Anthem Press

The Ṭämpiṭavihāras of Sri Lanka focuses on one distinctive Buddhist architectural practice from pre-modern Sri Lanka – the construction of Buddha image-houses on elevated wooden platforms supported by stone pillars. As a centre of Buddhism, Sri Lanka has a rich tradition of erecting Buddha image-houses, the origin of which dates to the fifth century. Yet, the ṭämpiṭavihāra tradition only existed from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The ṭämpiṭavihāra is an exceptional type of image-house, not only for its specific timeframe and unique construction technology, but also for its complex architectural conception of the Buddhist worldview and soteriology. Except for this period of Sri Lankan history, this architectural exemplar does not exist in anytime or anywhere in the entire Buddhist world. This book examines the significant aspects of ṭämpiṭavihāra architecture and documents some of the distinctive examples with an analysis of their architectural design and symbolic content.

Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book is organized into two parts. The first part examines the significant historical, cultural, and architectural aspects of ṭämpiṭavihāras in depth. The second part documents fifty of the distinctive examples of ṭämpiṭavihāras in the country with an analysis of their architectural designs and symbolic content. Each example is illustrated with architectural drawings of its plans, elevations, and sections along with photographs. The book also includes a list of over 200 extant tämpiṭavihāras in the country. This book is the very first comprehensive examination of the subject of tämpiṭavihāras published in any language and made available for a global audience. It narrates the story of ṭämpiṭavihāras from a multidimensional perspective that involves architecture, anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, history, sociology, and theology. Consequently, it appeals to a vast array of enthusiasts of these disciplines in addition to scholars in Asian studies, South Asian studies, Sri Lankan studies, and Buddhist studies.

‘An Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion’ is based on current events and developments in Australia and seeks to illuminate them using historical and contemporary issues. It is not a formal or chronological ‘history book’. Its sources are soundly based on the scholarship of existing history books. The transformation of Australia into a complex multicultural society comparable to the United States or Canada has not been fully dealt with by most conventional historians or taught extensively in schools and universities. Many conservative scholars either ignore this or even deplore the changes which have become so noticeable since the 1950s.

The most important of these changes has been the decline and virtual disappearance of the British Empire from the Asian regions and the growth of dozens of political powers and systems previously only subject to European control. These changes have created an international environment for Australia which is increasingly focussed on Asia and on powers as large and strong as China and India or as threatening as North Korea or some of the Islamic world. These may have been exaggerated, as was Communism in the past, but recently public policy is being reshaped to cope with them. This has normally exchanged British for United States protection, which may not be acceptable to some of Australia’s neighbours. In particular the newly discovered ‘Anglosphere’ may look just like the old British connection on a broader scale.

The Australian population reflects these changes in its quite recent nature by accepting and even welcoming immigration from the same Asian regions despite some official attempts to control and limit it after the end of the White Australia policy in the 1970s. Refugee pressures have even extended the intake to cover some parts of Africa. While some official policies have welcomed these changes, others have sought to limit them or to seek cohesion in what might seem like a dissolving society. There have been a series of public debates surrounding ethnicity, values, dangers and tensions, even though these are much less obvious than elsewhere. The book tracks backwards through history to show that dislike and even fear of non-British, non-white and undemocratic elements have existed since the earliest days of British settlement. These were first motivated by contact with the indigenous population, which was drastically reduced in size and driven from their lands within the first generation. This created lasting problems with which Australians have grappled with limited success right into the present, two centuries later. Others followed, including ‘enemy aliens’ such as Germans who were originally welcomed as civilized and Christian. Other potential enemies of British Protestantism and authority were soon included – the Irish, socialists, radicals and, eventually by 1920, Communists.

Most potential disturbers of stability were seen as foreigners in one sense or another, extending to Jews, Catholics, Chinese, Asians, Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Displaced Persons after 1945, Japanese and, most recently, Arabs and Muslims, including Muslims who were not Arabs and Arabs who were not Muslims. These latter were the victims of the only mass race riot of recent history at Cronulla (NSW) in 2005. The reality of Middle Eastern conflicts which were largely religious were distorted into claims that some such elements could never be accepted in Australia, despite the fact that the Arabic language by then was the fourth most widely used in Australia because of permitted immigrations. Fear of political disruptors is traced back to the Industrial Workers of the World in 1918, who were made illegal by the Hughes wartime government. At the same time Hughes was trying to recruit Australians into the massacres of the World War by urging support for King and Country.

‘An Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion’ traces many of the fears, real or imaginary, which characterized Australians in the past. As most citizens had become literate by 1900 they were subjected to a mass press which fanned these fears right through to the present. As adult Australians (and all British migrants until recently) could vote, political parties had an interest in maintaining the myths surrounding these enemies of progress and safety, whoever they were. The fear of Communists and other radicals was often combined with fear of the power of trade unions, although these were controlled by laws from the early years. Racist and fascist organizations did not arouse so much fear during the unstable 1930s or even post-war more recently. The fear of Communism was strong enough to rend the Australian Labor Party for two decades. Yet the Communists only won one parliamentary seat at the Commonwealth level in the whole of their half-century of existence. They were an agent of the Soviet Communist state but that was the cause of their eventual collapse and demise in the 1960s. It also ignores the fact that the World War II was turned against the enemy of Australia, Britain and the United States largely by the efforts of the Soviet Red Army. As in many other respects, history becomes very malleable in the hands of those with an interest in rehearsing it. The outstanding example in Australia has been the legend of Gallipoli, where the disastrous defeat of Australian volunteers invading Turkey was soon turned into a glorious victory and national legend.

‘An Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion’ presents Australian traditions, myths and legends in an understanding but often critical light in the belief that such devices have often been used by interested parties and even governments to maintain social solidarity and to mould a very complex people into a coherent and obedient whole. In the process Australians have often been misled about their failures and problems in the interest of consolidating their belief in their superiority. Australia is not and never has been an equal society. It has not always been a peaceful and tolerant society but it is more so than most other states and especially many of those sending immigrants. It is not a perfect democracy. Many have been mistreated and even persecuted but not as severely as in many other still-functioning societies. That most of those suffering at present are either indigenous or refugees should not be a cause of indifference. But at least some protest and assistance has been present since the passing of the original convict state in the 1860s. Australians may be suspicious of foreigners and social and political deviants. But they have passed a whole series of reforming laws since the Federation in 1901, not all of which have been as racist as the White Australia policy. In general, Australia has been a successful society, which does not mean that problems and mistakes need to be wiped off the slate. This book seeks to get a little bit closer to the truth of two hundred years of creating a liveable society in what was a remote and unknown part of the world. Nothing is perfect. Australia might have been served by better politicians and journalists or even by academics and intellectuals. But of how many societies in the modern world could that not also be true? The point is to record and contemplate specific faults and triumphs and act accordingly.

This book is about how new media, and in particular, digital and social media, has changed the world of sports forever. The way fans receive information, communicate and form communities now predominantly lives online.  

But perhaps even more significant is the evolution of the sports media industry, where digital media has impacted the broader media industry, stimulated new media organisations, changed old media organisations and altered old conventions of journalism in equal measure.

It is no exaggeration to suggest that new media has turned the sports industry on its head. The implications for this are profound – both exciting and disturbing. So too is the impact on the way we form communities, the quality of news created, the way we receive information and prioritise news and content – all fundamental to our democratic processes and social and political lives.

 This study draws on the expertise of academics, scholars, experts and professionals at the forefront of the sports, media, and journalism fields. Calling upon the worldwide appeal of the sporting industry, this book is a prevailing testament to the pure influence of digital media on ALL parts of society.

For the 2019 IVR World Congress of Philosophy of Law meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, Drs. Barry W. Bussey and Angus J. L. Menuge organized a special workshop on the inherence of human dignity, featuring participation from philosophers, legal scholars, and legal practitioners from around the world. Many of the chapters in these volumes are the result of that invigorating two-day workshop. In addition, several new papers were solicited to round out each volume so that it offers broad coverage of the issues it addresses. 

The first volume, Foundations of Human Dignity, focuses on the foundational questions concerning the meaning, nature, and scope of human dignity, and our ability to know it. It addresses the following questions: It addresses the following questions. How was dignity understood by the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Can human dignity be grounded in natural characteristics of human beings accessible by reason, or must it be grounded in God? How can we recognize and promote dignity? What is the connection between dignity and religious liberty? Should dignity be understood in terms of autonomy or well-being? What is the origin of the new dignity jurisprudence, and is it defensible? Can dignity be understood as social characteristic? Can it be extended to artificially intelligent systems?

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.

Old troubles with remote origins persist in modern Spain. When did Spain screw up? "The Spanish Frustration" argues that, in the long term, Spain missed the opportunity to become a consolidated modern nation-state because it was entangled in imperial adventures for several centuries when it should have been building a solid domestic basis for further endeavours. The opportunity of shaping a modern, civilized Spanish society was lost.

Largely as a consequence of the waste of resources in the imperial effort, Spain missed the chance to build a civil administration, institutions of political representation and the rule of law at the right time. For long periods, militarism and clericalism substituted a weak state. As states create nations, rather than the other way around, the weakness of the Spanish state made the building of a unified cultural nation a frustrated, incomplete effort.

Lacking the institutional and cultural bases of a solid nation-state, the democratic regime established since the late 1970s in Spain has been based on a political party oligarchy which tends to produce minority governments and exclusionary decisions. Catalonia, the Basque Country and other centrifugal territorial autonomies also lend less support to the regime and threaten it with splits. People’s dissatisfaction and disengagement with the way democracy works are widespread.

In short: A ruinous empire made a weak state, which built an incomplete nation, which sustains a minority democracy. That, in a nutshell, is the political history of modern Spain.

This volume’s relevance may be explained, first and foremost, during a time of unprecedented loss of life around the world each day. The data, which is oftentimes incomplete and misleading, nonetheless reveals the state as deficient as well as negligent in its response to social healthcare needs. This volume attests to the fact that pressing global public health concerns are ever present as subjects of societal discourse and debate in developed and developing states. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic makes the omission of the ethics of personal data collection analysis in the international relations literature even more salient given the rise of contact tracing and increased uses of mobile phone Apps to track citizens by states and firms across the globe, as this volume’s chapters analyzing the responses to COVID-19 in Iran and Taiwan explain. 

For this reason, dialogue connecting research and practice is necessary to identify ways to address these emerging challenges at the conceptual, economic, legal, political, and social levels. The perspectives of researchers and the experience of practitioners must come together to bring the discussion forward. In response to this plea, a community of research-practitioners remains in dialogue after two Bosch Workshops at New York University to define the contents of case studies in this volume. The responsibility of this research-practitioner community is to grapple with specific issues that define the state of the discipline in personal data collection ethics. Case studies, including prominent uses of crowd-mapping platforms and mobile telephony Apps, document legal and human rights concerns in remote areas. Field research speaks to cases ranging from an analysis of Iran’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to the exploitation of personal data collection to perpetuate modern slavery through re-education camps in the People’s Republic of China to crowd-mapping stories of physical abuses in public spaces by Safecity in India.

The emphasis on the ethics of personal data collection in this edited volume through various case studies is to bring race and gender to the forefront once again as lenses to understand international relations. The myth of the founding of international relations in 1919, analyzed by Acharya and Buzan (2019) a century later, is one that obfuscates the influence of race relations as well as gender in the early development of the discipline during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These case studies broaden the ways we understand international relations in the West and, as importantly, in the non-Western space given the countries that are the subjects of analysis: China, Iran, Taiwan, and India, as well as the European Union and the United States. As the contributors focus on the relevance of race and gender across cases, this volume underlines our concerns about the future of democracy in the face of the rising tide of authoritarianism around the world. The plight of the world’s largest and most plural democracy, India, under the Modi government, the increasingly aggressive nature of China under President Xi Jinping as well as the challenge of Trumpism in the United States make these concerns, which place illiberalism at the center of developments, pressing as well as timely.

In this collection of essays on Hamlin Garland, Donald Pizer attempts to re-establish the wealth and importance of the early work and activities of the radical, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer from the Midwest. Essays in the opening half of the book are devoted to Garland’s radical economic and artistic beliefs and activities, while those in the second part concentrate on his most permanent, well-known work of this period: ‘Main-Travelled Roads, Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly’, and ‘A Son of the Middle Border’.

In the preface to this volume, Pizer traces the overall coherence of Garland’s early ideas and fiction. Garland, Pizer demonstrates, found in his reading of radical writers of the period an explanation of the hardships and limitations of prairie life that he had personally experienced; he then translated this union of concept and actuality into a powerful expressive tool in his acclaimed prairie fictions.

Pizer includes several of his late essays on Garland in this book, in which he suggests, on the basis of his own critical development, that Garland’s finest writing dealing with late nineteenth-century Midwestern life also contains sexual and Edenic themes which transcend the immediate social and economic conditions of this period and help to explain the significance and lastingness of his early body of work.

‘Managing Coral Reefs’ examines Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s pathways to implementing the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), focusing specifically on how regional and national policies in Southeast Asia have fared when implementing the Aichi Targets of the CBD. These targets include safeguarding ecosystems through protection and ensuring that benefits from ecosystems can be enjoyed by all. Kelly Heber Dunning examines CBD implementation through marine protected areas (MPAs) for corals reefs in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Coral reefs, along with mangroves and seagrass, provide stakeholders with livelihoods in fisheries and tourism; they are also efficient natural barriers against extreme weather and climate change–related hazards. While Indonesia uses a co-managed framework, whereby villages and governments share power, to implement its MPAs, Malaysia uses a top-down network of federally managed Marine Parks. Using mixed methods through interviews and surveys as well as coral reef ecology surveys conducted over a year of fieldwork, Dunning argues that co-managed systems are the current best practice for implementing the CBD’s Aichi Targets in tropical developing countries. Not only do they prevent ecosystems from many local forms of degradation, but they also are seen as more legitimate by local resource user stakeholders, allowing them more adaptive capacity to manage the ecosystems under conditions of uncertainty, as well as allowing for a more integrated form of management whereby ecological, economic, and social considerations can be made for management decisions. Centralized MPAs can mimic the successes of co-managed systems through better stakeholder engagement, possibly with greater socio-ecological success in the long run, due to their superior financial, administrative and organizational powers.

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

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

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

In 'Depoliticizing Development', John Harriss explores the origins of the idea of social capital and its diverse meanings in the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu and, more specifically, Robert Putnam, who is most responsible for the extraordinary rise of the idea of social capital through his work on Italy and the United States. Harriss asks why this notion should have taken off in the dramatic way that it has done and finds in its uses by the World Bank the attempt, systematically, to obscure class relations and power. Social capital has thus come to play a significant part in the discourses of international development, which go toward comprising 'the anti-politics machine'. This powerful and lucid critique will be of immense value to all those interested in development studies, including sociologists, economists, planners, NGOs and other activists.

For the 2019 IVR World Congress of Philosophy of Law meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, Drs. Barry W. Bussey and Angus J. L. Menuge organized a special workshop on the inherence of human dignity, featuring participation from philosophers, legal scholars, and legal practitioners from around the world. Many of the chapters in these volumes are the result of that invigorating two-day workshop. In addition, several new papers were solicited to round out each volume so that it offers broad coverage of the issues it addresses. 

The first volume, Foundations of Human Dignity, focuses on the foundational questions concerning the meaning, nature, and scope of human dignity, and our ability to know it. It addresses the following questions: It addresses the following questions. How was dignity understood by the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Can human dignity be grounded in natural characteristics of human beings accessible by reason, or must it be grounded in God? How can we recognize and promote dignity? What is the connection between dignity and religious liberty? Should dignity be understood in terms of autonomy or well-being? What is the origin of the new dignity jurisprudence, and is it defensible? Can dignity be understood as social characteristic? Can it be extended to artificially intelligent systems?

Growing levels of education, increasing availability of capital, diversification and specialization of economic activities, and the numerous support options available to start a business has led to the creation of more and more micro and small businesses across Europe. But while the process of setting up a business is increasingly straightforward, keeping it going is much tougher. In normal times, business entry and business exit are natural processes, inherent to economic life. Yet, the number of bankruptcies peaked during the recent financial crisis. The Lisbon Partnership had identified the key role of overcoming the stigma of business failure as a strategy for growth and jobs.

There is a clear economic and social rationale in providing a second chance to failed entrepreneurs and helping them derive positive experiences from negative situations. First, businesses set up by restarters grow faster than those of first timers in terms of turnover and jobs created. The case studies of Ford, Hershey and Disney are instructive for young entrepreneurs in this matter.

Second, most of the time, the cause of a business failure is not the incompetence but external circumstances such as a slump in demand, financial crisis or rise of a new competitor. However, this professional failure is often confused with personal failure, and low self-esteem causes individuals to withdraw and retreat to safer employment options.

Third, it is accepted that a society does not generate innovation and productivity by steadfastly avoiding mistakes but rather by learning from them. Yet the culture of and incentive system in Europe does not reflect this.

Value of Failure is a comprehensive attempt to understand the various aspects of the phenomenon of business failure. It enables readers to understand business failure from the perspective of institutional theory; economic failure in the process of small business growth in the context of the shadow economy; Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ and the fear of failure; sustainable economic growth and development and system approach to failures and their impact on the enterprise operation.

The World of Wu Zhao is a carefully curated set of more than 120 translated stories—all annotated and contextualized—on a range of topics from Zhang Zhuo’s 張鷟 eighth century collection of miscellany, Collected Records of Court and Country (Chaoye qianzai 朝野僉載). The book provides English readers with a sense and feel for the empire during the reign of Wu Zhao 武曌 (624–705, also known as Empress Wu and Wu Zetian), China’s first and only female emperor. 

The World of Wu Zhao moves outward from the female sovereign’s personal and intimate domain of the inner palace. The text includes chapters on a number of different themes and topics: the female emperor’s male favorites, the culture of the court , cruel officials, as well as sections on flora and fauna, the common folk, artisans and craftsmen, Buddhist and Daoist monks, the military, spirits and the supernatural, the borderlands, and local officials. Chapters are introduced through “speaking artifacts” such as saddles, swords, bronze tallies, porcelain figurines of camels and grooms, official tallies, Buddhist cave paintings and funerary monuments—contemporary to the reign of the female emperor. This lively and fresh perspective on medieval China will amuse and shock readers, prompting them to recalibrate everything they think they know about medieval China.

Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation asks how we understand this contradictory politics and what opportunities exist to create a more equal society. It argues an older welfare state politics, driven by the power of industrial labour, is giving way to political contests led by workers within the welfare state itself. Advancing more equal social policy, though, requires new forms of statecraft, or ways of doing policy, as well as new models of organising.

 Drawing on examples of social policy change since the 1980s, the book explores how seemingly similar reforms reflect distinct political dynamics and facilitate different social outcomes. The examples reflect the main aspects of liberalisation – conditionality of benefits, marketisation of services and financialisation of the life course. Across each domain, it identifies examples that fit the ‘neoliberal’ frame and alternatives that appear to subvert it. From family payments to Medicare, social protection advanced using remarkably similar policy tools to those associated with liberalisation. The book identifies two competing welfare state projects. A ‘dual welfare state’ of hidden subsidies to privatised welfare alongside increasingly residualised public systems that stigmatise recipients, and a 'hybrid’ model of marketised universalism that uses novel forms of statecraft to socialise risk while advancing competition.

 Rather than explaining how Australia fell prey to neoliberalism, the book identifies an ongoing struggle between competing visions of liberalisation. Dual welfare deepens inequality by concealing the distributional effects of state policy, building a sizeable coalition of largely older voters, insulated from the insecurities of precarious work and benefiting from rising house prices. Hybrid policies, it argues, emerged at the intersection of sympathetic bureaucracies and strong social pressure. Central to both are workers within the welfare state and the unions that represent them. The analysis recasts divides based on generation and education as reflecting the increasingly central role of social reproduction within the paid economy, and the strategies of care workers to have their skills and value recognised. The analysis opens opportunities for new models of solidarity based on an ethic of care.

Reading as a Philosophical Practice asks why reading—everyday reading for pleasure—matters so profoundly to so many people. Its answer is that reading is an implicitly philosophical activity. To passionate readers, it is a way of working through, and taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. The book examines the lessons that the activity of reading seems to teach about selfhood, morality, and ontology, and it tries to clarify the sometimes paradoxical claims that serious readers have made about it. To do so, it proposes an original theoretical framework based on Virginia Woolf’s notion of the common reader and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of practice. It also asks whether reading can continue to play this role as paper is replaced by electronic screens.

Despite the obvious overlap between the concerns of avid readers and the perennial questions of philosophy, most professional philosophers pay little attention to the kinds of reading that are most familiar to most people. They have had almost nothing to say about the activity of reading for pleasure, considered in itself and as such, or about the ways it matters to ordinary readers. For many serious readers, reading offers a way of working through philosophical matters—a way of posing, and sometimes taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. This questioning is usually not as explicit or as self-aware as the debates that go on in philosophy journals and seminar rooms. But it has much the same goal and addresses many of the same concerns. Moreover, Reading as a Philosophical Practice argues that it is the “experience” of reading that performs these functions. Reading is not just philosophical on those occasions when we happen to read the works of philosophers or philosophically minded novelists. There is something philosophical about the activity of reading, in itself and as such, and about the experiences people have while engaged in it. The book’s goal is to clarify what this is. 

Every day we hear and read about the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation but learn little about what it takes to become an entrepreneur. “Entrepreneurial Living” is intended for anyone who is interested in entrepreneurship but has not dared to venture into this world, yet.

“Entrepreneurial Living” takes the most relevant proven insights from research and practice and communicates them in an accessible and concise way with beautifully illustrated hands-on tools. Using the analogy of a board game and illustrative examples, the book teaches you the fundamentals of entrepreneurial life. Some exemplary lessons are as follows:

• Knowing your identity, network and competencies helps you identify interesting entrepreneurial problems that you are equipped to solve.

• Focusing on your means instead of a distant vision enables you to create goal portfolios and deal with uncertainty.

• Understanding your own strengths and those of your potential partners lets you evaluate the option of cofounding a business.

• Developing a business model in collaboration with your customers can be more useful than writing a business plan. Listening to customers early in the ideation process helps you develop the business systematically.

• If you are observant and reflective, your insights will combine and turn you into your personal version of a successful entrepreneur.

“Entrepreneurial Living” teaches that it is never too late to become an entrepreneur; any prior life experience will help you visualize what you can do. Do not be afraid of the uncertainty and dare to take the first step to start the adventure. The best day to begin was yesterday. Today is the next-best day.

William Congreve wrote his plays and his novella, Incognita¸ during a time of immense social and political upheaval. The revolution of 1688 brought with it a rash of new ideas. William and Mary were monarchs chosen by a Convention of Englishmen, not rulers chosen by divine right. And new ideas in philosophy and politics, most notably expressed in the writings of John Locke, gave a new shape to the way the world was perceived. Congreve, an ardent supporter of the dual monarchy and later of William III, was depicted by Charles Lamb and many later critics as writing comedies that had no connection with the real world. To the contrary, his writings reflect a strong engagement with the changes occurring in the social milieu of the time. The new sense of political liberty brought with it greater social equality; the lapse in the Licensing Act brought greater freedom in publishing. And while the attack upon the stage by Jeremy Collier in 1698 was to rein in some of the explorative nature of comedy during the 1690s, Congreve took advantage of the new freedoms from the events of 1688 to write sophisticated comedies that both exploited this liberation and criticised it.

This book attempts to examine Congreve’s major writings in the light of these changes by beginning with what appears to have been the questions raised by what may be seen as skepticism about the family, the collapse of concepts of marriage and the debates over divorce that dominated the decade. The book demonstrates how Congreve’s plays were very much a part of this; however, in his comedies, he always managed to achieve a light surface affect. This is perhaps never truer than in his first publication, his novella Incognita. Yet what appears to be an amusing series of mistaken identities resembling what was called a “Spanish plot” turns out to contain some serious questions about identity and some doubts about the way we understand our world. After demonstrating the political ambiguities of The Old Batchelor, the book shows how the betrayal of the family to which the lovers, Mellefont and Cynthia, are attached, by the sinister Maskall, is a fairly blatant attack on the politics of Jacobitism. Congreve followed this with the lighter Love for Love, which, beneath its odd Egyptian imagery, contains an attack upon the patriarchal concept of government still accepted by the followers of the deposed king, James II. In his tragi-comedy, The Mourning Bride, Congreve allowed his plot to carry the weight of the Whig rebellion, giving his lovers the epistemology of perception that belonged to the new world of the 1690s, compared to the uncontrolled passions of the past. In his final play, The Way of the World, he demonstrates how his lovers of 1700 reveal a combination of sensibility and canniness that make them capable of facing the complexities of the new century.

Since the new leadership came to power in 2012, China's domestic governance and public diplomacy have experienced some profound changes. At home, a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign significantly restored the government's credibility and reinforced public trust in the party-state's governance model, leading to a surge of nationalist pride. Internationally, the previous diplomatic principle, "hide our capacities and bide our time", gradually faded away with the emerging ideas like "China's ideas" and "China's wisdom". Good governance and anti-corruption efforts were expected to enhance soft power overseas. The party-state successfully governed the state for decades relying on its controversial governance approaches. The country also has visibly demonstrated economic and social development. However, China's growing influence has failed to be recognised as soft power, being viewed rather as sharp power most times. The monograph investigates whether China is mindful of exporting its political ideas and whether it considers its governance model to be the pillar of its soft power portfolio. The monograph also analyses how Australia, a western country with close economic ties with China, interprets China's intended narrative regarding its governance model and development. The questions are addressed through framing analysis of media coverage and in-depth interviews with Australian public diplomacy experts. Most studies in this field focus on externally directed soft power initiatives and the monograph fills the void by drawing attention to domestic affairs. The monograph sheds a new light on the relationship between domestic governance, soft power, and sharp power by examining the congruity between China's projection and Australia's mediation and also draws implications about China's public diplomacy and the future global order by sketching out Beijing’s ambitions and attempts.

The Petersburg Noverre accounts for Marius Petipa’s ballets produced on the Russian stage between 1847 and 1910. It is organized by year starting from the early 1860s, records details of his life and the action and reception of his ballets, obscure and famous.

‘The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde’ offers the best contemporary work on Gabriel Tarde, written by the best scholars currently working in this field. Original, authoritative and wide-ranging, the critical assessments of this volume will make it ideal for Tarde students and scholars alike.

‘Anthem Companions to Sociology’ offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the last two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological tradition, and will provide students and scholars with both an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

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.

During Latin America’s China-led commodity boom, governments turned a blind eye to the inherent flaws in the region’s economic policy. Now that the commodity boom is coming to an end, those flaws cannot be ignored. High on the list of shortcomings is the fact that Latin American governments—and Chinese investors—largely fell short of mitigating the social and environmental impact of commodity-led growth.

China and Sustainable Development in Latin America documents the social and environmental impact of the China-led commodity boom in the region. Primary commodity exploitation—of petroleum, copper, iron ore, tin, soybeans and the like—are endemic to environmental degradation. The recent commodity boom exacerbated pressure on the region’s waterways and forests and accentuated threats to human health, biodiversity, global climate change and local livelihoods. China and Sustainable Development in Latin America also highlights important areas of innovation, like Chile’s solar energy sector, in which governments, communities and investors have worked together to harness the commodity boom for the benefit of the people and the planet.

It is imperative that Latin American governments put in place the necessary policies to ensure that economic activity in natural resource sectors is managed in an environmentally responsible and socially inclusive manner. China and Sustainable Development in Latin America aims to highlight the efforts that have borne fruit as well as the areas that still need attention. Without proper policies in place to make sustainable development part and parcel of economic decision-making, Latin America will continue to be plagued by commodity boom and bust cycles that accentuate social and environmental conflicts and are ultimately detrimental to long-term prosperity.

For most of its history Europe was a thoroughly average part of the world: poor, uncouth, technologically and culturally backward. By contrast, China was always far richer, more sophisticated and advanced. Yet it was Europe that first became modern, and by the nineteenth century China was struggling to catch up. This book explains why. Why did Europe succeed and why was China left behind? The answer, as we will see, does not only solve a long-standing historical puzzle, it also provides an explanation of the contemporary success of East Asia, and it shows what is wrong with current theories of development and modernization.

The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry is the first book-length study of the contemporary poetry industry. By documenting radical changes over the past decade in the way poems are published, sold, and consumed, it connects the seemingly small world of poetry with the other, wider creative industries. In reassessing an art form that has been traditionally seen as free from or even resistant to material concerns, the book confronts the real pressures – and real opportunities – faced by poets and publishers in the wake of economic and cultural shifts since 2008. The changing role of anthologies, prizes, and publishers are considered alongside new technologies, new arts policy, and re-conceptions of poetic labour.

The historical frame helps to understand the legacy of increased funding in the UK in the previous decade, which Tony Blair described as a ‘golden age’ for the arts two months before his resignation, and a year before the global financial crisis which succeeding governments used to justify major funding cuts. With this economic emphasis, the book challenges the historical perception of poetry’s market autonomy, for a period in which it has moved beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s view of it as ‘the disinterested activity par excellence’. Drawing on an emerging body of research into the newly defined creative economy, alongside materialist and sociological approaches, the book is structured around a range of case studies – from new publishing formats, new degree programmes and mentorship schemes, plagiarism scandals, to poems going ‘viral’ – emphasizing an underlying shift towards professionalisation and entrepreneurial rhetoric associated with new poetry. Ultimately, it argues that poetry’s continued growth and diversification also leaves individuals with more responsibility than ever for sustaining its communities.

Can we live with being merely a brain with a history of being souls? Can our supra-nature, learnt in the crucible of religion and expressed in theology, survive without being exiled to the quantum mysteries of consciousness? Our very survival depends on these questions being answered and in a manner by which a non-expert can understand.

The book explores these ideas and posits how we might be able to understand ourselves as merely brain without the confusion of pixie dust in the nanotubules, reorienting ourselves to the idea of Nature, and our humane ethical response. By looking at the challenge of neuroscience to identity and our souls, the book explores the tension of being scientific and theological and helps guide the reader to what can be said by either front in our axial age.

The work places the soul, neuroscience and the new physics (as refuge for emergence of souls) into a conversation that considers what can be said about the Real of reality, including G-d. The book works theology, religion and science together so that each is given its voice and place in the conversation on how humans can become nature realists as a response to our challenges as a species with respect to climate change and worldwide pandemics.

'The Making of Christian Communities' sheds light on one of the most crucial periods in the development of the Christian faith. It considers the development and spread of Christianity between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and includes analysis of the formation and development of Christian communities in a variety of arenas, ranging from Late Roman Cappadocia and Constantinople to the court of Charlemagne and the twelfth-century province of Rheims, France during the twelfth century. The rise and development of Christianity in the Roman and Post-Roman world has been exhaustively studied on many different levels, political, legal, social, literary and religious. However, the basic question of how Christians of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages formed themselves into communities of believers has sometimes been lost from sight. This volume explores the idea that survival of the Christian faith depended upon the making of these communities, of which the Christians of this period were themselves acutely – and sometimes acrimoniously – aware.

The book Radical Human Centricity sits between two worlds: business and anthropology. It is a critique and reassessment of commercial innovation research from an anthropological perspective born out of years of experience in innovation research consulting and anthropological scholarship. It demonstrates the many failures of contemporary commercial research, from market research to research approaches in design thinking and human-centered design. After identifying the key problems, it provides a set of solutions to elevate commercial research and allow practitioners to fulfill the empty promises of design thinking and human-centered design. The book ends with a clear articulation of how to fix what is broken and actually be human-centric, just now from within the radical human-centric approach. 

This book is written for two audiences. The first is a business reader involved in innovation and strategy. It helps this business reader to understand the growing problem lurking in commercial research and offers practical advice to develop a research practice better able to fuel innovation, strategy, and design processes than anything currently available. It provides a practical and theoretical engagement with research practice to change how companies study human lives. It identifies the many gaps in more typical research methods, fills them with new tools and approaches from anthropological and ethnographic practices, and finally contextualizes them within an end-to-end radically human-centric research process.

The second reader is an anthropological scholar or student interested in the applied anthropological practices in commercial research. This is an increasingly important area of theory and practice within contemporary anthropology, and few books in this area are written by practicing commercial anthropologists. While the theoretical treatments will be known to an advanced anthropological reader, it applies them in contexts and examples not commonly discussed in the ethnographic disciplines. Additionally, the methodological examples and practice anecdotes introduce the reader to a world few academic researchers ever experience. Consequently, this book adds insight into an area of anthropological practice not well understood by academic social scientists and offers a window into new avenues of applied anthropology.

The purpose of this book is to create a space for a new form of applied commercial ethnography, called radical human -centricity. It is unique in that it addresses the problems of business research in a thoughtful, scholarly way, while also providing practical examples for innovation researchers of all backgrounds to emulate.

The concept of 'sustainable development' was first introduced at the time of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, where over 170 heads of state signed a plan of action for the 21st century - Agenda 21. Agenda 21 sets out a proposal for sustainable development that combines several goals: preservation of the environment, social equity and economic efficiency, aiming to ensure the well-being of the world's people without compromising the future of generations to come.

This Atlas proposed an unprecedented 'reading' of the global situation, supported by socio-economic, geopolitical and environmental data. Topics including access to education, the gulf between living standards in the North and the South, women's civil rights, climate change and international solidarity are presented along with a series of fully updated 30 information sheets and 40 full-colour maps.

'World Atlas of Sustainable Development' is a unique and valuable tool for individuals and organizations interested in development, whether they work in businesses, administration, local authorities, associations or education, as it is designed to be concise, accessible and objective.

This volume seeks to bring to light the lived experiences of those who are at the lowest intersections of injustice—Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, refugees, disabled people, the youth, women, children and the poor. It is the fruit of a series of presentations that were delivered for the (In)justice International Workshops 2021 by a variety of commentators, ranging from eminent academics, students at all levels of study, practitioners within the fields of social work and ‘live experience’ alongside victims, esteemed barristers and social justice activists. 
These were presented to an audience of 524 attendees representing 28 countries and they formed the basis upon which broader, more holistic discussions of the lived experiences and traumas of people from different Indigenous origins, ethnicities, disabilities and the ‘so-called’ problematic youth (of all types) could take place.  Gender, social exclusion, institutional discrimination, the intersectional nature of these crimes and effects, (social) media influence and public perception were also prominent aspects of the presentations and ensuing deliberations.
Like this volume intends to do, the workshops uniquely combined the strengths and insights of social policy, sociology, politics and criminology whilst demonstrating a historical/cultural awareness of the issues at hand.  Presentations from this workshop that appear in this book facilitate a combination of theoretical knowledge with a deep awareness of pertinent interpretations of the past or present to promote a greater understanding of why political policies and directions have been embarked upon. In so doing, they—when taken in a multidisciplinary context—help to explain and describe some of the most devastating social outcomes relating to many of the political undertakings portrayed in each chapter.

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is a deeply embedded concept in Western society. It embodies the idea that corporations have an ethical responsibility to society beyond financial return and beyond their immediate shareholders. CSR organizations, contractors and reporters have proliferated in recent decades as activist pressure around labor rights, equity and environmental destruction including climate change has ramped up.

This book examines international regimes working to monitor CSR, such as The Global Compact and the EITI. We find the organizations rife with conflicts of interest, lacking the means of verifying information reported by corporations, and unable to enforce transgressions of the largest corporations in any meaningful way. We then turn to the burgeoning reporting industry that informs socially responsible investment, using a test case of severe human rights violations leading to death. In these cases, we find that while the incidents are reported, they are obscured in the reporting system and have very tangential and fleeting effects on CSR ratings. This underscores the overall lack of accountability for corporations that violate their ethical commitments, and the lack of credit for those who step up to them.

We close the book with a series of suggestions about how to reform the CSR regime so that ethical investors and consumers can begin to have confidence that the corporations they select to support will begin to live up to their promises. Until there is transparency and objectivity, CSR will remain a smoke-and-mirrors game of marketing over ethical responsibility.

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.

Ann Loades has been instrumental in bringing forward for the attention of readers in later generations “voices from the past,” notably highlighting the work of pioneering women such as Evelyn Underhill and Dorothy L. Sayers as well as advancing the study of better-known Anglican forebears C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer—always with her own distinctive concerns. A key interpreter of the Anglican tradition and with a keen eye to ensure the full recognition of women, these studies by Ann Loades are essential reading in Anglican, feminist, and twentieth-century theology.

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

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

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

Al-Ghazālī made seminal contributions to the field of ethical economic thought. Though he dedicated many chapters in his encyclopaedic Iḥyā’ Ulūm al-Dīn (The Revival of Religious Sciences) to what he considered just and Sharī‘a-based economic conduct in (Muslim) society, this specific aspect of his corpus has been largely overlooked in Western scholarship. This book aims to analyse and revive al-Ghazālī’s little studied economic teachings by emphasizing his economic philosophy and its correlation between Sharī‘a’s moral law and the tradition of taṣawwuf, situating his thought within the context of modern economic theories. 

The scholarly ignorance of his economic contributions goes hand in hand with a claim made by several Western scholars (e.g., J. Schumpeter) that classical Islamic scholarship did not offer any significant development in the domain of economic thought in what was known in Europe as the Middle Ages—a claim that scholars like Ghazanfar and Islahi, attempted to refute. This book delves into an analysis of al-Ghazālī’s theoretical accounts and his economic philosophy as part of his overall ethics of happiness, looking closely at select passages from his work in order to position them at the intersection of two domains within the framework of classical Islamic economic thought, namely taṣawwuf or Sufi-mystical thought and Sharī‘a law. 

This work does not assume that al-Ghazālī anticipated modern trends of Western economics; however, by merging the necessity of kasb (acquisitions of wealth) and the importance of zuhd (renunciation of the worldly endeavours) as equal components in the context of the science of the hereafer (‘ilm ṭarīq al-ākhira), he presented the culmination of ethical economic thought in classical Islamic tradition, influencing later Muslim scholars. Hence, in this rather specific reading of al-Ghazālī’s economic philosophy, he conceived of an economic analysis that was founded upon ethical teachings, an endeavor that should be ultimately regarded as a technology of self-examination.

Gothic Appalachian Literature examines the ways contemporary Appalachian authors utilize gothic tropes to explore the complex history and contemporary problems of the region, particularly in terms of their representation of economic, environmental, and political concerns. It argues that across Appalachian fiction, the plight of characters to save their homes, land and way of life from the destructive forces of extractive industries brings sharply to bare the histories of colonization and slavery that problematize questions of belonging, ownership and possession.
• Robertson extensively considers contemporary manifestations of the gothic in Appalachian literature, arguing that gothic tropes abound in fiction that focuses on the impacts of extractive industries and the climate crisis that connect this micro-region with other parts of the Global North and Global South where the devastating impacts of extractive industries are also experienced socially, economically and environmentally. Across contemporary Appalachian writing the everyday is haunted by the specter of climate change. As a result, while Appalachian fiction contains an array of horror-fueled texts rife with the regional stereotypes common in the popular imagination, the monstrous in contemporary Appalachian fiction is commonly found in overflowing slurry pits, the nightmarish sight of fracking towers, floods, droughts and forest fires. Gothic Appalachian Literature proposes that Appalachian texts that expose readers to the sites and processes of fossil fuel extraction, and their contribution to the climate crisis, are inherently gothic.
• As Robertson explores both historic and contemporary forms of the gothic she covers a diverse range of voices and perspectives that reflect a complex micro-region where individuals and communities are more richly complex than the reductive stereotypes of Appalachia ever allow. To that end, Robertson engages with contemporary debates about race and LGBTQ+ rights in what she terms a post-Trump moment in Appalachian literature.

“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.

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

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

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

Old troubles with remote origins persist in modern Spain. When did Spain screw up? "The Spanish Frustration" argues that, in the long term, Spain missed the opportunity to become a consolidated modern nation-state because it was entangled in imperial adventures for several centuries when it should have been building a solid domestic basis for further endeavours. The opportunity of shaping a modern, civilized Spanish society was lost.

Largely as a consequence of the waste of resources in the imperial effort, Spain missed the chance to build a civil administration, institutions of political representation and the rule of law at the right time. For long periods, militarism and clericalism substituted a weak state. As states create nations, rather than the other way around, the weakness of the Spanish state made the building of a unified cultural nation a frustrated, incomplete effort.

Lacking the institutional and cultural bases of a solid nation-state, the democratic regime established since the late 1970s in Spain has been based on a political party oligarchy which tends to produce minority governments and exclusionary decisions. Catalonia, the Basque Country and other centrifugal territorial autonomies also lend less support to the regime and threaten it with splits. People’s dissatisfaction and disengagement with the way democracy works are widespread.

In short: A ruinous empire made a weak state, which built an incomplete nation, which sustains a minority democracy. That, in a nutshell, is the political history of modern Spain.

In the “Introduction,” Ralf Rogowski provides biographical information and an overview of the development of Luhmann’s social systems theory. In “Luhmann and Constitutional Sociology: Law and Functional Differentiation Revisited,” Chris Thornhill analyses how Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation can be used as a methodological device to examine the construction of an institutional and legal framework for governance in the world society. In “Far from Equilibrium. Niklas Luhmann on Politics and Economy in 21st Century’s World Society,” Aldo Mascareño argues that the political and economic systems have intensified their unpredictable dynamics, hence increasing their levels of instability, as shown by critical events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the 2011 political upheavals, and the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. In “Luhmann on Law and Legal Theory,” Richard Nobles and David Schiff explain how legal argumentation yields sufficient redundancy and variety in the legal system to achieve the recursive reproduction of legal communications which gives the system opportunities to evolve autopoietically. 

In “Epistemic Sociology: Luhmann’s Theory of Science and Knowledge,” Gert Verschraegen underscores the connection of science in society with other function systems such as the educational (coupled via curricula content in textbooks), the economy (coupled via patents), politics (coupled through research policy as well as policy advice), and the medical system (coupled through scientifically tested medicinal knowledge and operation practices). In “Luhmann’s Theory of Art,” Paul Buckermann examines how Luhmann’s functional method is key to understanding art and makes visible possibilities of order that otherwise remain invisible. In “Luhmann on Religion and Secularization,” Raf Vanderstraeten discusses, with reference to a host of examples, how the religious system contributed to the genesis of modern society, and how it was forced to adapt to the consequences of modern society’s functional differentiation. 

In “Niklas Luhmann and Critical Systems Theory,” Kolja Möller and Jasmin Siri outline features of a critical systems theory and its potential for a critique of modern society. In “Niklas Luhmann and His Sceptical Notion of Culture,” Dirk Baecker outlines Luhmann’s reserved attitude towards the concept of culture. In “Luhmann, on Algorithms, in 1966,” Elena Esposito analyses an early text of Luhmann on Law and Automation in Public Administration. In “Niklas Luhmann Observed from a Luhmannian Perspective,” Klaus Dammann analyses Luhmann’s biography using Luhmannian concepts and in “Three Encounters with Niklas Luhmann,” Gunther Teubner narrates his academic and personal experiences with Luhmann. 

This book is a comprehensive review of the political career of Benjamin Disraeli, providing a thorough critical analysis of one of the most ambitious and controversial leaders in British history. 'Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics' explores the political journey of a man propelled by a tremendous self-belief and capacity for self-invention through the complex world of Victorian political life. Disraeli retains a powerful presence in contemporary political discourse; whether in terms of current debates concerning the direction and leadership within the Conservative party or in more general areas of social and political debate such as the nature of imperialism, the dangers posed by the centralization of government power, the scope for state intervention in the economy, the constitutional role of the monarch and the meaning of Judaism in British life.  Dr Ian St John discusses Disraeli’s Conservative ideology and its relationship to his identity and his practice as a politician. The author brings to life the often sharp historiographical debates surrounding Disraeli's career by reproducing within each chapter views from key historians – an effective way to introduce the student and general reader to the contested nature of historical understanding. This title will be a major addition to our understanding of both Disraeli and the dynamics of nineteenth-century politics.

In recent years, the fast growing economies of the Asia-Pacific region have attracted the attention of economists, politicians, researchers and business communities. The economic dynamics of the ever-growing Asia-Pacific region made the United States to adopt a "rebalancing strategy" toward Asia and to propose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Free Trade Area of Asian-Pacific (FTAA). With uncertainty about Brexit and the current Trump Administration, TPP and FTAA appear to be "dead." Nevertheless, the outlook for the Asia-Pacific region is still favorable with the expectation of continuous growth (IMF, 2014). The long run data from IMF (2016) also indicate the possibility of an Asia-centered world economy.

This book is a collection of the papers published during the two decades at the turn of the century, the period economists generally consider the emergence of the Asia-Pacific century. The major players have been the Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs): Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. However, Singapore and Hong Kong are regarded as city states, thus, development economists usually see Taiwan and South Korea as the countries that truly achieved a "miracle growth." Using historical, quantitative and econometric analyses, this book studies the present and past economies of emerging East Asia, providing future policy implications for economic development.

Chapter topics include development indicators, effects of 1997 Asian financial crisis, productivity growth, catching up and convergence of long-run real GDP per capita growth, the time required for a country to catch up, and a special chapter on colonialism and economic development (in Taiwan and India). A timely collection, the various topics in this book provide a comprehensive understanding of emerging East Asian economies, in addition to economic analyses explaining, among other subjects, the basic concept of total factor productivity and purchasing power parity (international dollars).

This broad-ranging monograph examines the potential creation, through the arts and culture, of societies that enjoy sustainable, positive peace. It begins with a critique of the pervasive nature of militarism and violence embedded deep in the cultural fabric of many societies, influencing the language and discourses we use, the films we watch, our museums and histories, our journalism, and our education systems. It also examines the roots of violence in our parenting styles, gender roles, and spiritual practices.

It contrasts this with an examination of a number of peaceful societies that already exist, drawing useful lessons from their cultures. It critiques discrepancies in history education with regard to war and peace and examines artistic and cultural processes, institutions, and artifacts designed to create peace, such as peace museums and parks, peace journalism, peace education, and resistance to violence through cultural means, such as film-making, fine arts, satirical theatre, and protest music. It examines the efficacy of these attempts and suggests positive ways forward. It also explores the role of gender in creating cultures of peace and the impacts on peacebuilding of cultivating peace within.

The book commences with an explanation of cultural violence and its underpinning of direct, structural, and ecological violence. Solutions-oriented and optimistic, each chapter begins with a critique of cultural violence in the subject area before moving to examples of positive cultural currents striving to embed sustainable peace deep within societies. It aims to inspire deep understanding, individual reflection, community empowerment, and grassroots action for peace in cultural spheres.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ studies the political economy of agrarian transformation in the Middle East and North Africa. Examining Egypt and Tunisia in detail as case studies, it critiques the dominant tropes of food security offered by the international financial institutions and promotes the importance of small-scale family farming in developing sustainable food sovereignty. Egypt and Tunisia are located in the context of the broader Middle East and broader processes of war, environmental transformation and economic reform.

The book contributes to uncovering the historical backdrop and contemporary pressures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the uprisings of 2010 and 2011. It also explores the continued failure of post-uprising counter-revolutionary governments to directly address issues of rural development that put the position and role of small farmers centre stage.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ uniquely presents a political economy of agrarian transformation in the MENA region by problematising the persistent politicisation of food and rural (under)development exemplified in the case studies of Egypt and Tunisia. These cases highlight the ways in which de-development has led to the persistent impoverishment of the countryside and its uneven consequences for the ways it reproduced power, politics and inequality. The political economy of food in the region is played out in the broader complex of global food regimes and their contestation by counter-hegemonic initiatives for food sovereignty.

This volume is a brief anthology of the most influential writing by American scientists between 1800 and 1900. Arranged thematically and chronologically to highlight the movement of American science throughout the nineteenth century, from its beginnings in self-taught classification and exploration to the movement towards university education and specialization, this anthology is the first of its kind. Biographies front each section, putting human faces to each time period, and the anthology includes such notable names as Thomas Jefferson and Louis Agassiz. 

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

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

Seattle is one of the most politically progressive and economically dynamic cities in the contemporary United States, popularly known as the ‘Emerald City’ for its natural setting and environmental politics. This book explores a range of political, policy, and project efforts in Seattle and the wider region to mitigate and adapt to the formidable reality of global climate change. Developing a framework suggested originally by the Urban Climate Change Research Network, the book’s core analysis considers both tantalizing progress and tangible problems in Seattle’s climate action initiatives so far. The narrative explores how Seattle is integrating carbon mitigation with adaptation; advancing climate action networks; co-generating risk information; coordinating disaster risk reduction with climate change adaptation; and, most importantly, focusing on historically and geographically disadvantaged populations. 

Linking together past, present, and future, Climate Change and the Future of Seattle argues that Seattle in the 2020s is less an ‘Emerald City’ than an ‘Elite Emerald’. Income inequalities have grown while gentrification pressures have increased. Class structures have steadily shifted upwards, leaving the working poor and homeless especially vulnerable to climate change. Profoundly uncomfortable with this contradiction, local climate change efforts are shaped by mounting political concerns not only with mitigation-adaptation commitments and risk aversion policies to manage rising sea levels, warmer temperatures and more variable rainfall patterns, but also with reshaping a metropolitan space-economy that too often favors and consistently rewards the high-tech “cognitariat” over middle- and low-income households and communities of color. 

Ultimately, Seattle cannot become post-carbon if it is not also post-polarized, resilient if not also just. The lessons that Seattle learns in pursuit of more inclusive climate action will thus be of abiding interest to cities and metropolitan regions across the United States and all around the world.

The twentieth century holds many titles that emphasize the extraordinary. It was a century of totalitarianism, but also one of betrayal, an age of extremes and the incomprehensible. Betrayed, that is, at the mercy of unrestrained violence, were not only the people themselves, but also, as it were, the idea of the human being. For up to a certain point, one could weigh oneself in an unfounded security of an inner connection between people. As is well known, such certainties were knocked out of hand in that century. Many situations, many images, motifs and sources can be named for this experience of unbounded violence, which now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, requires new forms of transmission. In an era flooded with images, however, attention is more difficult. One has to embark on a search for traces; not because the sources are lacking, but because the form of inscription in history is problematic. This search for clues leads directly to the present monograph.

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

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

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

Animated by theoretical eclecticism and methodological diversity, ‘Power Shifts and Global Governance: Challenges from South and North’ presents a 'post-national' political project for analyzing emerging architectures of global governance and examining country and regional case studies from the perspective of  'great power shifts' in the twenty-first century. Using theoretical insights from neo-Kantians and neo-institutionalists, the book explores the contested meanings and practices of globalization and polycentric governance in the context of emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, and examines the implications of shifts in the foreign and domestic policies of the new powers in the world. The book not only reflects on the fundamental erosion of an international order in which Western societies enjoyed a relatively uncomplicated consensus on their political, economic and ideological eminence, but also debates the nature of emerging 'radically incomplete' global interdependencies among nations.

Challenging the hegemony of dominant paradigms in conventional International Relations theories and blurring the traditional distinctions between South and North, the book seeks a new 'New Deal' to address issues of poverty, climate change and human security at the global level. Written in clear, lucid language, the book is a serious attempt to deepen newer ways of international cooperation as it re-imagines the future of cosmopolitan democracy and global civil society.

From political sleaze and scandal to West End hits and the 'feel-good' factor, Michael Diamond explores the media stories that gripped Victorian society, in an age when newspapers became cheap, nationally distributed and easily accessible to all classes. Fully illustrated, and drawing on a wealth of original material, 'Victorian Sensation' sheds light on the Victorians' fascination with celebrity culture and their obsession with gruesome and explicit reportage of murders and sex scandals. With a vivid cast of characters, ranging from the serial poisoner William Palmer, to Charles Dickens, Jumbo the Elephant, distinguished politicians and even the Queen herself, this passionate analysis of the period reveals how the reporting methods of our own popular media have their origins in the Victorian press, and shows that sensation was as integral a part of society in the nineteenth century as it is today.

The Gothic Literature and History of New England surveys the history, nature and future of the Gothic mode in the region, from the witch trials through the Black Lives Matter Movement. Three main areas of its focus are women’s representation as writers and consumers of Gothic literature, the Puritans’ fear of the wilderness and treatment of the native peoples, and the legacy of slavery and enduring racism. Texts include Cotton Mather and other Puritan divines who collected folklore of the supernatural; the Frontier Gothic of Indian captivity narratives; the canonical authors of the American Renaissance such as Melville and Hawthorne; the women's ghost story tradition and the Domestic Gothic from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Shirley Jackson; Stephen King and the horror boom of the twentieth century; and writers of the current generation who respond to the racial and gender issues in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, the Providence writer whose stories once defined New England’s Gothic heritage. 

The Gothic Literature and History of New England brings to the surface the religious intolerance, racism and misogyny inherent in the New England Gothic, and how these nightmares continue to haunt literature and popular culture—tourism, films, television, games, the visual arts and more.

This is a high-interest work designed for scholars of the Gothic mode who may not be familiar with more recent developments in fiction and film as well as for advanced undergraduate and graduate students searching for a compact introduction to this area of the American Gothic. It will provide an overview of criticism, a timeline of historical events and literary texts, and suggestions for further reading. The approach relies on open-ended questions that may help instructors “teach the conflicts” around race, gender, class and the aesthetics of the Gothic. 

‘Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century: Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications’ is a cross-national, 175 nation based exploration of the deep crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Investigating the effects of dependency theory and world systems theory upon the global success of eight dimensions of development – including democracy, environmental sustainability, employment, social cohesion, high quality tertiary education and gender justice – this study argues that the current European crisis has been precipitated by the pro-globalist policies of the European Commission.

The comprehensive analysis of this study reveals the magnitude of Europe’s errors. Lowering comparative price levels and increasing dependency on large, transnational corporations, as correctly predicted by Latin American social science of the 1960s and 1970s, emerges as one of the most serious developmental blockades confronting Europe in global society, whilst increases in military expenditure, as proposed by Article 42.3 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, are another large stumbling block against development. The harmful potential of these blockades is severe.

The book’s 175-nation investigation shows that Europe’s failure to develop its own MNC headquarter status in the global economy is a key factor that has hindered its developmental performance. This examination, which duly takes into account the control variables proposed by neoclassical economics and contemporary sociology/political science, also demonstrates the potential outcomes of several alternative scenarios, mainly those proposed by the political Left in Europe, and summarizes the effects of globalization on the environment and ecological vulnerability. What this analysis makes most clear is Europe’s need for change: without amending its pro-globalist policies, the continent will learn nothing from its current crisis – and is destined to compete in a destructive “race to the bottom”.

‘The British National Daily Press and Popular Music, c.1956–1975’ constitutes a reappraisal of the reactions of the national daily press to forms of music popular with young people in Britain from the mid-1950s to the 1970s (including rock ’n’ roll, skiffle, ‘beat group’ and rock music). Conventional histories of popular music in Britain frequently accuse the newspapers of generating ‘moral panic’ with regard to these genres and of helping to shape negative attitudes to the music within wider society. The book questions such charges; in doing so, it also challenges the tendency to perceive evidence from newspapers straightforwardly as a mere illustration of wider social trends and considers the manner in which the post-war newspaper industry, as a socio-cultural entity in its own right, responded to developments in youth culture as it faced distinctive challenges and pressures amid changing times.

Commencing with an analysis of the reactions of various key popular and ‘serious’ daily national papers to the so-called ‘rock ’n’ roll cinema riots’ of 1956, which represented the first occasion on which this musical form became ‘headline news’ in Britain, ‘The British National Daily Press and Popular Music, c.1956–1975’ considers the extent to which ingredients of ‘moral panic’ were present in press coverage of popular music, both in 1956 and at subsequent points throughout the period. However, by examining other factors, such as the more varied coverage which did frequently appear, the relative lack of sustained public concern in response to the more inflammatory reports and the contrasts in perspective among the various individual newspaper titles, each of which possessed its own particular ‘voice’ at this time, a more nuanced picture emerges. The work also considers press coverage of popular music beyond the headlines, focusing particularly on the ‘disc columns’ and pop record review pages which became more prevalent as this period progressed. It notes that, although the ‘serious’ newspapers would ultimately develop a more sophisticated approach to rock criticism, the popular papers –especially the Daily Mirror – played a particularly significant role in bringing the music to a wider, cross-generational reading public during the earlier portion of this period, aiming to devise a suitable vocabulary for the dynamic, ever-changing music styles and ‘scenes’ of this era.

Ultimately, ‘The British National Daily Press and Popular Music, c.1956–1975’ encourages scholars to avoid hasty or sweeping deployment of such phrases as ‘moral panic’ when considering early press reactions to popular music. It also argues that the distinctive and paradoxical mixture of uncertainty, enthusiasm, sensationalism and curiosity which characterised much national press coverage of rock ’n’ roll and other kinds of music helped, in many ways, to set the tone for adult responses to popular music within society at large. Just as the press was not unilaterally hostile towards popular music, so too were members of ‘the older generation’ more varied in their responses to the music than has previously been assumed.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ studies the political economy of agrarian transformation in the Middle East and North Africa. Examining Egypt and Tunisia in detail as case studies, it critiques the dominant tropes of food security offered by the international financial institutions and promotes the importance of small-scale family farming in developing sustainable food sovereignty. Egypt and Tunisia are located in the context of the broader Middle East and broader processes of war, environmental transformation and economic reform.

The book contributes to uncovering the historical backdrop and contemporary pressures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the uprisings of 2010 and 2011. It also explores the continued failure of post-uprising counter-revolutionary governments to directly address issues of rural development that put the position and role of small farmers centre stage.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ uniquely presents a political economy of agrarian transformation in the MENA region by problematising the persistent politicisation of food and rural (under)development exemplified in the case studies of Egypt and Tunisia. These cases highlight the ways in which de-development has led to the persistent impoverishment of the countryside and its uneven consequences for the ways it reproduced power, politics and inequality. The political economy of food in the region is played out in the broader complex of global food regimes and their contestation by counter-hegemonic initiatives for food sovereignty.

During Latin America’s China-led commodity boom, governments turned a blind eye to the inherent flaws in the region’s economic policy. Now that the commodity boom is coming to an end, those flaws cannot be ignored. High on the list of shortcomings is the fact that Latin American governments—and Chinese investors—largely fell short of mitigating the social and environmental impact of commodity-led growth.

China and Sustainable Development in Latin America documents the social and environmental impact of the China-led commodity boom in the region. Primary commodity exploitation—of petroleum, copper, iron ore, tin, soybeans and the like—are endemic to environmental degradation. The recent commodity boom exacerbated pressure on the region’s waterways and forests and accentuated threats to human health, biodiversity, global climate change and local livelihoods. China and Sustainable Development in Latin America also highlights important areas of innovation, like Chile’s solar energy sector, in which governments, communities and investors have worked together to harness the commodity boom for the benefit of the people and the planet.

It is imperative that Latin American governments put in place the necessary policies to ensure that economic activity in natural resource sectors is managed in an environmentally responsible and socially inclusive manner. China and Sustainable Development in Latin America aims to highlight the efforts that have borne fruit as well as the areas that still need attention. Without proper policies in place to make sustainable development part and parcel of economic decision-making, Latin America will continue to be plagued by commodity boom and bust cycles that accentuate social and environmental conflicts and are ultimately detrimental to long-term prosperity.

In November 2007, Romain Lannuzel Erasmus, student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​mysteriously disappeared without a trace. This case remains unsolved, when the novel begins with another mysterious disappearance of Costantinu Iliescu, a Romanian student. His girlfriend and two of his Erasmus colleagues sound the alarm and move heaven and earth to find him, but both police and university officials believe that Iliescu has left voluntarily and refuse to get involved. However, they will soon have to change their minds as the events that occur after the disappearance of the Romanian student reveal that something terrible, dark and macabre is happening at the college.

A team of policemen, including Deputy Inspector Manuela Vazquez, open an in-depth investigation and the potential suspects multiply. In the minds of teachers, police officers and students, the thick shadow of what appears to be a meticulous and bloodthirsty murderer looms.

Carme Riera endorses the best elements of the thriller genre to create a state of tension and suspense that is maintained until the last page. The prose is evocative, almost cinematic and knows how to combine brilliantly intrigue, irony and social criticism.

‘Locating Australian Literary Memory’ explores sites which are explicitly connected with Australian authors through material forms of commemoration such as houses, graves, statues and assorted artefacts. The focus is on eleven Australian authors – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Joseph Furphy, Henry Handel Richardson, Henry Lawson, A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Nan Chauncy, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Eleanor Dark, P. L. Travers, Kylie Tennant and David Unaipon. Each of these writers offers different perspectives on the conventions of literary commemoration from the nineteenth century onwards.

Australian heritage terrain has been thoroughly mapped by nationalist heritage practices which may no longer relate to contemporary values. As elsewhere, the focus is moving towards a greater recognition of the contributions of women authors, migrants, expatriates and First Nations peoples. There is an often unacknowledged dissonance between imported modes of commemoration and the unceded lands onto which they have been introduced. The designation of ‘author countries’ is especially problematic in a postcolonial context because it ‘overwrites’ Indigenous Country, obscuring it from the view of non-Indigenous Australians.

Rather than advocating for the creation of more literary monuments, or the further preservation of memorials that currently exist, ‘Locating Australian Literary Memory’ seeks to reveal the many blind spots, contradictions, challenges and eccentricities of literary commemoration in Australia. While observing the value of literary memorials and the voluntary labour that enables their construction, this book argues for an expanded repertoire of practices to recognise authors and storytellers who have been hitherto overlooked.

This book chronicles the history of early spaceflight and asks how American gender culture shaped the public image of the American astronaut and spaceflight technology during some of the tensest years of the Cold War era. While historians have pieced together the story of American women’s fight for spaceflight, this work adds to the narrative by analyzing masculinity and the astronaut image by focusing on how that image came to terms with a perceived Cold War masculinity crisis. The astronaut image was informed by Cold War ideals of fixed gender binaries, specifically, the masculine ideal of control over technology. The American astronaut performed masculinity in space through his control of the space capsule. This emphasis on astronaut control helped mold a distinctly American (anti-communist) masculinity that appeared—on the surface anyway—to resolve not only an American masculinity crisis but helped win the Cold War on an ideological and popular level. 

The book begins by establishing a post–World War II masculinity crisis dialogue. For instance, Americans saw communism, conformity, feminism, homosexuality, automation, minority rights, and the dreaded “organization man” as threats to masculinity. Drawing upon this scholarship, this book explores how this dialogue played out within the spaceflight public discourse from 1957 through 1983—a time when cosmic conquest was integral to America’s success in maintaining domestic security and morale while securing victory in the international conflict with the Soviets. Using primary sources from the public record, such as newspapers, magazines, media, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Congress, speeches, the astronaut’s stories, and intellectual works, the book states that the American public discourse constructed the astronaut as an archetype of American masculinity through the spaceman’s ability to control spaceflight technology. The assumption that the astronaut could “fly” the capsule insinuated an American masculinity of individualism apart from Soviet conformity. The American accentuation of pilot control continued from Project Mercury through Project Apollo, but it often clashed with computer control, space accidents, the scientist-astronaut, and mission control. These conflicts led the astronaut image to be refashioned into that of Michael Kimmel’s “democratic manhood”—a masculinity that encompassed the self-made man and the team player. Democratic manhood still centered on masculine control, either men as individuals or men working in teams. The moon landing symbolized that through astronaut control of technology, Americans had conquered space. Women and people of color were left out of this dialogue of technological control but played important roles as passive actors with technology. Control meant a white masculine performance with spaceflight technology. Running parallel to this need to create a fixed masculinity, women fought for their chance for spaceflight, while African Americans and Hispanics were largely feminized as non-technological users. With the 1969 moon conquest, the domestication of spaceflight quickly followed with the space shuttle taxis that—for a short period anyway—demonstrated the safety of spaceflight. The book concludes that within this domesticated spaceflight framework, diverse women at NASA—both astronauts and staff—challenged fixed gender roles by proving themselves courageous, individual professionals in what by 1986 became the dangerous business of spaceflight. 

Journalism has been in a state of disruption since the development of the Internet. The Metaverse, or what some describe as the future of the Internet, is likely to fuel even further disruption in journalism. Digital platforms and journalism enterprises are already investing substantial resources into the Metaverse, or its likely components of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. Although research shows most of the public has little knowledge of the Metaverse, many are keenly interested in what it or its components may bring. Gartner (2022) predicts that a quarter of the public will spend at least one hour per day in the Metaverse by 2026. Journalism may be an important part of this future.

This book will critically examine the nature of the Metaverse and its implications for journalism. In particular, the book will examine how the advance of a broadband, interactive and immersive Internet called the Metaverse may change the content and format of news, the nature of journalistic work, who or what is a journalist, the nature and structure of the new industry and how it is funded, as well as the fundamental role of journalism in a digital society.

In particular, this book builds on a vision of the Metaverse as an immersive and interactive virtual world, a key development in the next generation of the broadband, publicly accessible Internet. Broadband means high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity, especially wirelessly. Immersive refers to enveloping, 3D forms of media and communication. Today, we often see immersive media in the form of augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) or other forms of what are labeled extended Reality (XR). Fueled by artificial intelligence, these forms are three dimensional (3D), they have depth and they surround the user in a 360 virtual world visually and aurally (and potentially via other senses, including the haptic). Interactive means both user-to-user engagement (e.g., social media) as well as an exchange between the user and the enveloping content experience of a virtual world. This book will examine the implications of the Metaverse for journalism in four broad domains, including content, how journalists work, structural and systemic considerations, and user and public engagement with news.

Artists often talk of a sense of community, of being in a place that engages their creativity in a cultural history that is deeply tied to and inseparable from their local environment. The phrase ‘community art’ emphasizes a collaboration between the artist and community; it is practised where the artist and the neighbourhood intersect. Projects most often take place as a means of revitalizing a community or providing an opportunity for community members to engage in a creative process. Increasingly, this has become a national and international movement in which sustainability of the identity of the community, the individuals within it and the environment are at the core of the project. This project engages the conception of art evolved in the ethos of community as its basic framework but considers it from a situationally historic perspective against the backdrop of the diverse landscape of Oregon. As such it considers the role of nature, individual and community identity in the development of arts projects that ultimately become associated with a community’s cultural and social milieu. 

Oregon is known for its unique landscape that moves from the high deserts of eastern Oregon through the former volcanoes of the Cascade Range, the breadth of the Willamette River Valley, Coast Range and finally the Pacific coast from Astoria to Brookings. Oregon has a long history of environmental planning. In 1899, the Oregon legislature declared 30 miles of Oregon beach as a public highway from the Columbia River to the south line of Clatsop County. In 1913, they declared the entire coast a public highway. Throughout the 20th century, the Oregon legislature and communities throughout Oregon have placed an emphasis on land use from the role of the timber, fishing and mining industries to the planning necessary for cities and towns. This manuscript considers the combination of people and social cultural ethos that were influential in the development of specific literary, visual and performing arts groups across Oregon’s diverse landscape. Artists Activating Sustainability: The Oregon Story examines the way in which the arts within specific communities, against the background of landscape and history, reveal concepts of sustainability that help us broaden our knowledge of what is needed to create a sustainable world. As such, each chapter considers the themes of participation, agency and empowerment through the lens of land, history and individual initiative.

This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It shows how the Asia-Pacific region with an existing large Chinese diaspora is seen as a ‘cultural landing pad’ for Chinese content and ideas. In addition to these regional investigations, the authors trace China’s growing technological status as an innovative nation through four policy approaches: culture+, industry+, Internet+ and platform+. Other + characterizations include intelligent+ and social+. These + characterizations show how China is rejuvenating, drawing technological knowhow from the region, and adding to its cultural power.

Drawing on the political economy of the media, industry analysis, platform studies and cultural policy studies, the book shows that China's commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of how Chinese cultural and creative industries became digital, as well as investigating the key players and the leading platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, TikTok, Baidu, iQiyi and Meituan. The book argues that China’s commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and in many cases can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media, although this does not necessarily translate into influence. 

The sites chosen suggest that there is widespread ambivalence to China’s political messaging combined with an uneven reception of its popular culture. The book provides a critique of Western bias in soft power metrics and draws on empirical data to provide alternative readings.

The authors also analyse in detail Beijing’s changing policies towards the governance of culture, Internet technologies and digital platforms. The book illustrates how Chinese cultural power is extending overseas and the challenges of Chinese platforms, products and services in overcoming stereotyping and ‘threat’ perceptions.

The book Radical Human Centricity sits between two worlds: business and anthropology. It is a critique and reassessment of commercial innovation research from an anthropological perspective born out of years of experience in innovation research consulting and anthropological scholarship. It demonstrates the many failures of contemporary commercial research, from market research to research approaches in design thinking and human-centered design. After identifying the key problems, it provides a set of solutions to elevate commercial research and allow practitioners to fulfill the empty promises of design thinking and human-centered design. The book ends with a clear articulation of how to fix what is broken and actually be human-centric, just now from within the radical human-centric approach. 

This book is written for two audiences. The first is a business reader involved in innovation and strategy. It helps this business reader to understand the growing problem lurking in commercial research and offers practical advice to develop a research practice better able to fuel innovation, strategy, and design processes than anything currently available. It provides a practical and theoretical engagement with research practice to change how companies study human lives. It identifies the many gaps in more typical research methods, fills them with new tools and approaches from anthropological and ethnographic practices, and finally contextualizes them within an end-to-end radically human-centric research process.

The second reader is an anthropological scholar or student interested in the applied anthropological practices in commercial research. This is an increasingly important area of theory and practice within contemporary anthropology, and few books in this area are written by practicing commercial anthropologists. While the theoretical treatments will be known to an advanced anthropological reader, it applies them in contexts and examples not commonly discussed in the ethnographic disciplines. Additionally, the methodological examples and practice anecdotes introduce the reader to a world few academic researchers ever experience. Consequently, this book adds insight into an area of anthropological practice not well understood by academic social scientists and offers a window into new avenues of applied anthropology.

The purpose of this book is to create a space for a new form of applied commercial ethnography, called radical human -centricity. It is unique in that it addresses the problems of business research in a thoughtful, scholarly way, while also providing practical examples for innovation researchers of all backgrounds to emulate.

‘Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century: Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications’ is a cross-national, 175 nation based exploration of the deep crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Investigating the effects of dependency theory and world systems theory upon the global success of eight dimensions of development – including democracy, environmental sustainability, employment, social cohesion, high quality tertiary education and gender justice – this study argues that the current European crisis has been precipitated by the pro-globalist policies of the European Commission.

The comprehensive analysis of this study reveals the magnitude of Europe’s errors. Lowering comparative price levels and increasing dependency on large, transnational corporations, as correctly predicted by Latin American social science of the 1960s and 1970s, emerges as one of the most serious developmental blockades confronting Europe in global society, whilst increases in military expenditure, as proposed by Article 42.3 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, are another large stumbling block against development. The harmful potential of these blockades is severe.

The book’s 175-nation investigation shows that Europe’s failure to develop its own MNC headquarter status in the global economy is a key factor that has hindered its developmental performance. This examination, which duly takes into account the control variables proposed by neoclassical economics and contemporary sociology/political science, also demonstrates the potential outcomes of several alternative scenarios, mainly those proposed by the political Left in Europe, and summarizes the effects of globalization on the environment and ecological vulnerability. What this analysis makes most clear is Europe’s need for change: without amending its pro-globalist policies, the continent will learn nothing from its current crisis – and is destined to compete in a destructive “race to the bottom”.

This memorial book honours the legacy of Eric Richards’s work in an interplay of academic essays and personal accounts of Eric Richards. Following the Eric Richards methodology, it combines micro- and macro-perspectives of British migration history and covers topics such as Scottish and Irish diasporas, religious, labour and wartime migrations.

Eric Richards was an international leading historian of British migration history and a pioneer at exploring small- and large-scale migrations. Starting with a foreword from David Fitzpatrick and Ngaire Naffine’s eulogy, the book includes Richards’ last public intervention, given in Amiens, France, in September 2018. This volume brings together renowned scholars of British and migration history who pay tribute to Eric Richards – a remarkable historian, but also a gentleman who is remembered for his kindness and humbleness. He stood as a role model for early career researchers. The book combines local and global migrations as well as economic and social aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century British migration history.

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

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

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

The two volumes on Wittgenstein and AI aim to trace and suggest Wittgensteinian influences in some of the most cutting-edge areas of research in Artificial Intelligence (such as Computation, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and the use of automation in legal settings). The collection is driven by an essentially interdisciplinary approach, featuring articles from philosophers, computer scientists and legal scholars, writing on a broad range of topics in AI.

The chapters across these two volumes are grouped into two sets of themes: Mind and Language and Value and Governance. These themes correspond to two major areas of research in the philosophical study of AI: the computational mind and the ethics of artificial intelligence. These volumes make a significant and unprecedented contribution to the question of what Wittgenstein’s philosophy can offer to the ever-growing field of AI. It aims to provide insight for both philosophers and non-philosophers alike, offering reflection on the significance of Wittgenstein’s work for AI, and on the implications of advancements in AI technology for Wittgenstein’s philosophy and philosophy influenced by Wittgenstein.

VOLUME I: Wittgenstein and AI (Volume I): Mind and Language. This volume includes chapters on Wittgenstein and Turing’s views on AI, the question of whether machines can think, intentionality, AI language models, analogical reasoning and logic.

This volume’s relevance may be explained, first and foremost, during a time of unprecedented loss of life around the world each day. The data, which is oftentimes incomplete and misleading, nonetheless reveals the state as deficient as well as negligent in its response to social healthcare needs. This volume attests to the fact that pressing global public health concerns are ever present as subjects of societal discourse and debate in developed and developing states. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic makes the omission of the ethics of personal data collection analysis in the international relations literature even more salient given the rise of contact tracing and increased uses of mobile phone Apps to track citizens by states and firms across the globe, as this volume’s chapters analyzing the responses to COVID-19 in Iran and Taiwan explain. 

For this reason, dialogue connecting research and practice is necessary to identify ways to address these emerging challenges at the conceptual, economic, legal, political, and social levels. The perspectives of researchers and the experience of practitioners must come together to bring the discussion forward. In response to this plea, a community of research-practitioners remains in dialogue after two Bosch Workshops at New York University to define the contents of case studies in this volume. The responsibility of this research-practitioner community is to grapple with specific issues that define the state of the discipline in personal data collection ethics. Case studies, including prominent uses of crowd-mapping platforms and mobile telephony Apps, document legal and human rights concerns in remote areas. Field research speaks to cases ranging from an analysis of Iran’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to the exploitation of personal data collection to perpetuate modern slavery through re-education camps in the People’s Republic of China to crowd-mapping stories of physical abuses in public spaces by Safecity in India.

The emphasis on the ethics of personal data collection in this edited volume through various case studies is to bring race and gender to the forefront once again as lenses to understand international relations. The myth of the founding of international relations in 1919, analyzed by Acharya and Buzan (2019) a century later, is one that obfuscates the influence of race relations as well as gender in the early development of the discipline during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These case studies broaden the ways we understand international relations in the West and, as importantly, in the non-Western space given the countries that are the subjects of analysis: China, Iran, Taiwan, and India, as well as the European Union and the United States. As the contributors focus on the relevance of race and gender across cases, this volume underlines our concerns about the future of democracy in the face of the rising tide of authoritarianism around the world. The plight of the world’s largest and most plural democracy, India, under the Modi government, the increasingly aggressive nature of China under President Xi Jinping as well as the challenge of Trumpism in the United States make these concerns, which place illiberalism at the center of developments, pressing as well as timely.

Francis Rodd’s life is interesting for the way it connected the worlds of geography, international finance, politics, espionage, and wartime military administration. Rodd was a generalist in an age of growing specialisation; he had an instinct for problem-solving, which he applied in a range of areas. He was both a pragmatist and a man of strong convictions, and in relation to African society a traditionalist as well as a moderniser. His life, interesting in itself for what it tells us about British geography, banking and military government, is also a window onto British society at a time of great change. 

More specifically, Rodd’s claim to fame lies in two fields in particular: geography and military government. Geography was in the family; he was a direct descendant of the cartographer and oceanographer James Rennell (1742-1830), who was for a time Survey-General of the East India Company. His first trip to the Mountains of Aïr in what is now Niger, took place in 1922. His gravestone in the Welsh border town of Presteigne contains a saying in the Tuareg language of Tamasheq ‘Naught by good’, reflecting the fact that he always felt connected to this remote desert region. A product of Eton and Balliol College Oxford, he spent a year with the Royal Field Artillery in Northern France 1914-15, before moving to work in Italy and North Africa—including intelligence duties. He then worked for a time in the Foreign Office (1919-24); and it was from there that he took time out to do this first Saharan expedition. His acclaimed book—still admired to this day—on the Tuareg, People of the Veil (1926), was the result. A second expedition to the Sahara in 1927 earned him the Royal Geographical Society’s Founders’ Medal in 1929. Later he was President of the Royal Geographical Society as it re-established its post-war agenda (1945-48). In old age, he was increasingly preoccupied with Welsh border geography and the agriculture of Western Australia. 

If geography was a life-long passion for Rodd, it was only one of his interests; indeed it was for the range of his activities that he was once called the ‘last of the Elizabethans’. He left the Foreign Office for the Stock Exchange, and then joined the Bank of England in 1929, soon becoming the bank’s representative at the Bank for International Settlements in Basle (1930-31). Between 1933 and 1961 he was a Partner in Morgan Grenfell, the British branch of the Morgan banks that has close links with Whitehall. He was one of the bank’s main conduits with Italy, and this led in 1939 to him being seconded to the Ministry of Economic Warfare, where he became the ministry’s chief negotiator with Rome before Italy entered the war. During the war itself, he had meteoric career in the War Office; he rose to being Chief Political Officer in East Africa in 1942 (when he was also made an acting Major-General)—a role that involved him briefly being the Chief Military Administrator of Madagascar, after the Vichy regime fell. He was then made Chief Civil Affairs Officer of AMGOT in 1943, a high profile role that effectively made him the civilian governor of Sicily and Southern Italy in the wake of the Allied military advance. He returned to Britain in December 1943. Rodd inherited a peerage from his father in 1941. After the war, he was much involved in the House of Lords, first as a Liberal and then as a Conservative, with a particular interest in economic and colonial affairs.

Reading as a Philosophical Practice asks why reading—everyday reading for pleasure—matters so profoundly to so many people. Its answer is that reading is an implicitly philosophical activity. To passionate readers, it is a way of working through, and taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. The book examines the lessons that the activity of reading seems to teach about selfhood, morality, and ontology, and it tries to clarify the sometimes paradoxical claims that serious readers have made about it. To do so, it proposes an original theoretical framework based on Virginia Woolf’s notion of the common reader and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of practice. It also asks whether reading can continue to play this role as paper is replaced by electronic screens.

Despite the obvious overlap between the concerns of avid readers and the perennial questions of philosophy, most professional philosophers pay little attention to the kinds of reading that are most familiar to most people. They have had almost nothing to say about the activity of reading for pleasure, considered in itself and as such, or about the ways it matters to ordinary readers. For many serious readers, reading offers a way of working through philosophical matters—a way of posing, and sometimes taking a stand on, certain fundamental questions about what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things. This questioning is usually not as explicit or as self-aware as the debates that go on in philosophy journals and seminar rooms. But it has much the same goal and addresses many of the same concerns. Moreover, Reading as a Philosophical Practice argues that it is the “experience” of reading that performs these functions. Reading is not just philosophical on those occasions when we happen to read the works of philosophers or philosophically minded novelists. There is something philosophical about the activity of reading, in itself and as such, and about the experiences people have while engaged in it. The book’s goal is to clarify what this is. 

In the context of China’s ascendancy, the world watches and listens. China wants to project a soft power image. One channel for its soft power communication – about its success and international cooperation – is international broadcasting. ‘Chinese Television and Soft Power Communication in Australia’ discusses China’s soft power communication approach and investigates information handling between China and its targeted audiences in the eyes of key influencers – intermediate elites (public diplomacy policy elites in particular) in China and Australia. Drawing on the case of the state-owned broadcaster CGTN – viewed by China as an essential soft power tool for framing its voice – the book examines empirically the reception to China’s soft power messaging by Australian audiences and the factors underpinning its reception.

The book provides a holistic, systemic evaluation of China’s soft power messaging seen as part of its power portfolio and what this means to the world order. Through media frame analysis of CGTN’s framing of China’s most ambitious and comprehensive initiative – the Belt and Road Initiative – and interviews with intermediate elites in China and the typical case of a Western target audience in Australia, it presents an in-depth theoretical discussion of the mechanisms of China’s communication approach through a soft power lens. It also reflects on an exploration of journalistic operations within CGTN (with staff from several professional cultures) and a systemic test of how successful/unsuccessful China’s soft power message projection is in terms of congruence between projected and received frames, as a pivotal factor of its power status.

‘The Visionary Realism of German Economics’ forms a collection of Erik S. Reinert’s essays bringing the more realistic German economic tradition into focus as an alternative to Anglo-Saxon neoclassical mainstream economics. Together the essays form a holistic theory explaining why economic development––by its very nature––is a very uneven process. Herein lie the important policy implications of the volume.

During a time of accelerating momentum for radical change in the study of economics, 'A Guide to What's Wrong with Economics' comprehensively re-examines the shortcomings of neoclassical economics and considers a number of alternative formulations. In it, a distinguished list of non-neoclassical economists provide a study of some of the many worldly and logical gaps in neoclassical economics, its hidden ideological agendas, disregard for the environment, habitual misuse of mathematics and statistics, inability to address the major issues of economic globalization, its ethical cynicism concerning poverty, racism and sexism and its misrepresentation of economic history. In clear and engaging prose, 'A Guide to What's Wrong with Economics' shows how interesting, relevant and exciting economics can be when it is pursued not as a defence of an antiquated and close-minded system of belief, but as a no-holds-barred inquiry looking for real-world truths.

In 'Depoliticizing Development', John Harriss explores the origins of the idea of social capital and its diverse meanings in the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu and, more specifically, Robert Putnam, who is most responsible for the extraordinary rise of the idea of social capital through his work on Italy and the United States. Harriss asks why this notion should have taken off in the dramatic way that it has done and finds in its uses by the World Bank the attempt, systematically, to obscure class relations and power. Social capital has thus come to play a significant part in the discourses of international development, which go toward comprising 'the anti-politics machine'. This powerful and lucid critique will be of immense value to all those interested in development studies, including sociologists, economists, planners, NGOs and other activists.

The book is a concise and comprehensive resource for people who are middle-aged and beyond and are facing the prospects of their own aging and of caring for elderly loved ones—an often overwhelming task for which little in life prepares us. Using an interdisciplinary approach and many personal anecdotes, Professor Hoffman develops recommendations for building sustainable social, legal, medical, and financial support systems for aging and caregiving.

Aging with a Plan combines thorough research with engaging anecdotes and practical advice. It offers one-stop shopping for anyone in need of guidance without a lot of time for independent research. The book answers questions such as: What legal documents should you be sure to have? What expenses should you anticipate in retirement and how do you save for them? What do you need to know about medical care as you or your loved ones grow older? How should you approach conversations about the sensitive topic of safe driving with elderly loved ones? What options exist for end-of-life care, and how do you make sure that your wishes will be followed? The book is user-friendly and accessible to a general audience, and each chapter ends with a helpful checklist.

The book draws on the author's background in law and bioethics as well as personal experience with health care and the elderly. Dr. Hoffman presents thorough research to bolster her advice. She also writes of her parents’ many challenges during their last years and her husband’s Parkinson’s disease. This is an illuminating, engrossing, and immensely useful resource.

Today we face an incredibly complex array of interconnected water issues that cross multiple boundaries: Is water a property or a human right? How do we prioritize between economic utility and environmental sustainability? Do fish have more rights to water than irrigated grain? Can we reconcile competing cultural and religious values associated with water? How much water do people actually need? These questions share two key defining characteristics: (a) competing values, interests and information to frame the problem; and (b) differing views - of how to resolve a problem - are related more to uncertainty and ambiguity of perception than accuracy of scientific information.

These problems - known as complex problems - are ill-defined, ambiguous, and often associated with strong moral, political and professional values and issues. For complex water problems, certainty of solutions and degree of consensus varies widely. In fact, there is often little consensus about what the problem is, let alone how to resolve it. Furthermore, complex problems are constantly changing because of interactions among the natural, societal and political forces involved. The nature of complexity is contingent on a variety of contextual characteristics of the interactions among variables, processes, actors, and institutions. Understanding interactions and feedback loops between and within human and natural systems is critical for managing complex water problems. [NP] This edited volume synthesizes insights from theory and practice to address complex water problems through contingent and adaptive management using water diplomacy framework (WDF). This emerging framework diagnoses water problems, identifies intervention points, and proposes sustainable solutions that are sensitive to diverse viewpoints and uncertainty as well as changing and competing needs. The WDF actively seeks value-creation opportunities by blending science, policy, and politics through a contingent negotiated approach.

The contemporary importance of A. N. Whitehead (1861–1947) lies in his direct yet productive challenge to the culture of thought inherent in modernity, a challenge that suffuses science, social theory and philosophy alike. Unlike some of the more destructive aspects of postmodernism and poststructuralism, Whitehead’s diagnosis of the conceptual fault lines of the modern era does not entail a passive relativism. Instead, he calls for a renewal of our concepts, offering a positive, philosophical approach based on becoming, relativity, and a reconception of subjectivity and the social. This book outlines Whitehead’s philosophy, using it to reorient a range of specific questions and topics within contemporary social theory, namely: the relation of language and the body; the relationship between the individual and society; sexual difference; conceptions of nature; the question of realism; the concept of the social; and capitalism as a process. It also provides detailed analyses and comparisons of Whitehead’s concepts with those of Judith Butler on materiality and the body, and of Luce Irigaray on nature, essentialism and sexual difference.

The book offers an overview of Brazil’s internationalization process, in particular since the 1950s, accompanying the author’s professional trajectory that includes a deep involvement in business diplomacy and the expansion of international investment in Brazil and by Brazilians abroad. Stating that Brazil historically and culturally tends toward isolationism, Roberto Teixeira da Costa develops a hypothesis about what is behind this attitude. 

The book continues to focus on the economy, particularly in international trade and business diplomacy, with chapters that discuss industrialization, China and US relations with Brazil, and an excellent provocative analysis about Mercosur, enriched by the author’s direct experience in development initiatives in the American continent and in Latin America particularly. The third part that follows discusses international investment and retraces Brazil’s historical resistance to engaging in investment abroad, as well as its slow process of developing structural assurances for foreign investment. The author discusses the importance of trust in international relations, even before the institutional assurances necessary for longstanding international cooperation with Brazil. These two parts combined are the “plat de substance”, the main course offered by this book.

Roberto Teixeira da Costa tells in the introduction of the book how the writing process started in 2018 and had to be reimagined when the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. After publishing in Brazil, with the Ukrainian invasion by Russia in 2022, another chapter had to be added. The changes in the book, compared to the changes in the world, offer a stimulating parallel. Human society as we know it is being re-written.

The personal and positive attitude of this book is inspiring, reading the past with an eye for opportunities in the present. It is critical towards the lack of engagement of the elite and the political leadership in taking the lead to coordinate efforts around the development of a long-term state strategy for internationalization, but it advocates for this cause with proposals that are achievable with a public-private joint effort. As Brazilians see some of our country's major achievements over the last decades become under siege, Roberto Teixeira da Costa’s latest book engages us in a necessary conversation about the importance of building more international cooperation as a vital ingredient to reducing inequalities and promoting social development. A necessary book for a time when Brazil must leave its international isolation to reimagine its identity and role in the planet’s future.

Francis Rodd’s life is interesting for the way it connected the worlds of geography, international finance, politics, espionage, and wartime military administration. Rodd was a generalist in an age of growing specialisation; he had an instinct for problem-solving, which he applied in a range of areas. He was both a pragmatist and a man of strong convictions, and in relation to African society a traditionalist as well as a moderniser. His life, interesting in itself for what it tells us about British geography, banking and military government, is also a window onto British society at a time of great change. 

More specifically, Rodd’s claim to fame lies in two fields in particular: geography and military government. Geography was in the family; he was a direct descendant of the cartographer and oceanographer James Rennell (1742-1830), who was for a time Survey-General of the East India Company. His first trip to the Mountains of Aïr in what is now Niger, took place in 1922. His gravestone in the Welsh border town of Presteigne contains a saying in the Tuareg language of Tamasheq ‘Naught by good’, reflecting the fact that he always felt connected to this remote desert region. A product of Eton and Balliol College Oxford, he spent a year with the Royal Field Artillery in Northern France 1914-15, before moving to work in Italy and North Africa—including intelligence duties. He then worked for a time in the Foreign Office (1919-24); and it was from there that he took time out to do this first Saharan expedition. His acclaimed book—still admired to this day—on the Tuareg, People of the Veil (1926), was the result. A second expedition to the Sahara in 1927 earned him the Royal Geographical Society’s Founders’ Medal in 1929. Later he was President of the Royal Geographical Society as it re-established its post-war agenda (1945-48). In old age, he was increasingly preoccupied with Welsh border geography and the agriculture of Western Australia. 

If geography was a life-long passion for Rodd, it was only one of his interests; indeed it was for the range of his activities that he was once called the ‘last of the Elizabethans’. He left the Foreign Office for the Stock Exchange, and then joined the Bank of England in 1929, soon becoming the bank’s representative at the Bank for International Settlements in Basle (1930-31). Between 1933 and 1961 he was a Partner in Morgan Grenfell, the British branch of the Morgan banks that has close links with Whitehall. He was one of the bank’s main conduits with Italy, and this led in 1939 to him being seconded to the Ministry of Economic Warfare, where he became the ministry’s chief negotiator with Rome before Italy entered the war. During the war itself, he had meteoric career in the War Office; he rose to being Chief Political Officer in East Africa in 1942 (when he was also made an acting Major-General)—a role that involved him briefly being the Chief Military Administrator of Madagascar, after the Vichy regime fell. He was then made Chief Civil Affairs Officer of AMGOT in 1943, a high profile role that effectively made him the civilian governor of Sicily and Southern Italy in the wake of the Allied military advance. He returned to Britain in December 1943. Rodd inherited a peerage from his father in 1941. After the war, he was much involved in the House of Lords, first as a Liberal and then as a Conservative, with a particular interest in economic and colonial affairs.

This book looks at the Brazilian international cooperation in health with Mozambique under the South-South Cooperation (SSC) context. It explores the particularities, processes, and interests embedded in the cooperation between these two countries under the lenses of the field of Global Health Diplomacy (GHD). It seeks to understand the profile of each country as a global health actor. While also looking at the main security, economic and trade, and human rights interests of these countries.  It particularly focuses on their cooperation in the HIV/AIDS front. In that sense, this research counts with an in-depth analysis of the implementation of an ARV factory in Mozambique, Sociedade Mocambicana de Medicamentos (SMM).
This research is insightful for those interested in understanding the main aspects that influence decision-making in global health from a Global South perspective, looking at  HIV/AIDS and the establishment of the SSM in Mozambique, as a result of the SSC in health with Brazil. Furthermore, it provides a useful framework for researchers interested in understanding how health and foreign policy are related to each other in different contexts and power relations. 

Presents the first comprehensive edited collection of commissioned essays by leading scholars that examine the diverse forms and functions of the gothic across Philippine literature, cinema, television, and comics, reframing the genre through the lens of colonial histories, regional cultures, and globalization

Archipelagothic: The Gothic in Philippine Culture is a volume that brings together essays that examine the place of the gothic in Philippine literary and visual culture, which includes Philippine literature in English, Tagalog literature, regional literature, cinema, TV, and comics and graphic novels. These essays collectively suggest that the Philippines’s longue durée of multiple colonialisms, archipelagic configuration, uneven effects and experiences of globalization, and various regional cultures have variously and uniquely transformed the idea of the gothic. The volume thus also serves as diverse theoretical elaborations of the concept of archipelagothic, designating a term that is attentive to the gothic multiplicity in Philippine culture as well as an approach to reading gothic texts that emphasize relationality, decoloniality, and multiplicity.

In the collection, Jeremy De Chavez’s introductory essay offers a theoretical elaboration of the archipelagothic. Thomas Leonard Shaw’s essay examines the gothic in Philippine Anglophone writing by looking at three thematic categories—1) the tropical gothic, 2) the urban gothic and 3) the domestic gothic—across a selection of texts spanning from the 1940s to the more contemporary 2010s. Edgar Calabia Samar’s essay examines contemporary Tagalog literature’s engagement with the gothic. Genevieve Asenjo’s essay examines literary texts from the Visayan region of the Philippines that perform the archipelagic tropes of the Philippine gothic, which she argues is rooted in its enduring shamanistic tradition and verbal arts of epic chanting and storytelling.

Louie Jon Sanchez’s essay examines how in the past 70 years of Philippine TV broadcasting, gothic tendencies may be observed in two popular televisual formats: the documentary gothic in episodes of news and current affairs formats and the melodramatic gothic in representational drama formats such as the occasional drama anthology/movies for TV and the soap opera, locally called the “teleserye” (television series). Rose Arong examines the formal elements of the komiks and graphic novel genre as a way to discuss the thematic variations of the gothic, which are products of the artistic negotiation of foreign influence and local adaptation. The volume includes a helpful glossary of terms prepared by Michael Justine Sales and Nikka Joy Abenoja.

The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children raises important questions at the heart of society and culture, and through an interdisciplinary, trans-cultural analysis, presents important findings on socio-cultural representations and embodiments of the child and childhood. At the start of the 21st century, new anxieties constellate around the child and childhood, while older concerns have re-emerged, mutated, and grown stronger. But as historical analysis shows, they have been ever-present concerns. This innovative and interdisciplinary collection of essays considers examples of monstrous children since the 16th century to the present, spanning real-life and popular culture. to exhibit the manifestation of the Western cultural anxiety around the problematic, anomalous child as naughty, dangerous, or just plain evil.

The linkage between children and horror, or horror-full children, would seem an almost natural connection to make given its popularity in contemporary horror films and novels. However, the intersection between the two categories has a long history going back beyond the more obvious Gothic reimaginings of the 19th century with its under-age ghostly terrors revealing that the idea of the ‘little horror’ is seemingly an inherent demarcation within society between adults and those that are viewed as ‘not adults’. 

However, as seen in this timely and innovative collection, the anomalous child can also be seen in a positive light, and that resistance to easy categorization can be embraced by wider society as a force for change as can be seen in the recent example of a problematic child/adolescence, Greta Thunberg, a singularly focused individual, who is 16 years-old at the time of writing, has consistently refused to act as desired by the adult society around her in pursuit of gaining recognition of the urgent need for action in regard to environmental change. The book takes an inter- and multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, film, and literature, to study the role of the child and childhood within contemporary Western culture and to see the ways in which each discipline intersects and influences the other, as well as viewing all this through a historical lens.

Seattle is one of the most politically progressive and economically dynamic cities in the contemporary United States, popularly known as the ‘Emerald City’ for its natural setting and environmental politics. This book explores a range of political, policy, and project efforts in Seattle and the wider region to mitigate and adapt to the formidable reality of global climate change. Developing a framework suggested originally by the Urban Climate Change Research Network, the book’s core analysis considers both tantalizing progress and tangible problems in Seattle’s climate action initiatives so far. The narrative explores how Seattle is integrating carbon mitigation with adaptation; advancing climate action networks; co-generating risk information; coordinating disaster risk reduction with climate change adaptation; and, most importantly, focusing on historically and geographically disadvantaged populations. 

Linking together past, present, and future, Climate Change and the Future of Seattle argues that Seattle in the 2020s is less an ‘Emerald City’ than an ‘Elite Emerald’. Income inequalities have grown while gentrification pressures have increased. Class structures have steadily shifted upwards, leaving the working poor and homeless especially vulnerable to climate change. Profoundly uncomfortable with this contradiction, local climate change efforts are shaped by mounting political concerns not only with mitigation-adaptation commitments and risk aversion policies to manage rising sea levels, warmer temperatures and more variable rainfall patterns, but also with reshaping a metropolitan space-economy that too often favors and consistently rewards the high-tech “cognitariat” over middle- and low-income households and communities of color. 

Ultimately, Seattle cannot become post-carbon if it is not also post-polarized, resilient if not also just. The lessons that Seattle learns in pursuit of more inclusive climate action will thus be of abiding interest to cities and metropolitan regions across the United States and all around the world.

The books collects Daniel T. O’Hara’s half century of essays and review-essays on Yeats and his major poetry an drama and how leading critics and theorists have sought to revise their reception for their periods of time and indeed for the future. Its aim is to trace a critical history of the last fifty years, even as it opens the prospects for the future of critical reading of Yeats and modern poetry.

Within the framework of the human rights treaty system of the European Social Charter, the collective complaints procedure was created in 1995 as an optional quasi-jurisdictional monitoring mechanism specific for the protection of social rights. In recent years, the importance and use of this procedure has increased considerably, in the context of a number of serious economic and social crises which are impacting negatively on the effective enjoyment of social rights in Europe.

The present monograph explores and clarifies the specific features of the collective complaints procedure, intended as a sui generis instrument for the protection of social rights in the light of its evolutive application by the European Committee of Social Rights (the monitoring body of the European Social Charter) and its real impact on the state and conditions of social rights in the European countries concerned. 

The analysis particularly dwells on the collective nature of the mechanism, and its implications from the standpoint of the admissibility of complaints, on the adversarial character of the procedure and on the particularities of the follow-up to findings of violation adopted by the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR). The crucial issues concerning the legal value and effects of the ECSR’s decisions on the merits of collective complaints, on the one hand, and the effectiveness of the collective complaints procedure as a means for the protection of social rights, on the other hand, are also addressed. Lastly, the book proposes some reflections on the supposed limitations on the effectiveness of a procedure which is conceived to deal not with individual situations of human rights violations but with violations characterized by elements of "collective importance" for many subjects.

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is a deeply embedded concept in Western society. It embodies the idea that corporations have an ethical responsibility to society beyond financial return and beyond their immediate shareholders. CSR organizations, contractors and reporters have proliferated in recent decades as activist pressure around labor rights, equity and environmental destruction including climate change has ramped up.

This book examines international regimes working to monitor CSR, such as The Global Compact and the EITI. We find the organizations rife with conflicts of interest, lacking the means of verifying information reported by corporations, and unable to enforce transgressions of the largest corporations in any meaningful way. We then turn to the burgeoning reporting industry that informs socially responsible investment, using a test case of severe human rights violations leading to death. In these cases, we find that while the incidents are reported, they are obscured in the reporting system and have very tangential and fleeting effects on CSR ratings. This underscores the overall lack of accountability for corporations that violate their ethical commitments, and the lack of credit for those who step up to them.

We close the book with a series of suggestions about how to reform the CSR regime so that ethical investors and consumers can begin to have confidence that the corporations they select to support will begin to live up to their promises. Until there is transparency and objectivity, CSR will remain a smoke-and-mirrors game of marketing over ethical responsibility.

This book is about contemporary Brazilian fiction from the past two decades and concerned with the possibilities of literary intervention in the reality of the historical moment. Thus, an understanding of the actual role of literature is strategic in the definition of the contemporary, and the book shows an optimism among current writers and artists with respect to the aesthetic, ethical, and political role of literature and art in the twentieth century. 

In contemporary Brazilian prose, two simultaneous ambitions are often reconciled. The commitment to individual or social reality is a challenge that is assumed without thereby necessarily accepting and following the molds of the traditional search for national or cultural identities. This foundation is one of the constants of contemporary prose, without thereby eliminating the continuous existence of a formal experimentalism that is the clearest heir of the modernist project.

Recent literary studies of Brazil generally accept that there was a transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, from a narrative mainly situated in regional areas or the backlands, to the appearance of the big city as a contradictory scenario for national literature. Novelists and short story writers who are consolidated at that time encounter in the big cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro a reality that not only brought a promise of modernity, but also produced a civic marginality that came with extreme poverty, violence, and organized crime. In the 1990s and 2000s, a generation of writers appeared who revived programmatic principles of this urban prose and who began the new century with a new demand for the real. Such a demand included references from historical realism and at the same time preserved a desire to experiment aesthetically in search of effects and affects, through a performative writing that was articulated in the translation of the historical temporality, mainly in the exploration of a lived presence. The narratives discussed are situated in a spatial referentiality that abandons the imaginary construction of the nation, an important task of modern literature, in favor of stories that are globalized by exploring ways to include Brazilian culture and language in new international networks.

This dedicated volume proposes to honor the rich, varied, trenchant, and tremendously influential scholarship of Professor Margot Norris in a series of essays amplifying her illumination of Joyce’s literary oeuvre along with several prominent lines she introduced and investigated. Our title is intended to mark the common denominator running, like Ariadne’s thread, throughout Professor Norris’ many-sided explorations of Joyce’s labyrinth. For Professor Norris, the quiddity of Joyce’s work, its elusive whatness, resides in its secretion of multiple what elses, its opening up of alternative ways of regarding the novels themselves, the readers they address, the narrative or generic forms they destabilize, the world to which they refer, and the heritages they tap. These five categories, in fact—textual plurivalence, formal innovations, possible worlds, emergent histories, and variegated readerships—serve as anchoring points of the collection, each corresponding with one of the significant projects delineating Professor Norris’ esteemed career. Prominent Joycean, Modernist, and Irish study scholars of different nations and generations supply the essays under each heading. 

The first critical section, the textual dimension, will engage with Professor Norris’ exemplary vindication of the hermeneutics of suspicion in her monograph, Suspicious Readings of Joyce’s Dubliners. Joseph Valente, Kezia Whiting and Beryl Schlossman will be toiling in this particular vineyard. The second section, the readerly dimension, will take up Professor Norris’ most recent book, Virgin and Veteran Readings of Ulysses, where she elaborates how the stylistic iridescence that Hugh Kenner identified as essential to Joyce’s writing likewise operates with shifts in the experience (in every sense of the term) of the reader, and how Joyce inscribes that shimmer of interpretive possibility directly into the text itself. Michael Groden, Ellen Carol Jones, and Austin Briggs each contribute an essay on this topic. The third section, the narratological dimension, grows out of Professor Norris’ attention to Joyce’s experiments in narrative and, more broadly, symbolic structure, beginning with her first book on Joyce, The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake. Derek Attridge and Valerie Benejan are featured in this subdivision. The fourth section, on alternative realities, enters forthrightly into dialogue with Professor Norris’ recent essays that usher the postmodern “possible worlds theory '' into the orbit of Joyce studies. Gregory Castle, Marilyn Reizbaum and Paul Saint-Amour extend the application of this paradigm to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake respectively. Whereas the first section of the volume deals with the importance of subtext in Professor Norris’ exegetical achievements, the final grouping deals with sub-context, with moments of buried history of the sort Professor Norris addresses in her book, Joyce’s Web. The essayists developing this approach include Maud Ellmann, Ann Fogarty, Michael Gillespie, and Margot Backus.

The volume culminates with an essay by Vicki Mahaffey focusing on the envisioning of and commitment to gender equality that pervades all of Professor Norris’ scholarship and rivets the excavation of a buried past to the imagination of a better future, possibilities missed and possibilities still to be seized.

Hopefully, this roster denotes how the concept of possibility will give the collection, as it has Professor Norris’ research, and as it did Joyce’s literary monuments, a kind of floating foundation (what seismic architects call base isolation), that ensures consistency in and through flexibility. The essays, to shift metaphorical register, speak to one another but in different idioms, each of which Professor Norris herself has helped to make legible and compelling in the several fields where Joyce looms centrally important. Due to the reverence in which Professor Norris is held in the Joyce community, the distinguished reputation of the contributors in Joyce studies and related fields, and the currency of the approaches they take in following her lead, this volume is certain to attract a substantial academic readership. 

The recent interest in quinqui film and the uprooted people of the Transition who were relegated to the background or were forgotten has recovered throughout the twenty-first century. The dissemination of the subgenre, paraphernalia and fetishism that surrounds these films, as well as the social groups they represented, have had their maximum exponent in exhibitions around the time that they were displayed in Madrid and Barcelona. During the summer of 2010, specifically from May 25 to September 6, the exhibition “Quinquis de los 80. Cine, prensa y calle” took place at the CCCB (Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona). Echoing this interest and practically simultaneously (from July 9 to August 29), the cultural center La Casa Encendida of Madrid held an exhibition and numerous screenings of Quinqui movies from the 70s and 80s. Both exhibitions enjoyed a great reception and affluent visits, as well as publicity and repercussion in different media, highlighting the large number of press releases published and the multiple reports that were broadcast during the television news shows of the main networks in primetime. Recently, films made with retro aesthetics in remembrance of that era have been released on the big screen, as is the case of revisions such as 7 vírgenes by Alberto Rodríguez (2005), Volando voy by Miguel Albadalejo (2006) or El idioma imposible by Rodrigo Rodero (2010). This last film is based on the homonymous novel by Francisco Casavella that is part of his particular vision of the years of the Transition through the trilogy “El día del Watussi”. In turn, renowned authors integrated into the literary star system of large circulation have published texts that portray this era and these young delinquents, slum dwellers and outcasts that are somewhere between the extreme hedonism of the heroine, the constant escape on board a Seat miriafiori or a Bultaco and survival in the peripheral neighborhoods of post-Franco Spanish cities. Authors such as Javier Cercas, with his novel Las leyes de la frontera (2012), and tributes to this type of cinema now bring this genre to a large audience that always turned its back on Quinqui film and its actors, with a nostalgic look and definitely romanticized of this time to legitimize it and finally integrate it, even within marginality, into what the Transition meant for Spanish society as a critical historical moment, however idealized, from which one cannot separate reality from the most disadvantaged that these films capture.

These films already anticipated much of the failure of the Transition, which failed to accomplish all of the achievements that it promised and that eventually ended up becoming, to a certain extent, just noise. What later is referred to as “the desencanto”, term established by the homonymous documentary of Chávarri in 1976 on the figure of the poet Leopoldo Panero; already anticipated by these films, which, although they do not articulate it theoretically or analyze it explicitly, if they implicitly expose their navajero, chorizo, macarra and yonqui characters, who live with the immediacy and the harshness of an era that did not offer them solutions, in fact one ignores them and sinks them, even more so if possible, in their particular hell in the democratic city. This ethical-social positioning towards the environment of the films analyzed here moves away completely from the illusions and reveries of high culture, as well as from the false illusion of modernity that took place in Spain at the time. Consciously or not, the films showed that disenchantment for the lack of solutions in society, not in formation, but already emerged and that had direct negative repercussions on the most disadvantaged classes. This representation of the outcasts reveals the vulnerability of the system that was being organized and that reproduced the exclusion of the lower classes. At the same time, it allowed the public to romanticize and place these characters within a halo of exoticism that attracted the big screen, since viewers could approach the wild side of life; knowing in advance the degree of verisimilitude that these works exuded since their protagonists, in numerous occasions, acted on their own existence, since many of them were drug dealers, criminals, thugs and people with multiple drug addictions who saw how their lives were spoiled as well as of most of the characters they represented on the big screen.

These films are representative of quinqui film, as a type of production that collects the lives of young delinquents in the late seventies and eighties and reflect the insecurity of the time and the degree of fame reached by the protagonists of the films. These films attempt to analyze the fractures of the new social order and offer a portrait of a collective belonging to a generation relegated to the background. The delinquency, marginality and exile of the mainstream suffered by the protagonists are the main elements that form the plot and thematic axis of these films. The Transition seems to ignore the rejection suffered by young people of the lower class and the approach of these to heroin and criminality, as spaces to develop their individualities. In this time of uncertainty, the most important creators of the Spanish film scene seem to opt for a realistic cinema, dealing with the most pressing problems of Spanish society. The works combine violence, delinquency and concern for youth, showing an attractive commercial appearance at the box office. The association between cinema, drugs and delinquency, which had never been excessively frequent, utilizes the concept of the spectacle, paradoxically, as evasion and abstraction of reality. Although these works suffer from a strong stigmatization in their beginnings, as far as criticism is concerned, they have gradually acquired the status of document and attention by social disciplines. Developing a retrospective look, this type of cinema has been constituted as another source of information when it comes to deploying social studies to analyze the conditions of youth during these years and, recently, this genre has enjoyed outbreaks of interest in criticism and the general public, both from the filmic and the social perspective.

In recent decades, international legal constraints have shifted far beyond the national border. International lenders’ structural adjustment programs require states to slash budgets, privatize public enterprises and cut pensions. Trade agreements have shifted from locking in low tariffs to forbidding policies that today’s rich countries used to climb up the developmental ladder. This suite of neoliberal policies has been labeled the “golden straitjacket” for their supposed promise of unlocking economic growth. [NP] ‘Judge Knot’ explores a corollary to the straitjacket: investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), where foreign investors can sue host states out of national courts before transnational tribunals over government regulation. Since 1990, corporations have launched hundreds of cases against states over environmental conservation, financial stabilization and public service provision. In an era of Donald Trump, Brexit, Bernie Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn, criticism of this system has grown enormously. Yet meaningful reform has been difficult. Even though neoliberal economics is on the wane, its legal underpinnings remain attractive to the corporations that demand investment law and the arbitrators who supply it.

Building off of an unprecedented set of interviews with the arbitrators who actually decide the cases, the interdisciplinary ‘Judge Knot’ brings together the best of political science, law and development economics scholarship to offer a historical institutionalist account of investment arbitration in an era of unprecedented judicialization of international affairs. The book offers concrete alternatives to ISDS that leverage what works about the system and discard what doesn’t, so that international law can be more supportive of democracy and development goals.

This book is a comprehensive review of the political career of Benjamin Disraeli, providing a thorough critical analysis of one of the most ambitious and controversial leaders in British history. 'Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics' explores the political journey of a man propelled by a tremendous self-belief and capacity for self-invention through the complex world of Victorian political life. Disraeli retains a powerful presence in contemporary political discourse; whether in terms of current debates concerning the direction and leadership within the Conservative party or in more general areas of social and political debate such as the nature of imperialism, the dangers posed by the centralization of government power, the scope for state intervention in the economy, the constitutional role of the monarch and the meaning of Judaism in British life.  Dr Ian St John discusses Disraeli’s Conservative ideology and its relationship to his identity and his practice as a politician. The author brings to life the often sharp historiographical debates surrounding Disraeli's career by reproducing within each chapter views from key historians – an effective way to introduce the student and general reader to the contested nature of historical understanding. This title will be a major addition to our understanding of both Disraeli and the dynamics of nineteenth-century politics.

“The Rise of Little Big Norway” delivers a wide-ranging topical exploration of the remarkable rise of Norway from poverty and Nordic peripherality to the global steward and Arctic frontliner of today. Drawing on an unusual range of scholarly and popular source material, it chronicles the developmental emergence of Norway while setting it variously in its Nordic, Arctic, European, transatlantic and global contexts. It astutely blends historical analysis and contemporary insight into a finely crafted study of a long-overlooked country that is now a quietly influential global force and an exemplar in areas as diverse as work-life balance, diplomacy and ethical investing.

Written by an experienced Scandinavianist, “The Rise of Little Big Norway” offers a textual mosaic befitting a geographically and historically fragmented land. It elaborates a connecting theme of mobility, which took Vikings across the Atlantic in open boats, created a worldwide diaspora, fueled an exploratory age, and makes today’s Norwegians the royalty of the skiing world and the most traveled people on the planet. It gives special attention to the overlooked northern dimension that makes Norway, with its front-row seat on the Arctic, an increasing touchstone for twenty-first-century debates over global warming and transitioning to a post-oil age. It posits Norwegians as grounded globalists and Norway as a country of unique elements, from its societal peculiarities to its polar identity and the Nobel Peace Prize, which contribute to its unique global profile.

“The Rise of Little Big Norway” is written in a lively, trenchant, essay-based style which can be appreciated by non-specialists, while its coverage of less familiar sides to the national story will be helpful to scholars seeking to extend their knowledge of Norway, Scandinavia and northern Europe. For all readers it delivers a wealth of specialized information, astute observation and comparative insight into the qualities that enabled Norway’s rise to prominence and which distinguish it from its Nordic neighbors. This book offers the kind of thoughtful, well-crafted, single-volume coverage that has long been missing and which fills an important gap in the English-language literature on Norway and northern Europe.

If Marguerite Blessington (1788–1849) – the “most gorgeous lady” in Dr. Samuel Parr’s words – is ever remembered today, it is mostly for her famous literary salon and for her ‘Conversations of Lord Byron’ (1833 l–34), one of the poet’s early biographies. She is also infamous for the relationship with her step-daughter’s husband, the French dandy Count D’Orsay. Hardly anything, however, has been written on Blessington as a traveller and a travel writer. In 1820 she set off on a series of tours, in the course of which she kept journals which were then published as ‘A Tour in The Isle of Wight, in the Autumn of 1820’ (1822), ‘Journal of a Tour through the Netherlands to Paris in 1821’ (1822), ‘The Idler in Italy’ (1839) and ‘The Idler in France’ (1841).

Convinced that Marguerite Blessington merits scholarly attention as a travel writer, Aneta Lipska’s ‘The Travel Writings of Marguerite Blessington’ offers the first detailed analysis of Blessington’s four travel books. This book reveals that travelling and travel writing offered Blessington endless opportunities to reshape her public personae, demonstrating that her predilection for self-fashioning was related to the various tendencies in tourism and literature as well as the changing aesthetic and social trends in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book argues that the author constructed diverse images of herself, depending on the circumstances in which she found herself. The early travel accounts foreground the personae of a chaperoned woman traveller and a novice writer, allowing her admission to the genre of travel writing. The mature travel writings present her to the public as indeed the “most gorgeous lady” on the tour and a seasoned travel writer solidifying her position as a celebrity.

This book arose from several years of research on Akhmatova. Anna Akhmatova is one of the most acclaimed poets of the twentieth century. Her career falls into two distinct periods, an 'earlier' and a 'later', the dividing line being her period of relative silence between 1925 and 1940.  As is often observed, her return to poetry brings with it a sudden and dramatic shift away from a relatively homogenous body of early lyric miniatures to a more diverse and complex style. One of the major unresolved problems in Akhmatova scholarship is that of how the poetics of the two phases are related. Previous attempts to plot her creative trajectory contain internal inconsistencies and are in conflict with one another, often serving to confuse rather than clarify the debate. This book seeks to explore these themes, bringing reconciliation to seemingly disparate views. This book outlines a fresh and coherent framework for the apprehension of Akhmatova's oeuvre in its totality, seeing her as a poet who moves beyond modernism in her later period. The appeal to postmodernism, which is in itself innovatory with regard to Akhmatova studies, also allows exploration of a second problematic issue: how to account for the shift in self-presentation in the later verse, and the different concept of poetic self which it advances. This new account of Akhmatova's path to maturity challenges the conventional view of the early Akhmatova as poet in the classical Russian tradition, and of the later Akhmatova as paradigmatically modernist.

This book examines China’s digital economy and its reach into the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It shows how the Asia-Pacific region with an existing large Chinese diaspora is seen as a ‘cultural landing pad’ for Chinese content and ideas. In addition to these regional investigations, the authors trace China’s growing technological status as an innovative nation through four policy approaches: culture+, industry+, Internet+ and platform+. Other + characterizations include intelligent+ and social+. These + characterizations show how China is rejuvenating, drawing technological knowhow from the region, and adding to its cultural power.

Drawing on the political economy of the media, industry analysis, platform studies and cultural policy studies, the book shows that China's commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of how Chinese cultural and creative industries became digital, as well as investigating the key players and the leading platforms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, TikTok, Baidu, iQiyi and Meituan. The book argues that China’s commercial digital platforms are increasingly recognized outside China and in many cases can disseminate Chinese culture more effectively than government-supported media, although this does not necessarily translate into influence. 

The sites chosen suggest that there is widespread ambivalence to China’s political messaging combined with an uneven reception of its popular culture. The book provides a critique of Western bias in soft power metrics and draws on empirical data to provide alternative readings.

The authors also analyse in detail Beijing’s changing policies towards the governance of culture, Internet technologies and digital platforms. The book illustrates how Chinese cultural power is extending overseas and the challenges of Chinese platforms, products and services in overcoming stereotyping and ‘threat’ perceptions.

‘Britain in India, 1858–1947’ seeks to trace the last 90 years of British rule in the light of modern historical debates. The volume examines the ambiguities of British rule that followed from the post-Mutiny settlement: the tensions between an authoritarian bureaucracy and the promise of a liberal vision of the future, and between imperial interests and the growing coordination of Indian aspirations for self-rule. The volume analyses these tensions with reference to contemporary historical debates, and traces them through changing international relations and world wars to Indian independence and partition in 1947.

This book is about contemporary Brazilian fiction from the past two decades and concerned with the possibilities of literary intervention in the reality of the historical moment. Thus, an understanding of the actual role of literature is strategic in the definition of the contemporary, and the book shows an optimism among current writers and artists with respect to the aesthetic, ethical, and political role of literature and art in the twentieth century. 

In contemporary Brazilian prose, two simultaneous ambitions are often reconciled. The commitment to individual or social reality is a challenge that is assumed without thereby necessarily accepting and following the molds of the traditional search for national or cultural identities. This foundation is one of the constants of contemporary prose, without thereby eliminating the continuous existence of a formal experimentalism that is the clearest heir of the modernist project.

Recent literary studies of Brazil generally accept that there was a transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, from a narrative mainly situated in regional areas or the backlands, to the appearance of the big city as a contradictory scenario for national literature. Novelists and short story writers who are consolidated at that time encounter in the big cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro a reality that not only brought a promise of modernity, but also produced a civic marginality that came with extreme poverty, violence, and organized crime. In the 1990s and 2000s, a generation of writers appeared who revived programmatic principles of this urban prose and who began the new century with a new demand for the real. Such a demand included references from historical realism and at the same time preserved a desire to experiment aesthetically in search of effects and affects, through a performative writing that was articulated in the translation of the historical temporality, mainly in the exploration of a lived presence. The narratives discussed are situated in a spatial referentiality that abandons the imaginary construction of the nation, an important task of modern literature, in favor of stories that are globalized by exploring ways to include Brazilian culture and language in new international networks.

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

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

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

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

Despite its international influence, Polish theatre remains a mystery to many Westerners. This volume attempts to fill in various gaps in English-language scholarship by offering a historical and critical analysis of two of the most influential works of Polish theatre: Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘Akropolis’ and Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. By examining each director’s representation of Auschwitz, this study provides a new understanding of how translating national trauma through the prism of performance can alter and deflect the meaning and reception of theatrical works, both inside and outside their cultural and historical context.

Although theatre scholars have now gained familiarity with ‘Akropolis’ and ‘Dead Class’, there remains little understanding of the complex web of cultural meanings and significations that went into their making – they remain broadly but not deeply known. Grotowski and Kantor both sought to respond to the trauma of the Holocaust, albeit through drastically different aesthetics, and this study develops a comparative critical language through which one can simultaneously engage Grotowski and Kantor in a way that makes their differences evocative of a broader conversation about theatre and meaning. Ultimately, this volume invites and engages with many questions: how is theatrical meaning codified outside its cultural context? How is it codified within its cultural context? What affects the reception of a theatrical work? And, above all, how does theatre ‘make meaning’?