka’ examines the loss of citizenship and statelessness of Indian Tamil estate workers in Sri Lanka. The loss of citizenship this community suffered over 60 years ago continues to dominate and disrupt their lives, contributing to poor working conditions, impoverishment and general marginalisation. By analysing the context of the formal agreement between the Indian and Sri Lankan government that led to the loss of citizenship Kanapathipillai reveals the economic, electoral and ideological issues that influenced the decision, and introduces gendered notions of citizenship and the agency of the workers into the discussion of the phenomenon.

‘Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka’ approaches the issue from a Sri Lankan perspective, thereby bringing a distinct new voice to scholarship on this subject, which has previously focussed on the inter-governmental and foreign policy implications of the agreement. By breaking the 'view from above' approach, and listening to the 'voices from below' of the Indian Tamil workers who have suffered as a result of the agreement, Kanapathipillai successfully reframes the parameters of scholarship on this subject.

Why do climate and financial crises pose such extreme risks? And what does it take to respond effectively to those risks? Extreme weather events – storms and sea-level rise, heat waves, droughts and floods – seem ever more common and extreme, while scientists warn of even greater climate risks ahead. Financial failures on the scale of 2008 make a mockery of the supposed efficiency of the market economy. None of this would be possible in the world as imagined by conventional economics – an imaginary land of gradualism, equilibrium, well-informed rationality and the win-win solutions dealt by the invisible hand.

The erratic rhythm of boom and bust in financial markets could be explained either by the patterns of crowd-following behaviour among investors, or by the unequal distribution of wealth (and the impact of the largest investors on the markets). Climate crises reflect the fact that natural systems can reach tipping points or critical transitions, where gradual change gives way to large-scale discontinuous changes. The economics of climate change has lagged behind the science, understating the severity of the problem and the likelihood of a crash.

While the causes of climate and financial extremes are distinct, the implications for public policy have much in common. The frequency of extreme events, of varying sizes, means that there is no way to predict the likely size of future crises. The traditional approach to risk aversion cannot account for longstanding patterns in financial markets. Better theories of risk call for more precautionary approaches to both financial and climate policy. In the frequent cases in which potential outcomes have unknown probabilities, the best policy is based on the worst-case credible scenario. When a single catastrophic risk commands everyone’s attention, a World War II-style, costs-be-damned mobilization is the right response. There is no formula for perfect responses to extreme risks, but there are important guideposts that point toward better answers.

‘British Depth Studies c500–1100 (Anglo-Saxon and Norman Britain)’ is a collaboration between academic specialists and experienced schoolteachers to provide a reliable and up-to-date summary of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England, complete with original sources, for use in schools. In particular, it is designed for students and teachers preparing for the new GCSE ‘Anglo-Saxon and Norman England’ British Depth Study components of the Edexcel and AQA examination boards. Eight chapters, each prefaced with a timeline and an overview, deal systematically and clearly with all the key issues defined in the exam specifications. Each chapter concludes with exam-style questions and guidance for further reading. The book provides students with a useful section detailing the character of the question types set by both examination boards and guidance on what is required to achieve a high grade at GCSE. At the end of the book is an essential glossary.

‘British Depth Studies c500–1100 (Anglo-Saxon and Norman Britain)’ includes many carefully chosen primary sources, a large number of which have never before been made available to students at this level. These serve to provide a richer, fuller flavour of the period than other textbooks. The sources are ‘folded’ organically into the narrative, so that history is presented in its most attractive format: as a story.

Over the next decade, states will be carrying out large-scale registrations in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to provide more than one billion people around the world with evidentiary proof of their legal and, increasingly, digital existence. 'Legal Identity, Race and Belonging: From Citizen to Foreigner' is an important book which identifies a connection between the role of international actors, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, in promulgating the universal provision of legal identity and links these with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from (largely) Haitian-descended people born and living in the Dominican Republic. The book provides the definitive analysis of the events leading up to the controversial 2013 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that rendered the Dominican plaintiff Juliana Deguis Pierre stateless. Hayes de Kalaf illustrates how measures that purposely blocked people of Haitian ancestry from accessing their legal identity not only affected undocumented and stateless populations – persons living at the fringes of citizenship – but also had a major impact on documented people; Dominicans already in possession of a state-issued birth certificate, national identity card and/or passport. The book illustrates the complex and contradictory ways in which digital identity systems are experienced, thus challenging the assumption within current development policy that the provision of ID to everyone, everywhere will lead to the inclusion of all citizens.

Professor Das provides a fascinating study of the issue of ethnic politics in multi-ethnic Third World countries and discusses the non-convergence of state and nation in the context of Kashmir and Sindh. The artificial de-colonization process in the South Asian sub-continent resulted in the construction of national frontiers for its two successor states that did not rest on a synchronization of ethnic and state boundaries. Consequently, cross-border loyalties amongst significant sections of the population survived the boundaries imposed between the two successor states. In the context of centralizing nation-building strategies, when ethnic political assertions occur in outlying or frontier areas of these nation-states, the distinction between domestic and external affairs or between home and foreign politics tends to lose its significance in the traditional sense. Political actors from across the borders of neighbouring states can then deny the marks of their different objective nationalities and treat themselves as members of a single 'loyalty group'.

Thus, ethnic politics transcends its domestic contours and helps foment regional tensions. In such circumstances, ethnic assertions tend to constitute vital local or domestic ingredients that define the national security priorities within a particular region. The current insurrection in Kashmir and turmoil in Sindh superbly demonstrate this pattern.

Over the next decade, states will be carrying out large-scale registrations in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to provide more than one billion people around the world with evidentiary proof of their legal and, increasingly, digital existence. 'Legal Identity, Race and Belonging: From Citizen to Foreigner' is an important book which identifies a connection between the role of international actors, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, in promulgating the universal provision of legal identity and links these with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from (largely) Haitian-descended people born and living in the Dominican Republic. The book provides the definitive analysis of the events leading up to the controversial 2013 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that rendered the Dominican plaintiff Juliana Deguis Pierre stateless. Hayes de Kalaf illustrates how measures that purposely blocked people of Haitian ancestry from accessing their legal identity not only affected undocumented and stateless populations – persons living at the fringes of citizenship – but also had a major impact on documented people; Dominicans already in possession of a state-issued birth certificate, national identity card and/or passport. The book illustrates the complex and contradictory ways in which digital identity systems are experienced, thus challenging the assumption within current development policy that the provision of ID to everyone, everywhere will lead to the inclusion of all citizens.

The book offers a step-by-step blueprint of radical proposals for the U.S.-Mexican border that go far beyond traditional initiatives to ease restrictions on immigration. The book argues that the border with Mexico should be completely open for Mexicans wishing to travel north. Up Against the Wall provides the background to understanding how the border has become a fraud, resulting in nothing more than the criminalization of Mexican and other migrants, the bloating of the mismanaged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the deterioration of living standards along the frontier, and the enrichment of American employers. Placing the border in a historical perspective, Laufer shows how circumstances have deteriorated to the present Trump-exacerbated crisis, and why the region and the migration through it cannot be ignored. Over the last several years he has interviewed dozens of authorities and men and women in the street while reporting from Mexico, along the border, and in the United States. He demonstrates that the security of America's southern border is a fallacy; offers vivid examples to illustrate how the chain of misery and lawbreaking for migrants heading north is initiated by U.S. employers, traces many of the border problems to the Guatemalan-Mexican border, and explores the abuses of the Border Patrol and the growing presence of vigilantes on the American side. Up Against the Wall is sure to provoke a lively debate over the future of Mexican immigration and global migration crises.

Almost all industrial countries have undergone strategies to maintain, or improve, competitiveness in order to improve the standard of living of their population, particularly during the last quarter-century or so. But how have they treated developing countries? ‘Competitiveness and Development’ explains how developing countries can attain competitiveness at a high level of development, examines the possibilities and constraints in achieving it, and proposes remedial measures at the national and international levels.

The author Mehdi Shafaeddin illustrates how developed countries impose restrictive policies on developing countries through international financial institutions and the WTO, as well as regional and bilateral agreements, thereby limiting their policy space for promoting dynamic comparative advantage in order to achieve competitiveness at a high level of development. Such policies, the author argues, lock developing countries that are at the early stages of development in specialization in primary commodities, or at best simple processing and assembly operations in accordance with their static comparative advantage.

To support this argument, the author critically examines the neoclassical theory of economics, which is the philosophy behind the principle of static comparative advantage as well as the policy stances of international financial institutions and the WTO. The author also reviews the historical experience of developed countries through industrialization, development and achieving competitiveness based on the principle of dynamic comparative advantage. In this context, he explains the importance of trade and industrial policies and the role of government in human resource development, innovation and technological development. To illustrate his case, the author compares the contrasting experiences of China and Mexico since the 1980s, during which time globalization has been intensified.

Late Victorian Orientalism is a work of scholarly research pushing forward disciplines into new areas of enquiry. This collection of essays tries to redefine the task of interpreting the East in the late nineteenth century taking as a starting point Said’s Orientalism in order to investigate the visual, fantasised, and imperialist representations of the East, as well as the most exemplary translations of Oriental poems. The Victorians envisioned the East in many different modes or Orientalisms since as Said suggested ‘[t]here were, perhaps, as many Orientalisms as Orientalists.’ 

By combining together Western and Oriental modes of art, this study is not only aimed at filling a gap in Victorian and Oriental studies but also at broadening the audiences it is intended for. Edward FitzGerald, William Bell Scott, the Brontë sisters, William Holman Hunt, D. G. Rossetti, William Morris, John La Farge, Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, the anonymous author of the Hongkong and the Hongkonians, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Rudyard Kipling, William Butler Yeats, Wilfred Thesiger, and Eric Newby play such a prominent role in the Oriental debate. By offering an extended discussion of their Oriental writings, this book will appeal to and benefit a wider range of audiences.

The subject range of this volume of essays on late Victorian Orientalism explores nineteenth-century modes of art which position themselves as instruments of knowledge of the Orient. The contributors deploy variegated tools derived from textual studies and visual culture research in order to explore the many ways in which the late Victorians envisioned the East. It is this combined approach which makes possible the reconsideration of Orientalist literature, art and cinema.

Reclaiming the Wicked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers takes the ideas of six well-known secular Jewish philosophers—Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ayn Rand, Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler—and views them through a wide range of Jewish lenses from the Talmudic tradition and prophetic Judaism to Kabbalist approaches, thereby understanding the 20th-century secular thinkers as on-going elements of a living Jewish intellectual tradition.

Jewish Studies as a field focuses on Judaism, but Jewishness is broader than Judaism, and as a result, a number of thinkers who come from Jewish backgrounds are excluded from the discourse in Jewish Studies. The goal of this volume is to act as a bridge between the religious and secular Jewish discourse communities, allowing a more inclusive and more comprehensive account of Jewish thought. 

While the philosophers who discussed may not have considered themselves to be Jewish philosophers. But, by reading them Judaically, they can be understood in terms of a more robust historical and intellectual context in which they partake of a tradition to which they are not often connected.

Hannah Arendt, Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, argued that some parts of history need not just to be understood but to be confronted as well. The 1998 Belfast or Good Friday Agreement between the two communities (nationalist and unionist) in Northern Ireland arranged power-sharing structures of governance between them. The Agreement was underwritten by the British and Irish governments. The signatories of the Agreement knew that its success required a cultural shift or conversion in each community.

To that end, the decisive and violent decade of recent Irish history, 1912–1923, needs to be confronted. In that decade, there were several conflicts: between Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists, between nationalist insurrection and British forces, and between two nationalist groups. At the end of the decade, the country was partitioned: the south had become an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth, while the north continued as part of the United Kingdom.

The division was bitter and violent, with each community (nationalist and unionist) effectively rejecting the right of the other to exist. That remained unchanged until the violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. While the vast majority on both sides want peace and mutual recognition, the traditional construction of each community’s historical memories obstruct that. The goal of the book is to analyse the different elements required for each community in how to confront that history in the interests of affirming identity, giving recognition to the other community and building a shared political community.

This book is a wide-ranging collection of essays that makes the case for the humanities as central to our self-understanding, for theory as the latest incarnation of a perennial concern with the relation between words and things, and for the ancient as constitutive of the modern. Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric makes a strong argument for a comparative approach to what we term “theory” today. It argues that our disciplinary boundaries create artificial divisions between philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, which historically would not have been recognized and have come to function as conceptual straitjackets.

These essays contend that a concerted engagement with the crucial texts in these debates over the last 2500 years not only offers a better understanding of the issues involved but also provides the necessary political, ethical, and existential tools for fashioning a better and more inclusive life. They offer extended readings of Plato, Cicero, and Sophocles, as well as Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Žižek, and Lacan. Theory Does Not Exist offers a full-throated defense of the humanities and crucial counterarguments against the reduction of education to the vocational and the operational.

During the Romantic period, Hannah Cowley (1743–1809) achieved fame both as a playwright and a poet, composing popular comedies and, as Anna Matilda, amorous Della Cruscan verse. But despite a recent surge of scholarly interest in her works, her controversial comedy The World as It Goes has never been published.This edition of The World as It Goes is based on the Larpent licensing holograph manuscript held by the Huntington Library (LA 548). The transcription of the play is supplemented with an introduction providing cultural, theatrical, historical and biographical contexts; contemporaneous reviews; and a note on the text.

The World as It Goes satirizes English tourists visiting a southern French resort and the scoundrels who prey on them. The play’s cast included some of the era’s most popular comic actors: John Edwin, John Quick, Charles Lee Lewes, William Thomas Lewis (aka “Gentleman Lewis”), Ralph Wewitzer (who specialized in stereotypical foreigners), Isabella Mattocks (who specialized in “vulgar” characters) and the famously rotund Lydia Webb. Elizabeth Younge, acclaimed for her portrayals of sentimental wives and daughters, played Lady Danvers, and the future novelist and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald appeared in the role of Sidney Grubb. 

Before the premiere of The World as It Goes at Covent Garden, Cowley’s comedies The Runaway (1776) and The Belle’s Stratagem (1780) and her farce Who’s the Dupe (1779) had been theatrical hits. But reviewers who admired her previous plays found The World as It Goes vulgar and morally offensive, and its sole performance on February 24, 1781, was disrupted by audience members who loudly objected to a ribald scene in a bedroom antechamber and repeatedly interrupted Younge as she attempted to deliver the epilogue, which contained a risqué reference to the transgender Chevalière D’Eon. Cowley heavily revised the play, but its second incarnation as Second Thoughts Are Best (performed March 24, 1781) was also a failure. The World as It Goes is Cowley’s most bawdy, multigeneric and socially subversive comedy and features a valet masquerading as his master and aspiring to take a seat at Westminster; French and German swindlers; a seductive countess; a lecherous, nouveau-riche London “Citizen”; an antiquarian bluestocking modeled after Lady Anna Miller; a fatuous aristocrat who neglects the wife he adores to be seen as fashionable; and a French monk who attempts to rape an Englishwoman. Among the contemporaneous issues and cultural products addressed in the play, its prologue and epilogue are English tourism on the continent; the pantomime Harlequin Free-Mason (1780); the January 1781 French raid on Jersey Island; the Chevalière d’Eon’s androgyny; the Gordon riots and Lord George Gordon’s acquittal in the ensuing treason trial; the recent performances by the French ballet dancer Gaëtano Appoline Balthazar Vestris at the King’s Theatre; anxieties about ambitious and oversexed male servants; bluestocking antiquarianism; the pretensions of the London merchant class; the pro-American revolution Bill of Rights Society and the London Association; James Graham’s Celestial Bed; and prison ships (“Hulks”). 

The comedy’s catastrophic failure influenced the manner in which Cowley handled controversial issues in her subsequent dramas and provides insights into late eighteenth-century anxieties and mores. Mortified by the damnation of The World as It Goes, she omitted it from her posthumous Works (1813), but she reworked some of its themes, situations and characters in her final play, The Town before You, which was staged in 1794. Although The Town before You, like The World as It Goes, portrays nefarious impostors, a philistine businessman, a spurious connoisseur and a wealthy female eccentric obsessed with classical art, it enjoyed a respectable run of nine nights.

This volume addresses a central problem of contemporary states, namely how to manage the eruption of public religions. While the liberal framework formerly regarded religion as simply a matter of private practice and conscience, in modern states religion has often come to challenge the so-called Westphalian model of church-state relations, and has brought into question many liberal notions of secularism and tolerance. There is much discussion about post-secular society in which religion has to be taken seriously in public affairs. This collection of case studies – looking at Turkey, Singapore, India, China, Britain, Europe and the United States – explores a number of examples in which the state exercises some degree of management of religion, thereby bringing into question the traditional separation of religion and state. This study also attempts to refine the notion of secularization by examining this process in terms of political arrangements (church-state relations) and the role of religion in everyday life. Ultimately, this study reveals that there is no uniform or standard pattern of secularization in modern societies.

This engaging two-volume study pursues a balance between theoretical and practical sociology. The authors are aware of the impasse often deliberately created by the self-conscious language of sociological theory. The primary concern of the applied sociologist is to adapt theoretical knowledge to actual human situations, using it to formulate social policy, investigate domestic and international social problems and create a pragmatic ‘sociology of possibility’.

Volume I, subtitled ‘Theoretical Perspectives’, focuses on the problems and prospects of applied sociology in an era of globalization. The essays emphasize the close association of applied sociology with altruism, identity formation, race and ethnicity. They evaluate the empirical ‘truths’ of sociological theories and examine their relevance for contemporary research, poverty, demographic issues and social policies. The authors agree that the ultimate test of theory is the extent to which it can produce knowledge that ‘works’.

Polar Shift addresses how to sustain the Arctic's richness, beauty, and local and global value. Its core describes programs specifically created to protect this region: the great inventory of law, policy, and civil society activity targeting sustainability of the region. It presents the Arctic’s environmental health very broadly understood and competing ideas of how it can be maintained or improved with specific recommendations. This is a book about the Arctic's past and how it was envisioned, about its environment, its people, and their cultures.

Polar Shift describes how the changing of the Arctic matters and to whom. It asks: Is it of serious concern if the Arctic becomes warmer? If its glaciers shrink away and its polar bears are found in zoos only? If cultures and traditions based on cold are changing? Is it acceptable if cultures adapt to a less cold world?

What if it's warming, thawing, melting, and other changes reflect significant global environmental shifts? What if the Arctic's instability affects society as a whole: if it bodes for bad changes: sunken cities throughout the world, cultural practices precluded, traditions and languages lost, species gone extinct, major metropolitan areas so hot as to be unlivable, and massive movements of people from inhospitable regions?

Why does it matter which countries are considered Arctic nations? Countries want to be seen as Arctic for several reasons. They may want access to a boom of extractable resources: oil, gas, and special metals. Some nations have a deep interest in protecting the Arctic, preserving what is pristine, and improving what is threatened. And some want to influence major international transit routes and rules for going through them to save time and money for international trade. Nations also view the region for significant security and military concerns. Who has and should have a decision-making say on these questions is a matter of high global stakes.

Immersed in a hyperconnected world, millennials are pressured by a lingering feeling that no matter their achievements, they can always do more. Conventional wisdom suggests that millennials must create and maintain personal brands while striving to achieve their potential. But this mentality, while initially appealing for many, breeds anxiety and insecurity. In "The Plight of Potential", Emerson Csorba shows how millennials can live deeper and more enriching lives by reflecting on the self, placing value on solitude and resisting the feeling that they must constantly connect and share. Drawing on case studies of millennials from networks such as the Global Shapers Community, Csorba offers suggestions on how millennials can thrive in a world that favours immediacy and superficiality.

Millennials live in a world of opportunity, characterized by the constant pursuit of personal growth and a belief that to hit the pause button would be catastrophic to a career. Within this context, Csorba explores ideas such as the ruthlessness of comparison amongst millennials and outlines guidelines for overcoming these pressures. Advocating for a long view of work and life, Csorba builds on hundreds of interviews with millennials across the world as well as research at the University of Cambridge.

The themes that Csorba explores in "The Plight of Potential" are not unique – they have existed for centuries, and do not pertain exclusively to millennials – but in a society that glamourizes the individual while paradoxically discouraging solitude and self-reflection, they are radical. Both practical and critical, this book is timely and refreshing for millennials looking to overcome the social pressures around them and advance their work and lives, while also cultivating the skills and qualities required to better know themselves in the process.

“Textuality, Culture and Scripture,” a study of the necessary and close relations between the three concepts, puts forward three main arguments. The first is that Western modernity retained the necessary role of texts and textuality in culture well into the twentieth century, although decreasingly so, until their role was increasingly displaced by materialist assumptions and theories. Taking as its starting point the so-called textual turn in cultural theory, the first argument is for the necessary role of textuality in understandings of culture.

The second argument is that textuaity is necessary in and for cultural, group and personal identities and that the texts of primary importance for identity can be related to what is generally thought of as “scripture.” It moves on to posit “scripture,” so understood, as a necessary category in an adequate textual theory and relates textuality and “scripture” to identity, primarily in terms of the potentials of texts for relating constancy and change to one another. 

The third argument is that the Bible has been and continues to be for so many people their “scripture” because it provides what people, groups and, at times, also cultures need to have as identity or an adequate worldview, especially the relation created by biblical texts between stability or constancy and change or disruption. The book concludes with the proposal that textual locations or identities can be evaluated for whether or not they provide ways by which past and future, tradition and innovation, or constancy and change are related to one another.

‘Another Canon: Indian Texts and Traditions’ in English traces the development of Indian English literary and textual practice over a period of seven decades, focussing on classic texts which have fallen beyond the scope of the established canon. Central to this volume is an inquiry into the nature of Indian modernity. Through careful and path-breaking readings of such important writers as Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, M. Ananthanarayanan, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, U. R. Anantha Murthy, Kiran Nagarkar, Vikram Seth, and Upamanyu Chatterjee, the author constructs what may be called ‘another canon,’ shedding new light on literary and critical practice in post-colonial India.

Useful both to specialists and general readers, these engaging and insightful interpretations of key Indian texts enhance our understanding of the making of modern Indian consciousness and culture. In addition, the book also offers crucial theoretical insights into the distinguishing features of the novel in India, especially of the fiction of the 1980s and 1990s.

Today, in an age of globalization, religion represents a potent force in the lives of billions of people worldwide. Yet when social theorists examine the impact of globalization on contemporary religious movements, they tend to focus on issues such as Islamic fundamentalism and threats to US or global security. This collection of essays takes a different approach, analyzing – with special reference to Asia – religion through lived experience. The key issues covered in the volume include: how religious impulses contribute to globalization; how religious groups and organizations repackage traditional beliefs for transcultural appeal; how religious adherents cope with external threats to identity; how new technologies are reshaping the nature of religious beliefs and images; and how local and global religious influences blend and/or clash. Far from religion being a subject of peripheral concern to globalization, the contributors demonstrate that from the most basic level of our interactions with the natural environment to the socio-political behavior of the “great religions” – and even to the profusion of folk and pop culture phenomena – the influence of religion upon globalization, and vice versa, is apparent at all levels.

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.

A Marxist scholar and historian, Irfan Habib has been a towering presence in the Indian intellectual scene for over four decades. His formidable intellectual reputation, established in the sixties with the publication of 'The Agrarian System of Mughal India', broadened as he became an authority in the entire area of Indian history from ancient to modern. Professor Habib's undiminished commitment to the cause of socialism is reflected in these highly original and bold analyses of Marxist historiography and theories of socialist construction.

This volume comprises essays from scholars around the world representing the wide variety of Habib's interests and contributions. Ranging from history to politics and economics, the essays cover both the medieval period and modern India, as well as theories for the future of this emerging superpower. This special edition also features an essay by Irfan Habib, originally published as 'The Economic History of Medieval India: A Survey', covering the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara economy and the economy of Mughal India.

The idea of the tragic has permeated Western culture for millennia, being closely bound with the concept of the limit of inescapable necessity that has been embodied in and expressed through theatre since the time of the ancient Greeks. This book addresses the question of how the twentieth century – one of the most violent periods of human history – dealt with the fundamental structure that is the tragic. Examining the consciousness of the era through an in-depth analysis of some of the twentieth century’s most outstanding texts – including works by Ibsen, Claudel, O’Neill, Brecht, Camus, Beckett, Pasolini, Grotowski, Delcuvellerie and Josse De Pauw – ‘Modern European Tragedy’ draws a vivid picture of the development that tragedy experienced during this time. Along the way, the book engages with some of the prominent currents of twentieth-century thought and philosophy that can still be found in the varied map of contemporary thought today: the ideas of modern Christianity, psychoanalysis, the theory of the Absurd, nihilism, Marxism and the acceptance of the limit. Together, analyses of these currents serve to support the book’s key avenues of investigation: its explorations of what inspired these key authors to engage with the idea of the tragic; and its explanation of why the contemporary tragic no longer bears the form of classic tragedy.

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 book is a firsthand account of Dr. Hannah Jaicks’ journey through western Montana's ranching landscapes to showcase the stories of ranchers and affiliated groups who are pioneering strategies for reducing conflicts with wildlife, while also stewarding the landscape. Americans depend on these people who live by working on the land. Ranchers have the power to shape the future of our lands, waterways, and wildlife communities, but enduring perceptions frame ranching as a unilaterally destructive force to the environment. Perception is slippery ground to base an argument on, however, and reality is far more complicated. Often seen as antithetical to one another, American ranchers and wildlife have long been entangled with another. The book is about producers and partner organizations who are forging new paths in conservation and addressing these seemingly intractable entanglements to sustain working ranch operations alongside healthy wildlife populations. It elevates the voices of these people striving daily to achieve wild and working landscapes in the West and serves as a model for how others can begin to do the same.

The author takes readers on a journey up western Montana to a different valley in each chapter and showcases the place-based stories of everyday conservation heroes who practice regenerative ranching, provide consciously raised agricultural products, advance strategies for collaborative conservation and protect vital habitat for endemic wildlife that would otherwise be developed and subdivided beyond repair. Ethnographic storytelling is interwoven with psychological theories to inform readers about progressive ways to make the world we share – with people and animals – a better place to live. Illustrations by Katie Christiansen of wildlife and conflict-reduction tools accompany the text, helping to underscore the vivid realities of shared landscapes and how they are achieved. 

There is no doubt the history of ranching is laden with problematic examples, and public and private rangelands are not universally in good condition today. This book aims to capture the increasing recognition that strong ranching practices coincide with good land and wildlife stewardship measures, but ranchers need help. If we want to see more of this remarkable work happening, environmentalists and concerned citizens need to step up and ensure these practices are not only possible but also become the norm. Everyone must be willing to come to the table and navigate discussions about how to work together more effectively and collaboratively. This book is a roadmap for how people can begin to do so.

‘The Constitution of Shelley’s Poetry’ is a close philosophical reading of ‘Prometheus Unbound’ from the perspective of the argument or drama of language played out in its pages. At its heart a four-chapter reading of ‘Prometheus Unbound’, the book is punctuated with readings of other Shelley works and prefaced with two earlier chapters: one on 'Mont Blanc' and 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', the companion poems inaugurating Shelley’s poetic maturity; the other on 'Ode to the West Wind' originally published with ‘Prometheus Unbound’ and here represented as 'signature' Shelley. The book’s one most distinguishing feature, from which several others derive, is its bringing the power and pertinence of Stanley Cavell’s thought to Shelley’s poetry and to his explicitly articulated philosophical interest in language.

The book urges and practises close reading, but it provides philosophical grounds for this ostensibly old-fashioned approach, and it implicitly proposes an understanding of language very different from those now most generally assumed in literary studies. The book’s bringing of Cavell’s thought to Shelley’s poetry would make two related but distinguishable contributions. There is, first of all, the reading of Shelley’s poetry, which is new and persuasive both in many of its local moments and in its overall thrust. Second, there is the practical demonstration of the relevance and yield of Cavell’s thought for literary studies.

The Oxford Movement, initiating what is commonly called the Catholic Revival of the Church of England and of global Anglicanism more generally, has been a perennial subject of study by historians since its beginning in the 1830s. But the leader of the movement whose name was most associated with it during the nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, has long been neglected by historical studies of the Anglican Catholic Revival. What attention has been paid to him by scholars has produced a largely negative picture of this complex man. This collection of essays seeks to redress the negative and marginalizing historiography of Pusey, in order to better understand both Pusey and his culture. The essays take Pusey’s contributions to the Oxford Movement and its theological thinking seriously; most significantly, they endeavour to understand Pusey on his own terms, rather than by comparison with Newman or Keble.

This collection of essays is derived from a conference on ‘Edward Bouverie Pusey and the Catholic Revival’ held at Ascot Priory, England in September 2009. It was attended by scholars from Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia. Broadly, the aim was to resuscitate Pusey as a figure of importance in Oxford Movement studies, in keeping with his contemporary importance during the Movement itself. The essays rescue both Pusey’s personality and theology from scholarly marginality, and place him in the same prominent place within the Oxford Movement that he had during his lifetime.

Together these essays represent an important step towards giving a more historically accurate view of Pusey. The essays do not subscribe to the hagiography of Liddon’s biography, nor do they exhibit the hostility typical of more recent works. Instead, the essays in the volume reveal Pusey as a serious theologian who had a significant impact on the Victorian period, both within the Oxford Movement and in wider areas of church politics and theology. This reassessment is important not merely to rehabilitate Pusey’s reputation, but also help contemporary understanding of the Oxford Movement, Anglicanism and British Christianity in the nineteenth century.

As an ancient Indian poet-dramatist, Kālidāsa cannot be absorbed into the homogenizing tendencies of Hindu hagiography, as has often been attempted, especially in the period after independence. From being projected as a Brahmin by birth in legends, a Vedāntist and Vaishnavite in darsana (theology), and more recently, owing to Western theoretical perspectives being applied to texts separated in time and contexts, Kalidasa is critiqued for a patriarchal and casteist outlook. These various readings have privileged personal theories and validated them by reading literary texts in certain ways. ‘Memory, Metaphor and Mysticism in Kalidasa’s ‘AbhijñānaŚākuntalam’’ brings together scholars from both sides of the globe who offer possibilities for reviewing this text, not as an Oriental discovery or a cultural property, but as an ancient literary text that can be read in multiple philosophical contexts. Further, the translations of ‘AbhijñānaŚākuntalam’ into South Asian languages like Urdu and Nepali and a classical language like Persian are also included for detailed study for understanding the impact of this text in the respective literary traditions of these languages, and to assess the actual cross-literary dialogue that this text made, without hyperboles and generalizations, given the fact that many of these translation happened just before and after independence when literary historiography and nation writing project went hand in hand in India.

‘Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment’ argues that both ageing as a unitary social process and agedness as a distinct social location have become fragmented. The book concentrates  on the emergence of a ‘new ageing’ mediated in part through the processes of ‘embodiment’.

The first section provides the main theoretical context for the book, with the first chapter outlining the new ‘sociology of the body’ and the second outlining the emergence of new ageing and its ‘re-orientation’ toward the body. The second section explores the relationship between new ageing and key aspects of embodied identity, namely gender, race, disability and sexuality. In each of these sections, the authors provide a brief historical perspective on the emergence of these embodied identities as social movements during the cultural ferment of the 1960s, and explore their subsequent confrontation, or avoidance of confrontation with, the issue of ageing.

The third section covers embodied practices, from sexual practice and its re-orientation toward age and ageing, to the embodied practices of ‘appearance management’, particularly those associated with cosmetics, clothing and fashion. Finally, the book considers ‘new enhancement technologies’ of the body, such as plastic surgery, with relation to ideas of ‘rejuvenation’. By focusing upon those embodied practices that are oriented toward age and ageing, and their place in expressing, maintaining or recreating other ‘pre-performed’ identities, the work allows a more embodied understanding of ageing and its diverse engagements within society to be realised.

Why do climate and financial crises pose such extreme risks? And what does it take to respond effectively to those risks? Extreme weather events – storms and sea-level rise, heat waves, droughts and floods – seem ever more common and extreme, while scientists warn of even greater climate risks ahead. Financial failures on the scale of 2008 make a mockery of the supposed efficiency of the market economy. None of this would be possible in the world as imagined by conventional economics – an imaginary land of gradualism, equilibrium, well-informed rationality and the win-win solutions dealt by the invisible hand.

The erratic rhythm of boom and bust in financial markets could be explained either by the patterns of crowd-following behaviour among investors, or by the unequal distribution of wealth (and the impact of the largest investors on the markets). Climate crises reflect the fact that natural systems can reach tipping points or critical transitions, where gradual change gives way to large-scale discontinuous changes. The economics of climate change has lagged behind the science, understating the severity of the problem and the likelihood of a crash.

While the causes of climate and financial extremes are distinct, the implications for public policy have much in common. The frequency of extreme events, of varying sizes, means that there is no way to predict the likely size of future crises. The traditional approach to risk aversion cannot account for longstanding patterns in financial markets. Better theories of risk call for more precautionary approaches to both financial and climate policy. In the frequent cases in which potential outcomes have unknown probabilities, the best policy is based on the worst-case credible scenario. When a single catastrophic risk commands everyone’s attention, a World War II-style, costs-be-damned mobilization is the right response. There is no formula for perfect responses to extreme risks, but there are important guideposts that point toward better answers.

The book is a firsthand account of Dr. Hannah Jaicks’ journey through western Montana's ranching landscapes to showcase the stories of ranchers and affiliated groups who are pioneering strategies for reducing conflicts with wildlife, while also stewarding the landscape. Americans depend on these people who live by working on the land. Ranchers have the power to shape the future of our lands, waterways, and wildlife communities, but enduring perceptions frame ranching as a unilaterally destructive force to the environment. Perception is slippery ground to base an argument on, however, and reality is far more complicated. Often seen as antithetical to one another, American ranchers and wildlife have long been entangled with another. The book is about producers and partner organizations who are forging new paths in conservation and addressing these seemingly intractable entanglements to sustain working ranch operations alongside healthy wildlife populations. It elevates the voices of these people striving daily to achieve wild and working landscapes in the West and serves as a model for how others can begin to do the same.

The author takes readers on a journey up western Montana to a different valley in each chapter and showcases the place-based stories of everyday conservation heroes who practice regenerative ranching, provide consciously raised agricultural products, advance strategies for collaborative conservation and protect vital habitat for endemic wildlife that would otherwise be developed and subdivided beyond repair. Ethnographic storytelling is interwoven with psychological theories to inform readers about progressive ways to make the world we share – with people and animals – a better place to live. Illustrations by Katie Christiansen of wildlife and conflict-reduction tools accompany the text, helping to underscore the vivid realities of shared landscapes and how they are achieved. 

There is no doubt the history of ranching is laden with problematic examples, and public and private rangelands are not universally in good condition today. This book aims to capture the increasing recognition that strong ranching practices coincide with good land and wildlife stewardship measures, but ranchers need help. If we want to see more of this remarkable work happening, environmentalists and concerned citizens need to step up and ensure these practices are not only possible but also become the norm. Everyone must be willing to come to the table and navigate discussions about how to work together more effectively and collaboratively. This book is a roadmap for how people can begin to do so.

‘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.

This book explores the multiple effects of globalization on urban and rural communities, providing anthropological case studies from postsocialist Bulgaria. As globalization has been studied largely in urban contexts, the aim of this volume is to shift attention to the under-examined countryside and analyse how transnational links are transforming relations between cities, towns and villages in Bulgaria.

Since the opening of borders after the end of socialism (1989) and Bulgaria’s EU accession (2007), rural communities have been drawn into new transnational connections and global ‘shortcuts’ that transcend the framework of the (formerly socialist) nation-state. The case studies of this volume demonstrate that apart from cities, villages and towns are also increasingly exposed to global flows and economic inequalities, resulting in the remaking of rural places. As a result of increased mobility and growing transnational and global connections, boundaries are fading between cities and the countryside and between Bulgaria and Europe. Some Bulgarian villages are winners while others are losers as a result of this development, leading to a situation of extreme rural diversity.

This book aims to challenge undifferentiated notions of ‘the countryside’, calling for a greater awareness of rural economic and social disparities which are often only associated with urban environments. It also focuses on how the ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ have been reconfigured in Bulgaria following the end of socialism and the advent of globalization, in socioeconomic as well as political, ideological and cultural terms. The volume is based on a collection of papers presented at a workshop that took place at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies on 29 and 30 May 2008. 

The book provides an assessment of the first 12 years of BRICS cooperation, from 2008 to 2020, focusing on international financial governance issues and especially on the new financing mechanisms created by the BRICS, the BRICS monetary fund and the development bank. It is shown that Brazil, Russia, India and China, joined later by South Africa, share common traits that led them to cooperate in the reform of the existing international financial architecture, especially the G20 and the IMF. After 2012, in light of the difficulty of having the USA, the European and other advanced countries agreed to move from “tinkering at the margins” to fundamental reform of the Bretton Woods institutions. The BRICS took the momentous decision to establish their own monetary fund, named the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), and their own development bank, named the New Development Bank (NDB). The book goes on to describe the difficult negotiations among the BRICS between 2012 and 2014. Some of these difficulties revealed the weaknesses that would lead the CRA and the NDB to make slow progress in the first five years of their existence, from 2015 to 2010. The book provides an overview of the strong points and weaknesses of the initial phase of these financing mechanisms. While they still hold promise, much remains to be done to make the BRICS financing mechanisms fulfill their founders’ plans and intentions. The book ends with a brief discussion of the future of the BRICS as a cooperation mechanism, highlighting that, despite inevitable and foreseeable obstacles, joint action by the five countries is likely to remain an important feature of the international landscape in the decades to come.

The book may be of interest to multiple audiences as it lies at the intersection of economics, international relations and geopolitics. Written in accessible language, avoiding jargon, the book is targeted not only at specialists but also at non-specialists interested in these areas of knowledge and changes in the international economic and financial landscape at the outset of the twenty-first century. 

This book brings together the leading contemporary currents of thought from a galaxy of established scholars and intellectuals of Pakistan. It is a monumental contribution to the national debate on a series of crises and lingering issues that need attention of the stakeholders all around.  

The book covers three major areas of investigation into public life in the country. One, it delves into the historical, sociological and cultural causes of various political conflicts, ranging from the negative role of the educational curricula for national harmony to cultural violence and persistent militarism to the curse of enforced disappearances. There are highly analytical contributions that define the conflict-resolution nexus. Two, the book is a source of inspiration on the liberal agenda of creating a scientific frame of mind, setting the feminist debate in a global context, challenging the shrinking space for media and focussing on the largely forgotten area of industrial relations. Readers will find ample issue orientation in the analysis and policy orientation in the deliberations. Three, the book enters a domain of hope, planning for a bright future and focussing on some longer-term issues couched in comprehensive new approaches to development, environment, energy, foreign policy and feminism.

The scope of the book is amazingly wide, the analysis is rich with conceptual references and empirical finding, and the scholarly idiom is comprehensible for both the articulate section of the population and the scholarly community. 

‘Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment’ argues that both ageing as a unitary social process and agedness as a distinct social location have become fragmented. The book concentrates  on the emergence of a ‘new ageing’ mediated in part through the processes of ‘embodiment’.

The first section provides the main theoretical context for the book, with the first chapter outlining the new ‘sociology of the body’ and the second outlining the emergence of new ageing and its ‘re-orientation’ toward the body. The second section explores the relationship between new ageing and key aspects of embodied identity, namely gender, race, disability and sexuality. In each of these sections, the authors provide a brief historical perspective on the emergence of these embodied identities as social movements during the cultural ferment of the 1960s, and explore their subsequent confrontation, or avoidance of confrontation with, the issue of ageing.

The third section covers embodied practices, from sexual practice and its re-orientation toward age and ageing, to the embodied practices of ‘appearance management’, particularly those associated with cosmetics, clothing and fashion. Finally, the book considers ‘new enhancement technologies’ of the body, such as plastic surgery, with relation to ideas of ‘rejuvenation’. By focusing upon those embodied practices that are oriented toward age and ageing, and their place in expressing, maintaining or recreating other ‘pre-performed’ identities, the work allows a more embodied understanding of ageing and its diverse engagements within society to be realised.

This book works at the intersection of two related yet different fields. One is the heterogeneous feminist effort to question universal forms of knowing. The expression 'embodiment of knowledge' deploys the notions of time (as history), space (as location) and politics (as partiality of perspective or standpoint) to interrogate the purported universality of knowing. Embodiment is one important concept through which feminist philosophies try to perceive the attempt of questioning the universal. The second field follows from mind/body dichotomy. Embodiment is traditionally understood to involve an act of simple inversion – valorizing the (material) body in place of the mind. However, if meanings are seen to produce the body as 'a system of signification', embodiment gets reduced to another form of the significatory mechanism. The book explored the dynamics of the production of the 'body' with a focus on the 'others' (death, sexual and colonial differences) that fracture and define the notion of the body. An ethical responsibility to the 'others' consonant with this ontologically differentiated body distinguishes this notion of embodiment from standard versions of 'third world feminism'. The development of this notion requires an elaboration of the ways in which power and scientific rationality work (epistemically) in a postcolonial setting. Finally, the book presents the notion of embodied knowledges as inseparable from a deconstructive politics of the (im)possible.

Examining today’s global politics by linking it to the meditations of a classical Greek philosopher may be counterintuitive to understanding a world in crisis. But for political analysts, policymakers, social media, bloggers, journalists, engaged students, the new influencers, and inquisitive citizens, Thucydides’ ancient wisdom may offer critical insights into detecting the endemic of political fear spreading across global borders. With his help and by applying his framework to six case studies, this book unearths the different facets of fear that define a world in crisis.

Fear is a pervasive term used to describe a group’s or individual’s sense of insecurity, threat, and angst. It identifies other subtle dimensions comprising suspicion, scepticism, wariness, dread, horror, stupefication, and moral panic. These events may arise in the very near future or affect society at some later point, as Thucydides discovered in his analysis. Disaggregating political fear makes us aware of its complexities as the classical Greek writer set out twenty-five centuries ago. Framing his study to today’s fears results in significant ramifications for democracy and rivalries between states. 

Thucydides’ meditations on fear is about six intriguing case studies structuring political fear: national fear which caused the Brexit outcome in the UK; a regional kind fomenting fear of foreigners in Germany’s Saxony state; an ethnic dimension emerging in a Russia fearful of too much in-migration; an individual case of a Japanese artist experiencing angst when caught between adversaries in World War II; fear of interstate relations shaping Australia’s troubled connections to China; and the precariousness of identity as the U.S. began to embrace tribal politics. In all this, can a rejuvenated liberal theory unpacking a heavy dose of tolerance overcome symbolic liberalism and slam the door on ever-mounting political fear?

Professor Das provides a fascinating study of the issue of ethnic politics in multi-ethnic Third World countries and discusses the non-convergence of state and nation in the context of Kashmir and Sindh. The artificial de-colonization process in the South Asian sub-continent resulted in the construction of national frontiers for its two successor states that did not rest on a synchronization of ethnic and state boundaries. Consequently, cross-border loyalties amongst significant sections of the population survived the boundaries imposed between the two successor states. In the context of centralizing nation-building strategies, when ethnic political assertions occur in outlying or frontier areas of these nation-states, the distinction between domestic and external affairs or between home and foreign politics tends to lose its significance in the traditional sense. Political actors from across the borders of neighbouring states can then deny the marks of their different objective nationalities and treat themselves as members of a single 'loyalty group'.

Thus, ethnic politics transcends its domestic contours and helps foment regional tensions. In such circumstances, ethnic assertions tend to constitute vital local or domestic ingredients that define the national security priorities within a particular region. The current insurrection in Kashmir and turmoil in Sindh superbly demonstrate this pattern.

Part I of this book gives particular attention to freedom as an “aesthetic idea” that informs certain philosophical discussions of freedom in Kant, Schelling, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus and Isaiah Berlin. The critical concept of “positive freedom” is discussed in the first chapter and continues to inform the entire book. In Part II, the more “practical” application of these ideas with respect to certain “zones” of freedom such as academia (“academic freedom”), religion (“religious freedom”), art (“artistic freedom”), “free speech,” and “political freedom” are discussed Finally, in the Epilogue, the surprising relationship of “friendship” to “freedom” that begins with their close etymological relationship is discussed.

This book gives the first no-nonsense, hands-on account of the financing principles and perspectives for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), the new kid on the block in the battle against climate change. NAMAs are finding their own identity, and most importantly, finding a new financial basis without relying on a carbon market and carbon credit. While the NAMA model may be the right instrument at the right time, it is spawned from the climate change negotiation sphere that continues to suffer from its lack of interaction with the other spheres involved in its actual deployment. Despite 20 years of negotiations, a barrier remains between concept and action. The disconnect is first and foremost between the political sphere and the private-sector sphere, and is particularly rooted in the understanding – or misunderstanding – of finance. This book bridges the gap by addressing policymaking and private sector financing in one volume. It disarms myths, hides nothing behind political correctness and applies a good measure of common sense to advance guidance for the financing of actions that will allow developing countries, having become the prime source of greenhouse gas emissions, to contribute to the global battle against climate change.

The twentieth century has witnessed a tremendous reinforcement of the concept of democracy. In a period of about one hundred years, the virtues of democracy have been greatly extolled and the world has witnessed a process of democratization. In the sixty years since its inception, Indian democracy too has developed indigenous roots and is emerging as a unique example of parliamentary democracy. The important question today is not the survival of Indian democracy, but the nature of India’s democratic politics.

The present volume is an attempt to understand the development of democratic polity in India. It covers a wide range of issues – theoretical concepts, political institutions, federalism, electoral process, individual and group rights and mass media – drawing attention to the significant broadening of Indian democracy. But the benefits of political democracy are yet to reach the masses – political institutions are dominated by the elite, civil society has been politicized and the interventionist state has become an arm of the elite. The solution to these problems lies in further democratization of the political process.

McCarron approaches the work of Alfred Hitchcock in a way that is unique in the world of film critique. Rather, than provide a biographical overview, or consider Hitchcock’s work in the context of conventional film criticism, McCarron uses Hitchcock’s films to illustrate ideas at play in the social sciences and philosophy even as he uses those same ideas to illustrate central aspects of Hitchcock’s films. In short, while McCarron focuses on many of Hitchcock’s most celebrated films, his broader concern is with a series of ideas crucial to Hitchcock’s work as an innovative artist of the cinema. For example, McCarron interrogates the idea of the MacGuffin, Hitchcock’s famous term for the motivating issue in a film’s narrative. However, there is far more to the idea of the MacGuffin than is found in Hitchcock’s description, as McCarron shows how political theorist Ernesto Laclau’s theory of equivalential substitution effectively explains how the MacGuffin functions as a device to bridge the divide between the film’s exegesis and the audience’s emotional engagement in the story. In a similar vein, McCarron undertakes a close reading of Hitchcock’s theory of ‘pure cinema,’ indicating that while the concept is widely embraced by Hitchcock scholars, rarely do those scholars agree on what Hitchcock ultimately intended by the phrase. Tracing the development of the concept across the years, McCarron shows how Hitchcock’s theory of pure cinema resonates with anthropological concepts of purity and even finds a place in current debates regarding so-called hybrid media. McCarron further explores Hitchcock’s alleged moralism, showing how the problem of moral agency was often treated in Hitchcock’s films as a highly complex and decidedly ambiguous condition. McCarron indicates the importance of re-viewing Hitchcock’s films from points of view that plainly show that Hitchcock is not properly understood when simply described as ‘the master of suspense,’ as his films are of enduring interest for a range of reasons that go well beyond their relevance for traditional film studies. Interpretations of his films gain in power and scope when we extend our analyses to the intricate interpretations of his work as it touches on subjects as diverse as politics, feminism, rhetoric, and philosophy. McCarron treats these larger intellectual constellations in considerable detail, bringing a fresh perspective to the study of the famed director’s work.

“The Domains of Identity” defines sixteen simple and comprehensive categories of transactions which cause personally identifiable information to be stored in databases. This research, which builds on the synthesis of over 900 academic articles, addresses the challenges of identity management that involve interactions of almost all people in almost all institutional/organizational contexts. Enumerating the sixteen domains and describing the characteristics of each domain clarifies which problems can arise and how they can be solved within each domain.

Discussions of identity management are often confusing because they mix issues from multiple domains, or because they try unsuccessfully to apply solutions from one domain to problems in another. This book is an attempt to eliminate the confusion and enable clearer conversations about identity management problems and solutions.

Who owns our digital identity? Is ownership even a relevant concept here? Who controls our digital identity (or pieces of it)? What is the correct relationship between the individual, the state, and private actors and organizations, with respect to one’s identity? What do emerging technical architectures do to potentially create alignment? What identity is required to get identity documents? Kaliya Young guides us through these and other questions we need to be asking to solve our society’s complex identity challenges.