2003-01-01,Daniel Meyer-Dinkgraf,European Culture in a Changing World: Between Nationalism and Globalism,Hardback,9781904303336,34.99,"In the words of Ezra Talmor: To deal with European Culture in a Changing World is to deal, in fact, with the reciprocal relation between Politics and Economics on the one hand, and Culture on the other. In an era when economic forces are pushing towards European Economic Unity or towards the Globalisation of National Markets it is rather difficult to demarcate the role of Culture. While the European Narrative may have been written by Monnet, De Gaulle, and Adenauer, the Global Narrative is written by an unknown author or rather by Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.
On the one hand the postmodernist claim that the Grand Narrative is dead is given the lie. A Grand Narrative is now being written not by Philosophers but by Managers of Multinationals. The Foucauldian “ça parle” (it speaks) is instantiated by the anonymous authors of the Global Narrative.
The question to be asked is: What will happen to the rich mosaic of National European Cultures? The answer to this question is not only a matter of National Memory and National Identity, it is also a matter of the sources of cultural creativity. L’Europe de nations may have been the theatre of endless national wars but it was also the cradle of a very rich mosaic of national cultures. The point is: how will creative genius adapt to the two new trends - European Unification and Globalism?
This volume brings together essays by leading scholars in a myriad of disciplines, all of which attempt to shed light on these issues.
Contributions by:
Nicholas Perdikis, Shari L. Boyd, William A Kerr, Sylvia MacPhee, Marcela Cristi, Anu Randveer, Martti Randveer, Viljar Jaamu, Vello Vensel, Anatoly Zotov, Warren Breckman, Douglas Moggach, Malgorzata Bogunia-Borowska, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Eric W. Ruckh, Avron Kulak, Kevin P. Spicer, Bernard Zelechow, Dorothy M. Betz, Robert Stanley, Rosemary Gray, Jean-François Thibault, John Danvers, Ewa Macura, William A. Everett, Armand Singer, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
","""Overall structure of the book is very appealing. Introduction is well-descriptive and written in a simple style. It motivates the reader and creates new inquiries about the topics.The biggest strength of the book is its diversity of topics, deftly managed by authors who assembled their ideas and connected them to the central theme.""
Ahmad Saeed Kahn, University of Trento, CEU Political Science Journal Vol. 5, No 1
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-01-01,Cedric Cullingford and Ikhlaq Din,Ethnicity and Englishness: Personal Identities in a Minority Community,Hardback,9781904303640,34.99,"In an age of globalisation, the most pressing concerns are with matters of identity, personal and collective. This book explores the culture of nationality, groups and religions through the inner lives of second generation immigrants in England.
The young people studied reveal surprising and sophisticated as well as complex attitudes. They reveal the contradictions, the opportunities and the dangers of their collective identities, and reveal how they are able to make use for good or ill their position in society. What they say relates closely to the experiences of any identifiable group.
The book also relates the experience of one community to the development of prejudice and the way in which people form their sense of self. The notions of nationality and nationalism, of tribal and religious loyalty, are all covered. The book does not just describe, or give a voice to minorities, but analyses some of the reasons for the suspicions of groups for each other, for the development of prejudice, as well as suggesting the ways in which to deal with it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-01-01,Alyson Brown,Historical Perspectives on Social Identities,Hardback,9781904303688,29.99,"This collection of work on the theme of identities was the result of a conference held in the spring of 2005 at Edge Hill under the auspices of The Centre for Liverpool and Merseyside Studies. Whilst a significant proportion of the research focused on Liverpool and the North West, the theme of identities was sufficiently broad to entice scholars from diverse and varied fields. This collection, therefore, reflects the range of work presented and discussed at the conference and the multi-layered and multi-facetted nature of identity.
Contributors to this edited collection examined the concept of identity in Britain through a range of historical perspectives, concerning themselves primarily with the later modern period. They reflect the extent to which nineteenth and twentieth century British social, cultural and political change has given rise to pluralist, fragmented and fractured identities and highlight the extent to which class, gender, religious and institutional frameworks have shifted continually. This publication will therefore be of interest to those working in diverse fields but who share an interest in the importance of identity as a decisive cultural, social, economic and political determinant.
Questions of identity have centred a good deal of debate in the social sciences, especially since the reception of Foucault's work in the English-speaking world in the last couple of decades. This has often taken a theoretical form. Attempts to link theory with analytical practice have been strongest in the field that might be characterised as the 'politics of identity'. At any rate this has provided an important instance of theoretical and practical conflict. Herethe focus of the debate has been around questions of gender, nation, language, economy, security and race. It has tried toto clarify crucial divisions in the analysis of identity as between explanatory and constitutive models, and between positivist and post-positivist procedures. For the most part these intense and extensive concerns have passed by largely unnoticed among historians practising in Britain in the well-found but conventional idioms of political and social history.
What this conference volume seeks to do is to help redress thedeficit, to domesticate some of the theoretical and polemical exchanges around 'identity' into a world of practical,yet conceptually aware historical work. This is a difficult but surely worthwhile task: to broach various imaginaries of identity, issues of identitarian politics, and questions of identity formation on a series of relatively familiar historical contexts.
Of course, no selection of subjects for practical research in this way can be exhaustive. The group of essays offered here is sufficiently wide, and occasionally gratifyingly unexpected, at least to begin the job, to stimulate others and, most importantly, to interject theoretical concern into historial fields sometimes lacking it.
Ten essays are included, together with the editor's introduction. The pieces are bound together by a common strategy not a shared empirical territory. They range from studies of gendered identity formation , to regional identities formed around seaside resorts, to empirical questions of class and capitalism and their identitarian politics, to historical analysis of mourning, and on to language, nationality, deafness, motherhood and their inflection in identity in past time.
This well-edited combination of shared conceptual purpose and variety of empirical form seems to me to work well. The book will be widely used in a variety of historical fields, not least in those which have been the most resistant to recenttheoretical innovations in the social sciences.
Keith Nield
Editor
SOCIAL HISTORY
'This is a fascinating and wide-ranging collection of essays linked by the over-riding theme of identity. While primarily historical in their focus, the essays will be of interest to more than just historians. They raise a variety of interesting conceptual and theoretical issues, from, for instance, the significance of the staymaker in the formation of eighteenth-century female identity, to the relationship between regional identity and late-nineteenth and early twentieth century Lancashire seaside resorts.'
Sam Davies,
Professor of History,
School of Social Science,
Liverpool John Moores University",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-02-01,Patricia Brewer and Michael Firmin,Ethnographic and Qualitative Research in Education: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference,Hardback,9781904303701,34.99,"Inquiry into the complexity of human interaction is the basis of educational research. How do we determine the circumstances of interaction that lead to relevant and productive learning environments?
How can we begin to address the complexities of diversity in our interactions with learners, parents, and each other? How do we obtain needed skills for interpreting the dialogue that accompanies our work?
The first part of this volume [chapters 1-6] explores the theme of communication and interaction in very diverse settings, from the tennis court (Arem) to the architect's studio (Popov). Two studies review cultural factors associated with student life on college campuses (Hughey and Sims) while Sperry, et.al. and Yamakawa, et.al. focus specifically on the role of dialogue. Action research, that which is designed to fill the gap between theory and practice, is represented in the second section [chapters 7-12]. Here, researchers explore a variety of professional concerns but are particularly focused on improvement of teacher education, whether at the point of preparation (Capobianco, et.al.), early professional experiences (Hamilton and Rademaker), or teacher continuing education (Hampton, et.al. and Raffanti). Palladino and Swafford examine educator-family relationships and factors that may affect that aspect of professional work.
The collection appropriately closes with a series of projects that examine the instruction of qualitative research methods at colleges and universities [chapters 13-15]. As Peter Demerath notes in the keynote address, ethnographic and qualitative research methods continue to be scrutinized heavily in this age of education accountability. Current trends and predictions of ""what works"" rarely agree that evidence from qualitative inquiry is sufficient to explore important issues of teaching and learning. Through qualitative study, however, educators can systematically evaluate the learning environment, the instructional methods, and the results of students' collective experience.
Improving the instruction of qualitative methods becomes an essential part of our curriculum, as well as a tool for our own professional practice. In this section, Firmin provides an introduction to teaching the reiterative process of qualitative inquiry and Zagumny reports on initiatives to promote qualitative inquiry in a technology school setting that prefers quantitative inquiry. Hockett, et. al. provide a rich description of ""double loop"" learning through a research project that documents the experiences of instructors and students who are engaged in a qualitative methods course. All represent the inextricable link between process and content, that which forms the foundation of qualitative research in education.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-04-01,José Resende and Maria Manuel Vieira,The School at the Frontiers of Modernity,Hardback,9781904303763,34.99,"The aim of this book is to discuss the emergent forms of educational processes observed in the context of late modernity, mobilizing the contribution of the social sciences. Through a plurality of educational subjects, this publication provides an overview of the contribution of schooling to the construction of late modernity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh and David Getty,Borders and Borderlands in Contemporary Culture,Hardback,9781904303831,29.99,"It is entirely appropriate that this book should be produced in Dundalk. Located on the Northern rim of the Irish Pale, this town has straddled a border for centuries. Over the past thirty years, it has come to be closely identified with violent Republicanism both by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland and by Constitutional Nationalists in the South. Against such a hostile background academics attached to the Institute of Technology there have bravely confronted and interrogated these processes which have so blighted the history not only of Dundalk but of places and spaces throughout the world similarly located.
In a wide-ranging series of articles, perhaps the strongest message to emerge is that of border as limitation. The notion of border as a liminal space where worlds converge, new realities emerge and transcendence is possible rarely surfaces. Instead, the border as a physical manifestation of divisiveness is repeatedly explored.
In a passionate statement of solidarity with the Palestinians, Lavalette describes the construction of the apartheid wall: “The wall is eight feet high and has a watchtower every three hundred metres. Although there are no maps, it is thought it could end up being close to one thousand kilometres in length by the time it is completed” (p. 18).
Yndigegn shows how spatial borders gradually become mental borders such that, as visual borders disappear, new invisible borders appear (p. 33). The article explores the dualism of borders—simultaneously protecting those inside from external threats while also preventing those inside from reaching or engaging with the outside world.
Ni Eigeartaigh takes up the duality theme in the exploration of individualism as a process either of liberation or one of alienation. Taking the title from an aphorism of Kafka’s “My Prison Cell, My Fortress”, she explores a view of contemporary society as repressive, and of its inhabitants as complicit in the repression. Drawing on a wide span of literature and disciplines, she teases through the paradox of contemporary society that the freedom gained from the liberation of the individual from communal obligations and repression has resulted in a loss of identity and an overwhelming sense of isolation and powerlessness. She concludes that in the “absence of a restrictive system of social control, the individual is forced to take responsibility for his own actions….It is to avoid this responsibility that many…choose the security of the prison cell above the hardship of the outside world.”
Her paper does not go on to look at the potential role of the State or of fundamentalist movements in playing on the fear and disconnectedness of the citizenry as an equally likely outcome to that of a stronger capability for personal responsibility. One could argue for instance that the Euoropean Fascist movement and the Nationalist movement of the early- to mid-twentieth century were both based precisely on the dislocation at personal and social level resulting from the breakdown of pre-industrial communitarian ties.
While there is no attempt in the book to elucidate any particular developmental relationship between the different contributors, two broad themes may be detected—a concern with borders as socio-political and geographical constructs on the one hand and a concern with the formation of identity in the individual’s relationship to the wider society on the other.
Some light is cast on the latter issue by de Gregorio-Godeo who posits discourse as a core concept in identity formation. This leads to the conclusion that individual identity, in this case individualism, is in fact socially constructed in a “dialectical interplay between the discursive and the social identities included—so that they are mutually shaped by each other” (p.93). Using critical discourse analysis, he goes on to explore changing notions of masculinity as evidenced in the Health sections of men’s magazines.
","“This is an important book. It explores the fundamentals of discord, power differentials and oppression at personal, national and global levels. It calls attention to the ways in which ʻspace, place, identity and war interact with each other to produce situations where the absence of peace and security becomes endemicʼ (p.32). It is being published at a time when ancient borders between the East and the West are yet again the subject of international strife and present possibly the most ominous single threat to global harmony and peace. It shows that a country such as Ireland, with its own very particular history, is uniquely placed to explore boundaries and to negotiate agreed borders on the geopolitical front. To the extent that this book begins and contributes to such a process it is to be greatly welcomed.”
—Tom Collins, National University of Ireland
“Individual and collective identity seems to be impossible without borders, i.e. a clear distinction between me/us and the others. Borders even appear to be something human beings do need. Historically the national states, political alliances and religious movements have managed to establish borders as if they are natural. We are witnessing currently a similar endeavour (by politicians, journalists and scientist) to make us think in terms of cultures.
However, to define myself or ourselves, the others are needed. In any case, it is a type of communication. And historically, with regard to human and societal development, people have had all types of exchange across the borders. Borders are links.
Of course borders have been helpful in terms of protection and security. There might even be liberties which can only be experienced within borders (territorial, social or legal ones), but surely people have been suffering severely because of restrictions and compulsions due to borders, too. The wall in Germany forced thousands, millions of people to stay in the GDR and bear the undemocratic regime. Even this border of barbed wire had been permeable to some amount: by TV, letters and packages and visits from the West. East Germans could manage to go West until 1961 via Berlin, then a few succeeded in escaping under high personal risk; pensioners got permission to leave GDR, others could attend family events in West Germany; in the 1980s more and more citizens applied for legal permission to emigrate. The political unification was based on a collective identity doubtless, though there used to be a kind of East-West tension in Germany, which did not disappear totally. Sometimes East Germans have experienced unification as annexation and patronizing, and many of those (two or three million) who were close to the regime lost their jobs (and privileges). There are, it cannot be ignored, people in West Germany, who ʻmissʼ the borders, too: the access of the ʻEastʼ (beginning with GDR 1990, the enlargement of 2004, not ending with Romania and Bulgaria) is threatening for them because of economic reasons—hence the ʻtraditionalʼ (i.e. cold war based) reluctance can easily be utilized for political purposes.
With regard to borders the European Union is a postmodern project which deserves respect and support—not only because it has reduced the importance of national borders (reduced only, as it is still governed by national governments). But it is far from being or becoming something like a (just bigger) national state. It has got a new quality, as its borders are changing and relative. Inside the EU there is, for instance, a distinction between the Eurozone and the rest. There are quasi member states (like Switzerland or Norway) and privileged associates (ACP-countries), and access is not restricted principally (Turkey, Croatia, Ukraine, etc.). Internal and external EU borders are not absolute, but variable.
Borders give structure. It is necessary to know where which tax legislation is in force. It facilitates political participation when people can identify the administrator of the local school. It is helpful to know what is the range of a ʻsocial or regional fundʼ. Historically and till today, the crucial issue was: borders have had manifold, multiplied functions. If one and the same border delineates people in several or even all aspects, in terms of property, territory, political systems, ideology, religion, ethnicitiy, language, or culture then it is a total border. This total border neglects and oppresses the reality of exchange and the human need of communication. Borders which structure reality under one aspect only are helpful. Total borders are dangerous.
Trade is universal. Borders cannot prevent people from exchanging goods (and, by the way, knowledge). Whereas cultural scientists used to analyze the appearance of a particular item in the territory (cultural circle), more and more politicians argue in terms of ʻculturesʼ which can be distinguished as if there are borders between them. In order to reject this type of culturalism it suffices to recognize that culture is no ʻthing,ʼ but a term for that what people believe, feel and act. And as people communicate with each other and move, there is no border between cultures. But of course particular people share particular patterns of behaviour while others do not. But altogether, they have communities, maybe, of fashion or lifestyle. The Islamic world is a media world like Western countries.
Due to migration and mobility, including all types of tourism, and the media in general, people are communicating. ʻCultures are in exchangeʼ―we would like to say; however, this is not correct, as ʻcultureʼ is an abstract term, no actor. There are cultural industries (TV, advertisement) which try to influence people’s desires, perceptions, patterns of behaviour etc., but have recognized yet that there are so many different ʻsubcultures,ʼ lifestyles and living conditions that any marketing has to cope with that variety.
There are persons who do overcome borders as they come over borders. Sometimes the political borders change and thus citizenship; Franz Kafka for instance, born in Austrian Empire, continued to speak and write in German language as a citizen of Czechoslovakia. Others, for instance the painter Lyonel Feininger, are transnational because of their parents (e.g. German-American couples). Think about the third generation of immigrants in Germany―they have still links and ligatures to their home country, Turkey for instance. Those transnational personalities give an example how borders can be crossed. Let us take into account people living in all the borderlands, regions like at the river Rhine, which brings together French, German and Swiss people. Be aware of a double town like Görlitz-Zgorzelec, which has good chances to become nominated as European capital of culture 2010―neglecting the German-Polish border, but using it, too (as a relative, linking border).
The view on borders is fascinating and highly productive for human scientists. Thus we are grateful for this volume, edited by David Getty and Aoileann Ni Eigeartaigh, which hopefully can reach publicity beyond the borders.”
―Wolfgang Berg, Dean, Faculty of Social Work, Media and Culture, University of Applied Sciences, Merseburg/Germany
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Cristina Gomes,Social Development and Family Changes,Hardback,9781904303855,39.99,"This book presents various studies that go beyond the mere opposition between macro and micro determinants of social and family changes. The cross-cultural, transdisciplinary and generational perspectives on selection of the partner, marriage, cohabitation, LAT relationships, divorces, ageing and interchanges, children, types of households, inheritance and construction of the domestic space contribute to deepen the analysis of diversity in families and their multiple interactions with cultural, demographic, economic, and social processes. The authors reveal the complex connections between the internal and external spheres of the family, the historical moments and contexts, the intergenerational experiences, the macro-structural processes and the individuals’ multiple possibilities of action, between the everyday decision-making and the changes in the families’ practices. Exceptional situations, such as catastrophes or economic crises, contribute to the diversification of the family and promote retrocession in gender equality. Crisis and war intensify female care and domestic work. Diversification implies that families are not adscripted to closed systems, determined automatically within also closed societies that portray family as a miniature reflection of social structures. Deconstructing this myth, most of the authors recognize family diversity and its variations in space and time.
The understanding of the economic, social, cultural and demographic family processes and practices permits to relate population and society. The duplication of the life expectancy and the reduction of births by almost one half in entire populations worldwide lie behind marriage markets, reproductive practices, generational availability, coexistence probabilities, intergenerational exchange and new and different familial arrangements. Increases in life expectancy and changes in the timing and number of children lead social actors to reconsider gender and generational roles; the solidarity among generations has another background and acquires different meanings; although there has been an increase in gender equality, it has come with an increased social inequality within the countries and among them. Demographic processes are an inherent part of social processes, and the age structure of the populations constitutes the human and biological basis for the analysis of social behaviors that these populations choose to reproduce, as well as for the understanding of the differences in the distribution of resources into and between countries, genders, generations and social groups.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-05-01,Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judith Barr Bachay,"Women Moving Forward: Volume One: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope",Hardback,9781904303800,32.99,"“Women Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.”
Associate Professor Beatriz González Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC
Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University
State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education
Fellow, American Council on Education
“These are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience – uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, ‘You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.’ They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.”
Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C.
Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Klaus-Gerd Giesen and Kees van der Pijl,Global Norms in the Twenty-First Century,Hardback,9781904303985,39.99,"Norms in the contemporary world system are no longer established exclusively through inter-state agreement but increasingly, are becoming truly global. This is made possible by the rapid privatisation of law and the self-regulation of the transnational private sector. Other forces driving this epochal transformation are the overwhelming pre-eminence of the United States, the erosion of the role of the United Nations, and the appearance of new actors such as subnational entities and NGO’s. They all contribute to the creation and ideological justification of new norms.
This collection brings together critical studies on this complex process. Written by authors from eleven different countries, both established scholars and young specialists, the book challenges the often convenient rationalisations of regime theory, the governance approach, and ‘post-national’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ democracy, in order to explore the practical, theoretical and ethical implications of the new world of global norms.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,"Margaret Grieco, Royal Colle and Muna Ndulo",Meeting the Information Challenge: The Experience of Africa,Hardback,9781847180100,34.99,"Africa faces serious challenges in the world of globalisation. One of the most serious and basic of these challenges is that of information and communication technologies. Meeting the range of social, economic and political goals in the contemporary world requires the meeting of the information challenge. This volume - primarily the product of a specialist meeting at Cornell University - provides both overview and detail on how this challenge can be and is being met.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,"Dominika Ferens, Tomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora",Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies,Hardback,9781847180001,34.99,"Out Here originates from a series of queer studies conferences which took place in Poland between 2002 and 2004, and includes essays, an autobiographical account, and two short stories. Their authors are of eight nationalities: Canadian, Belgian, Flemish, German, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian, and U.S. American. The academic papers represent a wide range of disciplines: philosophy, literature, ethnography, cultural and gender studies. Some combine theoretical insights and critical analysis with suggestions for activism. The short stories explore the formative moments of a queer adolescence in Anglophone Canada.
The eclecticism of Out Here reflects the cauldron-like mix of concerns taken up locally in places considered peripheral in relation to the centers of queer theory in British and American academia. It is out here (or back then), often within the context of rampant homophobia, that queer methodologies prove especially productive. Out here, queer theory is alive and kicking. Whether the authors write about sexual awakenings in Sri Lanka and Canada, or heterosexism in contemporary Ukraine, Hungary, Belgian parks, and 1970s Britain, or racial exclusion in American gay bars, or the veiled homophobia of Polish textbooks, what connects them is the commitment to questioning the limitations placed on queer desire.
","'...the second in what is hopefully a series... builds on its predecessor... its authors address the local context of Polannd and Eastern Europe'
Shamira A. Meghani, 'Queer Theory and Sexualities', The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, The English Association, 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Alana Lentin and Ronit Lentin,Race and State,Hardback,9781847180018,39.99,"Speaking about racism in the western political climate of the first decade of the twenty-first century is more difficult than ever before. There is a feeling in post-colonial and post-immigration societies that the blatant overt racism of the past is no longer as pressing. Admitting racism elicits discomfort because common wisdom tells us that racism opposes everything that we believe in as citizens of democratic, “civilised” modern states. Yet state racism appears to be here to stay and, in many ways, is more acceptable than ever before. Immigration detention centres, the deportation of “failed” asylum seekers and “illegal” immigrants, racial profiling and the rolling back of liberties won by the civil rights movement are all examples of how state racism impacts on our daily lives.
Race and State contributes to breaking the taboo of discussing the links between “race” and state. The papers collected in this book highlight the interconnections between “race” and state, from historical, theoretical or contemporary sociological perspectives. Part I of the book looks at theoretical issues in conceptualising the “race”-state relationship. Part II examines racism in its most pernicious contemporary manifestation: the racialisation of “terror”. Part III, on the racial state(s) of Ireland, is an important addition to the debate, examining Ireland as a “test case” for demonstrating and interpreting the relationship between “race” and state.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Joyce W. Warren,Feminism and Multiculturalism: How Do They/We Work Together?,Hardback,9781847180124,24.99,"The question of women’s role in Islam has been increasingly debated in recent years, even within the Muslim diaspora. This book explores cultural pluralities, their effect on women’s lives, and women’s role in questioning and/or shaping their identities. The questions that we are asking in this book about feminism and multiculturalism are questions that are being asked in many communities across the United States and throughout the world.
How do feminism and multiculturalism work together? Can multiculturalism coexist with feminist principles? Does respect for cultural traditions take precedence over women’s rights? Should outsiders interfere with traditional cultural practices? How are transplanted cultures affected by or shaped by their transplanting? How do women of color create gender and racial identity in and outside of mainstream American culture? The contributors to this book represent some of the most important voices in this discussion and include Nurah Ammat’ullah, Jane Kramer, Robina Niaz, Manizha Naderi, Katha Pollitt, Madhulika Khandelwal, Eugenia Paulicelli, and Gail Garfield. In this book they are in dialogue with each other, asking questions and responding to questions, giving different perspectives, and providing or attempting to provide answers. If readers do not find all of the answers they are looking for in these pages, they are certain to gain new perspectives on the questions. And sometimes that is the only way to begin to find answers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Dawn Zinga,Navigating Multiculturalism: Negotiating Change,Hardback,9781847180162,44.99,"This provocative volume explores multiculturalism from different disciplinary perspectives as well as examining the associated issues from the perspectives of various countries. It considers how multiculturalism has been defined and the various meanings that the term holds while also focusing on the realities faced in different societal contexts. The authors address difficult and at times divisive questions about race, ethnicity, and identity. This collection challenges readers to examine their own perceptions of multiculturalism and to consider how the perspectives in this volume can inform their thinking. By examining the issues from different perspectives, the authors have encouraged individuals to consider how to navigate multiculturalism and negotiate change.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Elena Bellina and Paola Bonifazio,State of Exception: Cultural Responses to the Rhetoric of Fear,Hardback,9781847180216,29.99,"In a globalized world exposed to ever more dramatic dangers, the established legal order enters into crisis and the rhetoric of fear is deployed in order to legitimate states of exception. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has widely elaborated on the historical effects of the juridical concept of the state of exception, recalling the definition formulated by German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. The state of exception presents itself as an inherently elusive phenomenon, a juridical no-man's land where the law is suspended in order to be preserved. The juridical tensions inherent in the state of exception necessitate a constant interplay of anomie and nomos, an ongoing interaction between order and the suspension of order used to justify every conceivable abuse of power. Such interplay, epitomized by the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, has become central to today’s geopolitical scenario.
This book examines the implications of the “state of exception” on both a macro and micropolitical level strongly informed by Italy's long history of exceptional uses of power. The book is divided into three parts. The first part explores philosophical issues related to the history of the state of exception within the frame of juridical, political, and economical principles. The second part focuses on Italian cultural and literary production during times of socio-political crisis, devoting special attention to the ways in which history may interact with its fictional representations. The third section is devoted to the literary and cinematic representations of the biopolitical effects of the state of exception on Italian urban areas and the spectacularization of terrorism in Italian cinema.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-07-01,Anthony Barker,"Television, Aesthetics and Reality",Hardback,9781847180087,39.99,"This new collection of essays seeks to focus on three areas where television has recently been in an intriguing state of flux. Taking as our background the emergence of multimedia conglomerates and cash-rich cable channels, we look at the way old national terrestrial channels and the brash new internationally commercialized ones have innovated in the domain of television programming. In all there are fourteen original essays, an introduction to the book’s theme by the editor and a foreword by Professor Annette Hill.
Section one “Realizing the Real” looks at contemporary patterns of television consumption and the presentational styles which package the real in news, current affairs and other ‘live’ television formats. Essays on rhetorical strategies in the news coverage of the war in Iraq, on national and international inflections of Sky News in Europe and coverage of the recent EURO2004 football tournament, as well the multi-channel reporting of a prominent paedophilia scandal, are presented in this section. They all analyse the extent to which the grounded and the local are threatened and distorted by hegemonic forces in media today. The findings of a comprehensive new study of Portuguese social practices and viewing habits are also featured in this section.
Section Two “Realizing Performance” addresses the way new trends in reality programming and other documentary practices have impacted on fiction and entertainment television. There are essays on the recent wave of British television comedy heavily influenced by TV newsmagazine and fly-on-the-wall documentary styles and two pieces on new American series, 24 and CSI, which have revolutionized the narrative parameters and evidential base for thrillers and cop shows respectively, coming up with new ways to ‘perform’ space, time and science. Finally there is an essay on Nigel Kneale’s The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), a survivor from the era of the single play who seems to anticipate the future of television in reality-based gameshow-style entertainment. Each of these essays shows that the success of these programmes is dependent on a fresh restylization of the conventions and formulas which govern mainstream television programming. They therefore see the representation of the real in fiction as primarily an aesthetic reappraisal.
Section Three “Performing the Real” looks at the explosion in reality television programming itself. It focuses on the coming to pass of 70s and 80s theorists’ visions of both a passive voyeuristic society and one increasingly at peace with the notion of surveillance. We have been progressively acculturated to watching and being watched. Orwellian anxiety has given way to Baudrillardian acceptance of the message and the medium fused in a new order of mediated reality or hyperreality. Essays refer specifically to the globalization of shows and formats and their local inflections and to coverage of reality shows in print media and on the net. There are essays on The Bachelor and gender stereotyping, Joe Millionaire and the conventions of melodrama, and two on Big Brother, one on the problems of communication within a sealed environment and another on its reception in Portugal. Concerns about the self and its authenticity are consistency raised in all the essays of this section.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-08-01,Seymour Leventman,American Popular Culture: Historical and Pedagogical Perspectives,Hardback,9781847180070,29.99,"American pop culture is no longer merely popular. It has penetrated to such deep-lying cultural and social structures that persons dream and fantasize in pop cultural terms. It is the new reality which increasingly measures all else in the social world. The present volume consists of original essays written expressly for the 2005 Conference of the American Pop Culture Association. They fall under three headings of the Association's lead: History of Pop Culture contains papers of a distinct historical dimension pointing out that although pop culture may become an autonomous force, it exists in a context of space and time. The Teaching of Pop Culture is critical because American pop culture has become so ubiquitous, classroom educators use it to present other unrelated materials, e.g., from history, economics, politics and sociology. Not even high culture such as Classic Literature is immune to pop culture treatment. Utilizing classic literature performs a double function of popularizing high culture while also paying hommage to it.
The authors of these papers are research scholars and academic teachers who have spent their careers communicating to students with great skill and dedication, the great ideas and concepts of popular as well as unpopular culture. The book contains important insights into that complexr, maddening phenomenon, American popular culture
Scholars, educators and general non-fiction readers will find much enlightening material. Most people associate pop culture with movies, music and TV shows. Yet this volume suggests that in modern society pop culture ultimately absorbs almost every facet of the collective life as to become generic and ever-present. Literature, for example, whether American, Japanese or Italian may lose their cultural distinctriveness and writers may forget their bibliographic ties. A literary agent, defending her client on charges of alleged plagiarism, commented, ""As a former teenager myself, I recall that spongelike ability to take popular culture and incorporate it into your own lexicon."" As this volume implies, pop culture has both uplifting and downgrading possibilities.
""Levantman has assembled a varied and fascinating collection of original and imaginative investigations into the pop culture every American knows and loves (or hates). It's exciting reading and covers all the bases.""
Howard Becker,
Author of Art Worlds and Outsiders
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-08-01,Dzemal Sokolovic,Nation vs. People: Bosnia is just a case,Hardback,9781847180223,34.99,"The book is provoked by the recent tragedy of Bosnia and the clash within a paradigmatic multicultural society. It offers theoretical responses both to the challenge of Bosnia and to the global challenge of how to reconcile two facts of the modern world and the threat that stems from this: the existence of 200 states, and their commitment to their own integrities, and the existence of 8000 ethnic groups and their devotion to keep their identities alive. The question the book raises is whether nation (state) and democracy are the proper and only answers to these challenges. Presenting conceptual controversies about two of the most discussed and disputed concepts of the present day, the author insists on totally new notions of nation and people (ethnic group, narod, folk). He maintains that ethnicity and nationality have hitherto been defined mainly in terms of culture and politics in anthropology and political science. Both concepts are however basically societal phenomena and therefore fall primarily within the subject domain of sociology. By combining a theoretical analysis with experience from Bosnia, the book provides definitions of concepts such as ethnic group and nation, and thereby ensures a new perspective and analytical tool for an international audience of academics and officials in international institutions and organizations. While the book is written in an academic style, it is nevertheless accessible to a broader audience: professors willing to test their own views and students keen to meet new approaches; academics eager to face new theoretical challenges and politicians ready to apply new emerging expertise; international practitioners capable of learning from life and local activists able to make up new theoretical responses to global issues.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-08-01,Rebecca Fine Romanow,The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time,Hardback,9781847180261,34.99,"The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time examines the ways in which the notion of the postcolonial correlates to Judith Halberstam’s idea of queer space and time, the non-normative path of Western lifestyles and hegemonies. Emphasizing authors from Africa and Southeast Asia in the diaspora in London from the mid-1960s through 1990, the reading of both postcolonial lands and subjects as “queer counterproductive” space reveals a depiction of bodies in these texts as located in and performing queer space and time, redefining and relocating the understanding of the postcolonial.
The first wave of postcolonial literature produced by diasporics presents the body as the site where the non-normative is performed, revealing the beginnings of a corporeal resistance to the re-colonization of the diasporic individual residing in England from the Wilson through the Thatcher regimes. This study emphasizes the ways in which early postcolonial literature embodies and encounters the topics of race, gender and sexuality, proving that a rejection of subjectifying processes through the representation of the body has always been present in diasporic postcolonial literature.
Reading through postcolonial theory as well as the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Homi Bhabha, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Halberstam and queer theory, The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time discusses the poetry and journals of Arthur Nortje, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and his film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, tracing a geographic arc from homeland to London to the return to the homeland, traveling through the queer space and time of the postcolonial.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Theophilus Kofi Gokah,Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in Sub-Saharan Africa: Aspiration or Achievement of Policy,Hardback,9781847180353,24.99,"Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in sub-Saharan Africa has come at the time when children’s well-being is on the agendas of governments, policy makers, schools and community organisations. It provides an in-depth analysis of the relation between official children’s rights and well-being policies and their implementation refracted through African as well as Western lenses. The content of the book is a departure from conventional stereotype approach to children’s well-being analysis in sub-Saharan Africa.
In addressing issues around children’s rights and well-being, the book offers a reflection on the conflict between adult society and government welfare policies. The book also draws on existing knowledge about national and international efforts to change adult attitudes towards children. Analysis in the book demonstrates that there are both structural and operational problems in children’s rights and policies governing their well-being in sub-Saharan Africa.
This sort of work has been neglected since the last few decades and has created a gulf between government policy rhetoric and practice. Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in sub-Saharan Africa bridges that gap and reasserts the need for effective policy, material changes in resources and cultural change valuable to enhance children’s ability to stay healthy, grow and learn to become responsible citizens.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Kylo-Patrick R. Hart,Film and Sexual Politics,Hardback,9781847180377,39.99,"Film and Sexual Politics: A Critical Reader features a variety of noteworthy critical essays that explore the evolution, representation, and social construction of sex, gender, and sexual orientation from the early days of cinema to the early twenty-first century.
This collection investigates the complex relations between film form/style and sexual politics (past and present), as well as the ideological and social ramifications of those relations for the lived realities of individuals in the United States over the course of the twentieth century and beyond. Contrary to popular perceptions of films as relatively simplistic forms of “entertainment,” the essays in this collection demonstrate clearly how the act of producing meaning through the use of cinematic verbal and visual signs is far from a simple process with negligible historical consequences.
This book offers insightful and satisfying reading to established and emerging scholars who explore film history, theory, and criticism, as well as to all readers with a general interest in film history and the effects of cinema on individuals and popular culture. The range of films analyzed includes Being John Malkovich, Citizen Kane, Elizabeth, Female Perversions, From Here to Eternity, Gidget, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Jackass the Movie, The Matrix, Maurice, My Own Private Idaho, Porcile, The Road to Ruin, and Wilde.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Thomas Acton and Michael Hayes,"Counter-Hegemony and the Irish ""Other""",Hardback,9781847180476,29.99,"This volume hopes to act as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies. Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies. These disciplines are all relatively new areas of enquiry in modern Ireland, a country whose society has witnessed very rapid and wide-ranging cultural and demographic change within the short space of a decade.
The issue of multiculturalism is not one which is particularly new to Irish society as a number of contributors to this volume point out. What is new however is an increased acknowledgement of diversity and multiculturalism in Ireland and Europe as a whole. Such an acknowledgement makes increased dialogue between “mainstream” society, older minorities such as the Irish Travellers and the many newer immigrant communities such as the Roma all the more necessary.
For such constructive dialogue to take place it is vital that the voices of Travellers and Roma are listened to and that their distinctive worldview be given due acknowledgement and respect. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards the development of such a process.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Amanda K. Baumle,Demography In Transition: Emerging Trends in Population Studies,Hardback,9781847180575,39.99,"The discipline of demography, much like the population processes which comprise its focus, changes theoretically, methodologically, and substantively as the world’s populations respond to internal and external forces. These disciplinary shifts are often identified and examined by demographers in academic journals and at annual population studies conferences. Demography in Transition is a compilation of seven studies presented by demographers at the Southwestern Sociological Association’s 2005 Annual Meeting. The works selected for this volume provide unique insight into complex demographic issues, as well as highlight many of the growing foci in the discipline.
There has been a movement in demographic research towards focusing on understanding population processes for more heterogeneous, rather than homogenous, populations. This movement has resulted in an increase in research concentrating on outcomes dependent on gender, race, and ethnicity. Changes in population structures within the United States have resulted in another notable disciplinary focus. Aging populations, altering family structures, and a rise in Asian and Latino immigration to the U.S. have all attributed to novel areas of research for demographers.
These timely issues, and their intersections, are central to the research explored in the chapters contained in this volume. In their chapters, these demographers examine the manner in which race and ethnicity affect access to heath care; the consequences and concerns associated with an aging population; the factors affecting Asian migration patterns; and the demographic implications of changing family structures. These chapters provide a glimpse into the current insights provided by demographic research, as well as directions for its future.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Marta Žilkova,Globalisation Trends in the Media,Hardback,9781847180582,39.99,"The book of studies named Globalisation Trends in the Media contains an evaluation of the media culture in Slovakia. It deals with problems caused by globalisation and by the specific circumstances of media production. Whilst the post socialist states are, in many respects, in a similar situation, they each have their own specific attributes too. As this book features not only Slovak, but also Czech and Polish authors, the English reader will be able to gain an idea of the state of media production, and especially of the media culture, in Central Europe. The nature of media culture in Central Europe, when compared to that of countries situated further east, differs mainly in its inclination towards western Europe and, unfortunately, towards America too. The book contains theoretical and glozing articles dealing with radio and television production, as well as the Internet. Overall the book aims to introduce the reader to the state of the Slovak media culture, to its audience and also to its problems and successes since the year 1989.
The book will probably attract the attention of experts in media production, academics of media culture and young people interested in radio and television production who would like to learn something about the culture of a small Central European country. They might have come across a similar phenomena in England. The book will help them find out how European culture influences Slovakia.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,"Helen Asquine Fazio, Atreyee Phukan, V.G. Julie Rajan and Shreerekha Subramanian",Home and the World: South Asia in Transition,Hardback,9781847180407,39.99,"Home and the World: South Asia in Transition,
by Helen Asquine Fazio, V.G. Julie Rajan, Atreyee Phukan, and Shreerekha Subramaniam
Home and the World: South Asia in Transition appears at a crucial, pivotal time for South Asia as it interacts on the global plane. For in this new millennium, South Asia is rising even as it roils with internal contradictions and reacts to external pressures. India, as the most economically developed country, enjoys a soaring economy, while partisan politics and the old demons of poverty and caste continue to erode and stymie internally. Pakistan, twenty years after the fall of the dictator Zia-ul-Haq, has come of age and is beginning its cultural renaissance, and yet fundamentalist factions continue to retard advances for women and full participation in the global economy. South Asians live in virtually every nation on the earth, and “new world” ideas about national selfhood and identity shuttle between regressive, nostalgic impulses and progressive cause investment as immigrant money fuels both conservative insurrection and 21st century development.
Gathering together essays by significant scholars, writers, diplomats, artists, curators, and activists, this volume addresses varied and divergent perspectives on nationalism, gender, diaspora and translation, art and untouchability. Provocative and au courant, Home and the World: South Asia in Transition is an accessible, lively, and essential reference volume for scholars of interdisciplinary humanities, political science and diplomacy as well as an informed general readership seeking to understand the global phenomenon of South Asia.
","""Home and the World: South Asia in Transition provides a valuable introduction to South Asian Literature and theory. I am impressed by Editors' discernment of cutting edge-issues.""
- Bapsi Sidhwa, Author, Cracking India
""The first annual Rutgers South Asia conference was an educative and exciting experience for the hundreds who attended. The present volume captures the range and vivacity of the conference and showcases South Asian contributions to important contemporary debates in the arts, literature, history and politics.""
- Dr. Sumit Guha, Prof. History and Director, South Asian Studies Program, Rutgers University
""The topics covered in this book range from gender and identity to contemporary art-a wide range of topics that shows both depth and scope of this anthology. For a humanities scholar or student interested in this region in general and India in particular, this book will provide the much needed understanding of the complexities and challenges that embody the region and its member nations. In that sense, this book does a wonderful job. My sincere congratulations to the Editors and contributors.""
- Dr. Sanjib Bhuyan, Associate Professor, Agricultural Economics & Marketing, Rutgers University
""Drawing on history, geography, religion and the manifold shapes of art, these essays help us imagine South Asia and its diasporas in flux, bodily identities split open and refigured at the brink of a new century.""
- Meena Alexander, poet, author of Raw Silk Distinguished Professor of English, Hunter College and the Graduate Centre, City University of New York
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,David Ross,"Modernity, Postmodernity, and Posthumanity: Life is the Fiddle",Hardback,9781847180520,39.99,"In line with recent post-modern research, this text argues for a global change never before realized on such a scale. I refer to 21st century communism. Communism has not been defeated, only its relatively immature 20th century form. To cross from late capitalism to a sophisticated communism based upon the advances of the current conjuncture is a task for those who would live dangerously. Indeed, the waters of this crossing upon the river of time are deep. But the depth of a river is the imagination of those who dare cross it. The vessel of the crossing is theory.
Without revolutionary theory,' said V.I. Lenin , there can be no revolutionary movement.' However, the production of theory has a social context, namely, the
actual life practises of a world belonging to a specific conjuncture. The world is undergoing constant change, and theory must both reflect upon and reflect that. Guided by Marx's words and example, I have undertaken the task of fitting dialectics within contemporary scientific discoveries, beginning with chaos theory.
A communism for the 21st century points to the possibility of order unfolding from disorder. According to this schema, it is necessary to hold both order and disorder as simultaneous realities while locating the dynamic of their operation vis-à-vis a
substrate. I tentatively identify this textual body as the confluence of several strands, blending relations between different but complimentary elements: dialectical method (Plato-Hegel-Marx); the striving for social justice (Hebrew prophets and Marx) and; science (specifically fractal logic, chaos theory, general systems theory, string theory).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Jean Ryan Hakizimana and Michael Hayes,"Postcolonial Identities: Constructing the ""New Irish""",Hardback,9781847180667,24.99,"The stranger, the foreigner and the pilgrim are all familiar figures in literature, philosophy, theology and mythology. This figure - travelling the world in search of refuge and sanctuary – is one which has had a particular resonance for many millions of Irish people in recent centuries. This book is a window on a new aspect of the Irish experience that is the “strainséir” or pilgrim. It is one man’s story of exile and renewal in a world where the concepts of home, place and diaspora are all changing at frightening speed. Jean “Ryan” Hakizimana’s story is the story of an artist, the colours of whose palette reflect the multicultural tapestry that is Irish society today. It is a narrative that involves a journey halfway across the globe, a portrait of the “modern” world incorporating exile, starvation, and genocide before the final “liberation” that is the healing process of painting. Traumatised from the horrific childhood experiences he witnessed during the genocides of Burundi and Rwanda in the mid-1990s it was almost a decade later and at a distance of many thousands of miles that African artist Jean Ryan once again found the will to paint.
This book sheds light on the diaspora experience of the “new” Irish, the refugees and asylum-seekers who are changing the face of many of Ireland’s villages and towns that until recently had been emptied by widespread emigration. The economic “miracle” that has transformed Ireland in the past decade has been accompanied by much rhetoric regarding multiculturalism, integration and dialogue with the newer peoples and cultures that now live in Ireland. As of yet, however, there has been few attempts to chronicle or engage in dialogue with the many different aspects of the diaspora experience that define these “new” Irish, the young Irish who will carry a renewed and exciting new Irish identity into the future. One of the greatest challenges facing Irish society and the indeed the Irish educational sector is how best to harness the benefits of the wide range of cultural experiences, values and peoples that are now part of the Irish cultural fabric. This book is one of the first attempts at such a new an exciting intercultural dialogue in Ireland. It is only through such a process of dialogue that we may uncover a “new politics of truth” (Foucault, 1977), a new discourse and a more productive understanding of the relationship that now exists between the various strands of Ireland’s multicultural society.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil,Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism,Hardback,9781847180469,34.99,"The papers in this volume include not only the traditional view of what constitutes a minority but also any individual, or group recalcitrant and reluctant, not to say resistant, to the generalized lobotomy operated by the rampant uniformisation of cultures around the world. For in the ruins of “the end of history” and its context of violence and Manichean politics, any opposition to the “general consensus” could be dismissed as anti-historical and atavistic. The objective of the book is precisely to counter such rhetoric and underscore the necessity of cultural diversity and the right to difference.
This book contains what can amount to a critical response to the current context of confusion surrounding the postmodern condition that arguably dominates most societies. It stresses the issue of ethics not only in world politics but also in literature and criticism which are the main focus here. In fact, the interest in minority issues is in itself an ethical concern that contributes to give substance to the idea that postmodernity opens the gates for the long-suppressed identities and sensibilities to emerge and demand recognition.
This volume intends, therefore, to contribute to the recent ethical turn that seems to take place in scholarship worldwide. Operated mainly by what is referred to as postcolonial studies this shift turned literary criticism and cultural studies into the site where a sense of literature can be envisioned that is not at all universalist, or reflecting the hegemonic temptations of the new world order. It seeks to present a patchwork of minor literatures, in the sense that besides the “major” literatures/languages, there are myriads of minor voices that express dissimilarity oftentimes under the umbrella of those major languages and literatures themselves.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Nathalie Ramière and Rachel Varshney,"Rhizomes: Connecting Languages, Cultures And Literatures",Hardback,9781847180544,39.99,"This volume, Rhizomes, is a challenging path into a very multidisciplinary set of papers. Papers range across cultural studies and film, to applied linguistics to sociolinguistics; and as gathered in this one volume - the result of postgraduate student research of a very high order - they 'force' readers to think critically of disciplines, their assumed boundaries and most importantly, the usefulness of assuming the enduring value of such boundaries. This is not to say that ‘anything goes’, but the diversity of areas under scrutiny means that sharper re-thinking of one’s own comfort zones is necessarily one key outcome when confronted with a volume like this. This is one advantage of the selected papers – besides the obvious one of having at your finger tips a simple way of delving into a challenging diversity.
Brian Ridge, Campion College, Sydney
This is a wonderful collection of papers, which demonstrates the power and vitality of contemporary literary and cultural research. The scope of the papers, the diversity of the subject matter, and the willingness of their authors to work across disciplinary boundaries work together to create an exemplary collection of research for the twenty-first century – multidisciplinary, multigeneric, and multimodal, like 21st century texts and media.
Greg Hainge’s opening paper sets the stage for the diverse and engaging papers that follow. With his own examples of rhizomatics drawn from music, Greg immediately has the reader acknowledging the multidisciplinary – and multimodality – of contemporary texts – and so the need for research that can address the richness and complexity of these texts.
In Part 1 we have two papers that address the issue of the limitations of conventional research methodology in their own fields (language acquisition, film studies) – and propose alternative and more productive methodologies. The exciting thing about this section is that these are fields normally considered very different and without much to say to one another – and yet the combination works to create a dialogue that extends across these and many other fields of research. Most importantly, both challenge the dichotomising of research and analytical methods that has worked to impoverish their fields and the research on which it is based.
Part 2 presents papers on a range of marginalised social positionings and experiences – and in the process demonstrates both the power of research to uncover what has been ignored or elided in contemporary histories (how many westerners know of the long history of Chinese women in film? Or of an Aboriginal Taiwanese literature?) as well as the power of new perspectives, new ways of thinking the research subject, to open up areas of study such as dating manuals and country music, both conventionally dismissed as inherently trivial and/or sexist.
In Part 3 the papers all play brilliantly with the notion of connectivity, demonstrating for readers the inextricability of texts and meaning systems (verbal, visual and other) with the cultural contexts in which they operate – and so the diverse ways they may be deployed. These papers banish forever any reliance on a formalist reading or methodology for the analysis of text and meaning! And, again, the range of subject-matter is breath-taking and argues the need for cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research practice.
Part 4 takes the reader into the realm of transformations, challenging the ways in which textual and systemic changes articulate profound cultural changes in the societies that produce them. So we learn about grammatical interventions in the Chinese language as feminine and neuter pronouns are added to the gender-free Chinese language – and consider the major cultural change that both caused this change and is subsequently produced by it. We consider the ways in which cinema has evolved as an art-form, under the influence of its material and verbal technologies. And we consider the ways in which Chinese poetry has entered a range of cultural practices in the west and the east, and again consider how its traditional meanings and significance are maintained and communicate to these new contexts – and the nature of the transcultural experience this generates.
For the academic, student, or interested reader this collection offers a breath-taking scope of subject-matter and a vital and engaged approach to the material, that makes this collection a research ‘page turner’!
Professor Anne Cranny-Francis, Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Amedeo De Dominicis,Undescribed and Endangered Languages: the Preservation of Linguistic Diversity,Hardback,9781847180568,39.99,"The book is devoted to linguistic and phonetic analysis of some undescribed and endangered languages. It collects the Proceedings of the international conference on “Undescribed and endangered languages: the preservation of linguistic diversity” held in University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy), on September 29, 2005. Papers are by Roberto Ajello (Pisa), Amedeo De Dominicis (Viterbo), Maurizio Gnerre (Napoli), Antonino Melis (N’Djamena).
It will appeal to linguists, phoneticians and phonologists as a contribution to the debate it discusses and it will be welcomed by a wide range of students and researchers as an ideal overview of recent works.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-10-01,Eóin Flannery,"Versions Of Ireland: Empire, Modernity And Resistance In Irish Culture",Hardback,9781847180506,34.99,"Versions of Ireland brings a refined postcolonial theoretical optic to bear on many of the most urgent questions within contemporary Irish cultural studies. Drawing on, and extending, the most advanced critical work within the discipline, the book offers a subtle critical genealogy of the development of Ireland’s diverse postcolonial projects. Furthermore, it reflects on the relevance and the effectiveness of postcolonial and subaltern historiographical methodologies in an Irish context, interrogating the ethical and political problematics of such discursive importation. Flannery’s work highlights the operative dynamics of imperial modernity, together with its representational agents, in Ireland, and also divines moments of explicit and implicit resistance to modernity’s rationalising and accumulative urges.
The book is pioneering in the facility and ease with which it navigates the interdisciplinary terrain of Irish studies. Flannery provides enabling and challenging new readings of the poetry of the bi-lingual poet, Michael Hartnett; the politically imaginative vistas of the republican mural tradition in the North of Ireland; the gothic anxieties inherent in the fiction of Eugene McCabe and the semi-fictional writing of Seamus Deane, and the differential codes of visual surveillance apparent in Irish tourist posters and late nineteenth century photography in Ireland. Versions of Ireland does not dwell on the exclusively theoretical, but offers rich critical analyses of a range of Irish cultural artefacts in terms of Ireland’s protracted colonial history and contested postcolonial condition.
","""Versions of Ireland brims with ideas and imagination, striving to push Irish studies to its limits and beyond, and the book has a critical integrity and coherence of its own. Its individual chapters are strongly researched and reverberate beyond their immediate context into wider meta-critical debates, and it is here that the real strength of the work is found. Eóin Flannery is one of the most promising critics currently working in Irish studies and Versions of Ireland reveals his talents to their full.""
Dr. Colin Graham.
""There are certain scholars whose first books cause you to sit up and pay attention, so immediately evident is the quality of the writing. My first reaction to Versions of Ireland was a mixture of awe and empathy. Throughout the book whose attractive presentation by Cambridge Scholars Press deserves high praise, the reader is carried along by the compelling fluidity of arguments that are based on the most scrupulous research and mature reflection on how the author's thesis differs from, or is in agreement with, the theories put forward by other cultural commentators... When you finish the final essay, you are aware of having learned many new things as well as having been forced to reappraise other long-held and cherished opinions that have been revealed to be deficient or unsustainable. In conclusion, all I can say is that as a first offering these essays are a tour de force. Eoin Flannery is a young critic who will undoubtedly write many more books and, on the evidence of Versions of Ireland, we will await their arrival with bated breath.""
-Eamon Maher (Director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies in ITT Dublin (Tallaght) and an Associate Editor of the Irish Book Review (The Irish Book Review, vol. 2, No. 4, Autumn 2007)
""Versions of Ireland is an exciting and innovative addition to the body of Irish and international postcolonial criticism. Flannery is an engaging and persuasive critic whose writings are both theoretically informed and politically engaged. The range of his work is exhilarating from Northern Irish murals to the poetry of Michael Hartnett to the configuration of Ireland as a tourist destination and throughout his analyses there is a keen respect for his primary materials alongside a robust and invigorating re-assessment of their meanings and importance.
A signal virtue of Flannery’s writing is to remind his readers that Empire has by no means disappeared or been made redundant by new political arrangements. On the contrary, the force of Versions of Ireland comes from the extreme topicality of his insights into the way in which power, coercion and oppression operate and are justified. What is more, Flannery demonstrates how strategies of resistance are elaborated and how these bring with them emancipatory potential. Versions of Ireland is an important and timely book and deserves the widest possible readership in Ireland and beyond.""
Professor Michael Cronin, Dublin City University, author of Translating Ireland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,"Rosalind Edwards, Jane Franklin and Janet Holland","Assessing Social Capital: Concept, Policy and Practice",Hardback,9781847180728,39.99,"Social capital is a key concept in academic research and policymaking internationally. It focuses attention on social relationships, values, and access to resources in families, communities, regions and nations. But does the concept, with its focus on particular aspects of social life and the thrust of its influence on policy initiatives, hide more than it illuminates? Is it even harmful? Can social capital ideas be amended or adapted to bring other issues into view, or are there alternative concepts that are better able to address contemporary social, economic and political life?
This edited collection ¬brings together contributions, including from internationally renowned researchers, that assess social capital - as a theoretical concept, its shaping of policy development, and its practices in research and everyday life. Some reveal the conceptual lacks and policy drawbacks of social capital, and put forward alternatives. Others pursue mainstream models and their adaptation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Michael Firmin and Patricia Brewer,Ethnographic and Qualitative Research in Education Volume II,Hardback,9781847180742,34.99,"The Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference (EQRE) is one of two longstanding, national conferences in the United States, focusing specifically on qualitative research. It has a rich history, being previously held at institutions such as the University of Massachusetts and Teachers College, Columbia University. The conference draws scholars from across the nation and internationally to share research focused on qualitative methodology. The 18th annual conference, held in Ohio, represented peer-reviewed contributions from over 100 different scholars.
This volume presents some of the highlighted papers presented at the
2006 EQRE conference. This includes articles addressing methodological approaches to qualitative research, perspectives relating to English as a Second Language (ESL), action research, connecting human services with educational research, instructional improvement, and culture & environment. The authors' works provide examples both of methodological rigor in qualitative research and also possessing important points of application related to educational professionals. Scholars of qualitative approaches to research as well as educational professionals will find this work particularly apt and a valuable scholarly resource.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Gwynyth Overland,Sociology at the Frontiers of Psychology,Hardback,9781847180650,29.99,"Sociology at the Frontiers of Psychology explores the nameless ground between sociology and psychology - an Alsace-Lorraine of the social sciences where theories and perspectives are freely borrowed from one to the other. Some chapters use psychological theory for studies of sociological phenomena, others use sociological perspectives for studies of psychological phenomena. Some writers are research fellows at the beginning of their careers, others professors at the pinnacle of theirs – notably Thomas J. Scheff, distinguished author of Goffman Unbound! and Being Mentally Ill.
These Scottish, Dutch, Moroccan-French, Norwegian, Canadian and North American sociologists have found inspiration in classical sociological theory from Durkheim to Foucault and produced original thinking grounded in empirical work. In addition, two psychologists and an anthropologist have contributed articles which border on the sociological field from the other side of the frontier.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Petra Buchwald,"Stress and Anxiety: Application to Health, Work Place, Community, and Education",Hardback,9781847180711,19.99,"The book offers cutting-edge developments in both experimental and theoretical aspects of stress and anxiety introduced by world-wide well-know researchers. It covers four major areas that are health, work place, community, and education. In the first part of the book issues of stress and health are discussed underscoring the importance of positive individual traits, positive resources for improving well-being, happiness and healthy functioning. Part 2 of the book shows what is currently known about occupational stress and deals with the role of personality, workaholism, and the importance of burnout. The third part of the volume focuses on stress, anxiety, and coping in the community related to terror attacks. Research presented here helps to understand the phenomenon of posttraumatic growth and related paradoxical effects of traumatic events. A comprehensive and instructive conceptual overview of terror, its psychological antecedents and consequences, as well as findings from research that investigated the coping process during a period of political violence is given. The fourth part of the book refers to education and develops understandings of the sources, experiences, and consequences of stress, anxiety, and coping in different groups and school settings.
Anxiety, stress, and coping are important to understand if we want to have meaningful descriptions of individuals. All contributions in this book demonstrate the development of research in this field and how important a continuing investigation and refinement in this complex area is. We wish to encourage academic researchers, students, service providers, policy makers, community members, and anyone else involved in treating stress to join with us in understanding individuals in the context of stress, coping, and emotions and how this effects their well-being, functioning and resilience.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-11-01,Jerry Harris,The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World,Hardback,9781847180698,39.99,"Combining bold theortical analysis and careful empirical investigation Harris provides a critical framework to understand the political and economic underpinnings of globalization. In an unique historical approach the book examines how the revolution in information technologies and the break-up of the Soviet Union intertwined to present new global opportunities to reorganize capitalism as a unified world system headed by an emerging transnational capitalist class.
The book challenges the common view that nation states still define international relations, with the United States as hegemonic leader of the world system. Instead Harris offers a more complex analysis of world affairs that sees the current period as one of transition between nationally based industrial capitalism and a global system based on revolutionary methods of production and new class relationships. He argues this conflict appears in every country as national economies realigned to fit new patterns of world accumulation creating a host of political tensions within and between nations.
This analysis is detailed in a distinctive interpretation of the US military/industrial complex, as well as the contemporary class struggles in Germany and the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. The book concludes by investigating alternative trends which are currently challenging the inequalities of global capitalism, unfolding a fresh approach to the relationship between the state, market and civil society.
","""This book is a timely and welcome contribution to our understanding of the nature and direction of change in world capitalism in the age of the microchip. Focusing on the cybernetic revolution and the sweeping changes it has brought about, Harris address’ such topics as the transformation of work, the conflict between new and old centers of capital, the rise of a transnational capitalist, the military-industrial complex, and terrorism. He identifies new theories, practices and strategies needed in this age of cyber-capitalism to achieve a renovation of participatory democracy and sustainable economics. These essays should be widely read and studied.""
-William I. Robinson, Associate Professor of Sociology, Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, author of A Theory of Global Capitalism, Production, Class and State in a Transnational World
""The Dialectics of Globalization is a fresh approach to the question of globalization and the technological transformations that underpin it. Whereas the Left has usually ignored the computer revolution, or been dazzled by it Harris systematically identifies the contradictions and crises below the surface of the shiny world of IT and traces its impact on ordinary people's lives. The last section on the state, markets and civil society is an incisive, clear and brilliant piece of writing.""
-A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, Editor ""Race & Class,"" author of When Memory Dies.
A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, Editor “Race & Class,” author of When Memory Dies.
""On the solid materialist foundations of his experience as an apprentice machinist with US Steel in Chicago, Jerry Harris has produced a valuable re-interpretation of the political economy of globalization, focusing on the complex inter-relations of capital, labor and technology. His subtle critical analysis of ""US Hegemony or US Globalization?"", complemented with detailed case studies of class struggle and globalization in Germany and the Third World, fruitfully locate the often confused rhetoric of nationalism and globalization within a more productive class perspective.""
-Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, author of The Transnational Capitalist Class.
'If you wanted to read just one primer to get a handle on all the important debates around global political economy, Jerry Harris's 'The Dialectics of Globalization' would be a good candidate. Harris's book is no simple survey - he takes partisan stances on a number of issues, some of them quite controversial. But he is fair with his opponents and rigorous in his argument ... What Harris does in this book is to raise this experience to the level of cutting-edge theory. readers should be fore-warned: this is not entirely and easy read. But it is not obscure gobbledygook either. In a few spots it's a tought climb, but once you get there, the view is terrific ... The Dialectics of Globalization does more than describe current realities in the world. It also points to a way out, to a 'successor system' that takes advantage of regulated markets in goods and services while severly restricting markets in labor and capital ... This book unfortunately has a steep price tag - thought it's not atypical for academic presses. Still, if a study circle purchased a copy to pass around, it would be a bargain, and a well-justified expense.""
-Carl Davidson, Executive Director of networking for Democracy and formerly national leader of SDS and writer for The Guardian (in Wasafiri, May/June 2008 issue)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Jorge Febles,Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture,Hardback,9781847180797,34.99,"Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture is a direct outgrowth of Jorge Febles’s involvement with the annual conference of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. In that sense, the compilation expands on a project initiated in 1993 by Helen Ryan-Ransom with her book Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993). David William Foster, who penned a lengthy preface to that collection, justified its intent by underscoring: “The very fact that our approach to culture is dominated by categories based on high, academic, institutionalized phenomena poses from the very outset the question of how to deal with all those other cultural manifestations that do not comfortably assimilate to the accepted canon” (Ryan-Ransom 3). The past fourteen years, however, have witnessed a radical transformation of that so-called canon due to the widespread acceptance of ideas espoused by cultural theorists like García Canclini, Homi Bhabba, Said, Stuart Hall, Benhabib, Bourdieu and countless others. Therefore, the ambivalence regarding what constitutes culture identified by Foster is inoperative nowadays to a substantial degree. In fact, a fundamental component of the postmodern outlook resides in the ability to blend comfortably the high and the low, the elitist and the popular realms of production in a multiplicity of textual artifacts, creative as well as critical in nature. Hence, the essays that conform Into the Mainstream do not question barriers anymore, nor do they expound on the need to assign a discursive intellectual space to matters pertaining to popular culture. Thus, this collection espouses an inclusive approach in which a variety of analytical approaches coalesce to reflect on an equally kaleidoscopic textuality.
Pursuant to its comprehensive nature, Into the Mainstream airs established as well as developing critical voices so as to reflect both ideological continuity and evolving viewpoints. Scholars who have compiled strong academic records like Hortensia Morell, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Elsa Gilmore, David Petreman and Benjamín Torres Caballero share a venue with younger critics like Corey Shouse Tourino, Roberto Vela Córdova, Stacy Hoult, Eduardo del Río, Bruce Campbell, Laura Redruello, Dinora Cardoso and April Marshall, as well as with two graduate students about to complete their academic preparation: Nuria Ibáñez Quintana and María Teresa Vera Rojas. The result is an eclectic compilation meant to elicit discussion on the basis of its variety. Into the Mainstream’s primordial objective is to place these provocative essays—which are expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005—along with the numerous subjects they treat in the academic mainstream where they rightfully belong.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Piotr Cap,Legitimisation in Political Discourse: A Cross- Disciplinary Perspective on the Modern US War Rhetoric,Hardback,9781847180803,29.99,"How did the G.W. Bush administration manage to persuade Americans to go to war in Iraq in March 2003? How was this intervention, and the global campaign named as “war-on-terror,” legitimised linguistically? This book shows that the best legitimisation effects in political discourse are accomplished through the use of ‘proximization’–a cognitive-rhetorical strategy that draws on the speaker’s ability to present events as directly and increasingly affecting the addressee, usually in a negative or threatening way. There are three aspects of proximization: spatial, temporal and axiological. The spatial aspect involves the construal of events in the discourse as physically endangering the addressee. The temporal aspect involves presenting the events as increasingly momentous and historic and hence of central significance to both the addressee and the speaker. The axiological aspect consists in a growing clash between the system of values adhered to by the speaker and the addressee, and the values characterizing a third party whose actions, ideologically negative, are made “proximate” and thus threatening. Although the tripartite model of proximization proposed in the book is very complex at the level of its linguistic realisation, the working assumption is intriguingly basic: addressees of political discourse are more likely to legitimise pre-emptive actions aimed at neutralizing the proximate “threat” if they construe the threat as personally consequential. The book shows how language of the war-on-terror, and especially the rhetoric of the Iraq war, respond to this precondition.
","""Piotr Cap's book takes great theoretical strides in critical discourse analysis, exploring the dimensions of space, time and value, and applying his model to decisive texts in the contemporary world.""
Paul Chilton, Lancaster University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-12-01,Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino and Clevis Ronald Headley,"Shifting the Geography of Reason: Gender, Science and Religion",Hardback,9781847180780,39.99,,"""Shifting the Geography of Reason constitutes an event. The contributions within this text boldly and effectively confront epistemic orders that were/are predicated upon the presumptive Occidental circumscription of reason and intelligibility. This text thus challenges the misanthropic effrontery of the west to territorialize the very meaning of the “human.” Through a collection of critically reflective contributions that capture the geo-spatial historicity, complexity, and diversity of Caribbean knowledge-production, from the epistemic, phenomenological, and the scientific to the aesthetic, poetic, and semiotic, this text forces a shift away from reason as totalizing to reason as possibility, s emancipatory and inclusive.""
George Yancy, Duquesne University
""Here stands the first of a series of important collective statements on the proverbial problem of reason that once fled those spaces in which the person of color reached for a meeting. What other resources are left for those of us who rely on ideas in a world that offers few options short of violence or, worse, apathy but to transcend the struggle for recognition into the sphere of building new intellectual homes? One must read this courageous celebration of thinking and of asserting the value of intelligence.""
Lewis R. Gordon, President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University and Ongoing Visiting Professor at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Cedric Cullingford,Childhood—The Inside Story: Hearing Children's Voices,Hardback,9781847180957,29.99,"This is a forensic analysis of the experience of childhood, from the children's point of view. It demonstrates, through case studies, how the influences of home, the school and the neighbourhood are interpreted.
The pupils reveal how they form their attitudes to life; to themselves and to society.
They reveal how they learn to form their future conduct through their analysis of school.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Richard Pine,"Creativity, Madness and Civilisation",Hardback,9781847180919,34.99,"What is ‘creativity’? And what is ‘madness’? How far can we interpret an artist’s work through our knowledge of his or her mental state, and how far can we infer a mental state from a work of art? When does a work of art cease to be a personal statement by the artist and become a matter of public concern?
The contributions to this book attempt to answer some of these questions. They come from a wide range of disciplines and experiences – a practising psychiatrist, a practising artist suffering from reactive depression, and critics working in literature, film, music and the visual arts.
The essays include discussions of the ‘myth of creativity’, the music of Robert Schumann, the borders of sanity in the writing of Lawrence Durrell, the ‘insane truth’ of Virginia Woolf, the meeting of doctor and patient in the poetry of Anne Sexton, mood disorders in the fiction of David Foster Wallace, love and madness in the poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz, and the paintings of Adolf Wölfli.
Central to this discussion of creativity, madness and civilisation is the difficulty of establishing an appropriate and effective vocabulary and mindset between critics and clinical psychiatrists, which would enable them to work together in understanding mental disturbance in creative artists.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Per Cornell and Fredrik Fahlander,Encounters | Materialities | Confrontations: Archaeologies of Social Space and Interaction,Hardback,9781847180858,34.99,"This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happens when people interact actively, when they involve themselves with people and materialities, when they move around, fetch things, use things, leave things etc. The repeated social encounter is often a confrontation with something, such as an opinion, a performance, or with materialities and the effects are often unpredictable. Encounters may reproduce a social pattern, but also contain potential for transformation and change. Such varied responses to encounters will certainly have effects on the archaeological record.
The primary focus of the volume is the effects and processes involved in intra- and inter-societal encounters. The collection hence fills a theoretical and methodological gap in the study of the encounter in archaeology. There is a need for elaborating aspects of postcolonial theory in order to develop new ways of approaching the archaeological record. The articles of this volume include examples from various regions and time periods. They range from Scandinavian Stone Age, through Buddhist social practices of the first millennium AD, Maya warfare and ideology, to Aboriginal-European encounters in 20th century Australia.
Per Cornell (PhD, Ass. Prof.) is currently lecturer at the Department of archaeology, University of Gothenburg. Cornell has been involved in extensive field-work in Latin America and current research topics include settlement archaeology, formation processes and social theory. Among his recent books are Local, Regional, Global, co-edited with Per Stenborg (Gotarc, 2004).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-01-01,Susanna Scarparo and Sarah McDonald,Violent Depictions: Representing Violence Across Cultures,Hardback,9781847180995,34.99,"Anything and everything may come under the rubric of violence in a society that is by and large addicted to the images of violence that are an inescapable part of contemporary reality. In the wake of recent international events, many have come to accept the perpetration of violence as morally acceptable and a just enterprise towards peace. But what is violence? How do we identify something or somebody as violent? Is violence justifiable? If so, under what circumstances? Violent Depictions addresses these and other questions on the role and nature of violence in a range of different national and historical contexts.
Violent Depictions is a reflection on the relationship between violence and representation and includes a number of thematic categories such as youth violence in films, violence against women in literary and cinematic texts, gendered representations of terrorism, the violence of colonial encounters and of the remembering of institutionalised violence.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-02-01,Stephen Kelly and David Johnston,Betwixt and Between: Place and Cultural Translation,Hardback,9781847181084,39.99,"Betwixt and Between: place and cultural translation examines the often fraught relationship between conceptions of place and the attempt to ‘translate’ them critically, politically and ethnographically for native and non-native audiences. Examining translation in a number of key contemporary geo-political contexts, including Northern Ireland, Venezuela, India, Italy, Canada, Germany, France, and the Middle East, and in a variety of genres, including poetry, drama, film, television advertising and the novel, in multiple languages, Betwixt and Between argues for the curiously fruitful dislocation of translation as a discourse and practice.
Contributors argue that, by attending to the curiously placeless place of the translator, translation studies might better police the quiet pieties of nationalism, ethnic singularity and cultural homogeneity which have so destructively determined the politics of the last two centuries and which threaten to overwhelm our understanding of current cultural and political antagonisms.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-02-01,R. Victoria Arana,“Black” British Aesthetics Today,Hardback,9781847181169,39.99,"“Black” British Aesthetics Today is a collection of twenty-four exciting critical and theoretical essays exploring current thinking about the hottest artistic, literary, and critical works now being produced by “black” Britons.
This book features a number of chapters by the avant-garde “black” British novelists, poets, and artists themselves. It includes, for instance, aesthetic manifestos by Diran Adebayo, Anthony Joseph, Roshini Kempadoo, Sheree Mack, Valerie Mason-John, and SuAndi as well as key essays by globally renowned critics, including Amna Malik, Kobena Mercer, Lauri Ramey, Roy Sommer, and many others. As a compendium, this book represents a powerfully fresh intellectual current of thought. It provides readers with important insights into contemporary “black” aesthetics, and it includes an array of important clarifications initially voiced at the groundbreaking international symposium that took place on April 8, 2006, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by outstanding new scholars in this burgeoning field of study: e.g., Kevin Etienne-Cummings, Valerie Kaneko Lucas, Michael McMillan, Magdalena Maczynska, Courtney Martin, Jude Okpala, Deirdre Osborne, Koye Oyedeji, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Sandra Ponzanesi, Andrene M. Taylor, Samera Owusu Tutu, and Tracey Walters.
The authors contextualise contemporary “black” British aesthetics in relation to the African, African American, and Postcolonial aesthetic traditions; they explore an exciting array of critical theories, trends of feeling, and lively aesthetic movements thriving today in “black” Britain; and they examine and assess embodied aesthetics at play in a wide range of specific works by today’s most brilliant “black” British novelists, poets, photographers, live performance artists, dramatists, architects, musicians, graphic artists, and cinematographers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-02-01,Vartan P. Messier and Nandita Batra Pages,"Narrating the Past: (Re)Constructing Memory, (Re)Negotiating",Hardback,9781847181145,34.99,"Narrative constitutes an integral part of human existence, being omnipresent in our ordering of the world and the ways in which we transmit both knowledge and experience. Narrative construction has challenged the supremacy of empirical fact and has questioned our ability to know the past Aas it really was. Examining a wide range of texts, from ancient Greece and medieval Britain to contemporary America, Asia, Australia, Britain and the Caribbean, the essays in this volume address the inconsistencies in master narratives to reveal that all representations of the past, like knowledge, are situated.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Ricardo Miguez,American Dreams: Dialogues in U.S. Studies,Hardback,9781847180827,39.99,"The scholars included in this collection sought to indicate more contemporary working definitions for the expression ""American Dream"", or rather Dreams. The multidisciplinary selections come from many countries and represent scholars from different backgrounds. They reflect the current developments and approaches in the field of US Studies and we hope to help broaden the scope of programs in higher education institutions. The chapters are thematically organized in two sections: “Initial Dialogues” and “Comparative Dialogues.” The first one comprises essays that set the foundations for our discussions and intends to familiarize newcomers with the theme. The second section extends the possibilities of working comparatively with the American Dreams and a number of other interdisciplinary fields of interest for US Studies programs.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Bart Ooghe and Geert Verhoeven,Broadening Horizons: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Landscape Study,Hardback,9781847181220,39.99,"‘Broadening Horizons: multidisciplinary approaches to landscape study’ presents nine papers on physical landscape research in the Mediterranean and the Near East. Giving prime place to young researchers working in this field, it brings together highly diverse applications ranging from ground survey to semi-automated remote sensing, from cuneiform studies to palynology and from human geography to paradigm re-evaluation.
Aimed at a public of both students and scholars with a shared interest in the study of past landscapes, its aims are dual. In presenting ongoing research which applies various techniques available to the student of landscape, it aims to add to the practice of these sub-fields. As such it may also provide a first insight into the particular methodologies addressed. In addition, by extending its gaze beyond geographical, temporal or disciplinary constraints, ‘Broadening Horizons’ addresses the need for a continued awareness of the many different methods and conceptualisations existing in this field. It hopes to illustrate some of the highly diverse ways in which to approach physical landscapes of the past and, by doing so, stress once again the value of continued cooperation between the many specialisations that make up this ever-expanding area of research.
""This is a very positive endeavour to improve cross-discipline awareness and collaboration. It is organised as a multi-facetted reader highlighting some of the wide ranging ways in which the past landscapes of the Mediterranean and Near East can be approached. It provides a significant contribution to the field of landscape research, and should prove of value to specialists and beginning researchers alike, both for its specific topics and its multidisciplinary approach.""
Professor Dr. M. Tanret, Head of the Dept. of Languages and Cultures of the Near East, Ghent University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Sally Bayley and William May,From Self to Shelf: The Artist Under Construction,Hardback,9781847181374,34.99,"""From Self to Shelf is a marvellously rich and various exploration of the interplay between biographical and aesthetic selves, ranging from the great self-inventions of the Romantic poets, through the complexities of revelation and impersonality that characterise twentieth century art, and down to the knowing dramas of reticence and display that distinguish the work of so many leading contemporaries. It includes essays in literary criticism, chapters in the history of painting and of music, biographical accounts, and studies in popular culture, as well as reflections by eminent practitioners. The editors have assembled an outstanding group of contributors, with names both new and familiar, to produce a volume at once absorbing and surprising, warmly alive to the human stories it tells while remaining theoretically up-to-date, and creating a book that is altogether as engaging and thought-provoking as the masterpieces it illuminates.""
Seamus Perry.
Fellow and Tutor in English, Balliol College, Oxford.
","'Dr. Bayley is a highly respected tutor of English Literature at Balliol College Oxford, and I believe that this collection, emeerging from a conference she organised this year, will offer a stimulating addition to interdisciplinary studies, especially in the field of the visual arts and twentieth-century modernist literature.'
Dr. Susan Jones
Fellow and Tutor in English,
Balliol College Oxford
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Deborah Staines,Interrogating the War on Terror: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,Hardback,9781847181305,34.99,"Interrogating the War on Terror presents a critique of contemporary war culture and politics, introducing a range of political, philosophical, legal, artistic and social perspectives on a devastating war. Bringing together contributors from the United States, UK and Australia—implicitly dissenting from within the Coalition of the Willing—this volume explores the discourses and cultural effects of the current “war on terror”. Is the so-called war on terror justified? Seeking an ethical engagement with the problems and paradoxes of this global conflict, the authors situate the historical and legal meanings of terror and terrorism alongside the exploitation of such terms by the Bush Administration and other governments in recent years.
Contributions by philosophers, sociologists, and law and literature scholars raise questions about neo-conservatism, freedom, security and the new legitimation of torture, and demonstrate how this war brings political and discursive power to bear on democracy, human rights and individuals in places as far-flung as Iraq, Bali, and the U.S. Artworks by internationally renowned war artist George Gittoes, and several essays by cultural theorists return a critical emphasis to the role of visual media, affect, gender and popular culture in understanding and rethinking war.
Interrogating the War on Terror’s multi-disciplinary and international perspectives will be useful to scholars and students alike in addressing this highly topical issue. The essays reference mainstream sources and widely-documented events in the war on terror, making it accessible also to the general reader.
","This collection is a brilliant contribution to the burgeoning literature on the ""war on terror"". Thoughtful, poignant, and elegantly constructed, the authors offer fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the most important questions of our times. From start to finish, I was enthralled.
Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London
What kind of imagination, what sort of reasoning made possible the proclamation of a ""war on terror"" so vaguely defined that it could never end? Without condescension or self-righteousness, the essays in this book look for answers to the catastrophe of US foreign policy as it responded to the events of 9/11. This is rhetorical analysis at its most persuasive: passionate, eloquent, deadly serious, and seeking hard to make sense of a counter-terror that mirrors its opponent.
John Frow, University of Melbourne
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,"Maarit Heinonen, Jouko Nikula, Inna Kopoteva, Leo Granberg",Reflecting Transformation in Post-socialist Rural Areas,Hardback,9781847181282,39.99,"The rural reforms in many post-soviet countries produced a number of unintended consequences. The reforms were guided by ideals of romanticized society of family farmers; they were to be the basis of the rural middle-class, together with owners of non-agricultural SME’s, acting as guardians of democracy and common good. The guidelines were set by advisers from World Bank and IMF, who preferred family farms or individual farms over the collective enterprises. In most countries the result was nothing like those envisaged by reformers. Instead of efficient and productive family farms, the result was almost complete de-capitalization of agriculture and collapse of production. The reform was destructive not only as far as production is concerned, but more importantly to rural communities. Social ties, which were based on the collective farm as the main economic and social resource for local community, were eroded. Only from the turn of this decade some early stages have been visible of new developments in economic and social life in post-socialist rural areas. The result is that now, more than fifteen years since the beginning of agricultural reforms, the key agricultural producers in Russia, Baltic countries and elsewhere are very large capitalist farms or large agricultural holding companies.
This anthology is based on the presentations given at the 5th Aleksanteri Conference 10 – 11 November 2005 in Helsinki, Finland, and it is devoted to the analysis of some of these issues. The volume is divided into two parts, in the first part the focus is on the patterns and problems of transformation of post-socialist agriculture and agricultural policies while the second part is focuses mainly on efforts to revitalize rural communities and issues of local development.
","""The contributions in the book cast a critical and in many cases also fresh light on the reform policies that national government in close cooperation with international organizations carried through and on the simplified understanding of the nature and mechanisms of post-socialist transition processes. The articles raise important questions about the role of institutions, legacies and local practices as preconditions for overcoming the severe and often unintended social and economic consequences of transition. The book is of high relevance for scholars of rural development in Central and Eastern European countries and Russia and for practitioners of rural development.""
PhD. Ilkka Alanen, Academy research fellow, University of Jyväskylä
""The book 'Reflecting Transformations in Post Socialist Rural Areas' brought together various authors whose backgrounds range from economics or political analysis to sociology or anthropology. Therefore, there is no doubt the book must present different views, must focus on different geographical areas in Central and Eastern Europe (with the dominant interest in former Soviet Union) and must use different theories to interpret and explain authors’ empirical findings. Albeit such 'polyphony' threatens to result into incoherent text, it is not the case of this work. Confronting various approaches, studied areas, theories and findings strengthens the general impression of the reader that the post-communist rural transition is not an easy win-win process because real rural world analysed from broader and various perspectives is too far from ideas about the ideal world with zero transaction costs where any action is easy to be implemented. The book is not an ideological apologetics of the “only right way” of transforming rural areas but gives lively mosaic of hopes and fares, winners and losers, successes and failures emerging during post communist transition in the Central and Eastern European countryside.""
-PhDr. Michal Lošťák, Vice-dean for International Relations, Czech University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Agriculture in Prague
""I consider that the book contains a lot of interesting material and raises very important issues, in particular, concerning rural development.""
-Ewa Rabinowicz, Swedish Institute for Food and Agricultural Economics, Lund, Sweden, European Review of Agricultural Economics, vol 35, no 2, June 2008
""RAkowska-Harmstone and Dutkiewicz, with their central, eastern, and southeastern European colleagues, have produced a fine two-volume set for the regional, transition and area studies literature. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will find in the trends, prospects, and variations analyzed a foundation for understanding the successes and failures across the European continent and beyond.""
-Joshua B. Spero, Fitchburg State College, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, no. 2 (Summer 2008), pp472-3
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Nancy Mae Antrim,Seeking Identity: Language in Society,Hardback,9781847181213,39.99,"""Seeking Identity: Language in Society"" looks at how we define and create identity both as individuals and as a society through language. Our language choices reflect not only how we view ourselves, but how we are viewed by society. An individual's identity is reflected in various language construed
identities: ethnicity, gender, and cross-cultural/counter cultural. In turn these identities are projected by society on the individual/ethnic group by the language choices society makes in describing and addressing these individuals. In the first section (Language and Identity), an ethnolinguistic approach is used to address the areas of language identity/loyalty, gender, and ethnic pride. Section two (Language and
Advertising) looks at how society in turn uses language to relate to different groups by appealing to ethnic pride, language identity, and the power/prestige that using a particular language variety entails. Section three (Language and the Media) explores how the media contributes to our construction of identity. Section four (Language and Discourse) shows how written discourse can appropriate, construct, and parody identity.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Michael Hayes (poems) and Jean Ryan Hakizimana (paintings),“Survivor” – Representations of the “New Irish”: Dúchas Dóchasach,Hardback,9781847181343,29.99,"This book is a window on a new aspect of the Irish experience. It is one small thread in the multicultural tapestry that is Ireland today. The Irish emigrant experience of old is a fading memory but as the poems and paintings in this volume attest to, the experiences that are exile and renewal remain as perennial as human nature itself. We, who were once shoeless, now search bewildered for the second and third pair - so that we can tap the new rhythm and dance the new dance. I ndeireadh na dála, níl ach cine amháin ann agus sin an cine daonna.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Mary Valentis with Tara P. Monastero and Paula Yablonsky,"TechKnowledgies: New Imaginaries in the Humanities, Arts, and TechnoSciences",Hardback,9781847181367,39.99,"TechKnowledgies: New Imaginaries and Transmigrations in the Humanities, Arts, and TechnoSciences is a diverse collection of essays, a recently produced technology play by William Kennedy, art, and installations that represent, and at times resist, the ways science and technology are interacting with the arts and the humanities to produce new imaginaries and disciplinary transmigrations that gesture towards a “university” of tomorrow. As theorists’ posit new futures and call for an end to historically grounded, or discipline-based, so-called silo approaches to knowledges, a de facto reorganization of disciplinary boundaries and a migratory spirit have spontaneously infused the humanities with new life.
These transmigrations, instead of diffusing the disciplinary terrain, have strengthened and broadened existing fields. They are provoking re-mappings of intellectual topography, and, ironically, have brought about more rather than less integration. Activated by such massive cultural shifts as the turn from print to visual culture; the technological revolution and its virtual sublimes; the acceleration of scientific advances; the rise and incorporation of mass or popular culture and the possibilities of replication, the humanities are producing integrated knowledges, what we are calling new TechKnowledgies, that interface the humanities, the arts, the social and hard sciences with digital technologies and research emerging at the borders of all these fields.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Robert Sugarman,The Many Worlds of Circus,Hardback,9781847181244,39.99,"Acrobats and manipulators of objects, trained animals, and clowns – have been performing throughout history. In the eighteenth century, the invention of the circus ring provided a focus for the activities, and the modern circus was born.
Once the circus was the most spectacular entertainment many Americans saw. When the supply of cheap labor disappeared and other forms of entertainment became available, the giant circuses shrank, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century new one ring circuses returned.
The Circus and Circus Culture area of the Popular Culture Association has been examining circus history, circus life, the relationship of circus to society, and the impact of circus on the visual and literary arts since 1997. This book is a collection of papers from its annual conferences.
""This fascinating collection showcases the transnational richness and cultural
depth of the circus in an array of historical and contemporary settings.
Strongly recommended for circus enthusiasts and students of popular culture,
history, and theater.""
—Janet M.Davis, Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of American Studies, College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, author of The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Michael Hayes and Thomas Acton,"Travellers, Gypsies, Roma: The Demonisation of Difference",Hardback,9781847181275,29.99,"This volume hopes to act as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies. These disciplines are all relatively new areas of enquiry in modern Ireland, a country whose society has witnessed very rapid and wide-ranging cultural and demographic change within the short space of a decade.
The issue of multiculturalism is not one which is particularly new to Irish society as a number of contributors to this volume point out. What is new however is an increased acknowledgement of diversity and multiculturalism in Ireland and Europe as a whole. Such an acknowledgement makes increased dialogue between “mainstream” society, older minorities such as the Irish Travellers and the many newer immigrant communities such as the Roma all the more necessary.
For such constructive dialogue to take place it is vital that migratory peoples and their particular expressions of postcolonial identity be voiced and valued. These identities are both complex and diverse and frequently straddle a number of countries and national identities. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards the cultivation of such dialogue.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Kay Inckle,Writing on the Body? Thinking Through Gendered Embodiment and Marked Flesh,Hardback,9781847181312,34.99,"This groundbreaking piece of work establishes a “position of embodiment” as an ethically salient epistemological and empirical strategy for understanding, representing, and experiencing gendered embodiment and marked flesh. Developing an embodied, feminist critique of the sociology of the body, the author integrates this position with some of the most recent developments in qualitative methodologies and creative research practices in order to engage with, and represent, women’s experiences of body-marking. As such, the specific body practices which are addressed, “body modification” and “self-injury,” are refigured in the context of a feminist, embodied position. This position of embodiment not only establishes a holistic, non-dualistic orientation from which to experience and explore gendered embodiment and body-marking practices, but in doing so, also highlights the limitations of normative dualistic, disembodied theories and methods which objectify and distance the very experiences they purport to explain.
Overall, this exploration is a provoking, moving and often uncomfortable journey into the imperatives of gendered embodiment, abject corporeality, blood and pain, and the practices which mark the body and evoke and transform the gendered, embodied self.
This is a courageous, beautifully written, evocative, and thought provoking book that takes the reader on an intimate journey into the misunderstood world of body marking practices. As part of the journey, Inckle provides a range of insights into the fluid, ambiguous, and complex forms of embodiment experienced by women over time. The reflexive stance she adopts throughout enables the reader to chart her emerging awareness of methodological dilemmas and the inherent tensions she experiences in trying to resolve them in relation to feminist ethical positions. As part of this process, she challenges the norms of knowledge production and dissolves the disciplinary boundaries that frame much of the current debate on embodiment and body marking practices. Inckle 's findings offer a powerful critique of dominant research perspectives that focus on the body and she makes a strong case for the development of a feminist-embodied-sociology in the future. As such, this book will be
of immense interest to sociologists and psychologists with an interest in the body and the dynamics of embodiment as well as to scholars seeking to develop their understanding of key methodological issues.
Professor Andrew C. Sparkes PhD Exeter University
This book is based on one of the best methodological approaches I have come across. Supported by materials from a wide variety of disciplines, it is reflexively argued, and Dr Inckle charts new grounds in her trajectory from feminist methodologies to creative sociology, searching for new ways of producing knowledge and radically broadening the sociological research agenda to include ‘stories that come out of the body’. I particularly like the way Dr Inckle develops feminist research methodologies, critiquing participatory approaches as often difficult to implement, and the fearless, yet highly problematic, positioning of the ‘researching I’ at the centre of the research process.
Dr Ronit Lentin, Department of Sociology
Trinity College Dublin
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Katherine D. Watson,Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context,Hardback,9781847181053,39.99,"This book offers an important contribution to the comparative history of interpersonal violence since the early modern period, a subject of great contemporary and historical importance. Its overarching theme is Norbert Elias’s theory of the civilizing process, and the chapters in the book recognise, as he did, that changes in human behaviour are related to transformations of both social and personality structures. Drawing on a vast range of archival and written records from five countries, the contributors explore the usefulness of the theory—the subject of much debate over the past two decades—to explaining long-term patterns in violence, but also point to the need for further empirical and comparative studies, to reflect current thinking and developments within historical, criminological, and sociological methodologies.
In approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, Assaulting the Past: Violence and Civilization in Historical Context presents a comparative and qualitative assessment of violent behaviour and the experience of violence. Approaches used include the empirical and the theoretical, and the book is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on the history of crime, history of medicine, criminology and legal history. The volume seeks to offer new insights on violence, the individual and society, to further illuminate the links between state formation, social interdependency and self-discipline that are so integral to the theory of the civilizing process.
","""Watson is mostly sympathetic to Elias...[and has] consistently turned her volume into an engagement with the theory of civilising processes.
One of the most interesting contributions to the Watson volume, the closing one by the editor herself, does provide a creative elaboration of the theory of civilisation. She discusses serial murder, asking whether its apparently growing prevalence since the 1960s is due to its being a feature of an increasingly interdependent society or, conversely, it is an example of a decivilising spurt.""
Pieter Spierenburg, Erasmus University in 'Crime, History and Societies 2008 vol. 12 No. 1
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,"Hedda Friberg, Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Lene Yding Pedersen",Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present,Hardback,9781847181473,39.99,"Various ways of collecting, storing and recovering memories have been the focus of the most recent joint research project carried out by a group of Irish Studies scholars, all based in the Nordic countries and members of the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN). The result of the project, Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present, is a collection of essays which examines the theme of memory in Irish literature and culture against the theoretical background of the philosophical discourse of modernity. Offering a wide range of perspectives, this volume examines a plurality of representations—past and present—of memory, both public and private, and the intersection between collective memory and individual in modern Ireland. Also explored is the relation between memory and identity—national and private—as well as questions of subjectivity and the construction of the self. Given Ireland’s tragic past and its long history of colonisation, it is inevitable that various aspects of memory in terms of nationality, post-colonialism, and politics also have bearing on this study.
The volume is divided into five sections, each of which examines one broadly defined aspect of memory. The introductory section focuses on memory and history, and is followed by sections on memory and autobiography, place, identity, and memory in the work of novelist John Banville. Within each section, the individual writers engage in a fruitful dialogue with each other and with the approaches of such theorists as Arendt, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Baudrillard.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Andreas Papapavlou and Pavlos Pavlou,Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Dimensions of Dialects in Education,Hardback,9781847181596,34.99,"In bidialectal speech communities it is common practice that standard dialects are strongly favoured in education whereas the role of nonstandard dialects is highly disputed. Several countries in Europe have successfully dealt with the use of dialects in education while in other countries such matters have yet to be adequately addressed and successfully resolved. Some educators are still debating as to whether dialects and nonstandard languages should be used in education because, among other concerns, they erroneously question the adequacy of dialects in meeting speakers’ communicative needs. In the same vein, others do not seem to be convinced that conducting education in a dialect is beneficial for all members of a community.
Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Dimensions of Dialects in Education brings together various theoretical, descriptive and empirical findings on the status of non-standard dialects, their relation and coexistence with standard or official languages and their potential use in education. Gaining insights in such issues is of immense importance to researchers, policy makers, educators, parents and children since it can help in creating an educational environment that would respect the linguistic rights of bidialectal speakers and be a source for their empowerment.
The edited volume contains 12 papers and is organized into four sections. Section I, which consists of three papers, deals with diachronic issues in dialects in education. Two papers in Section II present historical and current issues in language-in-education policy and planning while Section III, containing four papers, examines several aspects of dialect use in the classroom. Finally, the three papers in Section IV discuss the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic dimensions of bidialectalism.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Deborah Bowen,The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic,Hardback,9781847181619,39.99,"Contemporary Christian critique often talks about postmodernism apocalyptically, in terms of cultural crisis and decline; instead, the contributors to this volume believe that there is a new place for Christian entrées on the academic Smorgasbord of postmodernity, and they see the postmodern turn as an opportunity for fresh perspectives on the spiritual dimensions of reading literature. These twenty scholars are an eclectic group, differing in theological and theoretical commitments, but all identifying as Christian. In this collection they enter into dialogue with a wide range of contemporary literary theorists and theoretical perspectives, and offer new readings of primary texts informed by both these theoretical constructs and their Christian faith.
""The manuscript strikes out in important new directions in its sympathetic reading of postmodern theory from a Christian perspective, and, even more significantly, in its careful and measured dialogic approach to the relationship of Christian thought and contemporary literary theory.""
Daniel Coleman, Canada Research Chair in Critical Ethnicity and Race Studies, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
""Too often Christian literary critics and theologians have preemptively dismissed postmodern theory, even as secular critics have been equally dismissive about the contributions that the Christian faith tradition makes to the study of literature. This volume successfully brings these two worlds together in innovative, at times challenging, and always rich ways.
I do not know of a similar volume in existence, a work that gathers in one convenient publication a wide-ranging set of discussions of contemporary literary theory by Christian scholars. The editor has gathered an impressive and important set of papers here, and I believe the volume will raise much interest and provoke a good deal of constructive debate.""
Susan VanZanten Gallagher, Professor of English, Director, Center for Scholarship and Faculty Development, Seattle Pacific University
","...this volume's greatest strengths are its clear, introductory level expositions of Derrida, Althusser, Foucault, de Certeau, Bahktin and other important figures, with some excellent essays on specific authors...this collection would be useful to a literary theory class in a Christian liberal arts envirnoment.
James Rovira ofTiffin University, Christianity and Literature, Vol 58, Issue 2, Winter 2009.
""...the reader can rest assured that without exception the quality of the scholarship in the...essays is high; each of the contributors has indwelled his or her subject deeply.""
Christopher Dorn, The Glass, No. 22, Spring 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Silke Andris and Ursula Frederick,Women Willing to Fight: The Fighting Woman in Film,Hardback,9781847181428,34.99,"Women Willing to Fight is a collection of essays that explores the presence of the fighting woman in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Drawn from a variety of genres, the authors examine the changing role, image and position of this figure in film over recent decades. The increasing dominance of this character and her repositioning as a protagonist reinvigorates discussion concerning the dynamics of film narrative and spectacle.
Each contribution takes as its focus a central character from the Hollywood blockbuster era, examining in detail the motivations and implications of the fighting female. In doing so the collection raises significant questions about the place of the fighting woman in contemporary media and the relationships she forges on and off-screen.
With a strong appreciation of the mixed messages inherent in images of fighting women, Women Willing to Fight seeks to draw attention to the embodied forms - physical, intellectual and emotional - through which female fighters are represented. The anthology places particular emphasis on the emergence of the physically empowered woman, a character for whom the body has become a weapon and a target. While early cinematic representations allowed women to voice their fury and frustration, today’s female fighters not only ‘speak up’ but ‘muscle up’.
Putting aside the supernatural powers of many action heroines, this volume focuses on the kinds of fighting skills, abilities and desires that are engendered in characterisations of mortal women. To this end the volume implicitly addresses complex and cross-cultural notions of ‘extra-ordinary’ power. By examining the embodied arsenal that these characters possess and develop - through training, conditioning, and life experience - it considers the representation of motivation and metamorphoses into ‘the fighting woman’: how a woman fights holds implicit meaning and inevitably urges us to consider why and what she is fighting for.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Dominic Janes,Back to the Future of the Body,Hardback,9781847181626,39.99,"What can the past tell us about the future(s) of the body? The origins of this collection of papers lie in the work of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities which has been involved in presenting a series of international workshops and conferences on the theme of the cultural life of the body. The rationale for these events was that, in concepts as diverse as the cyborg, the questioning of mind/body dualism, the contemporary image of the suicide bomber and the patenting of human genes, we can identify ways in which the future of the human body is at stake. This volume represents an attempt, not so much to speculate about what might happen, but to develop strategies for bodily empowerment so as to get “back to the future of the body”. The body, it is contended, is not to be thought of as an “object” or a “sign” but as an active participant in the shaping of cultural formations. And this is emphatically not an exercise in digging corpses out of the historical archive. The question is, rather, what can past lived and thought experiences of the body tell us about what the body can be(come)?
“The continuing vitality of debate around the body was proven by the range and depth of the papers presented at the workshop on which this volume is based, ‘does the body have a future?’ Our overall theme required contributors to think through embodiment in the past. This they did with considerable interdisciplinary vigour, rigorousness and imagination.”
Prof. Donna Dickenson, Director, Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Jenni Ramone and Gemma Twitchen,Boundaries,Hardback,9781847181794,39.99,"Boundaries is a collection of work offering creative and critical responses to methods of making, breaking, and negotiating boundaries. The concern of this book is not simply to address the theme of boundaries; we also hope to breach the boundaries surrounding the usual ways that such a theme would ordinarily be debated. As such, this collection includes papers from both arts and science disciplines including literary, theatrical, historical, linguistic, educational, travel writing and geographical perspectives, from academics, postgraduate research students, postgraduate creative writers, and creative writers without institutional affiliation. The book is interdisciplinary in its approach, and boundary-crossing in its presentation: instead of organising the collection in sections of papers according to whether they are predominantly creative or critical in approach, the papers are presented together, and are organised in three sections according to the way that those papers approach the boundary that they perceive: whether that boundary is being made, negotiated, or broken.
In addition to the main papers in the three sections, the collection is framed by interviews with the plenary speakers who were invited to the conference, Adam Roberts and Hanan Al-Shaykh. These are writers whose works repeatedly deal with boundaries of form, genre, and audience, and the interviews included here start to explore the range of boundaries existing in their work and in their lives as writers. The format of their contribution to this book allows another boundary to be crossed, by including formal, structured interviews as another medium of developing the debate.
""Taking the principle that the idea of the boundary is, in fact and in imagination, boundless, Jenni Ramone and Gemma Twitchen gather together in Boundaries sixteen texts that stage in adventurous and provocative ways the endless reconceptualisation of this most enigmatic of concepts. Boundaries is at once a startling reassessment and necessary reorientation around its subject, in which critical acuity and creative panache cross and recross the borders of imaginative space. To say that this is a boundary-breaking collection, that frontiers have been transgressed, limits erased and hitherto invisible liminal territories mapped, is only to draw a line underneath the limitless inventiveness of the transgressive and translative interventions of this volume. The reader of Boundaries will find herself bound in a nutshell that makes her a ruler of infinite space. Ramone and Twitchen are to be applauded for redrawing the map and erasing the borders between the critical, the creative and the cultural, with such passion and precision.""
Julian Wolfreys, author of Writing London: Inventions of the City
“Make, break, negotiate - or, if you will, here are three impossible things to do with conceptual boundaries and all before breakfast, or at least middle-age; so say the exciting collective of young scholars, critics and writers who come together here. The result is much brilliant making, breaking and negotiating of all sorts of boundaries - but above all the boundary between the critical and the creative. Nothing could be more timely, or important.”
John Schad, Professor of Modern Literature, University of Lancaster",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Carmen Szabo,"""Clearing the Ground"": The Field Day Theatre Company and the Construction of Irish Identities",Hardback,9781847181800,34.99,"“Clearing the Ground”–The Field Day Theatre Company and the Construction of Irish Identities studies the Field Day Theatre Company, with special focus on the plays that they put on stage between 1980 and 1995; it attempts to dissect their policy and observe the way in which this policy influences the discourse of the theatrical productions. Was Field Day simply the “cultural wing” of Sinn Fein and the IRA, or did they try to give voice to a new critical discourse, challenging the traditional frames of representation? This book focuses on a thorough analysis of the way in which Field Day applied the concepts of postcolonial discourse to their own needs of creating a foundation for the ideological manifesto of the company. This study is a critique of the successes and failures of a theatre company that, in a period of political and cultural crisis, engaged in innovative ways of discussing the sensitive issues of identity, memory and history in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Shanthini Pillai,"Colonial Visions, Postcolonial Revisions: Images of the Indian Diaspora in Malaysia",Hardback,9781847181749,29.99,"This book offers reflections of the representations of the Indian diaspora of Malaysia according to two spectrums, colonial and postcolonial. It takes seed from the belief that any engagement with the Indian diasporic experience in Malaysia must take into account the role of the pioneer Indian immigrants who carved the niche of existence for the overseas Indian on Malayan soil. It begins by tracing their presence within the terrain of colonial narratives to uncover, not only the ways in which they were subordinated to colonial ideological discourses but also, and more significantly, the suppressed story of coolie resistance that lies under the weight of such masks of conquest. It then moves on to show how postcolonial revisioning is able to reconstruct the Indian immigrants of Malaya as choreographers of the diasporic identity that they have left as the most significant legacy for contemporary Malaysian Indians. This book ultimately reveals the politics of Malaysian Indian identity from colonised to globalised grounds, and the ways in which the subaltern spaces of the former can be reclaimed and reterritorialised in the latter.
","""Shantini Pillai offers a challenging way of rethinking the transitions from a colonial to a globalized order through the active role of so-called minority ethnic groups. Focusing on a little discussed topic in global postcolonial studies--Malaysian Indians--she admirably draws attention to multiculturalism, ethnicity, diaspora, migration and coolie labour as issues that emerge during colonial rule and produce the character of globalization, which Pillai rightly suggests cannot be separated from its colonial roots. The book will make a valuable contribution to diaspora studies from the colonial to the postcolonial era.""
— Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Nico Carpentier,"Culture, Trauma, and Conflict: Cultural Studies Perspectives on War",Hardback,9781847181909,34.99,"War has been pervasive in the 20th century and the 21st century seems to hold little promise of improvement. War is still one of the world’s most destructive forces, which on a daily basis touches the lives of millions of people. To increase our understanding of the pervasiveness and destructiveness of the institution of war, we need to mobilize all possible frameworks of knowledge. Cultural War Studies has an important role to play in adding to this knowledge, by putting the critical vocabulary of Cultural Studies to good use to analyze the constructions that push us towards a glorified killing of fellow human beings and then try to make us forget the intensity and durability of the trauma.
The first part of this book focuses on the diversity of media that generate meanings and definitions of past and contemporary wars. These chapters are not restricted to the more traditional analyses of media content, but utilize these media products to reflect on the contemporary cultural condition(s) in the U.S.A. and Europe. The second part of the book moves (at least partially) away from media representations and focuses on torture and incarceration. Although in this part the materiality of war and conflict is very present, these analyses again show the importance of the constructions of enemy identities and of (the acceptability of) violent practices. The third and final part of the book is related to memory and trauma. A series of 20th century conflicts and wars are revisited to demonstrate the cultural durability of war and the interconnection of these wars with present-day discourses and practices through the dialectics of remembering, commemorating and forgetting.
","Nico Carpentier has assembled a useful collection that applies the critical tools of cultural studies to the complex and varied media representations of interstate war and military conflict.
The value of this edited collection lies in its focus on such questions of ideology, discourse and representation in relation to war. Nico Carpentier has assembled a useful collection that applies the critical tools of cultural studies to the complex and varied media representations of interstate war and military conflict.
European Journal of Communication
'Culture, Trauma, and Conflict is a prime example of how the concepts of Cultural Studies can be successfully applied to War Studies, thus overcoming some ofCultural Studies’ and War Studies’ shortcomings. Without wanting to advocate another 'grand theory', this is very promising for both fields. Most of the authors—no doubt thanks to the skilful guidance of the editor—manage not to lose themselves (and readers unfamiliar with Cultural Studies jargon) in high theory and terminology. The book is recommended for anyone interested in history and actuality of war and the discursive practices surrounding it.
Leen Engelen, Media & Design Academy (KHLim), Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 28, No.3, 2008
""In Culture, Trauma and Conflict, editor Nico Carpentier provides readers with a wide-ranging series of essays directed toward understanding the role of media and culture as they are related to conflict and especially trauma.""
Dr Mark Finney, Assistant Professor of Mass Communications, Adams State College in The Journal of International Communication 15:2, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Chantal Ammi,Innovative Technology and Globalization,Hardback,9781847181756,39.99,"Globalization is leading the industry worldwide especially the new technology sector. The main aim of the book is to enhance the reader's knowledge – especially from a multidisciplinary perspective rather than from an individual functional perspective –the role of the globalization in the evolving world of the new technologies. This book will overview the process of globalization from a number of perspectives, including historical, geographical and social viewpoints while focusing on the new technologic products and services. Globalization and its effects on the innovative technology sector are best examined in terms of the social ramifications, and especially the geographical and political and economic (or political economy) contexts, at and between different levels, including the local, the regional and the global.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski,"Santayana and America. Values, Liberties, Responsibility",Hardback,9781847181817,34.99,"George Santayana (1863–1952), a Spanish-American philosopher, is an influential personage on the cultural stage in English- and Spanish-speaking countries. His numerous books and papers on topics as varied as epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, anthropology, value theory, and American studies, along with his best-selling novel, his sophisticated poetry, and his famous autobiography, make him a vivid and profound source of reflection on the history of American and European thought, as well as a stimulus for future work. Santayana’s exceptionality was appreciated by William James and Josiah Royce, his most eminent colleagues in Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy, and has been discussed by such respected authors as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Charles Hartshorne, Eric Voegelin, Alfred Schutz, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Arthur Danto, and Ferdinand Savater, among others. This book aims to understand Santayana by considering his often provocative views on America. Other scholars have reconstructed his thought at various times and in a variety of ways, but no one has yet considered Santayana’s approach toward America in a serious and profound way (at least not in the English language). This book attempts to convince the reader that the impartiality of Santayana’s philosophy, its transcendence of cultural limits and mental borders, makes it a living philosophy, and that this is the strongest aspect of Santayana’s thought.
","“ProfessorSkowroñski's is a fresh and refreshing voice in American philosophy. He brings novel perspectives to the study of Santayana, and through that to understanding America.
In Skowroñski's work, as in Santayana's, European and American influences combine to yield new insight. He explores the relevance of American philosophy for the study of Europe, America and their interaction with impeccable scholarship and unflagging energy. He leaves his readers heartened and enlightened.”
-John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
“Santayana's notion of the genteel tradition in American society was well-known in his day and is of historical interest. His comparison of vacant freedom with vital liberty is little known, but is timely and important today. Issues of both kinds are joined by Professor Skowroñski in a comprehensive, balanced discussion that is thoroughly reliable and highly readable.
He combs through the vast corpus of Santayana's writings, as is necessary with Santayana, to get a full and just view, and couples this with a remarkable collection of sometimes unexpected secondary sources. The scholarship is outstanding, the point of view original and interesting.
Skowroñski applies careful scholarship and a fresh perspective to write a significant new study of an important but neglected philosopher.”
-Angus Kerr-Lawson, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pure Mathemathics and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Canada; President of The Santayana Society, Editor of “Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society”.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-05-01,Chris Drake,You Gotta' Stand Up: The Life and High Times of John Henry Faulk,Hardback,9781847181640,34.99,"
If it’s true that we’re known by the company we keep, then Texas humorist, First Amendment Advocate, “Hee Haw’s homespun philosopher, and 1950s media blacklist buster, John Henry Faulk’s character was first quality. His story intersects some of America’s best and brightest: Eugene Victor Debs, the “Texas Triumvirate,” Edward R. Murrow, Mark Goodson, Louis Nizer, Myrna Loy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe Papp, and host of others. Consciously risking a lucrative television career, he seized “the buzzards of repression” during the McCarthy era, and “rung their sorry necks.” However, living up to his father’s admonition to “do something for the people,” he kissed his big time media career goodbye, and people still ask what made him do what he did. Perhaps this biography will help explain.
John Henry Faulk’s reputation runs an extraordinary gamut from blue collared everymen who wonder why a man throws away a future on television and millions of dollars, to intellectuals who couldn’t imagine why a groundbreaking folklorist with his gifts, skills, and reputation would associate himself with such lowbrow entertainments as “Hee Haw.” Permanently identified by his precedent breaking lawsuit as, “the man who broke the blacklist,” John Henry spent a life baffling those who tried to pigeonhole him.
","""Drawing extensively on interviews with Faulk's friends and relatives, Drake focuses on some of the lesser known aspects of Faulk's personal life, giving readers a more rounded picture of the hero as human being and helping explain how a son of the conservative South emerged as an icon of American liberalism.""
Steve Craig, University of North Texas, The Journal of Southern History, Vol.76, No. 4, November 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Holly Arida and Anan Ameri,Etching Our Own Image: Voices from Within the Arab American Art Movement,Hardback,9781847181954,34.99,"Etching Our Own Image: Voices From Within the Arab American Art Movement is a celebration of Arab American art and identity. In the wake of 9/11, the need for Arab Americans to define themselves, rather than be defined by others has galvanized an artistic movement. This collection of writers includes poets, musicians, playwrights, creative writers, painters, conceptual artists, comedians and scholars of the arts who have gathered to assert for themselves what it means to be Arab American and an artist.
Arab American artists use their art both to resist and to embrace their past, present and future. Through their art they retain their origins, while creating something new. They collaborate and come together. The artists included here are above all artists and the artistic renderings in this collection demonstrate their commitment to craft, innovation, and expression. They take on the task of etching their own image willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously. By telling their own stories through their own artistic mediums, these voices from within the Arab American art movement reclaim their own image and tell the world who they are.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Martin Howard,Language Issues in Canada: Multidisciplinary Perspectives,Hardback,9781847182036,34.99,"This volume attempts to illuminate Canada’s linguistic diversity by bringing together within one single volume a range of innovative studies which explore Canadian language issues across the political, legislative, social, educational and linguistic horizons. The ten chapters within the volume constitute a mixture of overview survey articles on a particular theme, as well as analyses based on large-scale empirical studies, presenting both qualitative and quantitative findings. The multidisciplinary approach provides complementary insights on a range of key-themes central to the Canadian linguistic context, such as in the case of language politics, language legislation, language education, sociolinguistics, language contact, language variation and change, varieties of French, minority language issues and language standardisation. The languages covered include both English and French, as well as Aboriginal languages.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Karen Fricker and Ronit Lentin,Performing Global Networks,Hardback,9781847182043,39.99,"Networks are everywhere: from migrant organisations to information technology, from business to social movements, from international governance to global non-governmental organisations, from theatrical collectives to fan clubs, from memory sites to narrative circles. The portmanteau terms networks, and more specifically, global networks, seem to have become the mots du jour in contemporary cultural and social studies. But what cultural, social and political work do global networks accomplish: what is the work of these networks?
This path-breaking collection follows Graeme Thompson’s rallying cry for a clearer analytical approach to the ways in which networks are ‘enacted, assembled, conducted, and performed.’ In its thirteen chapters, scholars from a variety of fields – sociology, theatre and performance studies, peace studies, history, and musicology – as well as social and cultural activists, explore the multiple meanings of global networks and performance.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Elizabeth Wells and Tamar Jeffers McDonald,Realities and Remediations: The Limits of Representation in Film,Hardback,9781847181923,29.99,"Representation in cinema as a phenomenon in its own right has rarely been addressed in film criticism. This volume of new essays attempts to address this omission, examining ways in which representations are put into place through mise-en-scene, editing and technological manipulation: processes that re-mediate what we see, hear and know. Contributors challenge commonplaces about representation, exploring the “limits” of the visible in a variety of ways.
This concern with representation appears an urgent one given the contemporary hyper-visual environment: currently no image seems to exist which cannot be exported, disseminated or commodified in a matter of seconds. In an era dominated by so-called “citizen” journalism, where home videos showing “happy slapping” compete in cyber-space with bootlegged footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution, the question of “limits” in filmmaking is more relevant than ever.
Taken together, these essays represent a broad view of critical analysis in film studies; thus thematic concerns about race sit alongside others focusing on formal questions of technique and presentation. In addressing how our access to images is mediated and re-mediated through cinematic technologies, these essays problematise questions about transparency and our relationship to a perceived reality.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,"Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh, Kevin Howard and David Getty",Rethinking Diasporas: Hidden Narratives and Imagined Borders,Hardback,9781847181961,29.99,"Central to the aim of both this book is to rethink the concept of diaspora as it is used both academically and popularly at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It seeks to interrogate the notion of “diaspora” in an interdisciplinary way, and to explore the contradictions inherent in contemporary notions of place and identity. It presents explorations of both “traditional” diasporas, such as the Irish community in the United States and in Great Britain, as well as recently established diasporas being formed through new patterns of migration and resettlement.
Traditional conceptions of diaspora focused on forced exile from the homeland and the adoption of conscious strategies of integration upon arrival in the new land. In the past, it was assumed that migrants would rapidly assimilate into their receiving societies. Alternatively, migrant workers were regarded by themselves and their host societies as “sojourners”: they were not expected to integrate precisely because their alien presence was perceived to be temporary. Two poles then framed the traditional interpretation of migration and settlement. On the one hand, migrants assimilated rapidly; on the other, migrants were temporarily in the host-land. Yet, the realisation both that the melting pot is a myth and that migrant workers do not, in the main, go home, has forced an increasing acceptance of ethnic diversity. This, combined with ongoing improvements in travel and communications technologies, facilitates today’s migrants in maintaining links with their home countries. The increased visibility of transnational ethnic communities and a resurgence in labour migration in the twenty-first century, have stimulated academic interest in both contemporary diasporas and in recovering the hidden narratives of earlier global migrations.
The renewed interest in the formation and narrative of diasporas is evident across a range of disciplines. Moreover, the meaningful exploration of any aspect of the humanities and social sciences requires an inter-disciplinary approach. Thus is the aim of this volume. Contributors approach the issue of diaspora from a variety of academic backgrounds: sociology, politics, history, literature and the visual arts. Concomitantly, data sources are diverse, with contributors drawing on official government publications, literary sources and personal memoirs, paintings and photographs, popular culture and personal interviews. This diversity of data sources indicates the multifarious approaches to the exploration diaspora. More importantly, it highlights the critical role played by unofficial, and often hidden, narratives in representing the experiences of those who find themselves, through a variety of political, social and economic factors, displaced.
""This edited collection is a timely and precocious answer to a gap in the literature of identities and nationhood. It is a response to the new challenges and opportunities facing diasporic communities and, what is more, sets out key pointers for rethinking diaspora in the twenty-first century.
At a time when western states are facing the need to re-evaluate traditional responses to ethnic difference arising from migration in the mid-twentieth century, this book posits an important perspective on the multiculturalism debate. Contrary to previous political and scholarly assumptions, this book shows that the children and grandchildren of immigrants can continue to have an ambiguous relationship to the state in which they were born in part because of the very nature of diaspora.
The enduringly complex and sometimes volatile insider/outsider relationship is explored in these chapters through analysis of various narratives, in textual, spoken and visual forms. Analysis of such ‘hidden narratives’ reveals that the meaning and pertinence of membership of a diasporic community is defined as much by the context of the host country as by the discourses of the homeland. Across their various sources and case studies, the authors demonstrate the power of the juncture between dominant national discourses of the host state and the identity of its immigrants. Each author notes how different the diasporic community in question would be – not to mention the impact on its relationship to the host state and the homeland – if some of narratives hidden over time were to be reclaimed. As one author puts it, flux in elements of identity-formation in postmodern society represents a chance to ‘engage in dialogue with our own diversity’.
In constructing a coherent volume from such a diverse range of cases and disciplines, the editors successfully demonstrate the wide validity of their case for ‘rethinking diasporas’. Nonetheless, the specific origins of this book – a conference held in a border town in Ireland – are, it may be argued, uniquely significant. For the current process of change in Irish national identity is inseparable from central features of diaspora-formation that the authors highlight, including economic pressures. Moreover, just as the town of Dundalk has historically felt the effects of its proximity to Northern Ireland, so the ‘imagined borders’ of diaspora explored in this book are shown to be all the more powerful for the fact that their delineation is contested.""
—Katy Hayward (Institute for British-Irish Studies, UCD
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,"Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Manuel Padilla Cruz, Reyes Gómez Morón and Lucía Fernández Amaya","Studies in Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics",Hardback,9781847182098,34.99,"Studies in Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics offers valuable contributions to research in pragmatics that will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students in many sub-disciplines of the field. The volume gathers a wide selection of papers that address traditional and recent issues in pragmatics and adopts a multidisciplinary approach, as most papers are based on various theoretical models and paradigms. An emphasis is placed on the interaction of cognitive processes and socio-cultural beliefs and practices to account for language production and interpretation. From this perspective, the papers offer new and revealing findings that support existing research, novel insights into language production and interpretation and useful directions for future research.
","""Although the volume is divided into three thematic sections; intercultural, cognitive and socio-pragmatics, most of the papers use a multidisciplinary approach. However, the editors were right when they decided to have three sections because this will give guidance to the readers about the main focus of each article. The papers describe and discuss research that is theoretically sound, contains empirical evidence and is based on data collected by the authors. I would also like to underline the international character of the volume. Among the authors there are scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, UK, Spain, and Turkey.
I am sure that readers will welcome the fine scholarship the volume will present to them.""
Istvan Kecskes, Professor of Linguistics, Director of ESL MA and PhD Programs
“This book will be of great interest and importance to scholars working at the interface between intercultural, cognitive and social aspects of pragmatics. It brings together a distinguished group of contributors using a wide variety of pragmatic frameworks, who provide new and valuable insights into the interaction of social, cognitive and cultural factors in linguistic communication and suggest interesting directions for future research.”
Deirdre Wilson, FBA, Professor of Linguistics, Department of Phonetics & Linguistics, University College London
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Andrea Morris and Margaret Parker,Celebrations and Connections in Hispanic Literature,Hardback,9781847182289,34.99,"The volume Celebrations and Connections in Hispanic Literature is itself a celebration of a tradition of scholarly dialogue in a relaxed, festive atmosphere. The articles included here began as papers presented at the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Biennial Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures, held in Baton Rouge Louisiana, February 23-24, 2006. Each of the authors responds in innovative ways to the idea of connecting texts, contexts, and genres, as well as to the disconnect that is often present between what we perceive as “Hispanic” identity and the experience of those left on the margin. Topics include “Celebrating and Rewriting Difference: (De)colonized Identities,” “Word and Image in the Spanish Golden Age,” and “Latin American Literature and Politics,” among others. The collection is demonstrative of current trends in Hispanic literary and cultural criticism, which are increasingly less bound by traditional regional and temporal constructs. While each author’s research is rooted in a specific socio-historic context, their combined contributions to the present volume provide a far-reaching perspective that expands the notion of “text” to go beyond the literary and engage a multitude of disciplines.
“…it emphasizes the often illuminating connections among literary and cultural texts which can be drawn when one conceives of Hispanism and its literary and cultural fields as shaped by trends and issues, rather than divided by periods and regions (...) What strikes me most is the newness of each piece. While each is very well informed, none rehearses old historical or theoretical ground more than is absolutely necessary, but rather presents either a new or overlooked text or offers a new approach.”
Leslie Bary, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
“An impressive array of well-established and younger scholars has produced a volume whose scope is the entire Hispanic world extending from the Golden Age to the contemporary era. (...) This volume will be of interest to all scholars and critics of Hispanic literature as well as to historians and political scientists. Many of the essays challenge traditional assumptions about the colonization of the Hispanic world as well as the motivations for the revolutions for independence whose influence is still strongly alive in contemporary treatments of fundamental questions of national identity, race, class, and gender.”
C. Chris Soufas, Jr., Tulane University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Malin Sveningsson Elm and Jenny Sundén,Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Digital Media and Gender in a Nordic Context,Hardback,9781847180896,34.99,"What does it mean to study supposedly global media phenomena from a Nordic perspective? In which ways could a Nordic feminist perspective on digital media make a difference in relation to dominant research traditions? What would be particular and unique about Nordic cyberfeminism – compared to the “unmarked” version of cyberfeminism dominating the field today? These are some of the questions that this book sets out to answer.
Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Digital Media and Gender in a Nordic Context pushes the boundaries of contemporary cyberfeminism significantly. Against the background of an expanding body of research in the field of digital media and gender – which to this date has primarily been carried out from an Anglo-American perspective – the book argues that feminist studies of digital media need to become more inclusive and aware of their own geographical and cultural biases and limits.
The book takes as its point of departure the knowledge and experiences from the Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark. Although often grouped together under the assumed homogeneity of Scandinavia, there are important differences between the countries – but also certain qualities and aspects that run across national borders, which make for an intriguing foundation of this book.
‘Highlighting the work of several of Scandinavia's best internet researchers, this collection shows how our understanding of the intersection of gender and computer technology is both universal and cultural. It's fascinating reading for anyone interested in questions of gender, culture, or social aspects of the internet and serves as a useful corrective for those who assume these issues can be understood without considering them from multiple cultural positions.’
Nancy Baym, Associate professor of Communication Studies, University of Kansas.
‘This is a very illuminating, unconventional and agenda-setting collection of essays by a new generation of scholars. Very Nordic in its pragmatic approach, egalitarian spirit and scholarly excellence, it manages to strike a global note. The range, depth and scope of the theoretical concerns, coupled with the originality of the themes discussed casts a new light on a number of crucial issues in feminist cultural studies of science and technology. A delight to read!’
Rosi Braidotti,
Distinguished professor in the Humanities, Utrecht University.
","""...the book is an illuminating contribution to those who are more interested in a more situated feminist technoscience research...The book presents an impressive selection of interesting and qualitative nordic cyberfeminist research.""
Johanna Sefyrin, Mid Sweden University in Information, Communication & Society, 12:6, 961-962, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,David Prescott,"English in Southeast Asia: Varieties, Literacies and Literatures",Hardback,9781847182241,39.99,"This book represents a new publishing venture in terms of its range of concerns with regard to English in Southeast Asia. The chapters in the volume reflect the interests and themes of the annual Conferences on English in Southeast Asia held since 1996 among participating universities from nine countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand Indonesia and New Zealand. This is believed to be the first time that such diversity and coverage has been published in a single volume.
The three sections of the book cover topics which have been consistently discussed at the conferences during the last ten years. The Varieties section features chapters on phonology, dictionary making, syntax, code-switching and the communicative strategies of English speakers from ASEAN countries. The Literacies section focuses on ICT in English language teaching, Information literacy, bilingual and multilingual issues in Southeast Asia, recent developments in English language teaching and education in Thailand and questions of heritage and identity with respect to English in Malaysia. In the Literatures section the concerns are with new generation writings in English in Malaysia, the literature read by young Filipinos, the use of English in Malaysian newspapers in the context of general elections, the discourses of Asian English newspapers in relation to notions like “globalisation” and “global English” and ASEAN English on Internet websites.
As a collection of work by experienced academics engaged in the issues germane to the roles and status of English in Southeast Asia this volume is an excellent resource for university students, university teaching and research staff and university library collections.
","""Given the scope of investigation, range of topics, and the number of countries studied or implicated within its covers, this book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the spread of English in Asia. It represents some of the financial research outputs of scholars who share similar concerns for the sociopolitical, ethnolinguistic and/or educational dimensions of the impact of English on various Asian localities.""
David C.S.Li, Hong Kong Institute of Education, English World-Wide 30:1, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,"Eddie Edgerton, Ombretta Romice and Christopher Spencer",Environmental Psychology: Putting Research into Practice,Hardback,9781847182180,39.99,"This book contains a selection of nine detailed and varied research papers in the area of environment-behaviour studies. The papers are based on presentations at the 4th UK Environmental Psychology (EPUK4) conference that was held in Glasgow, Scotland in September 2005.
The conference theme centred on a recurring debate in Environmental Psychology and one which had recently been ‘reopened’ by Prof. Christopher Spencer (University of Sheffield), namely: “how can we ensure that the findings from high quality environment-behaviour research are put into practice in ‘real-world’ applications”? This book outlines current views on the debate along with suggestions on how we might more effectively address this ‘research-practice’ relationship.
EPUK is an informal organisation that brings together environmental psychologists and other professionals working in the area of environment-behaviour research. EPUK4 was jointly organised by Dr. Edward Edgerton (University of Paisley) and Dr. Ombretta Romice (University of Strathclyde), and was attended by around sixty international experts in the field.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Narayan Gopalkrishnan and Hurriyet Babacan,"Racisms in the New World Order: Realities of Culture, Colour and Identity",Hardback,9781847182234,34.99,"Racism is a significant social problem that diminishes the social fabric of society, creates social tension and impacts on the life chances of the people involved. It impacts upon those who perpetuate it, on those who are at the ‘receiving end’, as well as on those who are not directly involved in the problem. Within the complexities of a globalized world, with its networks of actors and processes, racism is constantly changing its form and impacts. This book examines the contemporary forms of racisms evolving within this context, moving beyond the traditional idea of a single monolithic racism based on biology or culture.
It offers new perspectives on theorising the new racisms and looks at the intersections with different forms of prejudice and discrimination such as sexism and ageism. The book places the discussion of racism within the contemporary discussions of the ‘War on Terror’ and the allied issues of ‘Islamaphobia’ and the ‘New Antisemitism’, excavating the many elements involved including the media and the State, using case studies from across the world to highlight these. The final section focuses on the challenges in developing a discourse on anti-racism as well as presents strategies towards a platform for action.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-07-01,Erik S. Roraback,"The Dialectics of Late Capital and Power: James, Balzac and Critical Theory",Hardback,9781847182265,34.99,"This essay offers up a provocative new theoretical tack on the topic area of the dialectic of capital, the dialectic of cruelty, and the dialectic of power and of their intricate and self-differential inter-relationships and forms of being, under late capitalism, as delineated in selected narratives of two major Occidental novelists, Henry James and his key paper friend, Honoré de Balzac; it does so from a genuinely inter-disciplinary perspective that draws from heterogeneous waves of critical theory broadly conceived, having thus something to say to contemporary culture both of general and of academic interest alike.
Key concepts elucidated and fleshed out in the work for the first time in a volume-length and systematic way in the study of the humanities, in order to get the show on the road, include the theoretical notions and arguments of true power and capital as ‘un-power’, ‘non-power’, ‘un-capital’, and ‘non-capital’; other suchlike examples punctuate the essay that attempt to meet precise theoretical and practical requirements for a twenty-first century increasingly submitted to the logic of capitalist power. The present study also thus offers new ways of thinking about the enormous and age-long subject of big power and capital that would, in the final tally, want to align itself with such prophetic traditions of thought as what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for example, have termed ‘the New Earth’.
","“This book makes fascinating and long-overdue connections between Balzac’s and Henry James’s literary treatment of money - money both as an economic fact and as a metaphor and symbol. Dr Roraback’s astute analysis is pioneering, and should be read by all experts on these two authors as well as by anyone who has an interest in the post-1800 novel”.
--Alison Finch, Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Churchill College, University of Cambridge,
author of Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century French
(Cambridge Studies in French) (Cambridge University Press)
“very sensitively and well written […] a most interesting project”
--Stephen A. Erickson, Professor of Philosophy and the E. Wilson Lyon Chair of Humanities,
Pomona College, author of The (Coming) Age of Thresholding (Kluwer Academic Publishers)
“an important new vision of Henry James […] Roraback’s compelling use of contemporary theory pitches his book to a wide reading audience [...] an important work of literary scholarship, which will contribute significantly to a number of intellectual fields”
--Henry B. Wonham, Professor of English, University of Oregon,
co-editor Tales of Henry James (Norton Publishing Company)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Tatiani Rapatzikou,Anglo-American Perceptions of Hellenism,Hardback,9781847182487,39.99,"In this volume an attempt is made to tackle Hellenism as a global and transcultural entity. Through an array of essays, this book constitutes a comparative study of various literary, cultural and artistic trends as these develop throughout the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries on both sides of the Atlantic. Having been designed with the general as well as the specialized reader in mind, this book will prove to be a valuable guide to scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as to a broad spectrum of readers with an interest in comparative literature, cultural history, history of the classical heritage, transatlantic studies, English and American romantic, modernist and postmodernist narratives.
Its diverse material falls under the umbrella terms of “English Hellenisms” and “American Hellenisms” with the intention of enhancing intercultural dialogue and understanding. By embracing multivocality, as proven by the number of articles it contains, this book proves the tenacity, diachronic and intercontinental appeal of Hellenism at the era of multiculturalism and globalization.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01, Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner,Did Somebody Say Ideology?: On Slavoj Žižek and Consequences,Hardback,9781847182357,39.99,"Did Somebody Say Ideology? explores the philosophical, political, and psychoanalytic foundations of Slavoj Žižek’s work, almost two decades after his arrival on the international scene of contemporary philosophy with The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989). The book generally focuses on the understanding and applicability of Žižek’s theory of ideology, arguably the distinguishing and most original feature in his oeuvre so far. The first part contains six essays that carry out specific investigations into key aspects of the Slovenian philosopher’s work; the second part practices Žižek’s own injunction about Lacan (“discover Lacanian themes everywhere!”) on Žižek himself, employing his theories in different contexts and relating them to other thinkers. Each study in the present volume testifies to the extraordinary vitality of Žižek’s writing, demonstrating how his psychoanalytic brand of ideology critique fosters innovative research in a variety of intellectual fields and academic disciplines.
","The book has a great deal to offer to undergraduate and postgraduates students of Žižek’s extremely impressive oeuvre. But it will also be of great use to academics and everybody else interested in philosophy, cinema, feminism, psychoanalysis, radical politics and nationalism in the Balkans. The detailed exposition of Žižek is masterfully complemented by detailed discussions of Badiou, Bataille, Deleuze, Foucault and Lacan. Did Somebody Say Ideology? On Slavoj Žižek and Consequences is likely to be one of the most important books on Žižek in recent years and an original contribution to contemporary social theory.
Darrow Schecter
University of Sussex
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Roger Spalding and Alyson Brown,"Entertainment, Leisure and Identities",Hardback,9781847182364,29.99,"This wide-ranging collection of essays seeks to challenge the ‘common-sense’ assumption that entertainment activities have no function but to fill up otherwise empty moments. As such it builds on the term – coined by the Victorians – ‘Recreation’, and argues that in the entertainments people pursue they do not simply divert themselves, but actively create and re-create their identities.
The collection shows this process can only take place for those who enjoy the benefits of leisure; hence, in the medieval period leisure and entertainments are largely confined to the wealthy minority. In periods of rapid social change, like 19th century Britain, the inter-linked question of identity and entertainment became an issue of great concern. Orderly and respectable activities were seen by many commentators as the key to containing the potential menace of the new urban population. In the 20th century the development of new forms of mass entertainment, such as cinema, radio and television, has generated new debates, in particular about the potential of these new media to manipulate their audiences.
The essays, arranged in broadly chronological order, give fascinating and detailed ‘snapshots’ of these processes as they unfold from the middle ages to the present-day. As such the collection makes a very valuable contribution to the historical study of the social and, broadly defined, political role played by entertainments in shaping and reinforcing identities.
'In recent years the history of leisure and, more particularly, the history of leisure pursuits, amusements and ""entertainments"", has engaged the attention of social historians who, as well as highlighting their intrinsic interests, have demonstrated the contribution which such studies can make to an understanding on social identities and class relationships.
This collection of essays explores a wide and eclectic range of ""entertainments"" - from medieval pet-keeping, Victorian chess tournaments and late 19th century museums of curiosities to French anarchist theatre and the career of Harry Belafonte - themes which until now received little or no scholarly analysis. As such it fills a significant gap in the historical literature.'
G. R. Searle, Emeritus Prof. of History,
University of East Anglia and Fellow of the British Academy",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,"Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon","Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture",Hardback,9781847182555,39.99,"Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time, Culture
How do we hear and respond to place? 37 international artists and scholars have responded to this question from their unique perspectives, interrogating place as acoustic space where sound, place, time and culture collide. This book transcends the
boundaries of geography, time and discipline through its imaginative and scholarly writings and CD, provoking us all to pay attention to how we hear place.
","""Hearing Places draws together 37 scholars and artists from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, North America and beyond, bringing a plethora of voices from a variety of cultural backgrounds to explore the concept of place through an attentiveness to its sounds, and the relative significance attributed to those sounds.""
Peter Blamey, Real Time, October-November 2008
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Kylo-Patrick R. Hart,Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations,Hardback,9781847182456,39.99,"If, in fact, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her [step]mother forty whacks,” why (from a representational standpoint) did her stepmother deserve it?
If older gay men in Internet chat rooms regularly provide much-needed acceptance and advice to younger gay males during the coming-out process, how is it that they continually reinforce racist ideologies and powerless subjectivities while doing so?
What sorts of media images are commonly presented of individuals and groups that are regarded as being deviant in society, and whose interests do they ultimately serve?
The answers to these important questions and many others are provided in the pages of Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations, which explores provocative representations of deviance in various media forms—including books, films, musical offerings, news accounts, television programs, and Internet sites—and their substantial cultural, political, and social consequences for the lived realities of individuals of different backgrounds and lifestyles.
The eye-opening chapters of this book enable readers to more fully realize the regularity with which media representations continuously contribute, in powerful ways, to the formation and perpetuation of influential social constructions of deviance and otherness as they pertain to delinquents, criminals, and individuals of all ages, classes, genders, races, sexual orientations, and health/(dis)ability statuses.
""Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is a thought-provoking anthology that offers fresh insight and new approaches to critically analyzing social constructions of deviancy across a variety of media forms. While scholars have long examined the relationship between media and deviancy, this collection of essays features a range of theoretical perspectives through which to investigate deviancy and its various interpretations in original ways. In the process, it deepens our understanding of how deviancy has been constructed across time and in differing social/cultural milieus. The essays in this anthology reflect the diverse disciplines of their contributing scholars. At the same time, the anthology does not waver from its clear focus on deviancy, lending it substantial coherence and readability.
The book is expertly structured and edited. Each of the essays draws inspiration from a refreshing variety of sources and fields of study. The anthology is accordingly divided into six distinct yet related sections that mark its coherence and readability. Simultaneously, the essays within each section are quite different from one another, allowing the reader to make thought-provoking connections between representations of deviancy both within sections and among them.
Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is an important text. Considering the growth of new media forms, its investigation of both old and new media in relation to social constructions of deviancy represents a timely and topical contribution to the field of media and cultural studies. Given its breadth and scope, the anthology represents a highly significant scholarly contribution that will greatly benefit scholars, students, and interested individuals of all levels. It offers eye-opening insights to anyone with an interest in cultural studies, disease and disability studies, film and television studies, LGBT studies, criminal justice, sociology, and related fields.""
Brief Reviewer Bio:
Metasebia Woldemariam, Ph.D., is an associate professor of communication and media studies at Plymouth State University who specializes in media representations of deviancy and otherness.
""Mediated Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations is an erudite collection offering critical and cultural analysis of media representations within various media forms, including journalism, film, documentary, television, fiction, music, and the Internet. The book is divided into six sections that highlight the categories of deviance and otherness the contributors emphasize: (1) Age; (2) Crime and Criminals; (3) Disease and Disability; (4) Gender, Race, and Class; (5) Sexual Orientation; and (6) “Other” Forms of Deviance, which include masochism, carnival “spectaculars,” and cultures of violence.
While some chapters feature links to topics common to media studies, such as the Motion Picture Production Code, what is powerful about the collection is how varied the interpretive standpoints of the contributors are. An example of one such unique interpretive perspective comes from Linda K. Fuller, whose chapter examines the sexual-political aspects of African AIDS-related films based on her work in West Africa “with a sexologist collating and critiquing appropriate media for Life Skills.” This interpretive variety inspires novel examination of media representations through the originality of varied genres of analysis: the collection offers analysis of classic as well as popular literature, popular as well as veiled news media, award-winning as well as obscure television series, and outlaw country music as well as rap music.
Because “media” is so broadly interpreted within the collection, readers are encouraged to view mass media as a crucial cultural landscape for meaning making. Each contributor offers a timely perspective about past or contemporary society through the analysis of unique media genres and artifacts, or even through analysis of representations in multiple media forms. For example, Annette Holba examines multiple forms of the media representations of a less emphasized person in the Lizzie Borden case, Borden’s stepmother. Editor Kylo-Patrick R. Hart’s own contribution examines multiple media representations of the visible physical signs of AIDS before focusing on their representation in two particularly noteworthy film melodramas.
Rather than focusing on stereotypical categories of deviance and otherness, the contributors focus on less commonly acknowledged representations or challenge commonly acknowledged understandings of media. This is evident through Christopher J. Pérez’s ethnographic observation of instant messages from Gay.com participants, which dispels the notion that such online communities allow for positive expressions of gay identity. Through its broad interpretation of media, the collection offers an ample array of less commonly acknowledged media genres, as evident in Margaret Weigel’s class analysis of the electric-bulb advertising sign “spectaculars” in Manhattan from 1892 to 1917; Wendy Korwin’s visual analysis of a set of four image plates used within prescriptive literature; and Amanda Klein’s cinematic comparison of portrayed deviance in the 1950s juvenile delinquency teenpic and the 1990s ghetto action film. Incorporated also are unique perspectives on traditional news media representations, as in Thomas Grochowski’s interpretation of celebrity defendant perspectives of O.J. Simpson.
Occasionally, common themes thread particular chapters together, allowing opportunities to understand how critics view the same or similar media differently. For example, David Sealy and Georges-Claude Guilbert as well as Valentin Locoge offer analysis of the HBO television series OZ. Additionally, contemporary moral dilemmas and societal issues are covered as they appear in various media representations, as when Barbara Barnett’s discussion of journalistic representations of maternal infanticide and perfection appear alongside Robert Goff’s analysis of the textured view of abortion provided by the film Vera Drake.
Hart’s collection is important to expanding the scholarly understanding of media representations because it provokes thinking about what makes media mean so much to humans in particular social, cultural, historical, and even technological contexts. The issue of the detrimental effects of “shared notions of deviance and social otherness” is evident in chapters that highlight original perspectives useful for either scholarly analysis or challenging, graduate-level classroom discussions. Also, because the collection includes literary analysis, it could serve well those with interest in literary criticism.""
ELESHA RUMINSKI, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania with experience teaching mass communication, film studies, and visual communication.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,"Caroline Hamilton, Michelle Kelly, Elaine Minor and Will Noonan",The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal,Hardback,9781847182449,34.99,"The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal is an eclectic collection of essays from emerging academics who engage with the notion of “refusal” both as the embodiment of a resistance to conventional boundaries between academic disciplines, and as a concept with an underlying negative or reactive force that can be widely interpreted and applied. The applications of “refusal” outlined in this volume—ranging from activism and the politics of cultural production through to problems of identity and knowledge classification—raise questions about often-elided relationships of agency and complicity in routine experience.
The sense of “refusal” that emerges from this book is perhaps most easily classified by what it is not—namely, a prescriptive, conclusive, or unified account of what it is to reject, react, or work against any particular instance of theory or practice in any given domain. The value of a thematically-oriented collection like this is its ability to work across disciplines, media, and philosophical frameworks rather than limiting its focus to a narrow territory.
According to Herbert Marcuse, refusal must not only be the guiding principle for all artistic creation, it must also be a manifestation of artistic creation itself. With this volume, we have attempted to compose a collection which is not only theoretically guided by refusal, but practically informed by it as well. The collection in itself constitutes, we hope, a constructive rejection of the usual constrictions of discipline and approach placed upon new scholars.
""This rich collection of essays on the political, aesthetic and ethical dimensions of that form of social action called refusal is an important contribution to our understanding of the tensions and contradictions of contemporary culture.""
John Frow, Professor of English Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Priscilla Roberts and He Peiqun,"Bonds Across Borders: Women, China, and International Relations in the Modern World",Hardback,9781847182807,34.99,"At both the theoretical and practical level, the relationship between women, gender, and international relations has become increasingly controversial in recent years. This collection of essays by twenty leading scholars and diplomatic practitioners from China, Hong Kong, the United States, and Great Britain crosses national, disciplinary, cultural, professional, and gender boundaries to approach this subject from a wide variety of comparative perspectives, designed to stimulate further debate and research.
On the theoretical front, this volume explores the manner in which women and their contributions are represented within the discipline of International Relations; discusses whether women have unique contributions to make to both the academic study and the conduct of foreign affairs; and makes recommendations as to how women’s concerns and viewpoints might be better incorporated into the field of international relations in both intellectual and practical terms.
Moving to the level of practice, chapters on and by assorted women diplomats reflect on the official careers and foreign policy contributions of women—including the first two US female secretaries of state and the first Asian American ambassador—in both China and the United States. Several highlight the career handicaps women diplomats have faced in China, the United States, and Europe alike. A variety of historical and contemporary case studies, the majority of them dealing with foreign women living in China or Hong Kong, also focus on women in nontraditional diplomatic roles, as wives, missionaries, peace activists, reformers, teachers, businesswomen, and journalists.
“It is rare that the published record of a conference contributes to the design and definition of a new field of study, but that is the case with this remarkable volume of essays collected and edited by Priscilla Roberts and He Peiqun. Its very first chapter raises the central question: why we should focus on women/gender and IR. The rest of the volume proceeds to answer it brilliantly. There are essays on familiar aspects of the subject—war war and peace—but also on varieties of formal and informal diplomacy. A concluding section outlines future lines of inquiry. This indispensable collection will make it difficult, at the least, to imagine that it is possible to discuss international relations without also discussing gender.”
—Marilyn B. Young, Professor, Dept of History, New York University
“1. The product of brilliant scholars from three continents, this book looks beyond the veil to tell us about the constructive roles that women play in international relations.
2. Bigots beware!
3. The lesson of this timely and brilliant Shanghai project is that women are beginning to shape our international community, and very possibly for the better.”
—Rhodri Jeffreys Jones, Department of History, University of Edinburgh
""This collection of essays, drawn from the first international conference held in China on the role of women in international affairs, offers an intriguing look at the ways women have gained and wielded influence in foreign affairs both formally and informally. These essays, written by historians and political scientists from Australia, China, Great Britain, and the United States, reveal that female social activists, journalists, and diplomats focused world attention anew on human rights and environmental issues, highlighting the degree to which women were disproportionately the victims of wars, illicit crime rings, and environmental disasters. Yet this collection rightly cautions against assuming that women were always more compassionate international actors, noting that women in power often assumed the same belligerent stance as their male counterparts. As administrative positions within foreign ministries opened up to women they also formed a key component of the middle-strata, but even today women remain consistently shut out of high-level diplomatic appointments. These illuminating essays reveal both the achievements and challenges for women who sought to influence the direction of international relations, demonstrating conclusively that one cannot understand the diplomatic history of the twentieth century without understanding the role of women in international affairs.”
—Jennifer D. Keene, professor of history, Chapman University, Orange, California USA""
“The essays in this excellent collection explore and elucidate the power and potential of women on the international scene—whether as actors in the public sphere in positions of authority or as private citizens working to shape and improve the policies of the global community. For scholars and practitioners alike who seek to understand how gender and feminist theory offers a new paradigm for the international system, or the degree to which women may serve as agents of peace, or the process by which women in power undergo masculization in order to succeed in a male-dominated world, [Bonds Across Borders] is an essential read and indispensable resource.”
—Edward P. Crapol, Pullen Professor, Emeritus, College of William and Mary
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Larry Stillman and Graeme Johanson,"Constructing and Sharing Memory: Community Informatics, Identity and Empowerment",Hardback,9781847182777,39.99,"Community Informatics is a developing field which brings together understandings about the interaction of communities and information and communication technologies from fields as diverse as Management and Information Systems, Library and Information Sciences, Community Development, Sociology, or Social and Community Welfare. A key assumption of community informatics is that technologies can be used for positive social change and development, particularly with disadvantaged communities or communities that hitherto, have not had a public voice.
The volume brings together international perspectives around defining and debating the idea of community memory which, as Alex Byrne, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions observed in his splendid and wide-ranging Introduction: ""community memories are multilayered, changeable, conflicting and contested"", and the multilayering, changeability and contest between different players provide fertile theoretical and practical ground for Community Informatics and its interdisciplinary cousins.
""Community Informatics is an emerging new multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the intersection of communities and Information and Communication Technologies. This volume contains significant contributions from international practitioners and researchers in the fields of archives, record-keeping, community knowledge management, emerging information and communication technologies, history, community development-virtual as well as real-and Community Informatics as a
growing discipline. The content of the book is a unique contribution in the field. The volume will be read by researchers, and communities interested in how they communicate their past, present, and future.""
—Professor Emerita Gunilla Bradley Informatics School of ICT Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm Sweden
""Practitioners, researchers and theoreticians in Community Informatics will find a unique array of valuable perspectives in this book. It covers the interaction of communities, memories and technologies in a highly original way, with regard to its breadth and the number of case studies it presents. It incorporates contributions from 13 countries in all parts of our endangered planet, thus providing the international perspective that is critical to understanding how communities can use technology for societal good.""
—Professor Michel Menou. Les Rosiers sur Loire, France, Associate, Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Agita Lūse and Imre Lázár,"Cosmologies of Suffering: Post-communist Transformation, Sacral Communication, and Healing",Hardback,9781847182586,34.99,"The edited volume elaborates on a range of themes that emerged during a workshop of the 8th biennial of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Vienna in 2004. Among these themes are: the paradoxical permanence of ‘transition’ in post-communist countries, the accompanying persistence of social suffering and the structural conditions that give rise to it. A final theme focuses on the resources that people mobilize to cope with suffering and trauma. Ways of coping manifest a stance towards agency shared by sufferers from diverse post-communist regions, such as ethnically divided Croatia, politically and economically unstable Zimbabwe, relatively more peaceful countries such as Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, and, finally, two religiously unique areas in Siberia, Russia. Ethnographic accounts from these diverse settings testify that agency has often involved relinquishing reliance on one’s self and turning towards a power higher than the self, whether this is conceptualized through the lens of transcendence, religion, or cosmology.
‘This is a fascinating new series of ethnograhic studies of specific, mostly Eastern European and ex-Soviet mystically-orientated communities, grappling with
existential issues of suffering and meaning(lessness). Following the collapse of Soviet hegemonic communism and the well-known revitalisation of traditional and
New Age worldviews, many people have embraced alternative cosmologies to generate new identities and meanings that are not dependant on empirically-
derived positivistic perspectives. This book is major theoretical and ethnographically-based contribution to understanding the profound social and
personal transformations of worldviews and lived practices that have subsequently developed.’
Professor Iain Edgar, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Durham, UK
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Frederick Burwick and Kathryn Tucker,Marquis de Sade and the Scientia and Techne of Eroticism,Hardback,9781847182616,29.99,"Although the Marquis de Sade is often read only for his pornography, it is important to ask why his works have claimed such a persistent reception for the past two centuries, a reception that has grown increasingly more astute and analytical in the past two decades. Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), the founder of Sexualwissenschaft or sexology, taught the 20th century to examine Sade’s works in terms of psychology and cultural anthropology in his study of 1899. In a magisterial two-volume biography, 1952-57, Gilbert Lély laid the foundation for every biography that has followed. Lély went on to assemble the first critical/historical edition of Sade, his Oeuvres completes, 16 vols., 1966-67. Alice Laborde extended Lély’s work in her three volumes on Sade’s relationships, imprisonment, and family history (1988-91). Laborde also edited Sade’s letters, Correspondances du marquis de Sade et de ses proches enrichies de documents, notes et commentaries, 27 vols., 1991-98.
The study of Sade’s literary influence commenced with Mario Praz’s account of “the Divine Marquis” (1930). Simone de Beauvoir, in “Faut-il brûler Sade?” (1953; “Must We Burn Sade?” 1955), paved the way for subsequent studies of Sade’s relevance to gender issues and sexual behavior. Angela Carter, in The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1979) and Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), demonstrate the continuing ramifications of Sade’s understanding of the motives of desire. Thanks to the foundational work of Lély and Laborde, recent commentators have been able to attend in more detail to Sade’s literary career. Neil Schaeffer, in The Marquis de Sade: A Life (1999) addresses the logic and rhetoric of Sade’s prose, his suasory strategies to arouse, his paranoiac strategies to conceal, his philosophy of passion, and the reason in his madness.
Responding to current trends and offering new directions, this book examines Sade's reactions to medical theory and practice, to crime and punishment; his attempt to craft a reciprocity of written discourse and sexual intercourse; his involvement in the theater, both as a playwright for the public stage, and as playwright and director for the private theater of the insane asylum.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Rachel Moffat and Eugene de Klerk,"Material Worlds: Proceedings of the Conference held at Glasgow University, 2005",Hardback,9781847182753,34.99,"What are the contemporary definitions of materiality and culture and how do they interrelate? This expansive brief is the starting point for this publication, which draws from some of the definitions presented at the Material Worlds Conference, held at the University of Glasgow in 2005.
Following the keynote set by Professor Catherine Belsey, participants debated how it is that the real is negotiated and mediated by cultural practice. Those who contributed to this volume seek to examine how the intangible can be made real through different media and how these influence our experience of the world. Furthermore they also ask what it is about the real that resists cultural transcription. Included in these papers are analyses of attempts to inscribe the soul; the ongoing difficulty of propertizing concepts; and the material, sometimes pornographic, manifestations of capitalism and empire.
By the end of the conference a concern was expressed that even the antinomy between culture and the real was something which had largely been discursively or ideologically determined and demanded a fundamental revision. This is something which Professor Peter Hallward highlights when he seeks to outline the position of the real in modern philosophy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,"Clare Beckett, Owen Heathcote and Marie Macey","Negotiating Boundaries? Identities, Sexualities, Diversities",Hardback,9781847182739,39.99,"Negotiating Boundaries: Identities, Sexualities, Diversities is a collection of essays by contributors from—and/or on—societies across the world: Boznia-Herzogovinia, Croatia, France, Iran, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South and West Africa, the UK and the USA. They are from a range of academic disciples—English Literature, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies, Modern Languages, Religious Studies, Social Anthropology, Social Policy, Sociology and Theology.
This level of diversity has resulted in the most wide-ranging volume ever published in the social sciences and humanities around the concept of ""Boundaries"". The book is at the cutting edge of intellectual thinking on personal and social ""boundaries"" applied to such areas as: Art, Genocidal Rape, Identities, God/Godde, Lesbianism, Literature, Men in ""Women's Professions"", Muslim women in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, Nationalism and Symbolism, Poetry, Religion, Sexual Harassment, Sexuality, Women in Science, Transgenderism, Virginity Testing and War.
This range of contributors, locations and topics could have resulted in an incoherent volume with appeal to only a somewhat esoteric readership. However, the skilful use of the concept of ""Boundaries"" not only gives this book structured coherence, but makes it important reading for a wide range of academics, theorists and researchers in a diversity of disciplines.
""This is a lively, engaged, nuanced portrayal of the struggles around identity, inequality and domination. Ambitious in its scope – international, interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional in its social focus, Identities, Sexualities, Diversities offers a powerful picture of struggle and the pursuit of change, through the conceptual lens of boundaries. This collection explores the diverse ways boundaries operate, bringing new insights and questions to an established debate. It also, importantly, explores how boundaries can provide bridges. Thus, through its interweaving of theory and empirical analysis, and through its stories of bodies, texts, work, sexual expression, self-presentation, and changing values, Identities, Sexualities, Diversities offers a text that is reflexive, analytically thoughtful, and, significantly, hopeful.”
—Davina Cooper, Professor of Law and Political Theory, Director of AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, Kent Law School, University of Kent
“This is a fascinating collection of papers that provides new and important insights into the variety and natures of boundaries around ethnicity, identity and sexuality. Using the complex concept of boundaries the writers explore identities, sexualities and diversities through boundary crossings, contested boundaries, oppressive boundaries and creative, resistant boundaries. This provides a wonderful, coherent engagement with some of the key struggles at the present time over contested territory at personal and global levels. The range of articles ensures that these debates are contextualised in particular societies and cultures providing a rich source of theoretical material that helps our understandings of these complex and crucial issues. The theoretical rigour and fascinating insights presented in this edited book deserves a wide readership from those involved in the social sciences, women’s studies, the humanities and all those interested in transgressing conventional boundaries of scholarship”.
—Sheila Scraton, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Director of University Research, Professor of Leisure and Feminist Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Ellen Grünewald and Willem E. Frankenhuis,Researching the Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,Hardback,9781847182838,39.99,"Researching the Self originated in a conference held at the University of Amsterdam in 2005, where scholars from various academic backgrounds presented their current theories and research. One central theme that emerged from the conference is the need for interdisciplinarity in the study of self. The present volume tries to meet this need, as it covers fields as diverse as psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy, sociology, and computer science. Additionally, the authors have contributed interdisciplinary reflections, in which they contemplate the other contributions to the present volume, and consider integrating this work with their own.
•What are the neural correlates of self?
•Can individuals have multiple selves?
•How do selves depend on other people?
•Will engineers ever construct artificial selves?
•What is the problem of self we are trying to solve?
•What does the future hold for the self?
•Do selves really exist?
“As I read the other entries in the current volume I was struck by the implications that the many different perspectives on the self had for each other” (Gillihan, this volume).
“We must continue to keep in mind what we know, what we don’t know, and what we only think we know in order to successfully conquer this interdisciplinary problem of the self” (Gorman and Keenan, this volume).",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-09-01,Lauren Rosewarne,"Sex in Public: Women, Outdoor Advertising and Public Policy",Hardback,9781847182746,34.99,"Despite decades of feminist awareness and activism, women continue to be portrayed in outdoor advertising in a limited and sexist manner. The fact that in public space audiences are exposed to such images without choice, renders the issue an important public policy concern.
Sex in Public utilises a large outdoor advertising data collection to examine the contemporary outdoor advertising landscape, documenting the routine portrayal of women as thin, white, young and idle. This book examines why such portrayals are concerning for feminists as well as for public policy, and explores the advertising self-regulation systems that facilitate the display of such images.
This book criticises sexist outdoor advertising as a form of sexual harassment given that imagery often bearing very strong semblance to pin-ups which would be outlawed in a workplace are readily displayed in public space, reflecting a troublesome public policy double standard. Understanding sexist outdoor advertising as a form of sexual harassment is a new framework that Sex in Public offers to understand, critique and condemn such images.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Clara Sarmento,Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the 21st Century?,Hardback,9781847183088,34.99,"Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? is a collection of essays which focus on themes and methods that characterize the current research on gender in Asian countries in general, under a comparative approach that tries to cut across the boundaries of time and space.
In this collection, ideas derived from Gender Studies as they are practised all over the world have been subjected to scrutiny for their utility in helping to describe and understand regional phenomena. But the concepts of ‘local’ and ‘global’–with their discoursive productions–have not functioned here as a binary opposition: localism and globalism are mutually constitutive and the authors have interrogated those spaces of interaction between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, bearing in mind their own embeddedness in social and cultural structures and their own historical memory.
Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? provides a critical transnational perspective on some of the complex effects of the dynamics of cultural globalization, by exploring the relation between gender and education, politics, economics, anthropology, linguistics, historiography, sociology, literature, and popular culture, as agents of the (re)invention of old and new, male and female identities, their conversion into concepts and their circulation through time and space.
","""In this rapidly changing world, the publication of Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? is especially timely. Contextualized by the editor’s thoughtful introduction, these seven essays will provoke new questions regarding the interplay between current issues and the heritage of the past, especially in Asia. Writing in clear and accessible prose, an international group of scholars offers a range of interdisciplinary expertise and experience that provides a fund of fresh material and contemporary data. The geographical extent of the societies discussed (including new countries that have emerged from older entities, like the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, or Bangladesh) are a testimony to the insightful approaches and methodologies that are helping to open a new chapter in the study of women and gender relationships.
A strength of the book is the attention given to common themes that thread through the volume. Insisting that the past is intertwined with the present, the authors remind us that in all societies the local specifics shaping the female condition are infused by global dynamics. Although young women today may be better educated and more ambitious than their mothers, they still carry with them the inherited expectations of their society, and the gender stereotypes so often encountered in novels and films are not easily displaced. Governments can institute regulations and reforms, but such measures do not necessarily lead to changes in cultural perceptions about appropriate behavior and language for women. Individually and collectively, the contributions to Eastwards / Westwards graphically show that the painful effects of Western influence, so evident in the colonial environment, can still be tracked as Asian societies respond to the often adverse exposure to a globalized economy.
Taking us on an intellectual journey that is simultaneously exciting and disturbing, the editor and authors should be congratulated on producing a book that will undoubtedly be a most welcome addition to the field of women and gender studies.""
—Professor Barbara Watson Andaya, Asian Studies Program, University of Hawai'i
""In a volume that is penetrating, straightforward and polemic, the editor collects seven essays on Asian cultural issues, mainly concerning women. What strikes the reader at first is probably the fact that the matters discussed here are, generally speaking, unknown (and thus considered exotic) in the West, and that in spite of the fact that cultural studies, gender studies and post-colonial studies are thriving among us. But something else challenges us to read Eastwards / Westwards: Which Directions for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century?: the unbiased approach of these seven contributions, which seem to overcome, in practice, central difficulties in cultural studies, namely those spelled out by Gayatri Spivak.
Filled with accounts of carefully documented practices, descriptions of stereotypical images, their counterparts and evolution, this book seems to show us what we did not know, and at the same time shed light both on the ‘other’ and on us.
Globalization is rapidly confronting us with what were once classified as ‘regional phenomena’ happening far away from us: due to the migration currents from East to West, they are now unfolding before our very eyes as real practices taking place among us. To ostracize people from different cultures or simply to turn our backs to all this has proved not to be a solution.
What kind of readers does Eastwards / Westwards: Which Directions for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? appeal to? I would say almost every kind. You can read it out of sheer curiosity for exoticism, you can read it because you wish not only to know more about different cultures but to understand them better and you can read it as a scholar interested in cultural studies. Either way, while getting to know and understand the ‘other’, you are inevitably getting to know and understand yourself.
That women have a voice we all know; that their voice can be heard is something completely different. The contributions collected in Eastwards / Westwards: Which Directions for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? echo the predicaments of Asian women, be they in India, in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan, in Bangladesh, in China, in Southeast Asia or as migrants in the West. ""
—Professor Dalila Lopes, Coordinator of the Department of Languages and Culture, Polytechnic Institute of Oporto
""Clara Sarmento has adroitly selected and very usefully introduced this collection of essays exploring the local realities beneath the theoretical assumptions of the liberation and empowerment of women in Asian societies, with a focus on those of China, the Ukraine, Kazahkstan, and the Hindi-speaking, Bangla-speaking, and formerly Portuguese areas of India. To paraphrase the title of Alicia Tolstokorova’s essay, the Revolution of Gender Equality still falls deceptively but decisively short of its goals. Not surprisingly, Language and local languages are found to be at the center of the paradox: the “old ways” of history are imbedded in dialects; in the signs, symbols, and pledges of marriage; in religious formulations of all kinds. Stereotypes of “the Other Woman,” such as the prostitute, remain operative. The “old language” of states formerly subsumed by Russia now leaves them vulnerable to the incursions of Muslim fundamentalism and the subsequent erosion of their multiculturalism. Investigations of local languages reveal varying degrees of opposition between tradition and modernity and between cultural evolution and permanent biases beneath idealistic representations. The cinematic image of a newly liberated woman, for instance, does not immediately create a real woman of such liberated roles and definitions. The return of a culture to its nationalistic “roots” may actually exclude women from public discourse and expose them to being “criticized, categorized, and scorned.” New “marriage laws,” which attempt to free women from feudalism, may have unforeseen consequences such as the increase of “single women, of de facto unions, of homosexuality, of late marriages, and divorce” which are not necessarily of benefit to either the individual or the society.
Foucault’s “archeological method” and Gramsci’s “Inventory” of the “historical processes,” along with the “traces” of Derrida and the “imaginary” of Lacan provide a syncretic conceptual framework for understanding the practical failures of Gender Theory and constructing a program for re-directing and traversing the minefield of real social action. Global uniformity and superficial Westernization must be eschewed. A sensitivity to the persistence of deep layers of popular local preferences is paramount. Western Theory and Eastern History gaze upon each other in a symbiotic match.
I have been in frequent and detailed correspondence with Clara Sarmento since visiting Portugal, Porto, and ISCAP in November 2002. I believe I have read almost every book, article, and paper she has authored during that period. I long ago ran out of superlatives with which to express the high esteem in which I hold her as a scholar/critic of literature, the arts, culture, and society. Her intelligence, erudition, and eloquence are matched only by her unabashed generosity of spirit. And I know that when she writes, she writes not only for herself but on behalf of her congenial and productive colleagues at ISCAP, with whom she hosted me when I lectured there on (of all people!) Charles Bukowski—not a noted theorist (!) but one who portrayed as fully as anyone ever has the signs, symptoms, and symbols of the Gender Games. Clara has produced here a magnificent collection of essays to be digested by specialist and generalist alike. I know that my own thought processes have already been modified by my reading of the manuscript and that the paradoxes explored herein will inevitably find their way into my teaching, my poetry, my fiction, my criticism, and my life as a man, an American, and, I hope, a thinking member of our species. I recommend it to all readers who care about, speculate upon, and involve themselves with the future of humanity.""
—Gerald Locklin, Ph.D., Professor of English, California State University, Long Beach; Part-Time Lecturer, Master of Professional Writing Program, University of Southern California
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,"Judy A. Hayden, Sharon Kay Masters, Rhonda L. S. Ovist and Kim Vaz",Many Floridas: Women Envisioning Change,Hardback,9781847182999,24.99,"Many Floridas: Women Envisioning Change began with a group feminist researchers, teachers, advocates and activists in Florida, long isolated and marginalized in small, under-funded and under-valued departments, programs and organizations, who worked together to form the Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies (FCWGS). The essays in this collection report on the status of women in Florida, discuss service-learning as a feminist pedagogy, describe graduate student’s research on issues concerning women in Florida, and debate the value and consequences of internationalizing Women’s Studies.
This collection of feminist papers, originally presented at the inaugural Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies conference in April, 2006, reflects the deeper meaning of its title. Each of the authors write from the standpoint of various intersections of class, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality and profession, and it is from these unique social locations that they dare to envision change.
""Everyone talks about bridging the gap between theory and practice, but the Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies (FCWGS) is actually walking the talk. Their work represents an exportable product! I immediately envisioned feminist academics in every state developing similar consortia to bring the concerns of everyday women into the heart of the academy. Women’s and Gender Studies Departments/Programs represent the gold standard for interdisciplinary and culturally-diverse studies. Yet, despite the fact that virtually every university and college stresses the value of interdisciplinary studies and a culturally-diverse curriculum, all too few academic institutions adequately fund and support their Women’s and Gender Studies Departments/Programs. Were Women’s and Gender Studies Departments/Programs amply staffed and financially supported, their faculty members and students could engage in the kind of meaningful service-learning initiatives and outreach activities described in Many Floridas.""
-Rosemarie Tong, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor for Health Care Ethics, Affiliate Professor of Women’s Studies, Director, Center for Professional and Applied Ethics
""This new collection responds to that clarion call by addressing the local and the global by interrupting and inserting unique voices within and outside of the classroom, making meaningful and durable connections between the educational institution and the community. In this cultural moment, where the struggles between and among communities, resources, and institutions multiply, it is vital that we push for nuanced conversations, courageous inquiry, and responsible suggestions. This collection is an exemplary model of transformative conversations; the kind of conversations that I hope are manifesting locally and globally.""
-Orathai Northern, PhD, Visiting Instructor, University of South Florida Lakeland
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Jopi Nyman and Pere Gallardo-Torrano,"Mapping Appetite: Essays on Food, Fiction and Culture",Hardback,9781847183040,29.99,"As recent years have witnessed a strong interest in the cultural representation of the culinary, ranging from analyses of food representation in film and literature to cultural readings of recipes, menus, national cuisines and celebrity chefs, the study of food narratives amidst contemporary consumer culture has become increasingly more important. This book seeks to respond to the challenge by presenting a series of case studies dealing with the representation of food and the culinary in a variety of cultural texts including post-colonial and popular fiction, women’s magazines and food writing. The contributors to the first part of the volume explore the various functions of food in post-colonial writing ranging from Salman Rushdie and Anita Desai to Zadie Smith and Maggie Gee in the context of globalization and multiculturalism. In the second part of the volume the focus is on two genres of popular fiction, the romantic novel and science fiction. While the romantic novels of Joanne Harris, for instance, link food and cooking with female empowerment, in science fiction food is connected with power and technology. The essays in the third part of the book explore the role of food in travel writing, women’s magazines and African American cookery books, showing how issues of gender, nation and race are present in food narratives.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Volker Schmidt,Modernity at the Beginning of the 21st Century,Hardback,9781847183026,34.99,"Modernity is back on sociology's agenda. From the beginnings of sociology as an academic discipline, questions surrounding the meaning and consequences of modernity have fascinated generations of sociologists. The initial interest in the concept was inspired by a sense of a deep rupture (and crisis) afflicting European society, a sense that society was approaching something fundamentally different from the past, an entirely new form of societal organization that bore little resemblance to anything known before. Where exactly this transformation was headed was by no means clear, but around the 18th century a growing number of European intellectuals and scholars realized that the changes that had been in the making since the late 15th century were irreversible and could not be contained in any particular region or confined to particular sectors of society, but would ultimately transform all spheres of life.
Like other thinkers, sociologists observed this transformation with awe, and their attitude towards it has always been ambivalent. The 20th century, during which modernity gradually began to break through globally, was also a century during which many sociologists became increasingly disillusioned with the promises of ""the modern project"". But with the exhaustion of the energies of ""postmodernism"", the intellectual movement that wanted to bury modernity, the interest in modernity began to resurface again; not least because it became increasingly clear that the world is far from approaching a societal condition pointing systematically beyond modernity. Instead, we are witnessing an intensification of modernization processes around the world.
But what is modernity, anyway? The aim of the present volume is to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the meaning of modernity and about the significance of modernization processes in non-Western societies. As befits a subject matter as controversial and complex at this one, the book's chapters offer no conclusive answers to the questions they raise and address. The debate about modernity must and will continue, and one hopes that it will be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect despite sometimes fierce disagreement between the participants. For only if we listen to each other can we make genuine intellectual progress.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Edward H. Huijbens and Ólafur Páll Jónsson,"Sensi/able Spaces: Space, Art and the Environment Proceedings of the SPARTEN conference, Reykjavík, June 1st and 2nd, 2006",Hardback,9781847183231,39.99,"The book SENSI/ABLE SPACES focuses on the ways in which space, art and the environment interlace and interact, dealing with the perception and conception of spaces in the built as well as natural environment. The book brings together a wide range of academics, from the physical sciences, social sciences and humanities, as well as artists who have an interest in the way space is sensed, understood and reconfigured.
Spaces today are continually being reconstituted and reformulated in various ways, often relying on notions of what is sensible, narrowly defined by groups with an ideological agenda of some kind or vested economic interests. These sensible factors often obscure and ignore notions of the sensable-that which people perceive through the senses while being-in spaces.
Space is a topic equally of various academic fields, such as geography, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, physics, bilology, and many more. But space is also the subject of - or a frame for - any artist, whose work is neither academic, in any standard sense of the term, and yet heavily theoretical or speculative.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Michael E. Connaughton and Suellen Rundquist,The American Village in a Global Setting: Selected papers from an interdisciplinary conference in honor of Sinclair Lewis and Ida K. Compton,Hardback,9781847183132,39.99,"In October 2005 a conference honoring the contributions of Sinclair Lewis to Midwest and American culture and celebrating the friendship between Sinclair Lewis and Ida K. Compton was held at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Sinclair Lewis would no doubt have been flattered, and perhaps a bit surprised by the breadth of this conference in his honor. The fact that scholars, writers, students and readers gathered to discuss his work and its broader influence would have pleased him. He would have learned that readers still found stimulus for serious thought in his writing, and that his works can serve as a springboard to discussion of today’s societal issues, some of which might surprise him considerably.
The papers selected from the conference entitled The American Village in a Global Setting consider elements of Lewis’ world through today’s lens. In Part I, his version of community is compared to that documented in other ways, including architecture and television. Scholars address issues such as anti-Semitism, theocratic communities, the Irish, and outdoor life. In Part II, the concept of community is expanded to the visions of other authors including his contemporaries, such as Martha Ostenso, Josephine Donovan, and Willa Cather, as well as more recent writers. In Part III, today’s social and cultural issues in America are addressed, expressing the global and interdisciplinary intent of the conference. And, last, Part IV continues the global theme, addressing international communities and pedagogical philosophies through film and literature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Clint Miller,The Book of Change,Hardback,9781847183071,29.99,"The Book of Change presents a foundational form of philosophy in an original form of symmetrical verse, translating fundamental logico-philosophical truths into English. The work is a synthesis of symbolic logic and poetry, unlocking the underlying secrets of the universe, line by line, through two-sided imagery.
The scope of the book is truly universal. Starting from the world’s Beginning, the nature of reality is laid out in lines of logic, tracing a lineage of reason through topics as diverse as duality, causality, probability, number theory, physics, ethics, statistics, politics, and, of course, religion.
The Book of Change attempts to impart a unifying understanding of the world’s essence to any reader. Profound mathematical and scientific truths are simplified into images painted with poetry. A new system of thought lies open, now, to the public.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Takehito Onishi and Benny Teh Cheng Guan,The Shape of the East Asian Economy to Come: Lonely Rhetoric or Global Reality,Hardback,9781847182982,39.99,"Sometimes we hope to see a ""Savior"" of the secular world coming from an unknown alien realm. Such imaginings can encourage us to create both new concerns and goals toward which we scramble. We are always looking for the birth of a Venus. Since the ""Miracle of East Asia"" was pronounced by the World Bank, Asian economic development has been set against a specific background. Tigers have been sought in the jungles of Asia in place of the tragedies found in Africa or South America.
However the Asian economic crisis exposed the misconduct of policy advocated by the then dominant worldly consensus. East Asian developments once again gave an urgent impetus to reexamining conventional wisdom.
More recently, the coalescence of an ""East Asian economic community"" forms a backdrop for discussions on the future shape of the global system. Through this new paradigm will it be possible to further cultivate the fruits of Asian economic experiences? Or, by this rhetoric, will we merely be attempting a lonely effort to seek deliverance from the current realities of the savage world of the free market economy? This volume sheds light on various aspects of and phases in the most recent arguments, bringing together the work of European and East Asian scholars.
Part One is devoted to the political and economic dynamics contributing to the emergence of an integrating East Asian entity. Part Two illustrates the challenges and problems faced by selected individual countries that would need to be overcome in creating an East Asian economy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Barry M. Doyle,Urban Politics and Space in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Regional Perspectives,Hardback,9781847182920,34.99," This book addresses the increasing regionalisation of urban governance and politics in an era of industrialisation, suburbanisation and welfare extension. It provides an important reassessment of the role, structure and activities of urban elites, highlighting their vitality and their interdependence and demonstrating the increasing regionalisation of municipal politics as towns sought to promote themselves, extend services and even expand physically onto a regional level. Moreover, it explores the discourses surrounding space in which gender, class, morality and community all feature prominently. How urban space and its uses were defined and redefined became key political weapons across the regions of England in the nineteenth century and these chapters show how a range of sources (maps, poems, songs, paintings, illustrated journalism, social investigations, historical texts) were employed by contemporaries to shape the urban and its image, often by placing it in a regional context or contributing to the creation of a regional image and identity. This collection illustrates the continuing vitality of the study of urban politics and governance and presents a rare attempt to place English urban history in a regional context.
“Barry Doyle has assembled an impressive team of experts on urban politics to examine not just party politics but the wider machinery of government - the boards, agencies, and committees – that shaped British towns and cities after 1830. Space and place were contested and negotiated, and a distinctive sense of local identity emerged. In so doing, the collection challenges some of the generalisations about the governance of urban Britain and reminds us that, despite a shrinking globe, the local and regional are crucial to our everyday lives. The book should be read by all interested in, and especially those working for, local government.”
—Professor Richard Rodger, University of Edinburgh
“In Urban Politics and Urban Space in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Regional Perspectives Barry Doyle brings together nine original essays by both established and younger authors to explore three inter-related themes in urban history – politics, space and region from the early to mid nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The book is conveniently divided into three sections dealing with structures of politics, politics, institutions and urban management, and governance discourses and space. Each of the contributions to this volume promises to both enrich our knowledge of specific moments in British politico-urban development (through the study of discrete developments in time and space), and to open up and extend the debate on the British variant of urban modernity. Each examines the ways in which local power, space and regional relations developed and changed between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. Localities, their politics and communal identities are never really far from a national context; indeed, they largely shaped it, as these essays make clear. Doyle is to be commended for his endeavour, not just as the editor but in particular for his introduction to the volume. In a richly referenced essay that comes in at just over seven and half thousand words, he casts a panoramic view over the field in the last few decades, making connections where few contemporary urban historians care to tread. Doyle gives us a forceful challenge to what he sees as a particularly English malaise in this period, namely that of failing to recognise the potential of regional and local government to shape and manage the major reallocation of space and power; a vital sphere of public life that is contemporary to our own times. It is a masterly and well-informed piece of writing that will set the standard for some years to come.”
—Professor Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick.
","""This collection illustrates the problems with confining actions to 'party' politics at a local level, and highlights the need to reassess the role of party in urban spaces. Doyle offers an eclectic but well-compiled selection of essays which will provide the basis for studies of regional political space.""
Zoe Dyndor, University of Northampton, Urban History (Cambridge Journals), Volume 36/1 - 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Judith Barr Bachay and Raúl Fernández-Calienes,Women Moving Forward Volume Two: An Intersectional Lens for a Tapestry of Diverse Voices,Hardback,9781847183057,39.99,"“Drs. Judith Bachay and Raúl Fernández-Calienes present us with another outstanding volume of narratives that provide a much needed forum to share stories of the global movement of women towards empowerment and the securing of their human rights. Each of the twenty-three chapters’ authors share different aspects of the issues and challenges women have or will encounter as they “move forward.” The diversity of the stories reflects the diversity of the authors. As examples, Ariela Agosín discusses the progress Chile has made in recent years towards providing women with a voice. Katariina Juliao provides the reader with a comparison between the United States and Finland as to the evolution of women’s rights using examples from politics, education, and the workplace. Many of the authors explore the new difficulties and prejudices faced by women and/or their families who have migrated to foreign countries to escape the oppressive conditions in their homelands. Others reveal to the reader through first-person narratives, the intrapersonal conflicts experienced by those who are “moving forward” but fear the loss of their heritage. Women Moving Forward: Volume 2 delivers what the editors promise: a scholarly forum for the development of an intersectional perspective that extends our awareness of how women are moving beyond victimhood. This is a book that both inspires and challenges the reader!”
Nancy Borkowski, D.B.A., C.P.A., Associate Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs, South University (West Palm Beach, Florida)
“Women Moving Forward-Volume 2 is a cornucopia of issues and ideas, offered by diverse voices that lay the ground work for new ways of thinking and meaning making. Judith Barr Bachay and Raúl Fernández-Calienes are opening up spaces for an intersectional analysis that includes the unique experience of women. This is a must-read for social workers, academics, and human rights activists who want to learn about and from women who are claiming their place in every aspect of the world arena. I can't wait to meet and learn from the authors of Volume 3!”
Carol Heinisch, M.A., M.S.W., Social Worker, Jefferson County Public Defender’s Office (Denver, Colorado)
“This is a weaving of stories that speaks centrally to hope, fortitude, resilience, identity, and compassion amongst women. Within these writings is a central theme of finding meaning in adversity, promoting advocacy and justice, and fostering dignity in the human community through access and opportunity. Robert Coles posits, what we need is a respect “for narrative as everyone’s rock-bottom capacity, but also as a universal gift, to be shared with others.” These writings are a validation of our experiences and journeys to overcome struggles as women. Yet, narrative alone is not enough, as many of us know who have taken on these challenges of transforming communities and systems. Change occurs through the actions and resolve of individuals who courageously take on these issues. Assuredly, in this text, you’ll find this scale of synergistic energy as well. L. Sunny Hansen uses a poignant metaphor that “we are all quilters on this planet, seeking to understand, value, and connect with each other in a sustainable future free from violence.” Identifying where you fit into this “quilt” is, in part, what the authors writing here want you to examine. Urging you into identifying the essential role you might play in “sewing” together a better future for all humanity.”
Heather Zeng, Ph.D., Human Resource Development Consultant / Career Counselo, (Freemont, California)
“Significantly real world, unrelenting, and ultra-compelling are but a few defining indicators to describe these writings. This discriminating collection expresses the decisive dimensions that embody grassroots to global settings. From the evidenced shared aims of humanity reflected in the versatile matter-of-fact life experiences to the clearly conveyed urgent need for immediate involvement, these treatises are foundational to halting and de-fragmenting the variant layers of widespread colonial and post-colonial systems of injustice. To arrest this worldwide convention of minority-majority dissent, cultural hegemony, warfare, gendered suffrage and the socio-economic-politics against civilization, will require a revolution of sorts. This integral text establishes a wide-ranging view towards that negotiation and resolve and further presents a medium of critical reasoning to execute social reconstruction to dismantle the inequality that wrongly saturates macro to micro communities. No matter what societal position validates your being, this profound volume is a must read.”
Arnold Munroe, Ed.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Educational Studies Department, University of Central Florida (Orlando, Florida)
“This book illustrates the profoundly personal quest of “women moving forward” despite the burden of geopolitical place, structural and cultural constraints, economic hardship, and gender. The whole balances a celebration of localized and personalized advancements with a portrait of daily struggles for justice. Women write of finding strength in their families, ethnicities, culture, and spiritual beliefs, while confronting unequal footing in personal and professional spaces and private and public places. This work offers inspiration, as well as critical assessments of what women have endured, what they are enduring, and for what they are striving.”
Patricia Widener, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Florida Atlantic University (Davie, Florida)
“This uplifting book engages with the dilemmas and joys facing all those women who, at some time in their lives, have had to cross borders of one sort or another. The United States is the point of arrival for most contributors, and their earlier experiences—as immigrant, refugee or displaced person, as educational or health migrant, or as seeker after freedom and opportunity—emerge vividly from every page. The rich cultural diversity of this volume extends to Latin America, Jamaica, Palestine, Africa and Finland with a series of thought-provoking tales of sorrow, hope and, particularly, of faith. Interdisciplinary contributions include fields as diverse as traumatic exposure, second language acquisition and human trafficking. Women Moving Forward provides an essential source—not only an inspiration to those women still forced to follow similar paths but a necessary stimulant to evoking understanding, sympathy and support from those whose way has been less traumatic. It will be rewarding reading for all.”
Brenda Bolton, University of London (London, England, U.K.)",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,"Dr. Anthony D’Souza and Dr. Carmo D’Souza Foreword by Dr. Marian Pinheiro, Principal V. M. Salgaocar College of Law & Dean of Faculty of Law, Goa University",World Constitutionalism,Hardback,9781847182937,39.99,"Intellectual quest for World Order is as old as the history of mankind. Saints and sages, religious visionaries and philosophers from all great civilizations have left their valuable contributions on the peaceful sands of time. However much of this wealth has been obliterated by other events of history wherein power, might and grandeur were used as the instruments of exploitation by a section of human beings . Time has come to research on the past, and on its basis to analyze the present and visualize a future for a just world order.
In World Constitutionalism, over two dozen scholars, academicians, administrators, and leaders of civil society have come together to pen their innovative ideas. It is an attempt to carry their vision over national barriers through the realms of Human Rights, Environmental Law, Feminist Justice, Global Democracy and so on . In the fast evolving twenty first century , World Constitutionalism is already exploding on the global scene in all fields of life , as human race finds enlightenment through information and networking revolution, technology development, and conscious spiritual awakening taking place from East to West. World Constitutionalism endeavours to foster scientific study of world governance as a multi disciplinary subject with an added flavour of law to give it special sanctity in the minds of the Peoples of the World. The book is an addition to the growing movement for World Unity that presently reechoes round the globe.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Antonio Medina-Rivera and Diana Orendi,Crossing Over Redefining the Scope of Border Studies,Hardback,9781847183415,34.99,"The present volume brings together selected proceedings of the 2005 Cleveland State University Symposium “Crossing Over: Learning to Navigate the Borderlands of Intercultural Encounters.” The collection of essays offers some samples of the complex and potentially infinite array of investigations that the newly expanded field of ‘Border Studies’ can add to the academy’s scholarly enterprise. The articles collected in this volume demonstrate innovative approaches to comparative explorations of topics in American, Latin-American, European, and Post-Colonial literature as well as Linguistics, History and Education.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Brendan Keane,"""Crouching Tiger"": Quality and its Implementation in the Indian and Irish Software Communities",Hardback,9781847183262,29.99,"There are few people who have not heard of the Irish software success story. Once a country whose primary industries were agriculture and manufacturing, Ireland has become a focal point for many multinational corporations setting up major offshore software bases. There has also been strong growth in the indigenous software sector. However, the Irish software industry is facing some new challenges. Low-cost countries are investing in the growth of their software industry. And, with this investment, they are also focusing on software quality to given themselves a further competitive edge. This is particularly true in the case of India. Both Ireland and India hold much in common in that their respective economies can boast English speaking, well-educated workforces. Consequently, the Irish software industry must be aware of strengths demonstrated by their competitors in India.
This volume explores the attitudes and experiences of the members of the Indian and Irish software communities towards one aspect of quality - that of software process quality. A comparison of the implementation of software process models is presented, concluding with recommendations to support the Irish software industry’s competitiveness in a global marketplace.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Zhang Pinggong,Culture and Ideology at an Invented Place,Hardback,9781847183330,39.99,"Being a special kind of landscape, the theme park has become one of major subjects in interdisciplinary studies and received increasing scholarly attention in the past few decades. Perspectives have varied from American approaches which treat the theme park as the production base of the American Dream to various interpretation of the tourist space in semiotic, structural and post-modernistic approaches. Other studies of the theme park have been conducted in a practical way with a focus in economic development and urban designing for the local and peripheral surroundings. The body of research is enormous and has proved to be very beneficial in understanding the theme park as a multiple space in the ever-changing context.
Overseas Chinese Town theme park (OCT) is one of the most popular tourist sights in China, a cultural space which epitomizes the country’s cultural business and Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, an emerging metropolis. As the ultimate icon of Chinese and global cultural representation, the theme park has attracted visitors the world over. This book presents for the first time an analysis of narratives which surround the park.
The research of OCT is to shed a cultural, political and ideological light on the “modern pleasure space” constructed and consumed in contemporary China. In view of the overwhelming quantity of theme park study in the USA and Europe, a shift of orientation in the study of theme parks in China becomes significant as the emerging theme parks in the country are described as “springing up like bamboo shoots after a rain”. As an important study of an important contemporary phenomenon, it illustrates in considerable detail the distinctive nature of Chinese theme park development and will be of interest to a range of readers in fields such as cultural studies, tourism, sociology and human geography.
“Non-Western theme parks have attracted very little attention from social scientists, even though they can be considered important sites for the examination of the influence and limits of globalization. With this important study of the OCT theme park, Zhang provides us with a detailed examination of the extent to which the Western model of the theme park is replicated in the Chinese context. In this way, he provides crucial insights that will be of great interest to students of globalization.”
—Professor Alan Bryman, University of Leicester
“The work provides a very readable, critical review of the recent development of theme parks in China, in particular the Overseas Chinese Town Theme Park at Shenzen. The work is well-grounded in a critical understanding of the role of theme parks as cultural “texts”… As an important study of an important contemporary phenomenon, it illustrates in considerable detail the distinctive nature of OCT park and will be of interest to a range of readers in fields such as cultural studies, tourism, sociology and human geography.”
—Professor Stephen Williams, Staffordshire University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Debra Popkin,"Francophone Women Coming of Age: Memoirs of Childhood and Adolescence from France, Africa, Quebec and the Caribbean",Hardback,9781847183224,29.99,"This book began as a panel of University professors on the theme of Francophone Women, Coming of Age, Memoirs of Childhood and Adolescence, presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia, 2006. The essays center on the plight of growing up female in male-dominated Francophone cultures. Issues of culture, tradition, religion (Catholic and Muslim), parental conflicts and sibling rivalry are addressed in the works of authors from France, Quebec, Africa and the Caribbean. Authors whose memoirs and fiction are analyzed in this study span three continents––Europe, North America (Quebec and the Caribbean) and Africa––but they share a common search for identity and self-definition.
Dr. Beth Gale (Clark University) analyzes role-play and the use of language in the works of Annie Ernaux (France) and Assia Djebar (North Africa). Post-colonial angst and cross-cultural misunderstanding are the focus of the study of Aminata Sow Fall’s Douceurs du bercail (Senegal, West Africa) by Dr. Natalie Edwards (Wagner College). Two chapters focus on Caribbean authors, from Guadeloupe: Dr. Debra Popkin (Baruch College CUNY) analyzes Gisèle Pineau’s special relationship with grandmother who gave her a sense of cultural identity; Dr. Leah Tolbert Lyons (Middle Tennessee State University) discusses the negative impact of the bad mothering in Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s first novel, As the Sorcerer Said … Three chapters are devoted to writers from French-speaking Canada: Dr. Myrna Delson-Karan (St. John’s University) traces the portraits of children and adolescents in the works of Gabrielle Roy; Dr. Pascale Vergereau-Dewey (Kutztown University, Pennsylvania) explores the tormented childhood of Marie-Claire Blais’s Pauline Archange; Dr. Edith B. Vandervoort (Defense Language Institute in Monterey) examines the search for identity and tortured father-daughter relationships in the novels of Gabrielle Gourdeau, Monique Proulx, and Marie Laberge (contemporary writers from Quebec), The seven chapters in this book explore the challenges faced by women from late 19th century through the 20th and into the 21st century as they gradually gained a voice to express their changing roles in society.
Themes to be examined include sexual awakening, teenage pregnancy, and the rituals of coming of age. Conflicts occur between daughter and parents who inculcate traditional values and try to restrict their child's freedom.
The importance of writing as a source of liberation and self-definition will be explored in light of the young girl’s quest for freedom. Why write memoirs? Why write in French? These issues are discussed especially in cases where French is the language of the colonizer (Assia Djebar and Gisèle Pineau) or where French is essential to the preservation of one’s cultural identity, as it is for Quebec writers.
This book will be a fine resource for college and university professors and students in programs of French, Women's Studies, and French/Francophone Literature as well as African, Caribbean, and Quebec Studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Glen Newey,Freedom of Expression: Counting the Costs,Hardback,9781847183606,34.99,"Freedom of expression has long been cherished as a liberal ideal. But in the political climate of the new millennium free expression finds itself under assault.
Muslims greeted the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad with outrage. The Pope was forced to issue an apology after Muslims denounced his remarks about a Byzantine emperor as anti-Islamic. Meanwhile in the UK, the play Behzti was cancelled after protests by Sikhs and Christian activists attempted to force the BBC not to screen Jerry Springer: the Opera.
The political establishment, as well as religious activists, has also tried to gag free speech. Moves to ban inciting religious hatred and “glorifying” acts of terrorism, have stirred up political ferment. In several jurisdictions Holocaust denial is already outlawed. The advent of the internet, with its lack of regulation, has fuelled long-standing feminist concerns about pornography. Child pornography has become rampant on the web.
This collection explores the new challenges to free expression posed by cultural and political conflict and by technological change. It asks whether classical and modern liberalism still carry conviction against challenges to liberal orthodoxy.
The contributors ask how to weigh the claims of free expression against other fundamental rights such as group membership, personal privacy, and the protection of the public sphere both as a discursive realm, and as a cultural space. Together they tackle the key questions facing free expression today:
What does free expression mean in an age of global communications?
How, if at all, can it be traded against other goods?
Can free speech survive, given the growing awareness of its costs?
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Danielle A. Hidalgo and Kristen Barber,Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina,Hardback,9781847183620,34.99,"For those interested in learning more about the personal impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Narrating the Storm serves as an essential read. This important and timeless volume is a compilation of sixteen narratives that address the experiences of Gulf Coast residents, faculty, and graduate students who were caught up in the largest (not so) natural disaster in United States history. Each contributor deploys storytelling sociology as a methodological approach in order to illustrate how “personal” experiences with disaster are not so personal, but rather reflect and are informed by larger social phenomena related to issues including race, class, gender, age, bureaucracy, risk, collective memory, the blasé, and more. The narratives in this volume exemplify how inequality and injustice are unveiled, exacerbated, and created by the occurrence of disaster; and reveal the sociological in everyday and not-so-everyday experiences.
","“Before we are done with it, hundreds of books and thousands of articles will be written about that set of events we have come to call Katrina. But none of them will be anything like this remarkable collection of memoirs. The authors gathered here all know how to spin a tale and how to do so with a rich sociological sensibility. But, far more to the point, they all have gripping stories to tell.”
– Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters
“. . . Narrating the Storm is must reading for anyone interested in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath. Emotionally evocative, riveting at times, this engaging collection of original essays is replete with sociological insight. The book is an important contribution, as well, to the genre of storytelling sociology.”
– Ronald J. Berger, author of Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry
“The stories told by these individuals provide compelling applications and examples of sociological concepts and theories that serve to stimulate our sociological imaginations. Narrating the Storm is an important contribution to society’s efforts to better understand this latest American tragedy unleashed by Katrina.”
– Duane A. Gill, editor of Voices of Katrina, the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy
“The authors . . . give us thoughtful, personal, often emotional narratives as well as clear analytical insight on a wide range of issues . . . Narrating the Storm humanizes the disaster with its honest stories and aptly uses theoretical tools to place the stories in a larger sociological context. This is a unique and engaging book.”
– Alice Fothergill, author of Heads Above Water: Gender, Class, and Family in the Grand Forks Flood
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Patrick Curry and Angela Voss,Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination,Hardback,9781847183613,39.99,"Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination represents the cutting-edge of contemporary thought and research on divination. The thirteen authors come from a variety of academic disciplines, ranging from anthropology and classics to English literature and religious studies, and all address the question of divination, astrology and oracles in a spirit of critical but sympathetic inquiry. The emphasis is on a participatory and reflexive approach which is firmly post-positivist, seeking to understand the divinatory act on its own terms within widely varying contexts – ancient Greek and Chaldean philosophy and theurgy, Theravadan Buddhism, Biblical studies, Elizabethan Hermeticism, Jacobean drama, Heideggerian philosophy, Medieval scholasticism, 19th century occultism, contemporary Guatemalan divination and Western medical practice.
The authors are all teachers or researchers in the area of divination and symbolism, which is a new disciplinary focus developing at the University of Kent, Canterbury under the aegis of the MA programme in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. The essays in this volume originally contributed to an international conference of the same name held there in April 2006.
","""...all papers reflect the currently renaissance of divination studies within humanities and social sciences and will undoubtedly further stimulate this development.""
Audrius Beinorius, Vilnius University, Acta Orientalia Vilnensia Volume 9, Issue 1, 2009
""...a central theme is that divinatory knowledge involves a different mode of insight and a corresponding shift in perception. The essays range over many cultures and schools, including Chaldea, Stoicism, lamblichus, Theravadan Buddhism, astrology, medicine and Mayan culture. The tension between divination and the normal approach of academic studies is particularly fruitful and brings the reader to a deeper understanding of the meaning of participatory knowledge.""
Network Review, Summer 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,"Laura M. Popova, Charles W. Hartley and Adam T. Smith",Social Orders and Social Landscapes,Hardback,9781847183590,44.99,"Social Orders and Social Landscapes marks a new direction in research for Eurasian archaeology that focuses on how people lived in their local environment and interacted with their near and distant neighbours, rather than on overarching comparisons of archaeological culture complexes. Stemming from the 2005 University of Chicago Eurasian Archaeology Conference, the papers collected here reflect this new research agenda, though the way in which each author addressed the theme of the conference, and thus the book, was strikingly varied. This diversity arises out of the field’s intellectual flux driven by the principled engagement of the rich analytical traditions of the Soviet/CIS, Anglo-American, and European schools. Despite the variability in approaches and subject matter, several key themes emerged: 1) the reinterpretation culture categories by examining particular aspects of social life; 2) the role social memory plays in the production of landscape and place; 3) the influence of the built environment on societies; and 4) the ways in which economic considerations affect social orders and landscapes. The result is a book that helps to re-image Eurasia as a complex landscape fragmented by historically contingent and shifting ecological and social boundaries rather than a bounded mosaic of culture areas or environmental zones.
“Scholarly research on Eurasia was transformed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Entire areas and fields of research became accessible to European and American scholars for the first time, resulting in the emergence of new centers specializing in primary field investigations throughout the vast, politically transformed landmass of Eurasia. One such center is the University of Chicago that has recently sponsored two large international conferences on Eurasian archaeology. Social Orders and Social Landscapes is the product of the second Chicago conference held in spring 2005. The editors of the volume should be proud of their efforts that have resulted in such a broad ranging and prompt publication.
The articles encompass a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology, history, art history, palynology, and zooarchaeology; extend chronologically from Neolithic and Bronze Age times to the formation of national identity in Turkey in the early 20th century; and range geographically from Europe to China. Several articles reconstruct basic subsistence activities; others analyze distinctive settlement types and political and cultural frontiers, including the assimilation and emergence of new, self-defined ethnic groups and the selective adoption of new systems of religious belief. What unites this diverse collection is their consistent emphasis on the social construction of reality and the production of social landscapes and memories that altered perceptions of the physical world and mediated the practical activities that here have been convincingly reconstructed from the archaeological record. In so doing, rigid stereotypes are questioned and novel interpretations persuasively advanced. Early Bronze Age pastoralism on the south Russian steppes did not consist exclusively of herding animals nor was it combined, as it was later in the Iron Age, with the pursuit of agriculture; rather, D. Anthony and D. Brown suggest that at least in the Samara river valley the herding of animals occurred along side the intensive gathering of wild, nutritionally rich plants. The kalas of ancient Chorasmia are not cities, nor even proto-urban formations, but rather are large, heavily fortified enclosures meant to repel attacks of armed nomadic cavalry. They represent a continuation of a distinct Central Asian settlement pattern that began in the Bronze Age and that formed the center of a landscape divided into contiguous, self-contained oases. The Mongols not only herded livestock, but also farmed, fished, hunted, and traded throughout the vast area that they had conquered, uniting most of Eurasia into a single, economically integrated system. New perspectives proliferate throughout this richly detailed and extremely broad ranging collected volume.”
— Phil Kohl, Professor of Anthropology and the Kathryn W. Davis Professor of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College
“ “Social Orders and Social Landscapes” is a stimulating addition to the still small literature in English making the rich datasets from the archaeology of Eurasia widely accessible to Western scholars. The authors of the eighteen chapters analyze data from China to the Mediterranean, from the fourth millennium BCE through the fourteenth century CE, with the tools of art and architectural history, text analysis, paleobotany and paleozoology, and anthropological theory, among others. The product of a conference at the University of Chicago, this book fulfils the goal of the graduate student organizers to apply interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the archaeology and history of the Eurasian landmass in local terms through a focus on “how people lived in their local environments.” In the decade and a half since the end of the Soviet Union, scholarly communication has broadened and the mutual influences have stimulated many new and thought provoking views on the Eurasian past. This book is an exemplary product of the new scholarly discourse.”
— Karen S. Rubinson, Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Joel Kuortti,Writing Imagined Diasporas: South Asian Women Reshaping North American Identity,Hardback,9781847183422,29.99,"Joel Kuortti’s Writing Imagined Diasporas: South Asian Women Reshaping North American Identity is a study of diasporic South Asian women writers. It argues that the diasporic South Asians are not merely assimilating to their host cultures but they are also actively reshaping them through their own, new voices bringing new definitions of identity. As diaspora does not emerge as a mere sociological fact but it becomes what it is because it is said to be what it is, the writings of imagined diasporas challenge “national” discourses.
Diaspora brings to mind various contested ideas and images. It can be a positive site for the affirmation of an identity, or, conversely, a negative site of fears of losing that identity. Diaspora signals an engagement with a matrix of diversity: of cultures, languages, histories, people, places, times. What distinguishes diaspora from some other types of travel is its centripetal dimension. It does not only mean that people are dispersed in different places but that they congregate in other places, forming new communities. In such gatherings, new allegiances are forged that supplant earlier commitments. New imagined communities arise that not simply substitute old ones but form a hybrid space in-between various identifications. This book looks into the ways in which diasporic Indian literature handles these issues. In the context of diaspora there is an imaginative construction of collective identity in the making, That a given diaspora comes to be seen as a community is the result of a process of imagining, at the same time creating new marginalities, hybridities and dependencies, resulting in multiple marginalizations, hyphenizations and demands for allegiance.
The study concentrates on eleven contemporary women writers from the United States and Canada who write on South Asian diasporic experiences. The writers are Ramabai Espinet, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amulya Malladi, Sujata Massey, Bharati Mukherjee, Uma Parameswaran, Kirin Narayan, Anita Rau Badami, Robbie Clipper Sethi, Shauna Singh Baldwin, and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,"Rosalind Edwards, Jane Franklin and Janet Holland","Assessing Social Capital: Concept, Policy and Practice",Paperback,9781847183934,19.99,"Social capital is a key concept in academic research and policymaking internationally. It focuses attention on social relationships, values, and access to resources in families, communities, regions and nations. But does the concept, with its focus on particular aspects of social life and the thrust of its influence on policy initiatives, hide more than it illuminates? Is it even harmful? Can social capital ideas be amended or adapted to bring other issues into view, or are there alternative concepts that are better able to address contemporary social, economic and political life?
This edited collection ¬brings together contributions, including from internationally renowned researchers, that assess social capital - as a theoretical concept, its shaping of policy development, and its practices in research and everyday life. Some reveal the conceptual lacks and policy drawbacks of social capital, and put forward alternatives. Others pursue mainstream models and their adaptation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Karen Frostig and Kathy A. Halamka,"Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism",Hardback,9781847183767,39.99,"How has feminism matured over the years?
What are the pressing agendas for today’s feminists working in the arts?
Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism, emerges as a navigational text, celebrating past victories while charting new directions for today’s second wave and third wave feminists. A feminist anthology, Blaze is comprised of feminist artists, art historians, critics, journalists, curators, interdisciplinary artists, and arts administrators of diverse backgrounds, living across the United States. The book grows out of the 2006 Annual National Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts.
Blaze features 15 detailed and well-documented feminist histories that narrate a number of pertinent strands of activism regarding feminist art, scholarship, and organizational development while exploring current crossroads. Conversations occur between myriad groups of women: second wave to third wave; third wave to second wave; second wave to second wave; third wave to women who do not identify themselves as feminists. The book addresses a number of timely issues related to representation, work, collaboration, environmental interventions, and social justice platforms.
Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism captures feminists arts professionals working together across differences. In a world filled with strife, it is this form of engagement that inspires continued activism.
For further information, please also see www.blazediscourse.com
","“BLAZE is a work of love and commitment that chronicles the breadth and depth of American feminist creative practice across generations, as it speculates on the position of women in society and manifests in the making of art.”
Carol Becker
Dean of the School of the Arts, Columbia University
Her latest book: Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art
""A fascinating potpourri of essays ranging from a succinct account of how to start your own excellent museum to art criticism and blogging, from past history of the WCA to the return of the nude in recent art. Everyone will find something valuable in this collection, to which many of the smartest minds writing about women and art have contributed.""
Ann Sutherland Harris
Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
First President of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA)
BLAZE contains a provocative and piercing analysis of contemporary feminist art, spanning “35 years of passionate fury, sacrifice, and camaraderie between women.” Its informed and intelligent essays, written by a diversity of voices, are mandatory reading for anyone interested in tracking the impact of the revolution which demolished male domination in the art world. The book usefully contributes to a wide range of subjects: expansion of the canon; increased exhibition opportunities for women; the rise of eco-feminism and collaborative methodologies; public art projects; art education; and the history of a still thriving national Women’s Caucus for Art. It successfully maps the complexities of several generations of shifting feminist agendas, and makes a valuable contribution to where things might be headed now.
Suzi Gablik
Has Modernism Failed? And The Reenchantment of Art
For more than 30 years, feminist artists, curators, critics, organizations, and institutions have transformed the visual arts. BLAZE: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism is a dynamic anthology of articles by a stunning collection of second and third wave American feminist art world participants. This outstanding volume documents the recent history of feminist art in America, providing a fascinating array of perspectives that reveal the struggles and triumphs of women in the arts. Co-editors Karen Frostig and Kathy Halamka have provided readers with multiple visions from some of the most respected figures in recent American cultural history. Artists, scholars, journalists, arts administrators, and anyone interested in the state of the arts will find BLAZE compelling and essential-all the more so as women artists continue their righteous quest for full dignity and equality in all fields of human endeavor.
Paul Von Blum
African American Studies and Art History, UCLA
This book is a must to understand the Feminist Art Movement and the significant role it has played and still does play in shaping contemporary art ideas. It does double duty by documenting the day-to-day history of the Feminist Art Movement as seen through the eyes of participants in the Women's Caucus for Art, providing information on the participating women, on the exhibitions and events that brought the Feminist Art Movement to the public, its goals, and growing pains, and at the same time, by presenting the theoretical and intellectual issues that gave rise to the movement and that are key to its impact. Very few books intermix documentation and theory. In doing so, the editors and authors enlighten readers in a way that a book focused only on one or the other cannot. The book also enlarges the discourse around the movement. Many books document the artists involved, but few give information about the art historians, curators, administrators, and institutions that were key to giving the movement the visibility and support necessary for it to make an impact. The footnotes and bibliographies attached to each chapter are a valuable resource, providing direction for the reader to explore the feminist movement further. Until now, the Women's Caucus for Art has remained under-documented and under-appreciated for its role in furthering the Feminist Art Movement and ensuring its place in the cultural record. This book remedies that oversight.
Judith K. Brodsky
Third President of the Women's Caucus for Art and past President of College Art Association
Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Visual Arts, Rutgers University and Founding Director, The Brodsky Center for Innovative Multiples. With Dr. Ferris Olin, she is the Founding Director of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, and co-facilitator of The Feminist Art Project, a national program to celebrate the achievements of the Feminist Art Movement
The breadth of subjects in BLAZE that are of interest to women’s studies faculty and students is impressive, such as feminist generations, ecofeminism, attention to mother-daughter art, rituals, mentoring, and the role of personal history. BLAZE will also be welcomed by women’s studies faculty who teach “women in the arts” courses, for whom the entire book will be of value. Faculty who teach introduction to women’s studies from a humanities (or even more interdisciplinary) perspective will find it much easier to incorporate the arts into their courses by using this text… BLAZE will fill many niches and stimulate many minds.
Phyllis Holman Weisbard
Distinguished Academic Librarian, University of Wisconsin System Women’s Studies Librarian
Editor of Feminist Collections: A quarterly of women's studies resources
I admire both the scope and ambition of this volume of feminist essays. It ranges from a lively and accurate historical account of the formative period of the 70’s allowing the reader to relive the challenges and camaraderie of those early days, to new topics and preoccupations such as eco-feminism and feminism in the digital era of blogs and anonymity. Nevertheless, I am struck by certain enduring traits. Our desire to promote the proactive and the empathetic is a hallmark of feminism, and feminist organizations now as then. Whatever the tensions and differences between first, second and third wave feminisms, there is a dynamic mix of view points in this volume which will be of great value to all its readers.
Ruth Weisberg, Dean, Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California
BLAZE offers a multitude of feminist voices in the arts - from individual artists, to women who work collaboratively, to women who participated in the very birth of the feminist art movement. For this reason and many others, Blaze belongs on the bookshelf of anyone teaching contemporary art, women's history, and the emergence of women's organizations. Blaze also reminds us how important the Women's Caucus for the Arts has been both to individual careers and to the creation of a whole new phase of art-making.
Shula Reinharz
Jacob Potofosky Professor of Sociology
Founding Director, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Founding Director, Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Patrizia Faccioli and Jacqueline A. Gibbons,Framing Globalization: Visual Perspectives,Hardback,9781847183736,29.99,"The book presents a collection of readings to reflect and develop the varied and dynamic interfaces of globalization: the global and local. The purpose is to identify how global and local dimensions intersect with cultural construction and processes of identity. How do the images around us challenge us in everyday life? We are surrounded by a multitude of images in cultural contexts, with rich semiotic signs and symbols, manifest in posters, graffiti, advertising, the media, photographs, religious representation, sculpture, and myriad art forms. In the context of this assortment of representations, we explore visual sociological threads and constructs that emerge from issues evoked by modern ideas about globalization. This important contemporary theme is moved by the parameters of visual sociology, whereby photographic images in various contexts illustrate, reflect, and generate sociological concepts and theories. The collected writings point to a global stage, as we are guided through lands such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Egypt, France, Italy, and Lithuania, in the quest to understand globalization through prisms such as community, class, gender, ethnicity, and religious background. The book addresses the role of visual communication in an examination of these various theoretical facets, and explores ways in which individuals and institutions exchange information about themselves, their identities, their values, and their ideas of belongingness in the varied guises of culture.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Samir Dayal and Margueritte Murphy,Global Babel: Questions of Discourse and Communication in a time of Globalization,Hardback,9781847183811,39.99,"Globalization as we know it today would be unimaginable without the revolution in information and communication technologies of the last thirty years. Yet have we achieved “one world” as the promotional hype for cellular and digital networks would have it? This collection of essays, Global Babel: Questions of Discourse and Communication in a Time of Globalization, explores the current state of communication and discourse in a globalized environment. The essays are united by an awareness that, whether understood technologically, economically, epistemologically, or culturally, globalization is a discursive field with discrepant assumptions, categories and conclusions. As such, globalization is double-edged, and complex. It can certainly enable the exploitation of the powerless by the powerful; in different contexts, or at different moments, it can also facilitate individual and collective agency. It is this doubleness, this complexity, that this collection seeks to bring into focus.
This volume offers an interdisciplinary forum where technological, aesthetic, and ethical issues relating to globalization inhabit the same conceptual frame. Together the essays address the central issue of how the new knowledges of globalization are being articulated, and explore the cultural consequences and success of such communication and knowledge exchange.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Christine Geoffroy and Richard Sibley,"Going Abroad: Travel, Tourism, and Migration. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Mobility",Hardback,9781847183941,34.99," Going Abroad is a book not only for scholars, academics and students who are interested in different approaches to mobility, but also for non-specialists who wish to explore and understand what lies behind the various forms of travel, tourism and migration that are central to today’s—and no doubt tomorrow’s—globalized world.
If you are tempted by emigration, enjoy being a tourist, or just love the adventure of travel, real or imaginary, you can embark on a journey of discovery through time and across the continents to explore and reflect on diverse visions of mobility. The practical problems and the differing states of mind experienced by past and present emigrants to France, Spain, Morocco, Capri, Latin America, Canada and Australia, the impact of immigration on the host communities, and the reactions of turn-of-the-century French immigrants to Britain, offer contrasting and complementary perspectives. Along with the real and symbolic meanings of the apparently mundane act of crossing the Channel, stranger forms of travel are also explored: Filipino sailors who are neither at home nor abroad, backpacking across four continents, the real and the fantasized exotic in nineteenth-century orientalist art, and the sanitized utopias of today’s theme parks.
Within an inter-disciplinary and a cross-cultural framework, the book explores the terminology, concepts and methodology of a subject which has become the focus of curricula in many academic courses.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Ann Marie Bissessar,Rethinking the Reform Question,Hardback,9781847183972,34.99,"In this comprehensive and very wide ranging collection of papers from specific countries across the globe, a group of eminent and capable academics in the fields of public administration, policy and management draw on a vast amount of theoretical, empirical and comparative data to provide an up to date and timely collection of work aiming to explain the underpinning currents of the public sector reform phenomenon. This is a set of excellently written papers, brought together as a whole to provide a first rate resource for current and existing scholars in the field. Most of the research is based on empirical case material from some of the CARICOM countries, but one of the book’s key strengths is the keen location of findings on firm theoretical foundations, backed up with existing comparative data from other parts of the globe.
It will prove a useful, first rate resource for other scholars who want to ascertain the key trends, challenges and dilemmas of public sector reform across the world. The first two, thought-provoking chapters set the global context of public sector reform, but are also strong on theoretical and comparative analysis. The remaining chapters introduce readers to a series of excellent in-depth, empirical and theoretical contributions, but they are not confined to the cases and countries under investigation, as all draw from existing theoretical, empirical and comparative data sources. The authors have given us a deeper sense of understanding of the countries being examined, and their underpinning knowledge of the political systems within which public sector reforms are taking place is very evident in this excellent book. Taken as a whole, this publication provides a set of well written chapters that will provide a very interesting reading.
","'Governance and Institutional Re-engineering comprises a series of thought-provoking articles on governance and the institutions of governance. It commences with amounts to a plea by a well-respected academician in the field of Public Administration, Gerald Caiden, in an article entitled "" Toward Cleaner Government."" The book brings together scholars from across the world. In setting out their various perspectives, integrity in public life, women and politics and neighbourhood management among the various themes, the writers demonstrate the range and diversity of debates involved in the governance of any country. The book was certainly successful in presenting an interesting, informed, well written discussion of contemporary challenges and recent discussions in the field of government and public administration.'
Professor Tom Christensen, Professor in Political Science, University of Oslo
'Governance and Institutional Re-engineering is indeed a timely addition to the academic literature on a now well-discussed phenomenon referred to as 'governance.' In this book, twelve academics from around the globe present differing and unique perspectives on 'governance' and the mechanisms involved in governance. The book exposes readers with issues and challenges presented by leading academics from the UK, Canada, Africa and the Caribbean. Themes vary from women and the political process, neighbourhood management, representative bureaucracy, HIV/AIDS and health care, and integrity in public life. It explores the varying facets of governance and provides many thought provoking questions and debates on areas that are all critical in the governance process. This is certainly a book that provides very useful information for policy makers, politicians, students and interested citizens.'
Professor Evan Berman, the Huey McElveen Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at Louisiana State University. Recent books include The Professional Edge ( M.E. Sharpe, 2004), Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts ( Congressional Quarterly Press, 2007).
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Colman Hogan and Marta Marin-Dòmine,The Camp: Narratives of Internment and Exclusion,Hardback,9781847183989,39.99,"The camp is nothing if not diverse: in kind, scope, and particularity; in sociological and juridical configuration; in texture, iconography, and political import. Adjectives of camp specificity embrace a spectrum from extermination and concentration, to detention, migration, deportation, and refugee camps. And while the geographic range covered by contributors is hardly global, it is broad: Chile, Rwanda, Canada, the US, Central Europe, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, France and Spain.
And yet—is to so characterize the camp to run the risk of diffusing what in origin is a concentration into a paratactical series of “identity particularisms”? While The Camp does not seek to antithetically promulgate a universalist vision, it does aim to explore the imbrication of the particular and the universal, to analyze the structure of a camp or camps, and to call attention the role of the listener in the construction of the testimony.
For, by naming what cannot be said, is not every narrative of internment and exclusion a potential site of agency, articulating the inner splitting of language that Giorgio Agamben defines as the locus of testimony: “to bear witness is to place oneself in one’s own language in the position of those who have lost it, to establish oneself in a living language as if it were dead, or in a dead language as if it were living.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,"Mary Alice Trent, Trevor Grizzle, Andrew Lang and Elsa Rogers",The Language of Diversity: Restoration Toward Peace and Unity ,Hardback,9781847183828,39.99,"The Language of Diversity is an orchestrated effort of twenty-eight contributing authors, an editor, and three co-editors across the United States and Canada, and the stellar list includes bestselling authors, scholars, academicians, businessmen, theologians, and healthcare providers. Steeped in the Christian worldview, the twenty-five essays are sectioned off into three areas.
Section One is comprised of seven essays, which focus on topics that bridge the gap among racial, cultural, and religious differences in an effort to bring about a greater awareness of human diversity and civil charity.
The five essays in Section Two examine interfaith relations among Christians, Muslims, and Mormons respectively. The selections provide a serious examination of the tenets of these faiths and pose many challenges among diverse faith-goers.
Section Three entails thirteen essays that challenge readers to stretch behind the comforts of their boundaries to probe topics such as education and race; gender and hiring practices in higher education; the Christian church and race relations; implementation of a nursing practicum with a culturally-diverse perspective; a campaign to train credible business leaders in a global culture; etc.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,David A. Powell,21st-Century Gay Culture,Hardback,9781847184146,29.99,"21st-Century Gay Culture offers a collection of essays on the state of queer culture and queer studies at the beginning of the millennium. Authors from a variety of fields and specialties investigate topics concerning the ever fluid nature of labels and definitions in the LGBTQQA+ world. Issues include queer African-Americans, same-sex marriage, French gay culture, closeted and semi-closeted queers, among others.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"John Eade, Martyn Barrett, Chris Flood and Richard Race","Advancing Multiculturalism, Post 7/7",Hardback,9781847184191,34.99,"Multiculturalism still matters and is even more important after 7/7 than it was before. The political discourse and rhetoric of integration sits uncomfortably alongside both multicultural realities e.g. the civil disturbances in Birmingham, England (October 2005), Paris, France (November 2005) and Sydney, Australia (December, 2005) and social scientific notions of where multiculturalism positions itself domestically and internationally. This edited collection is intended to be a major contribution to studies of multiculturalism examining the historical background and anthropological context, alongside more contemporary applied social policy perspectives. In this volume, we argue that a multicultural perspective is as relevant and important, both socially and politically in a post 7/7 world. Within a post 7/7 context, there are contributors within this edited collection who argue for both integrationist and multicultural approaches. The volume acknowledges both concepts and encourages the reader to increase understandings of both arguments and position her / himself within the debates.
","""...these essays offer a good starting point for further analysis and discussion. The last three contributions, especially, go to the heart of the problem with which Western liberal democracies perceive themselves to be confronted.""
Hans van Amersfoort, University of Amsterdam, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36:1 Feb 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Matko Meštrović,Dispersion of Meaning: The Fading Out of the Doctrinaire World?,Hardback,9781847184122,29.99,"This book present interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities by connecting seemingly disparate sources through a sensitivity to endangered human values. It links reflections on the contemporary relationship between art and technology in a post-modern context, seeing art in terms of crossing boundaries and exploring virtuality. It deals with the consequences of economics colonising other disciplines, in terms of the processes by which the “social” becomes the “economic”. Using Jantsch’s evolutionary paradigm, the concept of self-transcendence is seen as crucial for the understanding of human beings and their social systems. Incorporating recent thinking from the natural sciences, the learning process can be conceived as the life and activity of all complex systems, including those once conceived as organisms, machines, cultures or economies. Without the societal embrace of scientific and technological development no collective or individual meaning can be assigned to the production of new knowledge. The book seeks to recognise the point where a collective learning process becomes the heart of productivity, and where the shift from the hegemony of material labour to immaterial labour becomes fundamental. The author brings new understandings of art, the social, and technology together, based on the idea that history is not a story told in separate physical, social and spiritual spaces and that the most fundamental problem of today is how to find some shared meaning in a fractured world.
“The author analyses, at a global level, the process of the co-production of scientific and social order, of culture and technology, of life sciences and economic and political regimes. It rightly identifies the rise of the role of knowledge and the move of capital into life sciences as a new stage in the history of capitalism: what we can qualify as cognitive capitalism or biocapitalism. In this new era of capitalism, what is being manufactured and sold are not just tangible and non-tangible goods, whose increasing importance, as the author shows, poses unsurmountable theoretical problems to the theoretical apparatus of economic science. The increasing mercantilisation of the world appears at the same time as a bio-power, i.e. a set of instruments creating and controlling different forms of life, forms of communication, standards of socialisation, education, the individual and collective imaginary, etc. More fundamentally, the encounter of life sciences and the information technology integrates and subjects the most essential mechanisms of biological and social reproduction to the logic of capital valorization.
To understand the complexity of these changes and the ethical and philosophical questions that the development of technology and sciences poses to the future of mankind one must break through the disciplinary barriers delineating different disciplines in social sciences and those separating social sciences from natural sciences.
Professor Matko Mestrovic manages to tackle this challenge not only because of his impressive and masterful knowledge of different disciplines in the social and natural sciences, but he does it also owing to his capacity for theoretical elaboration that allows him to lay the foundations of a new transdisciplinary paradigm.
This is why his work can raise the awareness of the general public on two issues: on a global and profound vision of the challenges posed by the new millennium; and on the need for a radical theoretical innovation bringing into question the disciplinary certitudes in develop a social science able to better understand the movement and the ambiguity of history.”
— Carlo Vercellone, Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne
“Meštrović provides a unique insight into the often forgotten relation between economics on the one hand and arts and culture on the other, demonstrating that these „domains“ function as a total social facticity and not as separate, entirely independent elements thereof. In doing so he is dispelling the illusions about the disciplinary self-containdness of individual forms of knowledge and is relying on those paradigms of contemporary scientific thought whose „epistemiological programs“ are based on close cooperation and „opening up“ and not on the persuasion about one's own positions and dispositions.”
— Prof. dr. Rade Kalanj, Redovni profesor na Odjelu za sociologiju
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Gerd Grözinger, Wenzel Matiaske and C. Katharina Spieß ",Europe and its Regions: The Usage of European Regionalized Social Science Data,Hardback,9781847184344,39.99,"Europe is getting closer. So are European social sciences. However, this is easier done in theory development and central research questions. When it comes to data the mutual understanding is far from perfect, due to a lack of knowledge about the data bases of the respective countries and the EU in general. This is particularly true when it comes to the regional level.
This volume will help to improve the insight into the rich stock of European datasets which cover any kind of regional information. Many institutions ranging from statistical offices to more academic research centres and commercial enterprises report their offerings with special emphasis on the regional level (e.g. European Community Household Panel, European Social Survey, Labour Force Survey). Central categories such as NUTS and LAU are explained and discussed. In addition, typical examples of socio-economic cross-border and multi-level studies highlight the power of a regionalized European perspective. Furthermore, information about special tools for such type of analysis is included in the volume.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Alexandra M. Kokoli,Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference,Hardback,9781847184054,39.99,"Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference addresses the on-going dialogue between feminism, art history and visual culture from contemporary scholarly perspectives. Over the past thirty years, the critical interventions of feminist art historians in the academy, the press and the art world have not only politicised and transformed the themes, methods and conceptual tools of art history, but have also contributed to the emergence of new interdisciplinary areas of investigation, including notably that of visual culture. Although the impact of such fruitful transformations is indisputable, their exact contribution to contemporary scholarship remains a matter for debate, not least because feminism itself has changed significantly since the Women’s Liberation Movement. Feminism Reframed reviews and revises existing feminist art histories but also reasserts the need for continuous feminist interventions in the academy, the art world and beyond.
With contributions by Anthea Behm, Alisia Grace Chase, Jennifer G. Germann, Catherine Grant, Joanne Heath, Ruth Hemus, Alexandra Kokoli, Beth Anne Lauritis, Griselda Pollock, Karen Roulstone, Anne Swartz and Sue Tate.
“Coming at the moment when contemporary art practices are themselves involved in re-cycling, re-evaluating and re-enacting the past, this collection asks how feminism’s own ‘troubled’ histories can be reframed productively in the present. The questions that feminism raised in the 1970s and 80s are still pertinent, and are addressed in a number of original essays: What does gender equality mean in the arts? How can women’s subjectivities be articulated or performed differently in art practices? Can attention to gender enable us to engage with complex differences of race, sexuality and class, of age and generation? Do we need new interpretative and conceptual models for writing about art? Alexandra Kokoli’s thoughtful and illuminating introduction reminds us that reframing is a risky but exciting business if it makes us ask these questions anew, with attention to the politics and aesthetics of the present.”
—Rosemary Betterton, Lancaster University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"José Antonio Gurpegui, Assistant Editor M. Carmen Gómez Galisteo",Interpreting the New Milenio,Hardback,9781847184115,34.99,"Interpreting the New Milenio is a collection of essays analyzing the past, present and future directions of Chicano Literature. Beginning with the presence of Spanish conquistadors in the U.S. and ending with contemporary authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Interpreting the New Milenio covers well-known Chicano authors as well as lesser known 19th-century Hispanic writers. The essays in the collection examine Chicano literature as well as its precedents as a whole, so as to find the keys for the interpretation of the challenges posed by the new millennium.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Richard C. Allen and Stephen Regan,Irelands of the Mind: Memory and Identity in Modern Irish Culture,Hardback,9781847184221,34.99,"Irelands of the Mind: Memory and Identity in Modern Irish Culture offers a compelling series of essays on changing images of Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It seeks to understand the various ways in which Ireland has been thought about, not only in fiction, poetry and drama, but in travel writing and tourist brochures, nineteenth-century newspapers, radio talk shows, film adaptations of fictional works, and the music and songs of Van Morrison and Sinéad O’Connor. The prevailing theme throughout the twelve essays that constitute the book is the complicated sense of belonging that continues to characterise so much of modern Irish culture. Questions of nationhood and national identity are given a new and invigorated treatment in the context of a rapidly changing Ireland and a changing set of intellectual methods and approaches.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Mícheál Ó hAodha,On the Margins of Memory: Recovering the Migrant Voice,Hardback,9781847184368,29.99,"PLEASE NOTE THIS TITLE IS NOW OUT OF PRINT AND NO FURTHER PRINTING IS ANTICIPATED AT THIS POINT.
This volume is, in part, an attempt to give a “voice” or a “platform” to communities who have frequently found themselves on the margins of the so-called “mainstream” community - the hidden Irish, the hidden European, the nomad and the migrant who reflects the changing face of the “new” and “immigrant” Europe. The essays in this collection explore the image of the nomad, migrant and the outsider/“Other” Traveller/Gypsy, within the frame of articulation that is European representational and visual culture. One of the remarkable coherences which exists between the figure of the “traditional” nomadic Traveller or Gypsy in the public imaginary –whether this be in the form of imagistic or literary production – is its strangely symbiotic relationship with current ongoing developments in visual culture and the global flows of cultural diaspora that are the “norm” in the modern world. These essays display the representational function of the Traveller/Gypsy or migrant as an exemplar of that which overcomes spatial/temporal distance and separation, thereby creating innovative opportunities for the exploration of issues relating to cross-cultural and identity representation. The artists and academics writing in this volume are exploring a new energy in modern culture, one which seeks an innovative and exciting re-positioning of the panorama that is dominance and resistance within the postcolonial cultural discourse of the present-day.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Regina Rudaitytė,Postmodernism and After: Visions and Revisions,Hardback,9781847184108,34.99,"The present collection of academic articles is an attempt to reflect on new openings and recent developments in literature, literary theory and culture which seem to point beyond postmodernism and register a return to traditional concepts, theoretical premises and authorial practices.
Interestingly enough, forty years after the publication of John Barth’s seminal essay “The Literature of Exhaustion” (1967), the book is trying to diagnose the exhaustion of postmodernism, which was predicted by David Lodge already two decades ago. It also attempts to trace the signs in contemporary literature indicating that postmodernism is past its heyday, that it is losing or has lost its shine, fascination and attraction and that writers have been turning to the “old” or pre-modern forms, practices and strategies.
Herbert Grabes’ comprehensive and illuminating article “From the Postmodern to the Pre-Modern: More Recent Changes in Literature, Art, and Theory” which opens and sets the tone for this collection of essays is a major assessment of new developments in literary culture, focusing on the evolution of the postmodern to the premodern mode; it also highlights the role and current popularity of cultural studies and cultural history – theoretical movements which have been prevailing for some time now after the end of deconstruction.
The articles assembled in this collection are on diverse thematics and written from diverse theoretical perspectives; they differ in scope and methodology, and their focus ranges from the postmodern, intertextual aspect to the open questioning of it and to more recent developments in the literary culture. Focusing on literary icons like A.S. Byatt, John Banville, Margaret Atwood, Umberto Eco, Vladimir Nabokov (but also extending into a less-known regions – geographically as well), they invite reconsideration and reconceptualization of such key notions as “truth”, meaning production, textuality and literary interpretation. This book aims at opening fresh discussion, debate and reflection on the new age reaching beyond postmodernism, and the budding literary mode, whatever labels we might stick to it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Sara Martin,Recycling Culture(s),Hardback,9781847184290,34.99,"Culture survives today by means of a constant recycling, optimistically trying to overcome its own decadence in the 21st century. Recycling Culture(s) addresses from a variety of perspectives this strategy, analyzing not only a wide range of texts but also of cultural practices. As the volume shows, culture thrives on a permanent state of flux, borrowing materials for its own survival wherever they are found and always favouring hybridity. This refers not only to how texts cross genre and medium boundaries but also to how identities and the very idea of culture grow out of recycling what is at hand both synchronically and diachronically.
Divided in two sections, ‘Part I: Recycling the Book and the Screen’ and ‘Part II: Recycling Identity, Consumption and History,’ the twenty essays offered here are the work of an international group of scholars dealing with different linguistic and geographical environments. A primary aim of the volume is breaking away with the compartmentalisation of Cultural Studies into non-communicating linguistic domains to offer an eclectic, engaging mixture of approaches.
This is the twelfth monographic volume of the series Culture & Power edited by members of the permanent seminar on Cultural Studies ‘Culture & Power,’ which has organised an international yearly conference since 1995.
""Recycling Culture(s)/ is the latest in the series of Culture and Power books to come out of Spain. It features essays not only from many of the most distinguished cultural studies scholars on the Iberian Peninsular but many from beyond its borders. What makes this volume so stimulating, relevant and exiting is that the contributors range across an impressive assortment of contexts of (and for) recycling. The book’s thematic base is impressive taking in, as it does, the relevance of recycling history, identity and a multitude of popular texts (written and audio-visual).
All contributions are theoretically informed and the authors consider subjects from comic-book heroes, James Bond and /Clockwork Orange/ to African-Carribbean women, Australian national myth and mobile phones.
The contributors and editor should be congratulated on producing a theoretically coherent, challenging and important intervention into contemporary cultural studies. ""
Dr David Walton, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the Univerisity of Murcia, Spain, author Introducing Cultural Studies: Learning Through Practice /(Sage, 2008)
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Céline Beaudet, Pamela Grant, and Doreen Starke-Meyerring",Research Communication in the Social and Human Sciences: From Dissemination to Public Engagement,Hardback,9781847184320,34.99,"The sharing of knowledge is one of the key elements of a society's economic, social, scientific and cultural development. Social and human science research addresses some of society's most pressing problems, such as poverty, illiteracy, high dropout rates in schools, marginalization of social groups to name but a few. Despite its vital role in building a civil society, research in the social and human sciences has been criticized for being little known by the public. This lack of large-scale visibility detracts from its social and scientific significance and legitimacy in a media-driven society.
To address this pressing need for sharing social and human science knowledge and to overcome the paradox of its invisibility, this book brings together researchers from across disciplines in the social and human sciences who have identified the challenges in communicating across boundaries of researcher and practitioner communities and who have begun to develop solutions ranging from research dissemination in the media to stakeholder engagement in research networks and partnerships.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Pauline MacPherson, Christopher Murray, Gordon Spark and Kevin Corstorphine","Sub/versions: Cultural Status, Genre and Critique",Hardback,9781847183729,29.99,"Sub/versions draws together recent work analysing texts that exist in a complicated relationship to issues of “high” and “low” culture. An important aspect of this debate is the manner in which the critical reception of “original” versions can act to resist the validity of new or re-imagined adaptations. Equally important is the reception of works that are self-consciously intertextual, or exist in various forms and different media. The research represented here examines these issues, exploring the changes that are made between versions and the ways in which these transformations might subvert the original text. The approach of this collection is therefore fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of topics related to subversion and “sub/versions”, including translation, parody, satire, metafiction, performance, allegory, and genre.
""An incisive and innovative collection of essays that combines a theoretical enquiry into the nature of subversive texts, with scholarly readings of key contemporary authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Philip Pullman, and artists and filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, Mary Harron and Orson Welles.""
—Professor Marion Wynne Davies, University of Surrey
""A diverse collection of papers exploring the emerging territories of subversion in literature, comics and film. A useful guide for undergraduate and research students working in these areas. ""
—Professor Peter Kitson, President of English Association
""Nearly all the greatest stories are re-tellings – Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, and hosts of others of like stature, were all in the re-tale trade. Their tales go on being recycled in a cultural economy that recognises no boundaries of genre or nationality. In the twentieth century the pace has intensified, in line with the growth of new cultural forms, and we now encounter cannonical tales re-born in graphic novels, animated cartoons, operas (of both the soap and the
high-art kind), art installations, poems, stories, and digital media. This book is a lively and much-needed examination of the processes of textual subversion and metamorphosis which remain a major force in our culture.""
—Professor Peter Barry, Aberystwyth University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Bradley Bowers,The Da Vinci Code in the Academy,Hardback,9781847181299,24.99,"As millions of readers worldwide react to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, so do many scholars. The novel has become a proxy debate for two compelling scholarly and social issues of our time: the feminist/post-feminist challenge to patriarchal authority; and the textual construction of meaning and value. Presenting the feminine as both dominant and sacred brings attention to every text which argues for dominance or divinity.
Traditional scholars are being challenged to defend their disciplines and practices, to reassert the authority of their knowledge base. Postmodern scholars are finding an opportunity to explain to the world at large how texts construct meaning and maintain power structures.
These essays examine resistance to the sacred feminine in religious, cultural, and literary histories. Robert Davis explores the return of the goddess to academic and popular discussions. Deanna Thompson examines the apocryphal evidence brought into the debate by the novel. Rachel Wagner looks at the larger issue of postmodern textual authority, and how Brown’s novel has brought Biblical interpretation to popular awareness. Arlette Poland reviews current feminist and academic thinking on textual versus spiritual authority regarding the feminine divine.
Other essays identify the elusive and misunderstood sacred feminine in religion and literature; in church teachings and practices; in the variant Grail stories; in the mystery genre itself. Together, these essays place the reaction to these issues into broader social and contemporary contexts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,"Marie-Claire Considère-Charon, Philippe Laplace, Michel Savaric ",The Irish Celebrating: Festive and Tragic Overtones ,Hardback,9781847184078,39.99,"The Irish Celebrating is a collection of essays which focuses on the complex dynamics of celebrating, its significance and its scope, through Ireland’s past and present experience. This book studies the dual aspects of celebrating —‘the festive’ and ‘the tragic’— which, while not necessarily functioning as a binary opposition, have long proved mutually constitutive of the Irish experience. Many different occasions and ways of celebrating are explored, be they associated with feasts, festivals, commemorations, re-enactments or mere merry-making.
Irish literature abounds with motifs, symbols, allusions and devices that stand as ample testimony to the essential part played by celebration in the creative process. Both the treatment of mythical themes and figures, and the perception of contrasted realities and moods, all linked in some way or another with celebrating, are examined in the works of Irish novelists, poets and playwrights.
If celebrations undeniably had a crucial role to play throughout Ireland’s troubled past, they continue to shape Irish society today, part and parcel of the deep social, economic and cultural changes it is currently experiencing. New representations of Irish identity as they are expressed through new forms of celebrating are explored in such varied contexts as emigration and immigration, alcohol addiction, church allegiance and European membership.
The way the nationalist and unionist communities have been celebrating their past in Northern Ireland, often complacently and ostentatiously, is a theme dealt with in the final section of this collection. Irish, English, French, Spanish, Italian and American scholars apply a broad range of interdisciplinary expertise to original and illuminating essays which will undoubtedly provoke a new insight into the interplay between current trends and issues and the long-established patterns that thread through the volume.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Sarah O’Connor and Christopher C. Shepard,"Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?",Hardback,9781847184085,29.99,"Drawing from a range of disciplines, this book pivots around the central concept of women, social and cultural change in Ireland during the twentieth century. The interdisciplinary, inter-institutional nature of the work gathered here aims to challenge monolithic representations of Irish female identity. Utilising new sources and theoretical frameworks, the contributors to this volume expose women’s disparate political, social and cultural backgrounds, highlighting the concept of woman as a ‘site’ of exchange, overlap and variation. This collection represents not only the work of a vibrant research community but aims to make a lasting contribution to the study of women in twentieth century Ireland.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,José María Gutiérrez Arranz,A Multicultural and Multifaceted Study of Ideologies and Conflicts related to the Complex Realities and Fictions of Nation and Identity represented in Contemporary Literature Written in English,Hardback,9781847184528,34.99,"This book contains a multicultural and multifaceted study of ideologies and conflicts related to the complex realities and fictions of Nation and Identity represented in contemporary literature written in English. The history and present time of the United Kingdom, the British Empire and North America provide vast fields of research which have been explored by our selection of authors. Their interests range from the moral and personal consequences of modern nationalist conflicts to the memories of old racial confrontations on the British soil. Readers will find analyses and reflections on the individual’s pursuit of identity in a challenging environment that covers more than two centuries of mainly Western civilization and abound in national dilemmas, social concerns, authoritarian legacies, and problematic postcolonial hybridizations. Short stories, novels, plays and poems by Irish, American, English, Nigerian, and Scottish writers will enable readers to consider the diverse approaches, propositions and debates the issues raised by Nation and Identity are being dealt with.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,"Ann Davies, Parvathi Kumaraswami and Claire Williams","Making Waves Anniversary Volume: Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies",Hardback,9781847184641,34.99,"Gender and women’s studies have formed part of the academic landscape for many years, but while the field is now established enough to have developed in depth and perspectives, there remain many areas of significance yet to be explored–most significantly, much of the work carried out has remained rooted in the Anglo-American context. Those working outside this context are increasingly aware of the need to understand women in different cultural contexts in order to determine whether, to what extent and how representations of women and cultural contexts are interactive and dynamic concepts. The current volume contributes to the growing interest in the field of women and culture in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds and shows how women writers, researchers, teachers and students have always made waves to counteract the complacency, prejudice and tradition that threatens to ignore or subsume them.
The volume draws on literary study–the starting point for much of the early work on gender in Spain, the Lusophone world and Latin America–but also goes beyond it, to discuss women’s interaction not only with literature but also with art, and language itself, in the Hispanic and Lusophone contexts. It acts as a showcase for contemporary scholarship undertaken in Hispanic and Lusophone gender studies, developing earlier insights and forging new ones, to refine the debate continuing in the subject. The contributors include both established scholars with a proven track record and promising newcomers to the field.
The volume arises from the individual research projects and sustained discussions of Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (WiSPs), an organisation that exists to promote scholarship by and about women in the field of Iberian, Lusophone and Latin American Studies. This volume celebrates the first seven years of WiSPs's life and presents some of the research presented under its auspices at annual conferences and study days.
","""This collection of essays constitutes a watershed, marking the definitive coming of age of Gender and Women’s Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Studies (...) Each of these studies could very well stand on its own. Each prompts further reflection, and each advances knowledge in its realm of intellectual activity. Together they achieve an astonishing critical mass. The authors have brought to bear their collective expertise in deciphering languages, literatures and cultural codes in order to produce new readings and interpretations of written and visual texts, taking full account of such issues as gender, race, identity and the different kinds of violence inflicted on the female subject. These essays simultaneously expand the boundaries of feminist scholarship and raise readers' expectations with regard to future publications.""
―Dr Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta, University of Birmingham
""Making Waves is an exciting new contribution to the study of women writers, readers and artists in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds. The essays have been carefully selected to provide a global focus (Cuba, Mozambique, Mexico, Brazil, and Spain) and a central concern: the gendering of language, image and experience. Combining accessibility with theoretical sophistication, insightful commentary with feisty debate, the volume certainly promises to 'make waves' in the field of women's studies today.""
―Professor Catherine Davies, University of Nottingham
""This collection is fresh, stimulating and ground-breaking, both in the material offered for consideration and the critical and theoretical approaches used. Considerable strength is lent the collection from the fact that this comes from a group of scholars who have had the opportunity to exchange ideas and prompt new thoughts in others via the regular and now well-established meetings of WISPS. The volume celebrates not only the women whose work is brought under the critical lens, but the collaborative and cooperative process that brought these studies into being.""
―Professor Alison Sinclair
""The collection...deserves attention simply because of the quality of so many of the contributions. This is a collection of essays that should be held by all good university libraries and many of the pieces it contains will be of lasting interest to scholars and students in the field of Hispanic and Lusophone gender studies.""
Thea Pitman, University of Leeds, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2009
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen,Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation,Hardback,9781847184535,29.99,"In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume’s authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products.
In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. At the same time, prudence is required, as many of the empowering and transformative opportunities cover-up a multitude of restrictions that deal with muting voices, appropriations, techniques of surveillance, inequalities, and exclusions. This volume thus provides its readership with a set of analyses that reconcile the appreciation for the analogue and digital empowerment and emancipation with the critical analysis of their boundaries.
Participation and Media Production is the result of the intellectual work of the participants of the 2007 San Francisco Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Marie Porter and Julie Kelso,Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities,Hardback,9781847184566,34.99,"Maternal research is a rapidly expanding, multi-disciplinary form of scholarship. Prior to second wave feminism most motherhood literature was written from a male perspective. This literature focused on telling mothers how to practice mothering without acknowledging the expertise of the mothers themselves. Research on motherhood as it is experienced in all its facets by mothers has only emerged in recent decades. This book is aimed at expanding academic knowledge of motherhood, from a feminist perspective, looking particularly at how maternal subjectivities can be represented and theorised. When mothers themselves (academic or not) are responsible for theorisation and representation of maternal ‘realities’, dominant theories and representations of motherhood are radically challenged. In Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities the contributors argue that it is no longer acceptable to regard mothers as mere objects of knowledge and research. They are primarily the subjects of knowledge and research.
","“This timely book is conceived with a clear desire to make visible the hidden and often challenging ‘real’ experiences of aspects of women’s everyday lives as mothers….. “The book is a compassionate and scholarly work which reveals and theorizes maternal realities in contexts which many women will recognise”. This fascinating and thought-provoking book makes an important contribution to the study of maternal lives and is a must read for a wide range of academic, professional and practitioner audiences.”
Dr. Tina Miller, Reader in Sociology, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. UK
Author of ‘Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach’ (2005) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“Over the last three decades a central, if not defining, aim of motherhood studies has been to articulate and theorize “the voice of the mother”: to analyze becoming and being a mother from the perspective and subjectivity of mothers themselves. However, before we can speak authentically as mothers we must first do the difficult but necessary work of unmasking motherhood. Indeed, as Susan Maushart wrote: “Unmasking motherhood is a greater challenge to the feminist imagination than all the other “women’s issues” put together” In its penetrating and far reaching exploration of many and diverse maternal realities, this collection quite literally breaks ground; unearthing and excavating the truths of motherhood that for too long have been buried beneath the mask of motherhood.”
- Andrea O’Reilly, Founder/Director Association for Research on Motherhood
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,"Dilek Direnç, Günseli Sönmez İşçi and Klára Kolinská",Women in Dialogue: (M)uses of Culture,Hardback,9781847184504,34.99,"Women in Dialogue: (M)Uses of Culture results from an international symposium held at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 2006, which brought together scholars from over ten countries, and from multiple academic backgrounds, who share professional interest in women’s studies, and, to no less degree, in current women’s realities. The book presents a collection of essays united by a common focus on the position of women as objects of cultural production in different geographic, national, and political contexts, as well as the character and typology of women’s contribution to cultural activity across the ethnic or religious divide marking the face of contemporary world.
The volume comprises two sections: the first, titled “Women in Dialogue,” contains contributions which analyze literary representations of women from a variety of perspectives, and from diverse spatial and temporal locations. The second part, titled “(M)Uses of Culture,” includes personalized observations by several women writers, of both poetry and fiction, their commentaries on their own work as artists, and their deeply experienced “musings” on the position of women as artists in the world of today.
The essays that this volume brings together are varied in subject matter; yet they are connected by the common theme, epitomized in the metaphor of dialogue, as a platform for active, productive communication, leading – on the pages of the book, if not elsewhere – to learning, and mutual understanding.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Sven Eliaeson and Ragnvald Kalleberg,Academics as Public Intellectuals,Hardback,9781847184764,39.99,"As public intellectuals academics formulate specialized knowledge to become understandable and relevant for people outside of the specialty. There are two main forms of such intellectual activity: dissemination and debating. Scientific knowledge is a cultural value in its own right and also of importance in public discourse. Due to the complexity of the challenges facing modern societies the intellectual role of individual academics and scholarly institutions is increasingly important with mass education and new media techniques expanding the public sphere. It has become more important that specialists popularize also for specialists in other fields. Challenges such as climate change or social integration requires knowledgeable citizens and broad public discourses integrating specialized knowledge from several disciplines.
Contemporary challenges in Western Europe, Scandinavia and the US are discussed. The historical perspectives are followed back to early Modernity. The cases include contributions on Holberg, the Myrdals and Boas. There are contributions on the recent transformations “East of the Elbe” and the challenges facing scholars in Turkey and India. The main focus of the book is on social scientists but the issues discussed are of general interest for all kinds of academics and for people interested in the cultural and political relevance of science.
","""This exciting collection of essays explores the important issue of academics as public intellectuals and the conditions in which they have proved influential. It has a broad historical sweep, covers figures from contrasting points in the political spectrum, includes different fields of political, intellectual, and moral leadership, and examines international as well as national scales of intervention. In addition to a rich set of case studies, the contributors offer insightful general reflections on the changing nature of universities, of the public sphere, and of the tasks of academics who have acquired the status of public intellectuals.""
—Robert Jessop, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University
""The national 'publics' to which 'public intellectuals' speak vary enormously. This collection of fascinating cases introduces an important comparative dimension to the study of public intellectuals, showing familiar and important figures in new light, and brings a broader and more sophisticated conceptualization of the problem of public social science"".
—Stephen Turner, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy,
University of South Florida
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Elena Marushiakova,Dynamics of National Identity and Transnational Identities in the Process of European Integration,Hardback,9781847184719,44.99,"This collection was inspired by the international conference ""Dynamics of National Identity and Transnational Identities in the Process of European Integration"", organized by the Balkan Ethnology Department of the Ethnographic Institute and Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and realized as project of the European Commission Jean Monnet Action Program for the support of Study and Research Centers. The book opens a debate on the changing notions of identity in the region of Central and Eastern Europe on the base of analysis of social developments influenced by EU accession and EU integration process. The most important aspect is the analysis of processes of breaking up the borders of national identity and transition towards new forms of transnational identities and emerging of consciosness of All-European unity. The book has a dual focus: on general topics related to the study of national and transnational identities and on the process of European integration. It brings together the work of researchers not only from different parts of Europe (from France to Russia) but from USA and Asia too. This book is a starting point for East-West discussion and brings new knowledge that will be an invaluable contribution to the common European research area.
","""This book proposes a study of transnational identities and the process of European integration. One of its main strengths is its multidisciplinary approach combining approaches from experts in humanities and social sciences; these comprise inter alia ethnology, anthropology, history and cultural studies. Another asset is that it offers both theoretical frameworks and empirical studies covering several themes and countries, with regards to particular populations in their homeland and abroad such as Gypsies, Turks in exile. It is innovative in the sense that the question of Central European countries and European integration is still in progress and remains under researched. It will be an important tool of analysis for researchers and policy makers interested in new development in Central and Eastern Europe.""
—Daniele Joly, Director of Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick
“Dynamics of National Identity” is a most timely contribution to our understanding of the complexities of collective identities, and their rapid changes since the end of socialism, in the Balkans. The broad range of topics addressed by eminent scholars in this volume is truly impressive and opens up new and comparative perspectives on the issue of nationality in Southeastern Europe.”
—Ulf Brunnbauer (Reader in Southeast and East European History at the Free University of Berlin)
""The contributions to the book present a welcome departure from mainstream approaches to the relations between EU integration and minorities. All too often analysts reduce the essence of European processes to an asymetrical interaction between European pressures for legal reforms and a (reluctant) adoption of European standards by candidate states. Relying on well-grounded empirical research, the contributors to this volume remind us of the need to grasp the reshaping of identities in the context of EU integration at the crossroads between multiple scales (local, regional, European and international) and a variety of social processes (new social mobilities and migrations, among others). The contributions also fruitfully underscore the need to move beyond normative distinctions between Central European and (exoticized) Balkan trajectories in order to provide a nuanced understanding of the twin process of europeanization and globalization in post-communist Europe.""
—Nadege Ragaru, CNRS research Fellow, Lecturer at Sciences Po Paris.
""A fascinating collection of essays written in delicious East European English. It conveys the vigour of scholarship in the New Europe on issues of personal and social identity in that area. The volume is particularly strong in exploring the complex and multi-dimensional relation to ""Europe,"" as constructed in the homeland and by migrants. This book will be read with profit by anyone interested in the intimate life of new peoples within the EU as well as of those in the Balkans excluded from it.""
—Andre Liebich, Head of the International History and Politics Section of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,"Karin Halldén, Elias le Grand and Zenia Hellgren",Ethnicity and Social Divisions: Contemporary Research in Sociology,Hardback,9781847184702,39.99,"The anthology “Ethnicity and Social Divisions: Contemporary Research in Sociology” is a collection of studies presented at the annual Aage Sørensen Memorial Conferences in 2006 and 2007. The volume reflects a number of important tendencies in contemporary social research: the increasing interest in questions that concern ethnicity and immigration on the one hand, the remaining centrality of social stratification and class analysis on the other hand, and the intersection between these fields. Eight young sociologists, all PhD Candidates at the universities of Harvard, Oxford or Stockholm at the time they wrote their contributions, participate in this volume. Representing a new generation of social scientists, they have conducted empirical research on social inequality related to class and ethnicity from different perspectives.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Joanna N. Paull,From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks: Teaching about Culture in the Composition Classroom,Hardback,9781847184757,34.99,"From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks is a text designed to invigorate composition teachers’ classroom approaches for getting students to better understand American culture(s). The contributors share their strategies from their classrooms, including such exciting topics as food, comedy, music, technology, and photography. Readers may use this collection in a pragmatic way or as inspiration for developing and revising their current cultural curriculum. In general, these essays trace semester-long course structures to allow readers to see how one assignment leads into the next, often offering student writing samples along the way. There is not another collection out there quite like this one. Ideal for graduate students learning strategies for teaching, new teachers seeking some effective strategies or even seasoned professors looking for new teaching ideas, From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks is an exciting addition to any composition instructor’s collection of teaching texts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Ann Marie Bissessar,Governance and Institutional Re-engineering,Hardback,9781847184788,39.99,"Governance and Institutional Re-engineering comprises a series of thought-provoking articles on governance and the institutions of governance. It commences with what amounts to a plea by a well- respected academician in the field of Public Administration, Gerald Caiden, in an article entitled ""Towards Cleaner Government."" The book brings together scholars from across the world. In setting out their various perspectives, integrity in public life, women and politics and neighbourhood management among the various themes, the writers demonstrate the range and diversity of debates involved in the governance of any country. The book was certainly successful in presenting an interesting, informed, well-written discussion of contemporary challenges and recent discussions in the field of government and public administration.
","""Governance and Institutional Re-engineering is indeed a timely addition to the academic literature on a now well-discussed phenomenon referred to as ‘governance.’ In this book, thirteen academics from around the globe presented differing and unique perspectives on ‘governance’ and the mechanisms involved in governance. The book exposes readers with issues and challenges presented by leading academics from the UK, Canada, Africa and the Caribbean. Themes vary from women and the political process, neighbourhood management, representative bureaucracy, HIV/AIDS and health care and integrity in public life. It explores the varying facets of governance and provides many thought provoking questions and debates on areas that are all critical in the governance process. This is certainly a book that provides very useful information for policy makers, politicians, students and interested citizens.""
Evan M Berman, Huey McElveen Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at Louisiana State University.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-03-01,Claudia Herbst,"Sexing Code: Subversion, Theory and Representation",Hardback,9781847184795,29.99,"Critically investigating the gender of programming in popular culture, Sexing Code proposes that the de facto representation of technical ability serves to perpetuate the age-old association of the male with intellect and reason, while identifying the female with the body. Challenging this division, in which code is situated within the male sphere, the discussion highlights women¹s contributions in the writing and theorizing of code, particularly in the digital arts, hacking, and hacktivism. Presenting an accessible and lively discussion, Sexing Code demonstrates that the gendering of programming selectively confers the privilege of authorship and is therefore a salient factor in the production of culture in the twenty-first century.
","Sexing Code is a highly instructive and profound discussion on the contemporary and historic situation of women in the traditionally male dominated world of computer programming as well as on the representation of female programmers in the media . . . Herbst vividly shows that the act of programming is not randomly associated with men and that it is in fact the substantial political and economical meaning and agency of codes that guarantees and stabilizes this close association.
Andreas Jahn-Sudmann, Ph.D. Co-editor of Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: Games Without Frontiers - War Without Tears
Claudia Herbst’s new book is an important contribution to the discussions concerned with women’s participation in code cultures. Sexing Codes incorporates both critique of media representations and the views and experiences of women in programming in order to unravel “the historical and visual milieu within which code culture is embedded.” Herbst guides her readers through an impressive range of examples, stories and contexts, from the marginalization of women in histories of computing to the gender dynamics of software culture, from the representations of female hackers in journalism and Hollywood film, to the works and views of female media artists.
Susanna Paasonen, Ph.D. Author of Figures of Fantasies
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,"Matthew Caleb Flamm, John Lachs, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroñski",American and European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives,Hardback,9781847185006,34.99,"American and European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives is a collection of essays by contemporary scholars considering key aspects of intersection and encounter between American and European values in the contemporary world. The truly international makeup of twenty-one contributors enlivens the book's theme in surprising, and frequently edifying ways. The authors consider, in places with revealing frankness, the cultural sensibilities unique to America and Europe, key historical philosophic figures, from John Dewey, Josiah Royce, and William James to Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Mikhail Bakhtin. They also take up various philosophic trends and movements unique to the American and European traditions, including pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, and logical-linguistic analysis. Readers interested in deepening their understanding of the increasingly vital philosophical problems that continue to emerge with growing trends of globalization are invited into this rich conversation.
","""This well crafted volume provides unflinching assessments of the philosophical values that are beginning to unite – and that continue to divide – the cultures of America and Europe. Its contributors offer arguments that are once timely, provocative, and accessible. ""
—Larry A. Hickman, Ph.D, Director at The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale IL
""American and European Values is a far richer book than a misreading of its title might suggest: it is truly a ""both (American)-and (European),"" not an ""either-or."" The perspectives of its contributors range over time and place, from the anarchic California of Gold Rush days to modern Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Eclectic in the best sense of that word, it combines philosophy, literature, history, and even religion without ever straying far from its central theme. And, somewhat incidentally, it also demonstrates just how multifaceted and complex is the idea of ""pragmatism."" ""
—William McBride, Ph.D. is Arthur G. Hansen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Indiana.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Alperhan Babacan and Linda Briskman,Asylum Seekers: International Perspectives on Interdiction and Deterrence,Hardback,9781847184917,29.99,"
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,"Stefania Baroncelli, Carlo Spagnolo and Leila Simona Talani",Back to Maastricht: Obstacles to Constitutional Reform within the EU Treaty (1991-2007),Hardback,9781847185211,44.99,"European integration has long defied previous notions of state sovereignty and has since the days of the Coal and Steel Community been conferred with original supranational instruments. Yet the Treaty of Rome did not raise the same popular reactions as the Maastricht Treaty about the infringement of national sovereignty. This book suggests that the end of the Cold War has modified the functions of European integration so that the original ideals of integration have lost part of their appeal; hence the birth of the European Union can be regarded as an attempt to seek a new legitimacy. How far did the EU Treaty meet this unprecedented challenge?
This book argues that the Maastricht Treaty established a constitutional framework for a new kind of polity without resolving the issue of its purpose and scope. The volume seeks thus to explain some of the reasons for the defeat of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 dating them back to the Maastricht Treaty. In so doing, the book links the actual state of European integration with the decisions taken at Maastricht in five different realms of supranational policy-making. The first is the constitutional setting of the EU Treaty and its effect on national constitutional law; the second is the concept of governance and the changes introduced by the Economic and Monetary Union; the third is the historical background of the Maastricht agreement; the fourth the political economy of the Economic and Monetary Union; the fifth is the impact of European citizenship in the recent case-law of the European Court of Justice and the prospects of a EU politicisation.
The book puts in perspective the solutions to the recent stalemate of the European integration process offered by the Lisbon Treaty.
","""...the books is an outstanding contribution for all scholars broadly interested in European politics and policies...""
Martino Bianchi, CEU Political Science Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2010)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Jasmin S. Greene,"Beyond Money, Cars, and Women: Examining Black Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture",Hardback,9781847184955,24.99,"Masculinity and hip hop are two topics that have been gaining wide attention in recent years. However, research has often been limited to solely criticizing the hip hop movement and examining the culture from a very parochial outsider’s perspective. An in-depth study of the relationship between hip hop and black masculinity, with commentary from the very men who are affected by it, is missing from the academia. It is with this thought that I have written my book. I wish to give a voice to those who have not yet been heard from, to examine and bring to light the damaging as well as positive affects that hip hop has on black men by talking to every day black men themselves, and to show that the hip hop phenomenon can be used as a great political tool for mobilizing this generation.
This book examines stereotypical definitions of black manhood and looks at how specific images and lyrics in hip hop promote these stereotypes. I discuss how young black men, often growing up without fathers, look to the males in hip hop as role models. I argue that negative aspects of hip hop are really affecting young black men and that artists need to be more conscious of their impact and role in the black community. I also discuss many positive hip hop artists and music and that conscious hip hop is kept underground intentionally by corporations. I have integrated a case study throughout the book, where I interviewed young black men on ideas of masculinity, education and hip hop. I end by discussing the positive in hip hop, and by giving examples of how it can be taken so much farther, especially to connect the young urban community with politics and social awareness.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Mitchell Rosenwald,"One Paradigm, Many Worlds: Conflict Resolution across the Disciplines",Hardback,9781847185228,29.99,"One Paradigm, Many Worlds: Conflict Resolution across the Disciplines surveys how the paradigm of collaborative conflict resolution shapes a variety of disciplines. Conflict resolution examines the theory, research, strategies and spirit that accompany subscription to this “win-win” approach to conflict. In the past few decades, such a collaborative approach has emerged to challenge existing “win-lose” paradigms to approaching conflict that are predicated on some form of violence and unacknowledged/ unchanging power differentials. By challenging these existing paradigms, One Paradigm, Many Worlds documents and instructs on the merits of the collaborative approach to conflict resolution. It promises a broad and contemporary examination of how this paradigm both influences and holds the potential to influence a number of different professional and academic disciplines.
The text is organized in four sections. They focus on the application of conflict resolution in the human services, elementary/secondary education, higher education, and a range of other disciplines (philosophy, communication, international relations). With such a breadth contained in the text, One Paradigm, Many Worlds’ unifying core is the centrality of conflict resolution as a paradigm supportive of cooperation, positive communication and relationship to self, to others, to organizations and institutions, and to society.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,"Danny Butt, Jon Bywater and Nova Paul",Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice,Hardback,9781847184849,34.99,"Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice explores tensions between global cosmopolitanism and local practices in the new media environment. This edited collection of work by practitioners and scholars emphasises political issues raised by artists working in an indigenous cultural setting.
Indigenous epistemologies provide sophisticated structures for negotiating belonging among communities who may become widely dispersed from their homelands. New media, by contrast, demonstrates biases toward the the dislocated: a cosmopolitanism implicitly located in the urban, where communities form and fragment in “virtual” environments. Nonetheless, questions of belonging and identification remain for those of us who use new media networks. Through analysis of a range of contemporary art and film projects, and tracking recent developments in cultural theory, the book provides diverse perspectives on how long-held attachments to place are transforming in the new media context.
","“The contest over meanings of place stretch back to colonialism and forward to ubiquitous media. This collection draws together politics, aesthetics and ethics in a startling, innovative debate of exceptional value to both artists and sociologists of the new media landscape.”
Professor Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne
“This book recognises the complex readings of what it means to be contemporary in a place. A compelling set of conversations that consider the alternative modernities and knowledge systems that destabilize colonial understandings of spatialization, self- representation and the role of new media art practice.”
Professor Joel Slayton, San Jose State University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Dianne Dentice,Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives,Hardback,9781847185181,24.99,"Social movements continue to provide rich fodder for social researchers in the twenty-first century. This reader gives range and depth to ongoing debates about what constitutes a social movement, what motivates actors to participate in social movements, and how social movements continue to evolve in post-industrial societies such as the United States. Not all social movements are about positive social change and some movements have been and will be destructive. The nine essays contained in this text represent classical movements such as the Oneida utopian movement of nineteenth century America and contemporary emerging movements such as the church-growth movement. The authors examine movements that are attempting to revitalize American health care and religious practice along with movements that are counter to social justice such as the white supremacist movement.
Was Jonestown a cult or social movement? How does a charismatic leader such as John Humphrey Noyes sell the notion of selective breeding to Oneida communitarians? What is motivating people to participate in the contemporary communal movement in the United States? Such questions are fundamental to our understanding of the emergence and sustainability of social movements. This reader provides authoritative answers to these questions and many more as well as providing a basis for further thought and discussion among students of social movements.
While this volume does not attempt to present a unified theory of social movements, the authors apply different theoretical approaches to their explanation of the movements they write about. Authors represent various disciplines such as anthropology, education, and sociology and specialty areas such as criminal justice, immigration, and religion. This multidisciplinary approach adds to the appeal of this reader; with the goal of accessibility to a wide range of audiences who are interested in social movement phenomena, both past and present.
","“Professors Dentice and Williams provide college students and interested lay readers with an informative, interdisciplinary and insightful introduction to the subject of social movements. The selections are readable and intelligent. I strongly recommend Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives to anyone who seeks to understand the particular contribution of social movements to contemporary life.”
Jack Levin; The Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Northeastern University (and author of The Violence of Hate: Confronting Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Other Forms of Bigotry)
""Current work in social movements tends oscillates between highly abstract theoretical models and detailed pointalist portraits of individual movements. By bringing together work on nine different movements, especially on the far right, Dianne Dentice and James Williams build middle range explanations from the ground up. This volume will find a comfortable home in courses that are uncomfortable with facile explanations.""
Michael Kimmel, Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook
“Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives provides scholars, as well as lay readers, an interesting and fresh look at a number of unconventional collectivities – utopian and not so utopian – devoted to changing the world. I find the scholarship in this volume to be instructive, insightful, and smart, and believe it makes a valuable contribution to the discipline. I recommend it highly to all who are interested in how and why humans band together to precipitate social change.”
Douglas F. George, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas
(Dr. George chairs the Social Change session at the annual meetings of the Southwestern Social Science Association and recently co-authored an article on racial aspirations for unity in the United States.)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Miranda Anderson,The Book of the Mirror: An Interdisciplinary Collection Exploring the Cultural Story of the Mirror,Paperback,9781847184825,24.99,"The essays in this book are gathered together from the realms of art, literature, history, archaeology, philosophy and science. Together they weave a picture that gives us new insights into the mirror as a material object and as an image in art and texts. This interdisciplinary and innovative book raises important issues about the material life of an object and its intimate interrelations with socio-cultural imagery. Perceptions of the workings of our cognitive processes and of our subjectivity are shown to be dynamically interwoven with the technological and socio-cultural matrices of particular periods, whilst longer term continuities in the understanding and employment of the mirror reflect underlying continuities in the capacities and constraints of mirrors and of human subjects. This book demonstrates the active role imagery and technologies have always played in our thoughts, lives and worlds.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Bianca Maria Pirani and Ivan Varga,The New Boundaries between Bodies and Technologies,Hardback,9781847184993,39.99,"The new boundaries between bodies and technologies constitute one of the most important developments in the last fifty years. Through technologies we not only change the relations between a natural given, the body, and a human-made artefact -- the technology but also change the ways we experience the world. How close are we to a world in which the abilities of machines are indistinguishable from those of the species that invented them?
Our encounters with the new technologies change the cognitive processes and influences the modes of processing information. Moreover, it raises the question of the nature of human beings. Traversing body as emotive- being- in- the world and body as location culturally and socially constructed, there is a third dimension: the dimension of technological.
Are we able to use these new dimension as a creative interface between the emotional brain, the acting body, and ICTS?
In answering these questions, the book explores the action of bodies in technology, that is, how the sense of our bodies and of our orientation in the world are affected by information and communication technologies. It contributes therefore to the world-wide discussion and debates on the impact of technology, especially information technology, on the lives of human beings in the age of globalization, in particular to the present thinking of the relationship between technology and embodiment.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-04-01,Dan Wylie,Toxic Belonging? Identity and Ecology in Southern Africa,Hardback,9781847185143,39.99,"Southern Africa’s literatures brim with references to the natural world, its landscapes and its animals. Both fictional and non-fictional works express ongoing debates, often highly politicised, concerning its various groups’ senses of identity and belonging in relation to the land and its denizens. This often involves a pervasive tension between ‘Western’, settler societies’ conceptions of modernity and indigenous world-views, each complicating the often simplistic binarisms drawn between them. In this selection of papers from the 2006 Literature and Ecology Colloquium, held in Grahamstown, South Africa, the complexities of forging imaginative and pragmatic senses of belonging in Southern Africa are explored from a variety of disciplinary persepectives: philosophical, historical, botanical, and anthropological as well as literary. Their subject-matter ranges widely – from Bushmen testimonies to Berlin missionaries, from prehistoric cave-dwellers to Schopenhauer, from white Batswana to lion-tamers – but find themselves echoing one another in intriguing and illuminating ways. These are highly localised meditations on age-old questions: What does it mean to be human within a natural environment? Why do we appear to be so damaging to the ecology that sustains us? Is our presence inevitably ‘toxic’ to our planetary fellow-travellers? How do we forge an ecologically sound sense of belonging in this post-colonial, post-apartheid, post-modern era? If this collection has a single most prominent question binding it together, it is this: What are the limits and potentialities of human compassion towards the natural world?
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Alison Falby,"Between the Pigeonholes: Gerald Heard, 1889-1971",Hardback,9781847185556,34.99,"Aldous Huxley described Gerald Heard as “that rare being—a learned man who [made] his mental home on the vacant spaces between the pigeonholes.” Heard’s off-beat interests made him a cultural and intellectual pioneer on both sides of the Atlantic in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Despite accolades from such figures as E.M. Forster, who characterized him as “one of the most penetrating minds in England,” and Christopher Isherwood, who described him upon his death as one of the “few great magic mythmakers and revealers of life’s wonder,” Heard is largely unknown today.
Between the Pigeonholes is the first published full-length study of Gerald Heard. Alison Falby examines Heard’s ideas and contexts in interwar Britain and postwar America, demonstrating his significance in several important twentieth-century movements. These movements include popular science and psychology, psychical research, Eastern spirituality, pacifism, cooperativism, and Californian counter-culture. All of Heard’s involvements expressed his desire to convey religious ideas in the modern languages of biological, social, and physical science.
Falby also traces Heard’s shifting political leanings from left-liberal in the early-1930s to libertarian in the early-1960s. She finds that his modernist theological approach, conventionally associated with liberal religion and politics, provided spiritual fodder for those on both the Left and the Right: Isherwood and W.H. Auden on the one hand, and Clare Boothe Luce and Spiritual Mobilization on the other.
Using Heard as a prism through which to examine popular ideas, Falby shows that the twentieth century contained much political and religious heterogeneity. This heterogeneity illustrates the diverse and overlapping roots of both liberal religion and conservative politics in the twenty-first century.
","""Gerald Heard is the best kept secret of the 20th century. He changed the course of my life, and the lives of countless others, including Aldous Huxley's. Somehow, however, he didn't receive the attention that was due him. Alison Falby's new biography goes a long way toward correcting that oversight.""
- Huston Smith, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University.
""Between the Pigeonholes: Gerald Heard is the first comprehensive, critical assessment of Heard's life and philosophy. It is thorough in its scope, exhaustive in its depth, and painstakingly researched. It covers all of Heard's major influences including his domestic upbringing, scholastic career, and interactions with his contemporaries. It accurately charts the progressive development of his ideas and places them in the context of the dominant thought of his day. It reveals Heard as a significant and influential, albeit neglected thinker who made notable contributions in several fields. Kudos to Professor Alison Falby for producing an immensely absorbing and resoundingly authoritative biographical study of Gerald Heard.""
- John Roger Barrie, Literary Executor of Gerald Heard
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,"Zowie Davy, Julia Downes, Lena Eckert, Natalia Gerodetti, Dario Llinares and Ana Cristina Santos",Bound and Unbound: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Genders and Sexualities,Hardback,9781847185396,39.99,"
This edited book has developed from the themes, connections and disjunctures that emerged from a two-day postgraduate conference on Thinking Gender: The Next Generation in 2006 at the University of Leeds. The editorial collective is comprised by Zowie Davy, Julia Downes, Dario Llinares, and Ana Cristina Santos from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS), University of Leeds, Lena Eckert from the University of Utrecht, and Natalia Gerodetti, who is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University.
","“In 12 exciting and confident interdisciplinary essays, a lively new generation of scholars demonstrate how gender and sexual borders are being pushed, pulled, stretched, embraced and transformed. Carefully organised to raise challenging topics - from 'The Third Sex' to 'Holocaust Memorials'- this is a timely book lush with possibilities. It is a must collection for all students of gender and sexualities.”
--Prof. Ken Plummer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Essex; and author of “Intimate Citizenship”.
“The relationship between gender and sexuality has been much contested in the humanities and social sciences. This multidisciplinary collection showcases work from a new generation of scholars bringing fresh perspectives to bear on these debates. It is a collection that challenges boundaries – of gender and sexual categories and of existing academic knowledge – in which the authors seek ways of re-imagining the seeing and doing of gender.”
--Prof. Stevi Jackson, Director of Centre for Women's Studies, University of York, author of “Heterosexuality in Question”
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Marti D. Lee and Ed Madden,Irish Studies: Geographies and Genders,Hardback,9781847185495,34.99,"Highlighting the work of both established and emerging scholars in Irish studies, this collection brings together fifteen essays working at the intersection of two important and developing fields of Irish studies: gender studies and cultural geography. Developed from papers first presented at a regional meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in South Carolina in 2006, not only does this work suggest the importance of linking gender and geography, but it also suggests, in the range of literary and historical topics, the rich interdisciplinary nature of Irish studies at present. Central to all of the essays is an attention to intersections of gender and sexual identity formation with the politics of place and space. Although considerations of geographic space have long been staples of Irish cultural studies, especially in relation to political identities, these pieces suggest the critical importance of linking spatial and geographic analysis more clearly to ongoing examinations of gender and sexuality. From institutions such as the Magdalen laundries and the prison to the domestic garden and home, across urban and rural landscapes, from the Dublin GPO to a St. Patty's festival in the southern United States—this book examines the local and human contexts of identity formation and performance.
","“This volume of essays offers a new look at old themes by situating itself in the fruitful space where gender and geography collide in Ireland. It features intriguing intersections between Aran and the Congo, Ireland and Palestine, Kilmainham and Alcatraz, while straddling the Irish and English languages, male and female, creative and scholarly writing. The approaches taken are genuinely comparative and engage generously with their subjects, while displaying the scholarly breadth of contemporary Irish Studies.”
-- Kevin Whelan, Smurfit Director of the Keough-Notre Dame Center, Dublin, Ireland
“These essays move beyond analysis of the trope of a feminized land and nation and toward a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of gendered bodies in space, the importance of particular physical and imaginative geographies for understanding and performing gender, and the relationships between (inter)national and gendered identities and politics. In so doing, they put Geography and Gender in Irish Studies on the cutting edge of Irish studies scholarship.”
-- Kathryn Conrad, Associate Professor of English, University of Kansas, author of Locked in the Family Cell: Gender, Sexuality, and Political Agency in Irish National Discourses, and winner of the Dermot McGlinchey Award for pioneering work in Irish studies
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Lisa Bernstein,(M)Othering the Nation: Constructing and Resisting National Allegories through the Maternal Body,Hardback,9781847185372,34.99,"(M)Othering the Nation: Constructing and Resisting National Allegories through the Maternal Body explores how cultural narratives represent the mother as nation in ways that both reinforce and challenge traditional, normative roles and create new forms of social identity for women. The anthology examines ways in which the representation of motherhood as national allegory has constricted women’s social, economic, and political roles in different geographic and historical contexts. It also shows how this cultural use of the mother-figure can provide alternative models of women's lives as mothers and non-mothers. Encompassing literature from Canada, England, Germany, India, Ireland, Mexico, Romania, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Spain, and the United States, the essays attempt to give women a voice about their own diverse lives and experiences.
Section One, Authentic Mothers, examines how notions of pure, moral motherhood have been enlisted to promote nationalist projects and to create and maintain the illusion of a cohesive nation-state. Section Two, Transforming Mothers, focuses on texts that both challenge national stereotypes and contest the roles of women in society. The essays in this chapter address problems raised in the first part of the book by questioning notions of chaste, authentic mothers and by attempting to create new, inclusive and multi-cultural versions of the national imaginary. The third section, Transgressing Mothers, presents concepts of “anti-mothering,” embodied by ""deviant"" or ""unnatural"" mothers, to question the representation of mother as national allegory on the eve of and into the twenty-first century. In showing the relationship of particular women’s situations to ongoing discourses of mother-as-nation, this collection is significant to contemporary women's lives, and thus to society as a whole.
","""...an imaginative and provocative anthology. (M)Othering the Nation sensibly avoids being limited by national boundaries and examines how the trope of motherhood is presented in a variety of cultures and national situations. The articles take the reader on an educational journey through discussions of gender ideology and representations of (m)othering and the Nation in writing from and about Mexico, Ireland, Sierra Leone, Communist Romania, the Soviet Union of the 1920s, Galicia, South Africa. Its themes range from the 1950s USA and the Rosenbergs to the West German media and representations of those deemed female terrorists. An inter-national educational treat.""
—Merle Collins, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of Maryland, College Park
“In (M)Othering the Nation, Lisa Bernstein gives us a fascinating addition to studies of gender and nation. This wide ranging anthology provocatively addresses the ruptures in national allegories of “the mother,” which reveal that real women’s experiences are often banished to the margins in ideological representation. Adopting a global perspective that draws together a vast range of cultures--from medieval to modern, from the Americas to the Soviet Union, Europe and Africa--the book provides an incisive and richly detailed examination of the link between actual and allegorical mothers.”
—Nandita Batra, Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico and Editor of Revista Atenea and Co-editor of essay anthologies: Transgression and Taboo, Narrating the Past, and This Watery World: Humans and the Sea.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Michael Brennan,Mourning and Disaster: Finding Meaning in the Mourning for Hillsborough and Diana,Hardback,9781847185549,34.99,"The Hillsborough stadium disaster of 15 April 1989 and the death of Princess Diana on 31 August 1997 sparked expressivist scenes of public mourning hitherto unseen within the context of British society. The largely local displays of grief witnessed on Merseyside following the Hillsborough disaster were, however, repeated and provided a pre-text for the national (and global) public mourning which accompanied the death of Princess Diana. What was it, this book asks, about the Hillsborough disaster and death of Princess Diana that provoked such strong emotions? Why and how did these ostensibly similar events produce such contrasting reactions, moving some people, including the book’s author, to mourn one event but resist the mourning for the other?
Mourning and Disaster provides an insight into a series of questions raised by the public mourning that followed these two events. What, for example, do the messages contained in the public books of condolence signed in the wake of these events tell us either about the social identities of the people who mourned or about the processes of meaning-making by which death is apprehended and understood? What do condolence books tell us about how contemporary society mourns and the ways in which loss is languaged? Is it the case that, in episodes of public mourning in which the deceased are not known to us personally, the mourner might actually be mourning some aspect of themselves? Is it also the case that in not mourning these events some aspect of one’s own identity or self was being repudiated or mourned? Drawing upon both the public books of condolence signed in Britain during the public mourning for these events, alongside the author’s own autobiographical memories of them, it is to these sorts of questions, amongst others, that this book seeks to provide answers.
","""'Mourning and Disaster' offers an original and deeply resonant cultural analysis of public mourning. Focusing on the events surrounding the stadium disaster at Hillsborough and the unprecedented global response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, this book examines powerful articulations of politics and emotion, memory and community embedded not only in public spectacle, but also in the ineffable private losses and acts of memorialisation that can be summoned by distant disaster. This book marks a significant contribution to a burgeoning field of work interested in the psychic and cultural, as well as social and political dimensions of mourning practices.”
-- Dr Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry,UK
“Mourning and Disaster takes a fresh and searching look at two familiar instances of public mourning. Through textual analysis of condolence books and his innovative auto-ethnographic method, Brennan give us new insights into the relations of private grief and public remembrance, a key issue for our disaster-stricken times.”
-- Prof. Richard Johnson, Prof. Cultural Studies, Nottingham Trent University - retired
""Brennan writes in the sociology academic space, and does not examine the media studies angle.
Alongside the core research, the book is equally valuable as an excellent introduction to the history of sociology and psychology in regard to death and loss, which is technical but accessible for those not from this part of the academy. It also has a useful methodological section that might help those considering undertaking this type of research.
Prof. Michael Ashby, Professor of Palliative Care, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania, Grief Matters, Volume 13/ number 3, Summer 2010, pg87
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Robert Sugarman,The Many Worlds of Circus,Paperback,9781847185662,19.99,"Acrobats and manipulators of objects, trained animals, and clowns – have been performing throughout history. In the eighteenth century, the invention of the circus ring provided a focus for the activities, and the modern circus was born.
Once the circus was the most spectacular entertainment many Americans saw. When the supply of cheap labor disappeared and other forms of entertainment became available, the giant circuses shrank, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century new one ring circuses returned.
The Circus and Circus Culture area of the Popular Culture Association has been examining circus history, circus life, the relationship of circus to society, and the impact of circus on the visual and literary arts since 1997. This book is a collection of papers from its annual conferences.
""This fascinating collection showcases the transnational richness and cultural
depth of the circus in an array of historical and contemporary settings.
Strongly recommended for circus enthusiasts and students of popular culture,
history, and theater.""
—Janet M.Davis, Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of American Studies, College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, author of The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top
","This collection of essays edited by Robert Sugarman offers a number of intriguing perspectives on circus history and performances. It is divided in to sections including ""Spectacles"", ""Race, Gender, Difference"", ""The Dark Side"", ""Circus in the Arts and Media"" and ""History"". Robert Sugarman deserves praise for editing the eclectic collection and his own vivid contributions on circus economics.
Spectacle - Quarterly Journal of the Circus Arts
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Pink Dandelion and Peter Collins,The Quaker Condition: The Sociology of a Liberal Religion,Hardback,9781847185655,34.99,"This book focuses primarily on what we have termed the ‘Quaker Condition’. It looks sociologically at the condition of present-day British Quakerism. This original and innovative collection contributes to several different, though obviously connected, fields within the study of religion. It operates on five levels. In the first place, the volume is the first to represent, substantially, the contribution of social science to the study of Quakerism and therefore provides useful comparative material for those whose focus is on other faith groups. Second , the book focuses largely on British Quakerism and so enriches the pool of resources relating to the sociology of British religion and British culture more generally Third , there are very few sociological volumes dedicated to the analysis of a single faith group. Fourth, the book represents an in-depth study of a liberal faith group, when liberal religion is the focus of much scholarly debate at present particularly with reference to the secularisation thesis. The study of British Quakerism is especially fascinating in this regard, given how the group can be described almost as hyper- or ultra-liberal, prefiguring many of the developments which may overtake currently more conservative groups. Fifth, the volume represents a particularly collective way of working of interest to all those concerned with the methodology of social research, with the design and construction of the volume jointly agreed by all the authors. Regular meetings of the group and a conference based on these chapters has culminated in a book far more interwoven and layered than a typical ‘edited collection.’
","""This is a collection designed for, and attractive to, academics. However it remains accessible, with much to fascinate the lay reader. The book is a wide-ranging and fascinating look into what is distinct about contemporary Quakerism, compared both to Friends in the past, and other religions.""
-Hannak Brock, the Friend, September '09
‘…the interconnectedness and mutual supportiveness of the contributors’ chapters are striking. I recommend all readers with an interest in the dynamics and manifestations of contemporary religion to engage with this book’
Eleanor Nesbitt, University of Warwick, Quaker Studies, Vol.14, Issue 2 March 2010
""All the contributions to this edited volume contain interesting insights and it is convenient to have twelve studies of the same movement in one volume. The editors are to be commended for bringing their contributors together and I most strongly recommend this book.""
Steve Bruce, University of Aberdeen, Journey of Contemporary Religion, Vol.25, No.3, October 2010, pg 485
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,Marie Porter,Transformative Power in Motherwork: A Study of Mothering in the 1950s and 1960s,Hardback,9781847185501,39.99,"This book explores the experiences of a group of Australian women who became first-time mothers between 1950 and 1965. A grounded theory of transformative power in motherwork is presented that has emerged from the analysis of interviews. The mothers talked about what they did in their active mothering years. The author argues that despite being constrained by the gender bias in the patriarchal context, these mothers were agents who developed skills that enabled them to resist or creatively deal with most of the constraints they faced. Their emphasis was on their agency and the power to nurture their children into responsible adults. Their awareness of the importance of their motherwork acted as a motivator in this development.
The author further argues that the relationship between each mother and each of her children is a transformative power relationship in which both mother and child are transformed—the child into an independent adult and the mother into a skilled self-motivated agent through her motherwork. Any threat to this process resulted in the mother doing all she could to resist or counteract the constraint/s she was encountering. Transformative power expressed in motherwork can be recognised analytically by several characteristics. It empowers both parties in the mother–child duality. Complexity, diversity, fluidity, and responsiveness to the physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of the relationship are all evident in transformative power relationships.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,"Glenda Mac Naughton, Patrick Hughes and Kylie Smith","Young Children as Active Citizens: Principles, Policies and Pedagogies",Hardback,9781847185389,39.99,"Young Children as Citizens explores how young children (birth to 12 years of age) can and should participate in civic life. It reflects new images of young children as social actors, together with the increased interest in children's rights in the public sphere. The contributors are early childhood researchers, pedagogues, children and policy makers from Australia and Europe. They present a rich diversity of research-based case studies in which policy-makers and educators have listened to young children¹s views on public issues and responded in respectful and ethical ways.
Young Children as Citizens is a unique resource for policy-makers, those working in children's services and child advocates. It shows how best to consult young children and it presents a range of arguments that consulting young children about policies and decisions that affect them supports and enhances a vigorous democratic society.
Students (undergraduate and postgraduate), teachers and researchers in early childhood studies can use individual chapters of Young Children as Citizens selectively to explore issues of increasing complexity in different courses.
The book would be a good set text for Honours and Master's programs that address issues of children¹s rights.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Julia C. Paulk,Dominant Culture and the Education of Women,Hardback,9781847185730,34.99,"Women’s access to education over the centuries has been determined by many factors, including class, race, religion, and nationality. Although women’s experiences are marked by a rich diversity, women are in many ways united by their struggle to gain access to education. While previous essay collections that study this topic have tended to be more limited in scope, Dominant Culture and the Education of Women addresses the educational experiences of women from the fourth to the twenty-first century in Europe and the Americas. Because of its inclusive nature, this collection demonstrates not only that women have made great strides in education but also that certain challenges have yet to be overcome. While medieval women faced cloistering and severe restrictions, modern women have gained entry into previously all-male universities and male dominated professions. However, women under totalitarian regimes or from marginalized communities continue to struggle against patriarchal conceptions of women’s roles and use of the tools of literacy. This volume will appeal to all who seek new insights into the many subjects related to female education, including women’s studies, education, comparative cultural and literary studies, and history.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Michael Chapman,Postcolonialism: South/African Perspectives,Hardback,9781847185990,29.99,"This collection poses two overarching questions: Is there a role for the literary imagination in postcolonial studies? And where might one locate South Africa or, more generally, South/African perspectives, in a field delineated primarily by northern institutional purposes and practices?
While engaging with contemporary debates the essays seek to turn current postcolonial emphases on theoretical formulations and issue-driven interpretation towards the subjective experience of literary texts in specific contexts.
The Introduction, “Postcolonialism: A Literary Turn”, suggests a template of ‘late postcolonialism’ beyond empires writing back to the centre. Instead, ongoing challenges include settler identity, past and present; independent or compromised African/diasporic voices; the character of the postcolony in which the pre-modern, modern, and postmodern contest a single though heterogeneous place, or space; and the ‘voicing’ of the silent subaltern alongside the ‘postcolonialising’ of Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.
Despite the utopian political pronouncements of many postcolonial projects (the West’s own undoing) this collection wishes to stimulate us—students, academics—to see afresh, and comparatively, across worlds. In this, a literary turn may achieve an ethical dimension.
","“Postcolonial studies in South Africa obviously has important work to do.”
Robert J.C. Young, New York University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Aleš Erjavec,"Postmodernism, Postsocialism and Beyond",Hardback,9781847185778,34.99,"The book focuses on three interrelated issues: the relationship between modernism and postmodernism; visuality and visual culture; and the relation between the East (former European socialist countries) and the West as regards aesthetics, globalization, culture, and the mechanisms of the presentation and representation of contemporary visual art.
In the first part the author reflects upon some of the less noticed issues of modernism and its dominant theoretical narratives regarding art: its privileging of truth and its obfuscation of some segments of European art. One of his central tenets is that recent postsocialist politicized postmodern visual art contradicts Peter Bürger's canonical theory about the avant-garde art of the previous century.
The art and culture discussed throughout this volume predominantly concern the visual. For this reason, in the second part visual culture and its uneasy relationship with art and art history are an object of reflection, a topic which is then complemented with that of the embodied eye in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Photography, its relation to truth, and the problematic expectation that an ontology of photography is possible or necessary is the theme of the closing chapter of this part of the book.
In the third part the author offers a global view on philosophy of art, visual culture, and the institutions that disseminate them.
","""I recommend this book to South African artists, art historians, and philosophers of art.""
E. A. Mare, SAJAH, volume 23, No. 2, 2008
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Lisa Gjedde and Bruno Ingemann,Researching Experiences: Exploring Processual and Experimental Methods in Cultural Analysis,Hardback,9781847186003,34.99,"In the beginning was – not the word – but the experience. This phenomenological approach provides the basis for this book, which focuses on how a person-in-situation experiences and constructs meaning from a variety of cultural visual events.
This book presents video-based processual methods for researching experiences in a variety of settings ranging from the museum, to news photography, and interactive media. The research led to the development of a set of methodological tools and approaches we term the reflexivity lab. The interaction in the experimental situation between the media and body, dialogue, moods, values and narratives have been investigated qualitatively with more than sixty informants in a range of projects. The processual methodological insights are put into a theoretical perspective and also presented as pragmatic dilemmas.
Researching Experiences is relevant not only for students and researchers in media and communication studies but also for practitioners within the fields of media, communication and experience design.
","""The book supports the reader in moving beyond a verbal account of experience to a more complex, situated and nuanced account of experience as visual, embodied and spatial. In doing so the book offers ways to respond to the complex multimodal environment of the twenty-first century.""
-- Dr Carey Jewitt, Reader in Education and Technology, Institute of Education, University of London.
""As new media technologies develop, new research methodologies are required to investigate them. Gjedde and Ingemann approach this important topic imaginatively, and with a wealth of experience.""
-- Dr Judy Robertson, Heriot-Watt University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Mogens Rüdiger,The Culture of Energy,Hardback,9781847185792,34.99,"The culture of the modern world involves a sizeable and continuous use of energy. The story of energy as a part of modernity begins in the early 19th Century with hard work, experiments and the establishment of local energy systems. The natural conditions made certain by the alternation between light and dark, between warmth and cold, was gradually suspended by the introduction of electric lighting and heating into the home.
The welfare state has significantly hastened this development to the degree that notions such as wellness and individual well-being have become natural elements of our consumer culture and our daily life. In most parts of the world we have light whenever we desire it, and the homes maintain a comfortable temperature of 21 degrees Celsius by use of either heating or of air-conditioning.
In The Culture of Energy historians, social scientists and architects focus on various aspects of the energy culture in Western Europe, the United States, India and former Soviet Union, and examine subjects such as the history of lighting, street lighting, heating and central heating, household uses of energy, the debate on nuclear power, energy conservation and environmental perspectives on energy.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,"Ian Cooper, Ekkehard Knörer and Bernhard Malkmus",Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination,Hardback,9781847185914,34.99,"Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination brings together a varied and fascinating range of contributions to explore the role of third agents in the post-Enlightenment literary imagination, including modern narratives such as film. It centres on the figure of ‘the third’ – conceived imaginatively as a liminal agent transgressing social, cultural and spatio-temporal boundaries, and conceptually as the vital yet often problematic element in theories of discourse that seek to operate beyond binary codes of meaning. This figure is revealed to be a ‘secret protagonist’ of modernity, neglected by, and eluding the scope of, existing intellectual and literary histories. Contributors to this volume are drawn from diverse theoretical backgrounds, encompassing work in dialectics, psychoanalysis and systems theory. Through their focus on literature and media, they seek to understand how those conceptions of the third relate to imaginative figurations.
This volume offers the first comprehensive account of third agency in modern literature and its intellectual and imaginative pre-history. It provides an accessible combination of close readings and theoretical reflection, presenting figures who inhabit in-between territories such as the adventurer, the bastard, the priest, the angel, the adulterer, the poet and the outcast. These figures are read as protagonists in a genealogy of modernity that has not yet been written. The essays here also provide fascinating answers as to why these secret protagonists often became major figures in modern philosophy and literary theory, and give new insights into such writers as Benjamin, Barthes and Derrida.
","‘“There is nothing as important as the interference of a third party.” This statement from Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities contradicts the influential tertium non datur of Aristotelian logic. The lucid contributions to this volume aim at nothing less than deciding who is right – Aristotle, Goethe, or perhaps even a third agent. They clearly deserve the attention of more than three readers.’
Jochen Hörisch, Professor of German and Media Studies, Mannheim University
‘The “figure of the third” has proved to be an exciting motivic and conceptual framework for cultural exploration, a device for probing beyond traditional binary investigative systems and therefore for uncovering paradigms and constellations in intellectual and literary history that such systems themselves tend systematically to conceal […] This volume seems to me to be building on important existing research but simultaneously to be pushing it forward in new ways, particularly as regards the interfaces of theory with pragmatic literary and cultural criticism.’
Robert Vilain, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London
""...this genuinely interdisciplinary study is often stimulating and always worthwhile. It represents the first comprehensive account of this topical paradigmand could itself be said to represent a 'third realm' between literature on the one hand and philosophy and theory on the other which will doubtless be of interest to a large number of readers.""
Jane Walling, University of Durham, Modern Language Review, Volume 105, Part 1, Jan 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Helen Lee,Ties to the Homeland: Second Generation Transnationalism,Hardback,9781847185891,34.99,"Ties to the Homeland examines the connections maintained across national borders by the children of migrants, the “second generation.” In the context of globalisation and increasing population mobility, migrants’ transnational ties have become an important topic of research, yet until recently we have heard little about the reproduction of such ties in the second generation. The transnational engagements of migrants’ children are crucial for understanding future trends in the global movement of people, money, goods and ideas, and they also can have a significant impact on issues of cultural identity and “belonging” for these children, who grow up outside their parents’ homelands but may have dual or even multiple notions of “home.” The detailed case studies in Tie to the Homeland explore the diverse transnational practices and attitudes of members of the second generation and reveal significant intergenerational differences that bring into question some of the key assumptions underlying existing work on transnationalism. The case studies focus on the children of migrants originating in regions such as Europe, the Middle East and the South Pacific, and they bring an Australian perspective to a field that has been dominated by a European and North American focus.
","“The world of second generation Australians, steeped within a web of transnational connections and relationships, encompasses a complex array of negotiated identities, responsibilities and belongings. The essays included in Helen Lee’s collection draw on rich and multifaceted aspects of Australian second generation experiences that cover a range of pertinent topics: from the significance and diverse conceptualizations of homelands to questions of politics, remittances and music. They add important new dimensions to the growing body of Australian scholarship on second generation transnationalism. This collection, which combines conceptual clarity with the richness of data, will fill an important gap in the literature on migration and transnationalism and provide an invaluable insight into the dynamics of contemporary social life in Australia.”
—Zlatko Skrbiš, Professor of Sociology, School of Social Science, Co-director of Research, SBS Faculty, The University of Queensland
“This is the first volume to focus on the intersections of second generation and transnationalism studies in the Australian context. It provides a timely contribution to an emerging field of study that has to date included few accounts of Australian experiences. Helen Lee has woven together a stimulating collection of papers from complementary disciplines providing richly detailed primarily ethnographic accounts that showcase important new scholarship in the field. United by a common focus on identity, the collection offers a nuanced account of the varieties of practices and processes that characterise the transnational realities of the second generation including through music, film, religion, ritual, narrative and imagination.”
—Dr Loretta Baldassar, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Sociology M255, University of Western Australia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan,"Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives; History of Sexualities: Volume I ",Hardback,9781847185921,39.99,"The annual Lesbian Lives conference has been held in University College Dublin since 1993. The success of the conference held in 2006 entitled ‘Historicising the Lesbian’ inspired this collection of essays. From the dozens of papers delivered, the chapters chosen for inclusion in this volume cover a wide period in history from the medieval to the very modern, a huge range of subject areas and diverse historical interests. The many subjects areas dealt with will allow a widening of our knowledge of lesbian history and encourage more in-depth investigation into the many issues raised within.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,Margaret C. Wiley,"Women, Wellness, and the Media",Hardback,9781847185754,34.99,"
As a former nurse and someone who now teaches Women’s Studies, I have long been interested in the politics of health care. Today, most Americans would agree that our health care system is broken. We pay more for health care than any nation in the world, yet in 2007, the World Health Organization ranked us as 37th in quality of health care. Forty-six million Americans are now without health insurance. What is happening here? And just where are all these dollars going?
In Women, Wellness, and the Media, thirteen scholars from a wide range of disciplines examine the relationship between media stereotypes and women’s health. They look at several images of women: the perfect mom; the straight, bikini-clad sixteen-year old blond who has been air-brushed to perfection; the wild black Jezebel who struts her stuff; and the shriveled up menopausal crone. The writers point out that these images are making millions of dollars for all sorts of businesses ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to women’s magazines. Scholars have long noted that stereotypes disempower women; in Women Wellness and the Media we see how these stereotypes actually harm women’s health while turning millions in corporate profits.
","“This book is a collection of well-researched essays broad in scope, comprehensive in depth, and written by a diverse group of scholars. It is part reminder of the power media (backed by corporations) had in educating women, a power which continues unchecked today, and part a roadmap to future paths media, women and men can take to change direction. The essays …reveal a sexism, which on the surface seems to promote women’s independence and empowerment; yet, underneath, it actually undermines the power of the individual and the collective female. The essays postulate that the media remain rife with deceptions, which reinforce historical stereotypes and continue to subtly subvert female’s confidence, self respect, autonomy, and health. This collection further links sexism to ageism, racism, classism and homophobia.”
--Rebecca L. Johnson, MD Staff Psychiatrist, Dartmouth College Health Service Adjunct Asst Professor of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School Former Ethic Institute Fellow, Dartmouth College
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Gary Backhaus and John Murungi,Dangers in the Incommensurability of Globalization: Socio-Political Volatilities,Hardback,9781847186096,29.99,"The thesis of incommensurability concerns the interrelation between subjective culture and objective culture through which the constitutive agency of chaos (incommensurability) emerges. The objectivations/products, the constituents of objective culture, carry their own Being, and this Being transcends the original subjective expressivities/intentions. The constitutive agency of this incommensurable interrelation becomes apparent in an age of globalization where its effects become global, bringing about dangerous socio-political volatilities. To illustrate, global warming has been neither the expressive intention of subjective culture nor a constituent of energy per se as an objectivated product in the context of objective culture. It emerges in the interrelation, an unforeseen incommensurability, a chaos in the culture of energy that threatens the globe/world in various ways. Incommensurability, the cultural form of chaos, is recognized as dramatically foiling human instrumental rationality, spoiling its hubris or belief in its own progress. The doctrine of incommensurability shows that we can not know what we are doing while we are doing it, for the empirical manifestations of chaos are only knowable after the fact and its effects are unpredictable. This book of essays is divided into two parts: the first dealing with contemporary themes in subjective culture and the second with those in objective culture. A few of the pressing topics treated in this volume are: abstracted information of a computer-based society versus locally-based, grounded knowledge, abstracted neo-liberal economics versus place-grounded economics, the geo-politics of peak oil, and the intensification of natural disasters as a consequence of global warming reveal the tenuous character of the contemporary world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Mina Karavanta and Nina Morgan,Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid,Hardback,9781847186164,39.99,"Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid features essays that invoke Said and Derrida’s intellectually rigorous examination of humanism in their works; yet by shifting Said and Derrida out of their contexts—by dis-engaging them from their respective habitats of postcolonial studies and deconstruction—and by placing them in each other’s company, the collection reconstellates those traces of their works that open the question of ethics, criticism, and the political in order to reconsider the status of the human subject in the global moment.
These fourteen interdisciplinary essays by leading international scholars address present social change and political questions and analyze humanism from the perspectives of literature, theory, history, gender studies, and art in view of the intellectual impact of Said and Derrida on contemporary philosophy. In rethinking the question of humanism, these essays pursue the analysis of pivotal concepts that are theoretically and politically imperative in the global age such as the ""human subject"", ""hybridity"", ""community"", ""philology"", ""secularism"", ""planetary humanism"", ""ethical antihumanism"", ""inhabitancy"", ""exceptionalism"", ""utopia"", and others.
","""Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid, a surprising conjunction of essays on two of the most relevant theorists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, is a must-read for any literary critic and academic who wishes to make sense of the current crises that infect both the humanities and global societies. The editors, in a brilliantly conceived move, have drawn together across national and intellectual borders some of the most provocative scholars who read multiplying divergent critical discourses—humanism, globalism, democracy, secularism—to produce luminous new thinking on these central figures and the problems their works illuminate.""
—Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim, University of California, Santa Barbara
""Bringing together Said and Derrida, whose recent deaths have laid waste the intellectual landscape, is an excellent thing to do. This book examines the role of humanism in a post-humanist world, and from a global not just western perspective. The contributions, especially those by Spanos, Radhakrishnan, and the editors themselves, are truly outstanding, but the level of quality of the entire volume is head and shoulders above the usual collection of critical essays. This is a timely and important book, and it will be cited often in the future by those interested in the topic.""
—Professor Daniel T. O'Hara, Temple University
""Back to basics and with the integrity of a relentless probe, this work conducts a double soliloquy, poignant and persuasive, between Said and Derrida. Outsiders with inside knowledge—and who impacted us in ways we are still sorting out—they continue to light the way as the world tries to clear significant hurdles due to metaphysical error and the hubristic pummeling of humanism. A wonderful aggregate of essays written by top-notch and responsible scholars.""
—Professor Avital Ronell, New York University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-07-01,Nigel Barber,The Myth of Culture: Why We Need a Genuine Natural Science of Societies,Hardback,9781847186195,39.99,"Before oxygen’s discovery, scientists invoked a mysterious inner principle of fire to account for burning. Today, scholars appeal to an analogously unscientific inner principle, known as culture, to account for human actions. So what is wrong with culture?! It extends from the contents of Petrie dishes to art galleries and is far too imprecise for scientific use. Science aims to separate causes from effects but social scientists use “culture” indiscriminately as both cause and effect making scientific progress impossible. Finally, culture is a smokescreen distracting us from the quest for objective influences on human behavior. (Polygamy is more about parasites than religion, for instance). This book is both a critique of culture-centered social sciences and the manifesto for a new approach - evolutionary social science - that synthesizes evolution and sociology. The author demonstrates that a natural-science approach to human societies helps us to understand social problems such as health inequality and violent crime. Written in a more high-spirited and accessible style than is customary for academic works, The Myth of Culture is a full-throttle indictment of ivory-tower social scientists whose arcane lore does more to feather their nests than to advance knowledge, or solve human problems. It should have broad appeal among college-educated people around the world.
","“Nigel Barber has done it again! Barber is a first-rate scholar with a gift for tackling successfully issues of culture from an evolutionary psychological perspective. Barber’s new book, “The Myth of Culture,” is a tour de force of his own and others’ work indicating that “culture” is not a causal force, but is generated by evolved psychological mechanisms, with the result that any sensible and comprehensive analysis of culture must invoke an evolutionary perspective. Barber’s book is not only a scholarly achievement, it is equally well-written and engaging. Anyone with an interest in culture, evolution, or their interface will enjoy this book immensely, even if they disagree with some of Barber’s arguments or conclusions.”
Todd Shackelford, Professor of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University
Dr. Nigel Barber, a prolific contributor to the research literature on both animal and human behavior, has intensified the debate between scientists who use evolutionary process to explain the broad themes of social behavior, including love and marriage, and their opponents, who attribute such patterns to culture. Barber forcefully argues that ""the explanatory fabric of cultural determinism is as threadless as the Emperor's new clothes"". People who have toured a church in Paris and a mosque in Tehran, and listened to the different languages spoken in the aisles, might initially be unwilling to believe that culture is a myth, but those who read the book will become cautious about assuming that such sociocultural variables are the prime determinants of the human behavior in the two regions. In Barber's analysis, such variables as heritable resistance to parasites, and the ratio of males to females in a given area, provide a stronger explanation of social institutions such as polygamy and single parenthood than culture or religion. Supporters of an evolutionary analysis of human behaviour will be delighted with Barber's penetrating commentary. Supporters of cultural interpretations of human affairs will have to read Barber's provocative analysis to avoid making one of the many analytic errors that Barber harpoons, and retain some credibility in scientific discussions.
Michael Cunningham, Professor of Psychology, University of Louisville
President, International Network on Personal Relationships (2001-2002)
Barber has written an important book that should leave a lasting mark on cross-cultural science. He clarifies some of the more perplexing results from previous investigations, helps to resolve ongoing empirical debates and theoretical controversies, and speculates in ways that should productively stimulate future cross-cultural research agendas. His own research is but the tip of an iceberg of new findings that will forever doom the view that culture fully causes and essentially determines human behavioral diversity.
David P. Schmitt, Professor and Chair of Psychology, Bradley University
Founding Director, International Sexuality Description Project
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Raj Bardouille, Muna Ndulo and Margaret Grieco",Africa’s Finances: The Contribution of Remittances,Hardback,9781847186492,39.99,"Globally, the volume of remittances to developing countries exceeds the development aid budgets. This volume explores the contribution of remittances to Africa’s finances and provides concrete guidelines as to how these may be expanded. It contains essays by the field leaders in this area which record, review and revise our knowledge base on Africa’s remittance patterns. The advent of new information communication technologies can contribute to an expanded capture of remittances from the African diaspora and in Africa new forms of money transfer are already taking shape which reflect this affordance. The volume also examines other resources, such as skills, that the African diaspora remits in its patterns of contact with Africa. The volume, shaped out of a conference on remittances and the African diaspora held at the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, is a timely reminder of the substantial role to be played in Africa’s development by Africans themselves.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Chemba Raghavan, Arlene E. Edwards and Kim Marie Vaz",Benefiting by Design: Women of Color in Feminist Psychological Research,Hardback,9781847186508,29.99,"The presence of women of color within the practical applications of social science research findings is severely limited, since spaces where and when women of color enter the arenas of research methodology, research question and intervention design and knowledge generation is often that of the other. Benefitting by Design addresses this limitation. It does so by locating the experience and knowledge of women of color as its central theme, with sections of the text referring to emerging trends that attend to the need for greater representation of women of color in research and academic settings. A key theme is the dislodging of currently accepted positions for the experience of women of color as marginalized, and subsumed under normative modes of examination to central positions in areas of social science research and clinical practice. This is in response to the typical assumption of the need to ‘fix’ women of color be it based on their immigration status, sexual orientation, race, culture, class or spiritual practice. Benefitting By Design attends to the salient contexts of the lives of women of color from an emic perspective, by providing models for addressing the limitations that result from exclusion, and strategies for centering the experiential knowledge of women of color in social science research and practice that is designed for their benefit.
","""Benefiting by Design: Women of Color in Feminist Psychological Research is a significant contribution to the literature. The term ""Women of Color"" has too often been defined as African American, women of Asian or Hispanic descent, and occasionally Native American women. It is time to broaden the definition to include women who occupy the ethnic/racial category of ""Other."" Benefiting by Design accomplishes this goal by including the experiences of Arab/Muslim women, Caribbean American women, and Asian-Indian immigrant women. ""Intersectionality,"" as a term and theory, has made its way into numerous academic fields including, psychology, sociology, and advocacy. More specifically, feminist researchers assert that women have multiple identities influenced by gender, race, class, caste, and sexual orientation. It is imperative to understand how living at the intersection of multiple identities influence the daily lives of Women of Color. Benefiting by Design is a unique book because it utilizes the powerful feminist voices, of both emerging and senior scholars, to capture the complexity of ethnicity and
the contexts in which Women of Color operate. Equally as important, Benefiting by Design considers ""diversity within diversity."" For example, this book grapples with the ""triple jeopardy"" of being a young, Black, lesbian. These too often muted voices are given the opportunity to reach professional audiences. Benefiting by Design: Women of Color in Feminist Psychological Research is an impressive, comprehensive book. The reader will find an update on the latest developments in theory, research, practice, and pedagogy. This book is a fresh approach and much needed ""paradigm shift""
- Dr. Carolyn M. West, Associate Professor, Psychology, Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence
“Benefiting by Design:Women of Color in Feminist Psychological Research represents a departure from anthologies currently available to address racism and/or sexism in psychological research. The difference lies in the emphasis on intersectionality, the multiple, complex and intersecting categories of race, class, gender, caste, sexualities, and sexual orientation. Intersectionality argues that such categories of difference are not separate or even additive, and in fact may be somewhat arbitrary, influenced as they are by the social consensus of the majority. The exciting part about this perspective as indicated by the title of the volume, Benefiting by Design, is that it embraces empirical research as foundational to social equality while at the same time redefining the parameters of traditional methods. The volume puts front and center the salience of social context, social activism, application and connection to the community, couched in an analysis of the role of power and status in the maintenance of social inequality. This book has something for everyone, interesting theoretical questions of intersectionality and how to identify and study it, along with practical answers to questions of training, practice and research in women of color psychologies. This is one for every feminist bookshelf.”
- Patricia D. Rozee, professor of psychology and women's studies at California State University, Long Beach.
""This book is essential reading for mental health professionals and, of course, for educators, lawyers, and community activists. ""Benefiting by Design: Women of Color in Feminist Psychological Research,"" shares precious psychological information and knowledge about women of color who have been marginalized and who deserve to be mainstreamed--not only because it is the right thing to do but because it teaches everyone crucial things about the majority culture as well. This volume contains important pieces about African-American, Latina-American, Asian-American and about immigrant women from the Carribbean and from India.
Gender identity is more complex as a function of ethnicity, immigrant status, color, sexual preference, class, etc. White Americans place a value upon independence and individuality that other cultures do not always share. When one studies minority girls and women who live in a predominantly white environment, their ""stressors,"" both real and internalized, are not the same as those who live in a predominantly all-minority environment. I loved the inclusion of faith and ritual as healing tools by Kimberly Kirby et al who focused on ""Cocaine-Dependent African-American Women;"" I was especially moved by Kim Vaz's article ""Ritual and Recovery,"" which unites a West African tradition with a western psycho-analytic tradition; and by Ami Robinson's article about African American Lesbian Youth titled ""Misunderstood, Misled, and Misfit: The Marginalization Experiences of African-American Lesbian Youth.""""
Phyllis Chesler, Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, Author of ""Women and Madness"" and ""Woman's Inhumanity to Woman.""
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Ikhlaq Din,Diet and Exercise: Lifestyle and Health Choices of Older Pakistanis in Bradford,Hardback,9781847186454,29.99,"This book explores the lifestyle and health choices of older British Pakistanis (49+) living in the City of Bradford through examining dietary habits and physical exercise among this group. This issue was explored through conducting qualitative research through in-depth interview and presented in a rich qualitative method.
This research allows the reader to understand about the dietary habits among older Pakistanis, how they make their food choices; how much they understand about the food they purchase. Also the ways in which their diet has changed over time and the influence of British cuisine. We learn for example that migration has had a major impact on the dietary habits of older Pakistanis.
We are also in better position to understand attitudes of older Pakistanis towards physical activity and recreation including the frequency of physical activity; differences among men and women; the way they organize physical activity around their daily lives, work and family. This book fulfils an important health knowledge gap.
This book will be an invaluable book among academics, health researchers as well as lay people who wish to learn about the Pakistan community in a particular context.
","“Diet and Exercise: Lifestyle and Health Choices of Older Pakistanis in Bradford” provides an original work examining the attitudes to, opinions and experiences of the dietary and exercise choices of older Pakistanis in Britain. This work offers a comparative analysis of how these attitudes and experiences have changed over-time, across cultural borders (between Pakistan and Britain) and with evolving sources of information, both through up-to-date health research, and through different media (from healthcare professionals through television and radio, to more recently developing internet sources). This book with be of primary interest to anyone interested in cultural differences in diet and exercise, from healthcare professionals to policy makers; and the extremely well described qualitative methodology will be particularly useful for all researchers who use such methods. Dr Ikhlaq Din’s book also delivers a fascinating insight into migratory patterns and pressures faced by early Pakistani migrants to the UK, how these have changed over the last few decades and allows the voices of these older people to be heard verbatim within their own cultural milieu.”
Dr David Lee; Clinical Fellow; Institute for Ageing and Health, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Claudia Slate and Keith Huneycutt,Florida Studies: Proceedings of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Florida College English Association,Hardback,9781847186294,34.99,"
Included in this volume are essays on various aspects of Florida Literature and history by scholars from across the state representing every kind of institution of higher learning. Of special interest are the studies of Florida literature in the 19th Century and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, areas that are generally underrepresented in national journals. The papers on the contributions of African- America figures, such as Zora Neale Hurston, are noteworthy. Of particular interest are the suggestions for teaching Florida Studies in the classroom, which can be adapted for high school as well as college students.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Karen Ross and Stuart Price,"Popular Media and Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes",Hardback,9781847186263,34.99,"This collection of essays has its origins in the MeCCSA 2007 conference held in Coventry in January that year. Like most edited volumes which emerge from conference contexts, this one comprises a richly diverse set of original papers which span the various themes and topics which together make up the fascinating field of media and communication. The book is broadly divided into four sections: media/public; media workers and professional identity; media industries and policy concerns; and political communication. The first section looks at the transformation of the private and public spheres through new technologies, and the phenomenon and implications of audience-mediated genres such as reality TV. The second part of the book looks at media practice from the point of view of both content and the self-policing of professional norms. The third part considers media policy including gender issues within the Scottish creative industries, and the history and future of the BBC charter. The last section looks a political communication and essays here are concerned with elite political rhetoric, together with a consideration of the internet’s impact on political activism. The editors believe that, within the wide-ranging subject matter our authors have considered, a common theme emerges. This is the way in which contemporary communication acts are structured by a number of closely related forces; capital, technology, social norms, resistive practices and gendered subjectivity all contribute to the production of public meaning.
","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,"Lotte Dam, Lise-Lotte Holmgreen and Jeanne Strunck",Rhetorical Aspects of Discourses in Present-Day Society,Hardback,9781847186591,39.99,"Since antiquity, the notion of rhetoric has been associated with Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian. Their theories are central to the understanding that, on the one hand, rhetoric can be used for persuading and convincing an audience, and on the other, for becoming an eloquent speaker. Based on this understanding, the study of rhetoric was for many years regarded by scholars as a meaningless enterprise as it was perceived as a study of linguistic ornamentation.
However, in the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars regained an interest in the study of rhetoric in recognition of rhetorical skills being important for communication in modern society. Like speakers in public life, e.g. politicians, who had always acknowledged the role of rhetoric, all sorts of communicators, mediators and scholars became interested in rhetoric as a practical tool for building up texts meant for the public sphere as well as an analytical tool for the critique of public argumentation. This led to the development of new theories from New Rhetoric over Rhetorical Criticism to theories of genre and discourse, reflecting the view that rhetoric must be understood and used against the social and cultural framework in which it is embedded.
The contributions of this book reflect this multi-faceted approach to rhetoric, discourse and genre through their focus upon and analysis of different institutionalised discourses. Thus, within the three sections of political, journalistic and organisational discourse, the articles discuss various discourse types and their rhetorical features, contributing to the understanding of rhetoric and discourse having significant influence on human action and interaction in society.
","""This wide-ranging book offers new insights into crucial aspects of the public sphere—politics, journalism and the corporate world. A deeply rooted European tradition, the study of rhetoric, has re-appeared in the contemporary world, a world in which the public display of persuasive language seems to be the very essence of our self-understanding. Using up-to-date approaches to discourse analysis, the contributors to this volume deploy rhetorical analysis in a way that illuminates the nature of the rhetorical maelstrom that engulfs us in today’s societies, and has been doing so at an accelerating pace for the last half century. This is an important volume indeed for anybody who is trying to make sense of the rising flood of daily discourse.""
Paul Chilton, Lancaster University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Grzegorz Gazda and Mariusz Golab,Space of a Garden – Space of Culture,Hardback,9781847186270,44.99,"The book presents the phenomenon of the garden and its various cultural features. It compares historical aspects of the garden with its contemporary models and focuses on various cultural traditions and different ways of presentation of this problem, in the context of world literature, problems of visual arts, questions of architecture, ecology, universal aspects of language, as well as philosophical problems of axiology and aesthetics. All those contexts combine to form a picture of a phenomenon that could be called “the metaphor of the garden”, containing a universal anthropological image of “space” in which dynamic re-evaluation of rhetorical models take place and the order of Nature complements cultural models of human understanding of reality.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Lila Rakoczy,The Archaeology of Destruction,Hardback,9781847186249,39.99,"Buildings and landscapes are traditionally analysed with their construction and use in mind, with less interest shown in their destruction or ‘end’. This innovative book, canvassing the opinions of historians, archaeologists, and other professionals, highlights the complexity of destruction both as a concept and a phenomenon. Drawing from a variety of time periods and cultures, it explores the multiplicity of meanings that destruction can have, and the many complications this creates. Included in this are the politics behind how destruction is remembered (or forgotten), the logistical and ethical dilemmas it presents us with, and the power tensions and transitions that often accompany it.
One of the most fundamental themes explored in this book is what destruction is: who defines it and how we choose to recognise it, and why these questions need to be debated. It clearly demonstrates the importance of understanding the complexity of destructive acts, and argues that the best way to achieve this is by establishing channels of dialogue between archaeologists and other disciplines.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-08-01,Angela O’Brien and Kate Donelan,The Arts and Youth at Risk: Global and Local Challenges,Hardback,9781847186324,34.99,"The Arts and Youth at Risk: Global and Local Challenges is a contribution to the lively international dialogue about creative and arts-based interventions for young people categorized as “at risk”. It contains chapters written by internationally recognized researchers and practitioners in arts education, youth arts and criminology.
The instrumental benefit of arts participation for disadvantaged and marginalized young people is an area of increasing interest worldwide. This body of research highlights the positive educational and social outcomes of arts programs within and outside the schooling system. It also interrogates the ethics of arts interventions in a diverse and socially inequitable global context. The book questions the motivations of those working with “at risk” youth and challenges practitioners to ensure that their work with marginalised communities is efficacious as well as socially and politically responsible.
Professor Shirley Brice Heath describes this book as “philosophically complex and pragmatically provocative”. She commends the editors and authors for taking “the brave stance of interrogating the consequences, trajectories, and effects of participation in the arts by young people – especially those who carry labels such as at risk.” She calls attention to the critical need as outlined in this volume to consider contextual background as well as an international perspective on children and youth when planning and delivering social and arts-based interventions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Seymour Leventman,American Popular Culture: Historical and Pedagogical Perspectives,Paperback,9781847187451,14.99,"American pop culture is no longer merely popular. It has penetrated to such deep-lying cultural and social structures that persons dream and fantasize in pop cultural terms. It is the new reality which increasingly measures all else in the social world. The present volume consists of original essays written expressly for the 2005 Conference of the American Pop Culture Association. They fall under three headings of the Association's lead: History of Pop Culture contains papers of a distinct historical dimension pointing out that although pop culture may become an autonomous force, it exists in a context of space and time. The Teaching of Pop Culture is critical because American pop culture has become so ubiquitous, classroom educators use it to present other unrelated materials, e.g., from history, economics, politics and sociology. Not even high culture such as Classic Literature is immune to pop culture treatment. Utilizing classic literature performs a double function of popularizing high culture while also paying hommage to it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Julie C. Abril,"Bad Spirits: A Cultural Explanation for Intimate Family Violence, Inside One American Indian Family",Hardback,9781847186850,29.99,"Bad Spirits takes the reader inside one Native American Indian family to witness some of the violence and victimization that occurred in the privacy of their home. While the violence is graphic and disturbing, the effects of it on one victim made her much more resilient. The book begins with the suicide of one sibling and the homicides of two others. Because of the cultural beliefs held by this family one member was perceived to be a witch. In the paradigm of the Yaqui Indians, those perceived to be witches are often murdered.
The author puts forth the theory that Bad Spirits are responsible for violence. Yaqui witchcraft and sorcery (often referred to as “Bad Indian Medicine”) are used within this family as a means of violence precipitation. The author then takes the reader out of the violence of the home and into the violence of homelessness on the streets of San Francisco.
Finally, the author discusses the current research on violence and victimization occurring within Native American Indian communities to show that other Indian tribal groups hold similar views. The book ends with the two federal laws that were designed to address child abuse and family violence among Native American Indians who live on reservations.
","""There are strong warnings from the author that the story of her life in her Yaqui Indian family in California and Arizona contains gruesome and horrifying details. These include accounts of morbid beatings and blatant and ugly episodes of sexual abuse as well as cold-blooded murder by the her parents of twins immediately following their birth. Dr. Julie Abril's Bad Spirits a rare and unvarnished story of her survival, with deep emotional scars, from a childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood filled with almost unbelievable violence.""
-Gilbert Geis, University of California, Irvine. Past president, American Society of Criminology
""I recommend this book as a text for students in courses on victimization, Indians, women and crime.""
—Natalie J. Sokoloff, Professor, Sociology Department, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh and David Getty,Borders and Borderlands in Contemporary Culture,Paperback,9781847187567,14.99,"It is entirely appropriate that this book should be produced in Dundalk. Located on the Northern rim of the Irish Pale, this town has straddled a border for centuries. Over the past thirty years, it has come to be closely identified with violent Republicanism both by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland and by Constitutional Nationalists in the South. Against such a hostile background academics attached to the Institute of Technology there have bravely confronted and interrogated these processes which have so blighted the history not only of Dundalk but of places and spaces throughout the world similarly located.
In a wide-ranging series of articles, perhaps the strongest message to emerge is that of border as limitation. The notion of border as a liminal space where worlds converge, new realities emerge and transcendence is possible rarely surfaces. Instead, the border as a physical manifestation of divisiveness is repeatedly explored.
In a passionate statement of solidarity with the Palestinians, Lavalette describes the construction of the apartheid wall: “The wall is eight feet high and has a watchtower every three hundred metres. Although there are no maps, it is thought it could end up being close to one thousand kilometres in length by the time it is completed” (p. 18).
Yndigegn shows how spatial borders gradually become mental borders such that, as visual borders disappear, new invisible borders appear (p. 33). The article explores the dualism of borders—simultaneously protecting those inside from external threats while also preventing those inside from reaching or engaging with the outside world.
Ni Eigeartaigh takes up the duality theme in the exploration of individualism as a process either of liberation or one of alienation. Taking the title from an aphorism of Kafka’s “My Prison Cell, My Fortress”, she explores a view of contemporary society as repressive, and of its inhabitants as complicit in the repression. Drawing on a wide span of literature and disciplines, she teases through the paradox of contemporary society that the freedom gained from the liberation of the individual from communal obligations and repression has resulted in a loss of identity and an overwhelming sense of isolation and powerlessness. She concludes that in the “absence of a restrictive system of social control, the individual is forced to take responsibility for his own actions….It is to avoid this responsibility that many…choose the security of the prison cell above the hardship of the outside world.”
Her paper does not go on to look at the potential role of the State or of fundamentalist movements in playing on the fear and disconnectedness of the citizenry as an equally likely outcome to that of a stronger capability for personal responsibility. One could argue for instance that the Euoropean Fascist movement and the Nationalist movement of the early- to mid-twentieth century were both based precisely on the dislocation at personal and social level resulting from the breakdown of pre-industrial communitarian ties.
While there is no attempt in the book to elucidate any particular developmental relationship between the different contributors, two broad themes may be detected—a concern with borders as socio-political and geographical constructs on the one hand and a concern with the formation of identity in the individual’s relationship to the wider society on the other.
Some light is cast on the latter issue by de Gregorio-Godeo who posits discourse as a core concept in identity formation. This leads to the conclusion that individual identity, in this case individualism, is in fact socially constructed in a “dialectical interplay between the discursive and the social identities included—so that they are mutually shaped by each other” (p.93). Using critical discourse analysis, he goes on to explore changing notions of masculinity as evidenced in the Health sections of men’s magazines.
","“This is an important book. It explores the fundamentals of discord, power differentials and oppression at personal, national and global levels. It calls attention to the ways in which ʻspace, place, identity and war interact with each other to produce situations where the absence of peace and security becomes endemicʼ (p.32). It is being published at a time when ancient borders between the East and the West are yet again the subject of international strife and present possibly the most ominous single threat to global harmony and peace. It shows that a country such as Ireland, with its own very particular history, is uniquely placed to explore boundaries and to negotiate agreed borders on the geopolitical front. To the extent that this book begins and contributes to such a process it is to be greatly welcomed.”
—Tom Collins, National University of Ireland
“Individual and collective identity seems to be impossible without borders, i.e. a clear distinction between me/us and the others. Borders even appear to be something human beings do need. Historically the national states, political alliances and religious movements have managed to establish borders as if they are natural. We are witnessing currently a similar endeavour (by politicians, journalists and scientist) to make us think in terms of cultures.
However, to define myself or ourselves, the others are needed. In any case, it is a type of communication. And historically, with regard to human and societal development, people have had all types of exchange across the borders. Borders are links.
Of course borders have been helpful in terms of protection and security. There might even be liberties which can only be experienced within borders (territorial, social or legal ones), but surely people have been suffering severely because of restrictions and compulsions due to borders, too. The wall in Germany forced thousands, millions of people to stay in the GDR and bear the undemocratic regime. Even this border of barbed wire had been permeable to some amount: by TV, letters and packages and visits from the West. East Germans could manage to go West until 1961 via Berlin, then a few succeeded in escaping under high personal risk; pensioners got permission to leave GDR, others could attend family events in West Germany; in the 1980s more and more citizens applied for legal permission to emigrate. The political unification was based on a collective identity doubtless, though there used to be a kind of East-West tension in Germany, which did not disappear totally. Sometimes East Germans have experienced unification as annexation and patronizing, and many of those (two or three million) who were close to the regime lost their jobs (and privileges). There are, it cannot be ignored, people in West Germany, who ʻmissʼ the borders, too: the access of the ʻEastʼ (beginning with GDR 1990, the enlargement of 2004, not ending with Romania and Bulgaria) is threatening for them because of economic reasons—hence the ʻtraditionalʼ (i.e. cold war based) reluctance can easily be utilized for political purposes.
With regard to borders the European Union is a postmodern project which deserves respect and support—not only because it has reduced the importance of national borders (reduced only, as it is still governed by national governments). But it is far from being or becoming something like a (just bigger) national state. It has got a new quality, as its borders are changing and relative. Inside the EU there is, for instance, a distinction between the Eurozone and the rest. There are quasi member states (like Switzerland or Norway) and privileged associates (ACP-countries), and access is not restricted principally (Turkey, Croatia, Ukraine, etc.). Internal and external EU borders are not absolute, but variable.
Borders give structure. It is necessary to know where which tax legislation is in force. It facilitates political participation when people can identify the administrator of the local school. It is helpful to know what is the range of a ʻsocial or regional fundʼ. Historically and till today, the crucial issue was: borders have had manifold, multiplied functions. If one and the same border delineates people in several or even all aspects, in terms of property, territory, political systems, ideology, religion, ethnicitiy, language, or culture then it is a total border. This total border neglects and oppresses the reality of exchange and the human need of communication. Borders which structure reality under one aspect only are helpful. Total borders are dangerous.
Trade is universal. Borders cannot prevent people from exchanging goods (and, by the way, knowledge). Whereas cultural scientists used to analyze the appearance of a particular item in the territory (cultural circle), more and more politicians argue in terms of ʻculturesʼ which can be distinguished as if there are borders between them. In order to reject this type of culturalism it suffices to recognize that culture is no ʻthing,ʼ but a term for that what people believe, feel and act. And as people communicate with each other and move, there is no border between cultures. But of course particular people share particular patterns of behaviour while others do not. But altogether, they have communities, maybe, of fashion or lifestyle. The Islamic world is a media world like Western countries.
Due to migration and mobility, including all types of tourism, and the media in general, people are communicating. ʻCultures are in exchangeʼ―we would like to say; however, this is not correct, as ʻcultureʼ is an abstract term, no actor. There are cultural industries (TV, advertisement) which try to influence people’s desires, perceptions, patterns of behaviour etc., but have recognized yet that there are so many different ʻsubcultures,ʼ lifestyles and living conditions that any marketing has to cope with that variety.
There are persons who do overcome borders as they come over borders. Sometimes the political borders change and thus citizenship; Franz Kafka for instance, born in Austrian Empire, continued to speak and write in German language as a citizen of Czechoslovakia. Others, for instance the painter Lyonel Feininger, are transnational because of their parents (e.g. German-American couples). Think about the third generation of immigrants in Germany―they have still links and ligatures to their home country, Turkey for instance. Those transnational personalities give an example how borders can be crossed. Let us take into account people living in all the borderlands, regions like at the river Rhine, which brings together French, German and Swiss people. Be aware of a double town like Görlitz-Zgorzelec, which has good chances to become nominated as European capital of culture 2010―neglecting the German-Polish border, but using it, too (as a relative, linking border).
The view on borders is fascinating and highly productive for human scientists. Thus we are grateful for this volume, edited by David Getty and Aoileann Ni Eigeartaigh, which hopefully can reach publicity beyond the borders.”
―Wolfgang Berg, Dean, Faculty of Social Work, Media and Culture, University of Applied Sciences, Merseburg/Germany
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Theophilus Kofi Gokah,Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in Sub-Saharan Africa: Aspiration or Achievement of Policy,Paperback,9781847187543,12.99,"Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in sub-Saharan Africa has come at the time when children’s well-being is on the agendas of governments, policy makers, schools and community organisations. It provides an in-depth analysis of the relation between official children’s rights and well-being policies and their implementation refracted through African as well as Western lenses. The content of the book is a departure from conventional stereotype approach to children’s well-being analysis in sub-Saharan Africa.
In addressing issues around children’s rights and well-being, the book offers a reflection on the conflict between adult society and government welfare policies. The book also draws on existing knowledge about national and international efforts to change adult attitudes towards children. Analysis in the book demonstrates that there are both structural and operational problems in children’s rights and policies governing their well-being in sub-Saharan Africa.
This sort of work has been neglected since the last few decades and has created a gulf between government policy rhetoric and practice. Children on the Boundaries of Time and Space in sub-Saharan Africa bridges that gap and reasserts the need for effective policy, material changes in resources and cultural change valuable to enhance children’s ability to stay healthy, grow and learn to become responsible citizens.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Thorsten Botz-Bornstein,"Culture, Nature, Memes",Hardback,9781847186638,34.99,"This collection of essays on cognition, which involves continental as much as analytical approaches, attempts to observe cognitive processes in three areas: in culture, in nature, and in an area that can – at least from some point of view – be perceived as an “in-between” of culture and nature: memes. All authors introduce a certain dynamic input in cognitive theory, as they negotiate between the empirical and the conceptual, or between epistemology and the study of culture. In all chapters, culture, nature, and memes turn out to be dynamic in the sense of being non-essentialist, their significations and modulating functions always being multi-dimensional. The chapters shed new light on classical themes of cognitive theory as: ‘problems of creation, generation and emergence,’ ‘animals’ thoughts and beliefs,’ ‘minds and computing,’ ‘knowledge and its social dimension,’ ‘thoughts and emotions,’ ‘the innate state of lexical concepts’ and ‘memetics and stylistics.’
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Cedric Cullingford and Ikhlaq Din,Ethnicity and Englishness: Personal Identities in a Minority Community,Paperback,9781847188120,16.99,"In an age of globalisation, the most pressing concerns are with matters of identity, personal and collective. This book explores the culture of nationality, groups and religions through the inner lives of second generation immigrants in England.
The young people studied reveal surprising and sophisticated as well as complex attitudes. They reveal the contradictions, the opportunities and the dangers of their collective identities, and reveal how they are able to make use for good or ill their position in society. What they say relates closely to the experiences of any identifiable group.
The book also relates the experience of one community to the development of prejudice and the way in which people form their sense of self. The notions of nationality and nationalism, of tribal and religious loyalty, are all covered. The book does not just describe, or give a voice to minorities, but analyses some of the reasons for the suspicions of groups for each other, for the development of prejudice, as well as suggesting the ways in which to deal with it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,José Santaemilia and Patricia Bou,Gender and Sexual Identities in Transition: International Perspectives,Hardback,9781847186683,34.99,"The aim of this volume is to offer an international panorama of gendered and sexualised experiences, with new and original data collected from a variety of cultural settings and sociopolitical contexts. We look at many parts of the world (Japan, Sweden, Poland, Cyprus, Spain, US, Australia, Canada, Hungary) with different assumptions and expectations, often revealing various research practices and traditions. Gendered or sexualized discourses are unstable constructions, in permanent transition, in a perpetual struggle to gain social legitimacy and to counter the workings of opposite discourses. They constitute privileged vantage points from which one can observe and judge power relationships. New identities are created and reproduced, refused and challenged.
This volume explores, among other issues, the perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity in Evangelical universities; the pharmaceutical industry’s promotion of biometaphors involving a shopping strategy which revolves around compulsory heterosexuality; the perpetuation of Greek-Cypriot men’s sexual superiority over women; the Catholic Church's attempt to impose a restrictive view of religion and of sexual ethics; the consolidation of American TV shopping channels as a setting where middle-class femininity and consumption are linked stereotypically; the negotiation of gender- and sex-related norms in groups of British Bangladeshi girls. Even heterosexuality, as the unmarked form of sexual identity and the primary site for the reproduction of gender difference, needs to reassert its normative and prescriptive status, maybe through the silent workings of tradition. By suggesting the concept of transition, we resist seeing the idea of identity as a fixed and definitive category. Gender and sexual identities are never at rest. One is never finished developing into a woman or a man, or any other gender/sexual identity.
Contributors include: Joan Pujolar, Andrea Simon-Maeda, Allyson Jule, Stina Ericsson, Agnieszka Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Joanna Pawelczyk, Nóra Schleicher, Elli Doukanari, Pilar Garcés-Conejos, Lidia Tanaka, José Santaemilia and Pia Pichler.
","""This thought-provoking collection presents a culturally diverse range of new research which examines the dynamic relationship between language, gender and sexual identities. It makes a genuine contribution to the internationalisation of research in this area, encompassing many different languages, and both global and localised identities. This book provides valuable new material for language and gender courses, as well as a stimulating resource for scholars in this area.""
Professor Janet Holmes, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
""Jose Santaemilia and Patricia Bou have produced a refreshingly, genuinely international collection of papers on language, gender and sexuality. This refers not only to the cultural diversity of the contributors but also to their topics: while some of the reported work is set in hitherto under-explored (for the language and gender field) contexts, other work reported is truly global.""
Jane Sunderland, Director of Studies, PhD in Applied Linguistics by Thesis and Coursework and New Route
""I would like to endorse the volume which Jose Santaemilia and Patricia Bou are editing on Gender and sexual identities in transition: International Perspectives, with Cambridge Scholars Press. This seems to me a timely publication, with a good range of languages and cultural contexts addressed. This book will range over Hungary, Japan, Western and Eastern Europe, Greek, and will thus set the research on American and British usage in perspective. Gender and language studies have moved from considering male and female differences to examining gender in a more complex way, and this volume certainly reflects that more complex concern with the way identity is constituted through language. This volume indicates that it is not concerned to esentialise identity but will rather see identity as something acieved within talk, and as such is tapping into the current research field. I am sure that this volume will add greatly to the current research in this field.""
Professor Sara Mills, Sheffield Hallam University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Shane Alcobia-Murphy,Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland: The Place of Art/The Art of Place,Paperback,9781847187468,14.99,"How free is the Northern Irish writer to produce even a short poem when every word will be scrutinised for its political subtext? Is the visual artist compelled to react to the latest atrocity? Must the creative artist be aware of his or her own inculcated prejudices and political affiliations, and must these be revealed overtly in the artwork? Because of these and other related questions, the recent work by Northern Irish writers and visual artists has been characterised by an inward-looking self-consciousness. It is an art that relays its personal responses in guarded, often coded ways. Characterised by obliquity and self-reflexivity, the art does not simply re-present events and the artist's emotive response towards them; rather, it calls attention to the manner of its presentation. It is an art about art, and its role and place in society. Governing the Tongue examines how the creation of art in a time of violence brings about an anxiety in the Northern Irish artist regarding his or her artistic role, and how it calls into question the ability to represent events. The series of essays is inter-disciplinary in its approach, exploring the place of art - its role and location - in the work of key Northern Irish writers (Ciaran Carson, Seamus Deane, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Eoin McNamee, Glenn Patterson) and visual artists (Willie Doherty, Rita Donagh, Paul Seawright, Victor Sloan).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,"João O. Soares, Joaquim Pina and Margarida Catalão-Lopes",New Developments in Financial Modelling,Hardback,9781847186744,39.99,"This volume brings together a variety of issues, methods and market instruments that should prove useful for topics courses, finance and asset management practice, and also foster future research. This collection of contributions is a selected subset of those presented at the XLI Meeting of the EURO Working Group on Financial Modelling, Lisbon, November 2007, and has a rich manifold of applied, theoretical and methodological work:
• Banking, empirical assessment of efficiency and relationship banking;
• Corporate Governance;
• Market Microstructure: liquidity; price limits; volatility;
• Risk: sovereign debt rating; volatility-volume around takeover announcements;
• Multicriteria approach and portfolio selection;
• Modified Tempered Stable Distribution and GARCH modelling.
In sum, this contributed volume, joining many authors from academia and practice on finance, offers a multiplicity of issues and methodology that broadens the knowledge and skills in finance matters and raises research questions for further development.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,"Dominika Ferens, Tomasz Basiuk and Tomasz Sikora",Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies,Paperback,9781847187871,14.99,"Out Here originates from a series of queer studies conferences which took place in Poland between 2002 and 2004, and includes essays, an autobiographical account, and two short stories. Their authors are of eight nationalities: Canadian, Belgian, Flemish, German, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian, and U.S. American. The academic papers represent a wide range of disciplines: philosophy, literature, ethnography, cultural and gender studies. Some combine theoretical insights and critical analysis with suggestions for activism. The short stories explore the formative moments of a queer adolescence in Anglophone Canada.
The eclecticism of Out Here reflects the cauldron-like mix of concerns taken up locally in places considered peripheral in relation to the centers of queer theory in British and American academia. It is out here (or back then), often within the context of rampant homophobia, that queer methodologies prove especially productive. Out here, queer theory is alive and kicking. Whether the authors write about sexual awakenings in Sri Lanka and Canada, or heterosexism in contemporary Ukraine, Hungary, Belgian parks, and 1970s Britain, or racial exclusion in American gay bars, or the veiled homophobia of Polish textbooks, what connects them is the commitment to questioning the limitations placed on queer desire.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Alana Lentin and Ronit Lentin,Race and State,Paperback,9781847187741,14.99,"Speaking about racism in the western political climate of the first decade of the twenty-first century is more difficult than ever before. There is a feeling in post-colonial and post-immigration societies that the blatant overt racism of the past is no longer as pressing. Admitting racism elicits discomfort because common wisdom tells us that racism opposes everything that we believe in as citizens of democratic, “civilised” modern states. Yet state racism appears to be here to stay and, in many ways, is more acceptable than ever before. Immigration detention centres, the deportation of “failed” asylum seekers and “illegal” immigrants, racial profiling and the rolling back of liberties won by the civil rights movement are all examples of how state racism impacts on our daily lives.
Race and State contributes to breaking the taboo of discussing the links between “race” and state. The papers collected in this book highlight the interconnections between “race” and state, from historical, theoretical or contemporary sociological perspectives. Part I of the book looks at theoretical issues in conceptualising the “race”-state relationship. Part II examines racism in its most pernicious contemporary manifestation: the racialisation of “terror”. Part III, on the racial state(s) of Ireland, is an important addition to the debate, examining Ireland as a “test case” for demonstrating and interpreting the relationship between “race” and state.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Claudia Alvares,"Representing Culture: Essays on Identity, Visuality and Technology",Hardback,9781847186867,29.99,"The essays collected in this volume are interdisciplinary in nature, defying the traditional boundaries that compartmentalise and contain knowledge within particular camps. Heir to the ‘undisciplining’ legacy of cultural studies, they attempt to transcend the restrictive frameworks of pre-established discourse, engaging in new and fruitful combinations of theories and methodologies.
The general aim of the book is to indicate new perspectives for the exercise of cultural criticism on the basis of the major issues that confront us today, rather than articulate any canonical viewpoint on traditional cultural studies. These essays thus share a common denominator in that they seek to explore the field of current ‘experience’ through the exercise of critique.
The recontextualisation of cultural studies that this book attempts occurs along the vectors of identity politics, visual culture and technology. The collection draws attention to the fact that these vectors do not consist in delimited ‘camps’, but rather in axes that intersect with each other at each instance.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil,Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism,Paperback,9781847187734,17.99,"The papers in this volume include not only the traditional view of what constitutes a minority but also any individual, or group recalcitrant and reluctant, not to say resistant, to the generalized lobotomy operated by the rampant uniformisation of cultures around the world. For in the ruins of “the end of history” and its context of violence and Manichean politics, any opposition to the “general consensus” could be dismissed as anti-historical and atavistic. The objective of the book is precisely to counter such rhetoric and underscore the necessity of cultural diversity and the right to difference.
This book contains what can amount to a critical response to the current context of confusion surrounding the postmodern condition that arguably dominates most societies. It stresses the issue of ethics not only in world politics but also in literature and criticism which are the main focus here. In fact, the interest in minority issues is in itself an ethical concern that contributes to give substance to the idea that postmodernity opens the gates for the long-suppressed identities and sensibilities to emerge and demand recognition.
This volume intends, therefore, to contribute to the recent ethical turn that seems to take place in scholarship worldwide. Operated mainly by what is referred to as postcolonial studies this shift turned literary criticism and cultural studies into the site where a sense of literature can be envisioned that is not at all universalist, or reflecting the hegemonic temptations of the new world order. It seeks to present a patchwork of minor literatures, in the sense that besides the “major” literatures/languages, there are myriads of minor voices that express dissimilarity oftentimes under the umbrella of those major languages and literatures themselves.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Rebecca Fine Romanow,The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time,Paperback,9781847187789,16.99,"The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time examines the ways in which the notion of the postcolonial correlates to Judith Halberstam’s idea of queer space and time, the non-normative path of Western lifestyles and hegemonies. Emphasizing authors from Africa and Southeast Asia in the diaspora in London from the mid-1960s through 1990, the reading of both postcolonial lands and subjects as “queer counterproductive” space reveals a depiction of bodies in these texts as located in and performing queer space and time, redefining and relocating the understanding of the postcolonial.
The first wave of postcolonial literature produced by diasporics presents the body as the site where the non-normative is performed, revealing the beginnings of a corporeal resistance to the re-colonization of the diasporic individual residing in England from the Wilson through the Thatcher regimes. This study emphasizes the ways in which early postcolonial literature embodies and encounters the topics of race, gender and sexuality, proving that a rejection of subjectifying processes through the representation of the body has always been present in diasporic postcolonial literature.
Reading through postcolonial theory as well as the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Homi Bhabha, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Halberstam and queer theory, The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time discusses the poetry and journals of Arthur Nortje, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and his film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, tracing a geographic arc from homeland to London to the return to the homeland, traveling through the queer space and time of the postcolonial.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,José Resende and Maria Manuel Vieira,The School at the Frontiers of Modernity,Paperback,9781847187987,16.99,"The aim of this book is to discuss the emergent forms of educational processes observed in the context of late modernity, mobilizing the contribution of the social sciences. Through a plurality of educational subjects, this publication provides an overview of the contribution of schooling to the construction of late modernity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Cal Clark and Janet Clark,"Women at the Polls: The Gender Gap, Cultural Politics, and Contested Constituencies in the United States",Hardback,9781847188076,39.99,"Since 1980, most elections in the United States have been marked by a “gender gap” in which women are more supportive of Democratic candidates than men by nearly ten percentage points. Women at the Polls finds that this gender gap is quite extensive as it exists in almost all demographic groups and as it is based on similar differences in the political attitudes of women and men over a wide array of issues. This suggests that women are becoming an important constituency in U.S. politics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judith Barr Bachay,"Women Moving Forward: Volume One: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope",Paperback,9781847188298,14.99,"“Women Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.”
Associate Professor Beatriz González Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC
Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University
State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education
Fellow, American Council on Education
“These are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience – uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, ‘You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.’ They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.”
Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C.
Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Alyson Brown,Historical Perspectives on Social Identities,Paperback,9781847188946,14.99,"This collection of work on the theme of identities was the result of a conference held in the spring of 2005 at Edge Hill under the auspices of The Centre for Liverpool and Merseyside Studies. Whilst a significant proportion of the research focused on Liverpool and the North West, the theme of identities was sufficiently broad to entice scholars from diverse and varied fields. This collection, therefore, reflects the range of work presented and discussed at the conference and the multi-layered and multi-facetted nature of identity.
Contributors to this edited collection examined the concept of identity in Britain through a range of historical perspectives, concerning themselves primarily with the later modern period. They reflect the extent to which nineteenth and twentieth century British social, cultural and political change has given rise to pluralist, fragmented and fractured identities and highlight the extent to which class, gender, religious and institutional frameworks have shifted continually. This publication will therefore be of interest to those working in diverse fields but who share an interest in the importance of identity as a decisive cultural, social, economic and political determinant.
Questions of identity have centred a good deal of debate in the social sciences, especially since the reception of Foucault's work in the English-speaking world in the last couple of decades. This has often taken a theoretical form. Attempts to link theory with analytical practice have been strongest in the field that might be characterised as the 'politics of identity'. At any rate this has provided an important instance of theoretical and practical conflict. Herethe focus of the debate has been around questions of gender, nation, language, economy, security and race. It has tried toto clarify crucial divisions in the analysis of identity as between explanatory and constitutive models, and between positivist and post-positivist procedures. For the most part these intense and extensive concerns have passed by largely unnoticed among historians practising in Britain in the well-found but conventional idioms of political and social history.
What this conference volume seeks to do is to help redress thedeficit, to domesticate some of the theoretical and polemical exchanges around 'identity' into a world of practical,yet conceptually aware historical work. This is a difficult but surely worthwhile task: to broach various imaginaries of identity, issues of identitarian politics, and questions of identity formation on a series of relatively familiar historical contexts.
Of course, no selection of subjects for practical research in this way can be exhaustive. The group of essays offered here is sufficiently wide, and occasionally gratifyingly unexpected, at least to begin the job, to stimulate others and, most importantly, to interject theoretical concern into historial fields sometimes lacking it.
Ten essays are included, together with the editor's introduction. The pieces are bound together by a common strategy not a shared empirical territory. They range from studies of gendered identity formation , to regional identities formed around seaside resorts, to empirical questions of class and capitalism and their identitarian politics, to historical analysis of mourning, and on to language, nationality, deafness, motherhood and their inflection in identity in past time.
This well-edited combination of shared conceptual purpose and variety of empirical form seems to me to work well. The book will be widely used in a variety of historical fields, not least in those which have been the most resistant to recenttheoretical innovations in the social sciences.
Keith Nield
Editor
SOCIAL HISTORY
'This is a fascinating and wide-ranging collection of essays linked by the over-riding theme of identity. While primarily historical in their focus, the essays will be of interest to more than just historians. They raise a variety of interesting conceptual and theoretical issues, from, for instance, the significance of the staymaker in the formation of eighteenth-century female identity, to the relationship between regional identity and late-nineteenth and early twentieth century Lancashire seaside resorts.'
Sam Davies,
Professor of History,
School of Social Science,
Liverpool John Moores University
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,"Margaret U. D’Silva, Joy L. Hart, and Kandi L. Walker",HIV / AIDS: Prevention and Health Communication,Hardback,9781847188663,34.99,"Stating that HIV/AIDS is a colossal public health problem is a vast understatement. Its effects extend to all reaches of the globe and its toll is enormous. , The most recent statistics on HIV infections, people living with HIV/AIDS, and AIDS-related deaths are jolting.
Current realities, historical data, and future projections clearly indicate that much more action is needed to prevent new infections and curb the effects of HIV/AIDS. Rather than a single global strategy for HIV/AIDS prevention, programs must be developed and implemented with an awareness of local, regional, national, and international conditions.
Our hope for this book is that additional insight into HIV/AIDS prevention can be garnered and the ideas generated here will spur new efforts and improve existing ones. The chapters in this book explore how health communication researchers and practitioners continue to play critical roles in lessening the spread of HIV and the devastating impacts of HIV/AIDS locally, regionally, and globally. The book’s three sections—general prevention, global context, and specific contexts—address a range of topics. Chapters range from formative research to message construction and processing (e.g., difficulties in communicating statistical information, understanding risk messages), address geographical regions from Africa and Asia to Central America and the Caribbean, and examine specific contexts from university students to later-life adults as well as African Americans and persons living with HIV/AIDS. Because there is currently neither a cure for HIV/AIDS nor a vaccine to prohibit infection, the concluding chapter reinforces the book’s main premises—behavior change as the key to prevention and health communication work as crucial to achieving such change.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jorge Febles,Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture,Paperback,9781847189318,14.99,"Into the Mainstream: Essays on Spanish American and Latino Literature and Culture is a direct outgrowth of Jorge Febles’s involvement with the annual conference of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. In that sense, the compilation expands on a project initiated in 1993 by Helen Ryan-Ransom with her book Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993). David William Foster, who penned a lengthy preface to that collection, justified its intent by underscoring: “The very fact that our approach to culture is dominated by categories based on high, academic, institutionalized phenomena poses from the very outset the question of how to deal with all those other cultural manifestations that do not comfortably assimilate to the accepted canon” (Ryan-Ransom 3). The past fourteen years, however, have witnessed a radical transformation of that so-called canon due to the widespread acceptance of ideas espoused by cultural theorists like García Canclini, Homi Bhabba, Said, Stuart Hall, Benhabib, Bourdieu and countless others. Therefore, the ambivalence regarding what constitutes culture identified by Foster is inoperative nowadays to a substantial degree. In fact, a fundamental component of the postmodern outlook resides in the ability to blend comfortably the high and the low, the elitist and the popular realms of production in a multiplicity of textual artifacts, creative as well as critical in nature. Hence, the essays that conform Into the Mainstream do not question barriers anymore, nor do they expound on the need to assign a discursive intellectual space to matters pertaining to popular culture. Thus, this collection espouses an inclusive approach in which a variety of analytical approaches coalesce to reflect on an equally kaleidoscopic textuality.
Pursuant to its comprehensive nature, Into the Mainstream airs established as well as developing critical voices so as to reflect both ideological continuity and evolving viewpoints. Scholars who have compiled strong academic records like Hortensia Morell, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Elsa Gilmore, David Petreman and Benjamín Torres Caballero share a venue with younger critics like Corey Shouse Tourino, Roberto Vela Córdova, Stacy Hoult, Eduardo del Río, Bruce Campbell, Laura Redruello, Dinora Cardoso and April Marshall, as well as with two graduate students about to complete their academic preparation: Nuria Ibáñez Quintana and María Teresa Vera Rojas. The result is an eclectic compilation meant to elicit discussion on the basis of its variety. Into the Mainstream’s primordial objective is to place these provocative essays—which are expanded versions of papers presented during the annual gathering of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association in the period 2002-2005—along with the numerous subjects they treat in the academic mainstream where they rightfully belong.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,John Wall,"Mediations in Cultural Spaces: Structure, Sign, Body",Hardback,9781847188656,34.99,"The essays collected in this volume address the cultural and intellectual production of space. Cultures under discussion may be identified at a general level according to notional designations of East and West and range from those of Iran, Turkey, Western Europe and the United States. While the interests, orientations and methodologies of the individual contributions are diverse there is a general tendency to forgo official national and regional discourses of social space in favour of discussions exploring the material and intellectual conditions according to which cultural entities come to see themselves as spatially located and/or dislocated. To this end, this volume brings together philosophical, historical and critical interpretative treatments of virtual space, architecture, music, sculpture, literature, religion, advertising, politics and the cyberspace of the new media. Space is variously conceived in terms of the radical imaginary, metaphor, irruption, intensity, mimesis, ontology, the materiality of the earth, power and emancipation. There is expressed the conviction in these essays that interdisciplinary and eclectic approaches, combined with sustained and critical reflection on concepts of space, contribute to an understanding of space as radically mobile.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jane Warren and Heather Merle Benbow,Multilingual Europe: Reflections on Language and Identity,Hardback,9781847188342,34.99,"As Europe continues to expand and integrate through the European Union, it faces the challenge of ever increasing multilingual and multicultural contact, within and across its borders. This volume presents recent research on European language policy, language contact and multiculturalism that explores how Europe is meeting this challenge. Inspired by intersections and conflicts in language and cultural identity in Europe, the volume transcends disciplinary boundaries by enhancing sociolinguistic research with chapters on cultural identity and language in contemporary European cinema. The book considers the relationships between language and cultural identity in Europe at a time of increasing multicultural complexity, with contributions on Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine, and the linguistic and imaginative spaces between and beyond. The volume highlights the ongoing significance of language and identity for an expanding Europe, and the ways in which situations of linguistic hybridity, interlocution and language contact continue to define Europe and its others.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jean Ryan Hakizimana and Michael Hayes,"Postcolonial Identities: Constructing the ""New Irish""",Paperback,9781847189301,13.99,"The stranger, the foreigner and the pilgrim are all familiar figures in literature, philosophy, theology and mythology. This figure - travelling the world in search of refuge and sanctuary – is one which has had a particular resonance for many millions of Irish people in recent centuries. This book is a window on a new aspect of the Irish experience that is the “strainséir” or pilgrim. It is one man’s story of exile and renewal in a world where the concepts of home, place and diaspora are all changing at frightening speed. Jean “Ryan” Hakizimana’s story is the story of an artist, the colours of whose palette reflect the multicultural tapestry that is Irish society today. It is a narrative that involves a journey halfway across the globe, a portrait of the “modern” world incorporating exile, starvation, and genocide before the final “liberation” that is the healing process of painting. Traumatised from the horrific childhood experiences he witnessed during the genocides of Burundi and Rwanda in the mid-1990s it was almost a decade later and at a distance of many thousands of miles that African artist Jean Ryan once again found the will to paint.
This book sheds light on the diaspora experience of the “new” Irish, the refugees and asylum-seekers who are changing the face of many of Ireland’s villages and towns that until recently had been emptied by widespread emigration. The economic “miracle” that has transformed Ireland in the past decade has been accompanied by much rhetoric regarding multiculturalism, integration and dialogue with the newer peoples and cultures that now live in Ireland. As of yet, however, there has been few attempts to chronicle or engage in dialogue with the many different aspects of the diaspora experience that define these “new” Irish, the young Irish who will carry a renewed and exciting new Irish identity into the future. One of the greatest challenges facing Irish society and the indeed the Irish educational sector is how best to harness the benefits of the wide range of cultural experiences, values and peoples that are now part of the Irish cultural fabric. This book is one of the first attempts at such a new an exciting intercultural dialogue in Ireland. It is only through such a process of dialogue that we may uncover a “new politics of truth” (Foucault, 1977), a new discourse and a more productive understanding of the relationship that now exists between the various strands of Ireland’s multicultural society.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Valerie Pellatt and Elena Minelli,Proceedings of the Bath Symposium,Hardback,9781847188328,29.99,"Bath University set up its MA course in interpreting and translating in 1966. This volume celebrates forty years of interpreter and translator training at Bath. The papers cover a range of interests, from the history and development of the world-class programme, to the use of IT in the teaching and practice of translation. Issues of teaching technique – in both interpreting and translating - quality assessment in the classroom and the workplace, questions of detailed operation, such as short term memory in interpreting and the evolution of lexis are all tackled.
The volume provides an example of the way in which professionals and academics can work together in this highly specialised field. It reflects the principles and practice at the heart of the professions and the issues which relate to training and the work place in the modern world. Contributors include past and present staff and students of the Bath MAIT and professionals and trainers from other well-known institutions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Adenrele Awotona,"Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, Programs and International Perspectives",Hardback,9781847189271,39.99,"The scene in Iraq is most troubling; and further failure therein – especially failure in sustainable reconstruction – will compound the tragedy and bring grievous harm to too many: in Iraq, the United States, the Middle East and the Western world. Yet, the current efforts at reconstruction cannot succeed -- as we seem to be making many of the same mistakes that were made post-invasion. Simply put, a national occupying power cannot reconstruct a massive societal vacuum by working only top down. Reconstruction is not the simple reversal of destruction. Sustainability requires serious localized reconstitution of localized community infrastructure.
Accordingly, in order to explore how Iraqi communities could be rebuilt in a manner that promotes social justice, economic and political sustainability, and the full participation of all stakeholders, the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA, hosted a four-day international conference of Iraqi and international scholars and practitioners in July 2007. This volume collects some of the papers that were presented at the conference.
Amongst the topics that the contributing authors have explored are the following: the role of organizations and institutions in defining strategies for sustainable rebuilding of community; rebuilding the Iraqi Oil Industry; and, successful project strategies in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. The book concludes with a presentation of a number of international perspectives and their lessons for Iraq. These studies spring from Afghanistan, the United States of America and Africa.
","“Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, Programs and International Perspectives” should elicit an enthusiastic response from a variety of countries and international organizations which are interested in the topics covered in this book.”
Fuad Safwat, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Boston
“While the rest of the world focuses on the success and failure of military operations, millions of Iraqis are dealing with the destruction of their lives and their country. Rarely is any attention given to describing what a hopeful resolution to the devastation might be. Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq gives us hope. It tackles the overwhelming problem of rebuilding Iraq--helping its children, families and institutions heal--in an insightful, systematic and believable way. Let us hope that this book will inspire many to focus their thoughts, feelings and actions on reconciliation, not war.”
Diane Levin, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Wheelock College
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino and Clevis Ronald Headley,"Shifting the Geography of Reason: Gender, Science and Religion",Paperback,9781847189325,17.99,,"""Shifting the Geography of Reason constitutes an event. The contributions within this text boldly and effectively confront epistemic orders that were/are predicated upon the presumptive Occidental circumscription of reason and intelligibility. This text thus challenges the misanthropic effrontery of the west to territorialize the very meaning of the “human.” Through a collection of critically reflective contributions that capture the geo-spatial historicity, complexity, and diversity of Caribbean knowledge-production, from the epistemic, phenomenological, and the scientific to the aesthetic, poetic, and semiotic, this text forces a shift away from reason as totalizing to reason as possibility, s emancipatory and inclusive.""
George Yancy, Duquesne University
""Here stands the first of a series of important collective statements on the proverbial problem of reason that once fled those spaces in which the person of color reached for a meeting. What other resources are left for those of us who rely on ideas in a world that offers few options short of violence or, worse, apathy but to transcend the struggle for recognition into the sphere of building new intellectual homes? One must read this courageous celebration of thinking and of asserting the value of intelligence.""
Lewis R. Gordon, President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University and Ongoing Visiting Professor at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Gwynyth Overland,Sociology at the Frontiers of Psychology,Paperback,9781847189332,14.99,"Sociology at the Frontiers of Psychology explores the nameless ground between sociology and psychology - an Alsace-Lorraine of the social sciences where theories and perspectives are freely borrowed from one to the other. Some chapters use psychological theory for studies of sociological phenomena, others use sociological perspectives for studies of psychological phenomena. Some writers are research fellows at the beginning of their careers, others professors at the pinnacle of theirs – notably Thomas J. Scheff, distinguished author of Goffman Unbound! and Being Mentally Ill.
These Scottish, Dutch, Moroccan-French, Norwegian, Canadian and North American sociologists have found inspiration in classical sociological theory from Durkheim to Foucault and produced original thinking grounded in empirical work. In addition, two psychologists and an anthropologist have contributed articles which border on the sociological field from the other side of the frontier.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jerry Harris,The Dialectics of Globalization: Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World,Paperback,9781847189288,14.99,"Combining bold theortical analysis and careful empirical investigation Harris provides a critical framework to understand the political and economic underpinnings of globalization. In an unique historical approach the book examines how the revolution in information technologies and the break-up of the Soviet Union intertwined to present new global opportunities to reorganize capitalism as a unified world system headed by an emerging transnational capitalist class.
The book challenges the common view that nation states still define international relations, with the United States as hegemonic leader of the world system. Instead Harris offers a more complex analysis of world affairs that sees the current period as one of transition between nationally based industrial capitalism and a global system based on revolutionary methods of production and new class relationships. He argues this conflict appears in every country as national economies realigned to fit new patterns of world accumulation creating a host of political tensions within and between nations.
This analysis is detailed in a distinctive interpretation of the US military/industrial complex, as well as the contemporary class struggles in Germany and the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. The book concludes by investigating alternative trends which are currently challenging the inequalities of global capitalism, unfolding a fresh approach to the relationship between the state, market and civil society.
","This book is a timely and welcome contribution to our understanding of the nature and direction of change in world capitalism in the age of the microchip. Focusing on the cybernetic revolution and the sweeping changes it has brought about, Harris address’ such topics as the transformation of work, the conflict between new and old centers of capital, the rise of a transnational capitalist, the military-industrial complex, and terrorism. He identifies new theories, practices and strategies needed in this age of cyber-capitalism to achieve a renovation of participatory democracy and sustainable economics. These essays should be widely read and studied.
William I. Robinson, associate professor of sociology, global and international studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, author of A Theory of Global Capitalism, Production, Class and State in a Transnational World.
The Dialectics of Globalization is a fresh approach to the question of globalization and the technological transformations that underpin it.
Whereas the Left has usually ignored the computer revolution, or been dazzled by it Harris systematically identifies the contradictions and crises below the surface of the shiny world of IT and traces its impact on ordinary people's lives. The last section on the state, markets and civil society is an incisive, clear and brilliant piece of writing. A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, Editor ""Race & Class,"" author of When Memory Dies.
A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, Editor “Race & Class,” author of When Memory Dies.
On the solid materialist foundations of his experience as an apprentice machinist with US Steel in Chicago, Jerry Harris has produced a valuable re-interpretation of the political economy of globalization, focusing on the complex inter-relations of capital, labor and technology. His subtle critical analysis of ""US Hegemony or US Globalization?"", complemented with detailed case studies of class struggle and globalization in Germany and the Third World, fruitfully locate the often confused rhetoric of nationalism and globalization within a more productive class perspective.
Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, author of The Transnational Capitalist Class.
'If you wanted to read just one primer to get a handle on all the important debates around global political economy, Jerry Harris's '""The Dialectics of Globalization"" would be a good candidate. Harris's book is no simple survey - he takes partisan stances on a number of issues, some of them quite controversial. But he is fair with his opponents and rigorous in his argument.'
Carl Davidson for In Review, May/June 2008
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Jon Lewis,Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization,Paperback,9781847189295,19.99,"Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization is the first collection of scholarly essays dedicated exclusively to this important voice in contemporary American fiction. The collection grew from five essays originally presented at the 2006 XXth Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville, and the contributors are made up of graduate students, independent scholars, and university professors who hope the collection will aid general readers as well as instructors teaching Stephenson and professionals building the critical response to his work.
Reading through the lenses of history and linguistic, cultural, and science fiction studies, the essays in the collection examine each of Stephenson’s novels from The Big U to The Baroque Cycle as well as his long non-fiction work on computer operating systems, In the Beginning … Was the Command Line. Included in this collection is a new interview conducted with Stephenson during the summer of 2006.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Joseph D. Lewandowski and Milan Znoj,Trust and Transitions: Social Capital in a Changing World,Hardback,9781847189059,39.99,"Employing a range of empirical and theoretical approaches, contributors to this volume examine the nature and function of trust from within the framework of social capital theory. The empirically oriented chapters focus on post-Communist countries, including Serbia and Montenegro, Romania and, especially, the Czech Republic. Indeed, the collection contains an entire section devoted to analyzing trust and transition in the wake of the “velvet revolution.” The theoretical chapters engage the work of Tocqueville, Putnam, and Uslaner, among others, as they seek to clarify and rethink what in fact trust is, where trust originates, the causal relevance of trust for successful marketization and democratization, and the extent to which existing conceptions of social capital can be adequately deployed in diverse contexts.
With contributions from noted American and Central European political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers, this book presents an illuminating set of contemporary perspectives on the complex role of trust in times of transition.
","“This timely collection offers a wealth of profound reflections about the role that trust and democratic convictions can and should play in transitions to market-based democracies. In fact, we still face the central dilemma described—in rich and varied ways—by the contributors here: Is it sufficient that society be driven forward by the egoistic desires of individuals? Or, do successful transitions require some sense of democratic solidarity?”
—Lubomír Zaorálek, Vice-Chairman, Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil,The World as a Global Agora: Critical Perspectives on Public Space,Hardback,978-1-4438-0000-6,39.99,"In the current postmodern reality where society is no longer viewed as a totality but as a collection of individual interests, public space both as a physical and symbolic space, has no determined contours and the public sphere is likely to take new forms. Yet as a crucial principle of democracy, public space will continue to feed discussions as long as models of participatory democracy represent the guarantor of good governance and the preservation of the public good.
Ranging from architecture, sociology, to literary criticism and women and gender studies, the essays that compose this collection have as a common denominator the idea of public space as a vital aspect of public life in modern as well as in developing and traditional societies. Placing themselves beyond the relentless theoretical debates around the concept of public space, the authors agree that no matter what forms it takes, public space remains a fundamental aspect of even those societies that until recently were viewed as hermetically sealed. What emerges from the different perspectives included in this book is a general consensus that the symbolic value of the physical public space is grounded in the collective socio-political consciousness as the basis for a general sense of civic action.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-11-01,Martin J. Downing Jr. and Lauren J. Tenney,Video Vision: Changing the Culture of Social Science Research,Hardback,978-1-4438-0001-3,34.99,"In recent years, the use of video has soared spurring debate about the body-camera-environment connection and other concepts a social scientist considering this research tool will face. In this volume we zoom in on ethics, methodology, and analysis, while also zooming out on a wider praxis. The time is here to collectively identify our experiences, methods, and knowledge of video as a research methodology.
This compilation of work unpacks the use of video as a research tool. Often through the interdisciplinary lens of environmental psychology as well as anthropology, sociology, and the broader field of psychology, fascinating angles of the use of participant and naturalistic observations are captured along with that of participatory action research. Strategies such as recording video messages, the creation of student informed videos, and facilitating videos taken by or edited by research participants are coupled with methods for obtaining Institutional Review Board approvals, analysis, development of theory or action, and presentation.
This volume presents thought provoking, cutting-edge research that is both accessible to students and useful for social scientists who are yearning for a more accurate way to collect, analyze, and present data in our hyper-technical, visual, and competitive world.
","“Video Vision…speaks to a wide audience, and whilst many of the chapters discuss using video in the context of psychological research, there is enough diversity to interest sociologists, anthropologists and geographers in particular…[It] is largely successful in its mission and makes a timely and useful contribution to the all-too-scarce literature on using video in social scientific research.”
“Video Vision should be required reading for any undergraduate or postgraduate thinking about using video in social scientific research.”
Dr. Justin Spinney, University of Surrey
“The editors are to be congratulated on opening up cultural analysis to a new methodology based upon the visual. This book is an important first step in refiguring the gaze of social science research. It is profoundly concerned with new areas of human subject ethics, and theoretically promising.”
Dr. Joe Glick, The Graduate School and University Center at City University of New York
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,"David Cecchetto, Nancy Cuthbert, Julie Lassonde and Dylan Robinson",Collision: Interarts Practice and Research,Hardback,978-1-4438-0031-0,44.99,"With very few exceptions, interdisciplinary art and interarts practices—examined as such, including the perspective of artist-researchers, and not subsumed under a singular category of performance or visual art—have, until now, been largely ignored. While it would be simplistic to think that this collection somehow rectifies the “piecemeal” status of this discourse, our wager is that this collection works towards presenting an understanding of this status as, in a certain sense, constitutive of the field.
Beginning with an introduction to the very multiplicities that compose and complicate interdisciplinary practices, then moving into questions of body/technology, location/movement, space/practice, performativity/aesthetics, this collection covers an enormous amount, while still retaining an overarching sense of unity in the context of the subject as a whole. Each of these sections negotiates a series of interrelated collisions in order to address a range of theoretical positions, as well as a variety of international and cultural perspectives. In addition to addressing the notion of interdisciplinarity and the challenges of specific interarts practices, this publication seeks to question how we might understand interarts practice in a way that does not exclude perspectives such as spirituality, law, political activism and community development, to name only a few. The inclusion of these disparate practices within this publication—itself a site of collision of the poetic, the conversational, and the theoretical—is thus not presented as an attempt to unify or normalize them, but rather as a productive charting of their radical explosion; a collision that is always a colliding.
","“The essays here take “collision” in its full range of significances, deftly tackling such elusive and difficult topics as the interdisciplinary sublime, melancholy and digital performance, and the phenomenology of pain. Varying from dense theoretical disquisitions to creative diary entries, the contents open up new vistas in the resurgent consideration of interarts production and interdisciplinary inquiry. Coherent even in the huge scope they cover, these essays provide a startling and provocative snapshot of the current state of interartistic thought and practice. They challenge, outrage, entertain, and engage – often all at the same time.”
Dr. Stephen Ross, associate professor, director of English Graduate Studies and Director of the program in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria, Canada
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Daniel Stavárek and Stanislav Polouček,Consequences of the European Monetary Integration on Financial Systems,Hardback,978-1-4438-0068-6,39.99,"The volume consists of twelve chapters that represent updated and revised versions of papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Finance and Banking which took place at Silesian University - School of Business Administration in Karviná, Czech Republic on 17 – 18 October 2007. The chapters are arranged in three thematic parts focusing on exchange rates, financial markets and monetary policy. The purpose of the book is to identify effects of the European monetary integration in financial systems of original, new and potential euro area member countries. The book also aims to evaluate how different are the effects in countries at different stage of the integration process and how important are the implications for national economic policies. Although each chapter is originally an independent study all of them were selected by the editors in order to create consistent book offering a rich blend of well grounded theory, innovative empirical approaches, fresh ideas, and striking conclusions. Contributors include scholars, researchers, central bankers and financial practitioners from respected universities and financial institutions.
“I highly recommend this book to everyone, economist or not, who want to better understand the enormous challenges that financial systems nowadays have to face, particularly in the context of the European monetary integration. One of the main advantages of this book is that it does not reflect the opinion of only one author, but instead, it presents the views of 23 authors, all academics and qualified researchers, working in well known universities and research institutions from different EU and non EU countries.”
— Candida Ferreira, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Management, Technical University of Lisbon (ISEG-UTL) and Research Unit on Complexity and Economics (UECE)
“Analyzing the consequences of the European monetary integration on financial systems is certainly a challenging task, but this book tackles it very successfully by presenting a rich collection of highly original studies on the most relevant issues: exchange rate convergence of euro-candidates, inflation targeting, portfolio choice, volatility, yield curve disturbances and many others, currently debated in finance, macroeconomics and political economy. The International Conference on Finance and Banking at Silesian University in Karviná is a well established scientific event where the hottest issues in the financial scenario are analyzed from an international perspective.”
— Marco Mazzoli, Associate Professor of Monetary and International Economics, Director of CESPEM, Università Cattolica del S. Cuore, Italy
","“I highly recommend this book to everyone, economist or not, who want to better understand the enormous challenges that financial systems nowadays have to face, particularly in the context of the European monetary integration. One of the main advantages of this book is that it does not reflect the opinion of only one author, but instead, it presents the views of 23 authors, all academics and qualified researchers, working in well known universities and research institutions from different EU and non EU countries.”
— Candida Ferreira, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Management, Technical University of Lisbon (ISEG-UTL) and Research Unit on Complexity and Economics (UECE)
“Analyzing the consequences of the European monetary integration on financial systems is certainly a challenging task, but this book tackles it very successfully by presenting a rich collection of highly original studies on the most relevant issues: exchange rate convergence of euro-candidates, inflation targeting, portfolio choice, volatility, yield curve disturbances and many others, currently debated in finance, macroeconomics and political economy. The International Conference on Finance and Banking at Silesian University in Karviná is a well established scientific event where the hottest issues in the financial scenario are analyzed from an international perspective.”
— Marco Mazzoli, Associate Professor of Monetary and International Economics, Director of CESPEM, Università Cattolica del S. Cuore, Italy
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Per Cornell and Fredrik Fahlander,Encounters | Materialities | Confrontations: Archaeologies of Social Space and Interaction,Paperback,978-1-4438-0045-7,17.99,"This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happens when people interact actively, when they involve themselves with people and materialities, when they move around, fetch things, use things, leave things etc. The repeated social encounter is often a confrontation with something, such as an opinion, a performance, or with materialities and the effects are often unpredictable. Encounters may reproduce a social pattern, but also contain potential for transformation and change. Such varied responses to encounters will certainly have effects on the archaeological record.
The primary focus of the volume is the effects and processes involved in intra- and inter-societal encounters. The collection hence fills a theoretical and methodological gap in the study of the encounter in archaeology. There is a need for elaborating aspects of postcolonial theory in order to develop new ways of approaching the archaeological record. The articles of this volume include examples from various regions and time periods. They range from Scandinavian Stone Age, through Buddhist social practices of the first millennium AD, Maya warfare and ideology, to Aboriginal-European encounters in 20th century Australia.
Per Cornell (PhD, Ass. Prof.) is currently lecturer at the Department of archaeology, University of Gothenburg. Cornell has been involved in extensive field-work in Latin America and current research topics include settlement archaeology, formation processes and social theory. Among his recent books are Local, Regional, Global, co-edited with Per Stenborg (Gotarc, 2004).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Steven L. Davis and Maglina Lubovich,"Hunks, Hotties, and Pretty Boys: Twentieth-Century Representations of Male Beauty",Hardback,978-1-4438-0018-1,34.99,"White, heterosexual, middle-class men have long served as the standard for masculine “beauty,” even if such men have refused to embrace this term. This study seeks to denaturalize this standard by exploring the connections between beauty and the broad spectrum of masculinities.
The chapters included in Hunks, Hotties, and Pretty Boys contribute primarily to the field of gender studies, specifically masculinity studies. They consider twentieth-century representations of male beauty through a variety of mediums: performance, literature, art, photography, film and television. Although the contributors hail from both the humanities and the social sciences, all share a concern for how beauty informs, shapes, defines, and re-defines our understanding of masculinity itself.
These scholars investigate a range of historical periods and draw from a broad scope of critical approaches. Some interrogate male beauty through the female gaze and look to the influence of female performance on notions of masculine beauty. Others examine how queer and racial constructions of male beauty refuse and offer alternatives to hegemonic models of identity. Another revisits previous philosophical and theoretical conceptions of beauty, only to deconstruct gendered conceptions of the beautiful and the sublime. In all, these essays complicate masculine beauty by examining Chicano, Asian, working class, and female constructions of male beauty in Western culture.
","“This eclectic anthology brings much-needed attention to the social construction of male beauty. Its novel and wide-ranging essays will be of interest to scholars of gender studies, visual culture and gay and lesbian studies.”
—Martin Berger, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California at Santa Cruz, author of Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (2000)
“While the impact of the myths and ideals of beauty on the lives of women has attracted prolific scholarship, men’s association with the discourses, representations and practices of beauty has gone relatively unexplored. Davis and Lubovich address this critical omission in an anthology that dexterously reveals the connections between beauty and the multifaceted field of masculine identities and cultures. Always perceptive and absorbing, the essays deal with a wonderfully rich range of topics. Together, they provide an invaluable insight into the way notions of ‘beauty’ influence and inform patriarchal culture and definitions of masculinity.”
—Bill Osgerby, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communications at London Metropolitan University, author of Playboys and Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure-Style in Modern America (2001)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Piotr Cap,Legitimisation in Political Discourse: A Cross- Disciplinary Perspective on the Modern US War Rhetoric,Paperback,978-1-4438-0026-6,14.99,"How did the G.W. Bush administration manage to persuade Americans to go to war in Iraq in March 2003? How was this intervention, and the global campaign named as “war-on-terror,” legitimised linguistically? This book shows that the best legitimisation effects in political discourse are accomplished through the use of ‘proximization’–a cognitive-rhetorical strategy that draws on the spaker’s ability to present events as directly and increasingly affecting the addressee, usually in a negative or threatening way. There are three aspects of proximization: spatial, temporal and axiological. The spatial aspect involves the construal of events in the discourse as physically endangering the addressee. The temporal aspect involves presenting the events as increasingly momentous and historic and hence of central significance to both the addressee and the speaker. The axiological aspect consists in a growing clash between the system of values adhered to by the speaker and the addressee, and the values characterizing a third party whose actions, ideologically negative, are made “proximate” and thus threatening. Although the tripartite model of proximization proposed in the book is complex at the level of its linguistic realisation, the working assumption is intriguingly basic: addressees of political discourse are more likely to legitimise pre-emptive actions aimed at neutralizing the proximate “threat” if they construe the threat as personally consequential. The book shows how language of the war-on-terror, and especially the rhetoric of the Iraq war, respond to this precondition.
This second revised edition features an extended preface and a new closing chapter, which update the model into its state-of-the-art, 2008 version.
","""Piotr Cap's book takes great theoretical strides in critical discourse analysis, exploring the dimensions of space, time and value, and applying his model to decisive texts in the contemporary world.""
—Paul Chilton, Lancaster University
""This fascinating book provides readers with new theoretical insights into issues of legitimisation (and representation). More specifically, the US rhetoric of war is critically analysed and explained in innovative pragmatic-linguistic ways - a methodology which could be applied to many other salient problems in our complex world.""
—Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Lisa Andersen and Kate Oakley,"Making Meaning, Making Money: Directions for the Arts and Cultural Industries in the Creative Age",Hardback,978-1-4438-0065-5,34.99,"The arts have rarely been at the heart of so many policy discussions in so many places at once.
All over the world politicians and artists have been making a strong case for the social and commercial value of ‘culture.' It is found in debates about education, industrial policy, criminal justice and community wellbeing. As ‘creative industries,’ it is part of international competitiveness and the future of our cities and towns, from Shanghai to Sheffield to Shepparton.
Many practitioners and advocates have welcomed culture’s new prominence in policy discourse and the new markets it offers for cultural production. Others, however, see a danger that instrumental justifications for cultural funding risk overlooking the intrinsic qualities of culture, reducing it to an ‘input’ and blunting any radical edges.
This book asks: are we are at ‘a new moment’ for cultural policy? Leading international thinkers from countries including Australia, Britain and the United States provide a timely overview of these issues, debating and discussing the directions that cultural policy should take in the future.
Making Meaning, Making Money will be of value to artists, policy makers, cultural managers and planners who are involved in the practices, processes and decision making that constitute contemporary cultural industries and shape emerging cultural economies.
","http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25651580-16947,00.html
""This book is aimed at providing an Australian value to the global 'creative' buzz and contributing to the Creative Australia debate.
This book adds unique value to the discussion topic with it's diversity in angles and depth in content. I would like to recommend this book for academics and practitioners of 'creative' industries, urban and regional planners, community advocates, cultural policy makers, arts consultants, and students of these disciplines.""
Richard Hu, University of Canbera, Australia, Australian Planner, vol. 28, no. 1, march 2011, 63-64
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Robert Stojanov and Jiří Novosák,"Migration, Development and Environment: Migration Processes from the Perspective of Environmental Change and Development Approach at the Beginning of the 21st Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-0038-9,39.99,"At the beginning of the 21st century, the linkages among migration, development and environment undoubtedly belong to the most pressing issues on the political agenda. A special focus of this book is on two of these relations – on environmentally-induced migration and on the relationship between migration processes and development. The prime aim of the book is to contribute to and extend the current knowledge on these issues. How to define environmentally-induced migration? What are the differences between environmental and economic migrants? Is environmentally-induced migration forced or voluntary and what are the outcomes of selected regional field case-studies? ? How to classify environmental migrants? Where are the regional hot-spots of environmentally-induced migration? How to systematize the knowledge on migration policies? What are the impacts of skilled migration on development? What is the role of the transnationalism paradigm in the international migration research? Is international migration trade-diverting or creating? What is wrong with the effectiveness of development aid providing? Several prominent scholars and young researchers offer their answers to these challenges in the book.
","“At long splendid last, we have a professional book setting out a series of contributions reflecting the diversity of authors, and dealing with the tangled issues of Migration, Development and Environment. The Editors have done a thoroughly fine job in assembling such an expanse of expertise. I have one basic reaction, right on, write on!”
—Norman Myers, Oxford University
“This book provides excellent reading to anyone wishing to become more familiar with today's big issues in international migration research: environmentally induced migration, transnationalism, highly skilled labour migration, migration and development. It shows very clearly that migration can no longer be seen as an issue that affects only sending or only receiving countries. It impacts at both ends of the migratory chain. The contributors to the book are an interesting mix of established scholars and relative newcomers, many of them rooted in Central Europe, an area increasingly affected by international migration.”
—Han Entzinger, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
“Current international migration issues and their complicated mutual relations to environment and development are the main topic of this book. Distinguished scholars along with young scientists with various backgrounds discuss conceptual and practical matters while also taking you around the Globe—from China to Cape Verde, from Australia to the Czech Republic…Read this interesting book—‘truth is always the strongest argument’ (Sophocles).”
—Dusan Drbohlav, Charles University, Prague
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Tanfer Emin Tunc and Annessa Ann Babic,"The Globetrotting Shopaholic: Consumer Spaces, Products, and their Cultural Places",Hardback,978-1-4438-0027-3,34.99,"The thrust of the literature on consumer space and society focuses on product labeling, marketing techniques and approaches to branding, as well as how mass consumer culture has reshaped individuals' interaction with needs and desires. Globetrotting Shopaholics departs from this current discourse by examining both consumption venues and the cultural, political and social reasons why we consume. It elucidates international trends in consumption politics, and how they impact the creation of consumer spaces, which, in this book, takes the form of numerous global loci including Canada's West Edmonton Mall, Japanese theme parks, shopping venues in the Philippines, and expat boutiques in Budapest. Using a wide range of epistemological frameworks including cultural ethnography, historical analysis, literary theory, sociological dissection, anthropological examination, and philosophical ruminations, this collection conveys how material objects and lifestyles are accumulated and represented internationally, and how consumer goods and spaces define who we are as human beings.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,"Natti Ronel, K. Jaishankar and Moshe Bensimon",Trends and Issues in Victimology,Hardback,978-1-4438-0069-3,39.99,"This book focuses on varied practical and theoretical issues of the science of victims, Victimology. Featuring a foreword and epilogue by leading victimologists, and fifteen original essays by leading as well as by young international victimologists, Trends and issues in Victimology, illustrates how victimization is currently perceived. This edited collection describes how the victim’s right for privacy is deprived for the benefit of the accused and the public interest, and how special needs populations are exposed to revictimization during criminal proceedings. It also delineates specific characteristics of stalking victims, sexual abused victims, and victims in work place.
Several recommendations and solutions in order to balance the justice system and improve the victims of crime situation are presented in this book. Practical modifications such as the adoption of the principle of restitution in the penal code as a framework for building evidence of victim legislation and policy, and the incorporation of the victim’s therapy and restorative justice proceedings into the criminal justice system, are suggested. Theoretical aspects discuss the rhetoric of victimization and the social construction of victimization and empirical aspects of the focus on the impact of victimization.
This book is a valuable addition to the growing literature on Victimology and Victimization. This book offers versatile authors of multidisciplinary fields of law, victimology, psychology and criminology. It is suitable to use in courses across social sciences, criminology, victimology and law.
”I have read this book with a kind of breathless tension and with an intellectual joy. Its contributions triggered many theoretical questions. This book not only reflects the current intellectual climate in social science, but it has also posed certain challenges.”
—Prof. Gerd Ferdinand Kirchhoff (from the Foreward).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Amedeo De Dominicis,Undescribed and Endangered Languages: the Preservation of Linguistic Diversity,Paperback,978-1-4438-0054-9,19.99,"The book is devoted to linguistic and phonetic analysis of some undescribed and endangered languages. It collects the Proceedings of the international conference on “Undescribed and endangered languages: the preservation of linguistic diversity” held in University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy), on September 29, 2005. Papers are by Roberto Ajello (Pisa), Amedeo De Dominicis (Viterbo), Maurizio Gnerre (Napoli), Antonino Melis (N’Djamena).
It will appeal to linguists, phoneticians and phonologists as a contribution to the debate it discusses and it will be welcomed by a wide range of students and researchers as an ideal overview of recent works.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,David Matheson,Contours of Privacy,Hardback,978-1-4438-0106-5,39.99,"The contours of privacy—its particular forms and our reasons for valuing it—are numerous and varied. This book explores privacy’s contours in a series of essays on such themes as the relationship between privacy and social accountability, privacy in and beyond anonymity, the psychology of privacy, and the privacy concerns of emerging information technologies.
The book’s international and multidisciplinary group of contributors provides rich insights about privacy that will be of great interest not only to the scholarly privacy community at large but also to professionals, academics, and laypersons who understand that the contours of privacy weave themselves throughout wide swaths of life in present-day society.
The stylistically accessible yet scholarly rigorous nature of The Contours of Privacy, along with the diversity of perspectives it offers, set it apart as one of the most important additions to the privacy literature on the contemporary scene.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Gokce Yurdakul,From Guest Workers into Muslims: The Transformation of Turkish Immigrant Associations in Germany,Hardback,978-1-4438-0060-0,29.99,"The political representation of immigrant association is central for immigrants to become political actors in Germany. This book offers a comparative analysis of five Turkish immigrant associations to point out to the diverse approaches in terms of immigrant integration and citizenship rights. By exploring these associations’ views on integration/ assimilation, nationalism/ethnicity, secularism/Islam and their relations with the mainstream German political parties, this book attempts to show that immigrants are not victims of the political decisions of the German state. On the contrary, Turkish immigrant elites become important actors to negotiate rights and memberships in the name of this ethno-national group. This book suggests an approach that recognizes the agency of immigrants in the socio-political discourse and also in the governing process.
","“Offering an important contribution to the growing literature on Turkish immigrants in Germany, Gökçe Yurdakul argues convincingly for the centrality to German political life of immigrant associations, demonstrating the range of techniques employed to influence larger social policy. The book’s particular strengths are its in-depth description and the insightful analysis of a range of immigrant associations, encompassing both a political and religious spectrum. Effectively disrupting conventional assumptions about immigrant passivity and lack of agency, it shows how, as participants and political agents, the members and leaders of the associations actively engage with the German political sphere. Extremely readable, it successfully blends the political and the personal, displaying an impressive depth of knowledge and subtle grasp of the larger issues at stake both for German society in general, and immigrants in particular. This book is a ‘must’ for scholars, students and activists concerned with immigrant political participation in Europe and the changing role of political Islam.”
Ruth Mandel, University College London
Author of Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany
“With profound knowledge about the genesis of Turkish migration to Germany, Gökçe Yurdakul unfolds a distinctive and lively picture of immigrant associations’ activities and their relations to the German state and society in her empirical study. Enriched by the analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of these organizations conducted since 2001, she shows that immigrants who lack German citizenship are not passive towards the German state´s political decisions on migration and integration. On the contrary each of them developed quite different patterns of integration. Focusing on Berlin, Yurdakul gives an impressive insight into the heterogeneity of Turkish immigrant associations and their conflicts and paradoxes on the headscarf debate which dominated the integration discourse in Germany in the last decade.”
Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, University of Bremen
Co-author of Viele Welten leben. Zur Lebenssituation von Mädchen und jungen Frauen mit Migrationshintergrund
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,"Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon","Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture",Paperback,978-1-4438-0111-9,19.99,"Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time, Culture
How do we hear and respond to place? 37 international artists and scholars have responded to this question from their unique perspectives, interrogating place as acoustic space where sound, place, time and culture collide. This book transcends the
boundaries of geography, time and discipline through its imaginative and scholarly writings and CD, provoking us all to pay attention to how we hear place.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Lisa Dresdner and Laurel S. Peterson,(Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience,Hardback,9781847189769,39.99,"Patriarchal institutions govern all aspects of women’s lives: their minds, their bodies, and their souls. Additionally, they govern the ways in which women are perceived by others and the ways in which women perceive themselves. (Re) Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience, is a collection of essays on language, religion, war, sex trafficking, and medicine—the patriarchal structures that form the basis of western society and, thus, are in many ways inherently unjust. The essays illustrate the multitude of ways that women have found to work within and without these structures to create justice.
Traditional theories of justice cast it as a cardinal virtue, unbiased and impartial. The essays in this book, however, remove justice from the abstract and return it to the specific: most of the essays use personal narratives to highlight the connections all people share. The women discussed here are challenging the authority of existing patriarchal narratives by telling their versions, and, thus, calling attention to and challenging their own political and social realities. Reflecting a focus on global connectedness and interdisciplinarity, the writers of these essays aim not only to raise questions, but also to show ways in which women are creating new pathways for themselves. Only by exploring solutions will women reclaim justice.
From L.A. to Zimbwabe, women have stories to tell about their experiences of justice in the inherently patriarchal institutions of Language, Religion, War, Sex Trafficking, and Medicine. This relevant and thought-provoking collection captures the trials that women across the world face and the hope they create through their courageous actions. Through both personal narrative and factual overview, these essays emphasize that as people committed to justice, women must not simply raise the questions, but they must also explore solutions in order to reclaim justice for themselves, their daughters, their sisters, and their mothers.
Contributors: Yifat Bitton, Stephany Ryan Cate, Jo Scott-Coe, Susan Dewey, Carmela Epright, Carmen Faymonville, Adam Gaynor, Pauline Greenhill, Denise Handlarski, Alison Jobe, Marc J.W. de Jong, Jodie M. Lawston, Jody Lisberger, Kristy Maher, Susan Maloney, Mickias Musiyiwa, Ruben Murillo, Annemarie Profanter, Natalie Wilson, and J. Carter Wood.
","“Showing the usefulness and power of storytelling to change women’s lives . . . this book is a welcome contribution to a new type of feminist scholarship that engages insightfully with the questions and concerns rooted on women’s practices of change.”
—María Pilar Aquino, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, and 2008-09 Visiting Professor of Theology, Harvard Divinity School
“As Chair of Women’s Studies, many anthologies come across my desk for review …. Only one or two include the more contemporary legal issues related to war and sex trafficking. (Re) Interpretations fills this gap and the complexities of how and by whom behavior is defined are thoughtfully examined and clearly illuminated.”
—Nancy S. Harris, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology and Sociology and Chair, Women’s Studies at Manhattanville College
“…this impressive, far-reaching collection of essays illuminat[es] the gendered nature of global political institutions… The collection refreshingly presents women as empowered activists–not victims–struggling against the patriarchal systems that continue to obstruct social justice and equality: It is an important contribution to feminist jurisprudence.”
—Cara Tuttle Bell, J.D., Center for Women's & Gender Studies at USC Upstate
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Valentine Casey,Software Testing and Global Industry: Future Paradigms,Hardback,978-1-4438-0109-6,34.99,"Today software development has truly become a globally sourced commodity. This trend has been facilitated by the availability of highly skilled software professionals in low cost locations in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Far East. Organisations endeavouring to leverage the opportunities this provides and to avail of the benefits of establishing operations close to emerging markets have embraced this strategy in large numbers.
Software testing plays a key role in delivering high quality products and is a labour intensive, complex and expensive activity. In the context of Global Software Development (GSD) to date testing has been perceived as a well defined task that is relatively straightforward and lends itself to being outsourced or offshored. This volume considers this specific topic and demonstrates that testing in a GSD environment is not a simple activity. It is prone to be negatively impacted by all the factors associated with distributed software development. This work also provides practical solutions which can be utilised to address these important issues.
While the primary focus of this work is software testing it is also the culmination of 10 years research by the author in the area of GSD. During this period he has considered all aspects of the software development life cycle. This experience and knowledge has been incorporated into this volume. It is therefore relevant to note this work is of value to the wider software community not just to those interested in testing. It specifically considers the establishment of virtual teams and their efficient and effective operation. Therefore this book has relevance to all those interested in implementing or improving a GSD strategy. Its particular strengths are that while it is a scholarly work it is industry based and practical.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho,"Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion",Hardback,978-1-4438-0169-0,39.99,"Headscarves in schools. Ethnic gang rapists. Domestic violence in Indigenous communities. Polygamy. Sharia law. It seems that in public debates around the world, concerns about marginalised communities often revolve around issues of gender and women’s rights. Yet all too often, discussions about complex matters are reduced to simplistic debates such as “hijab: to ban or not to ban?” or “Muslim women: oppressed or liberated?”.
This collection provides a space for in-depth analyses on the politics of gender, race and religion. As well as critical reflections on images and experiences of Muslim women, chapters also explore the relationships between gender, violence and protection, and offer innovative possibilities for intellectual and practical understandings at the intersection of gender, race and religion.
Essential reading for scholars and students of gender and women’s studies, cultural studies, racial and ethnic studies, religious studies and an educated public interested in understanding the challenges and possibilities of tackling both racism and the oppression of women.
","“Tanja Dreher and Christina Ho have intelligently and sensitively opened up a space for a number of authors who call on readers to develop a complex, but at the same time, simply human, appreciation of the intricate negotiations that Muslim women have to engage in to preserve the viability of their lives in a terrain rife with contradictions.”
– Ghassan Hage, author of White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society and Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Darryl Reed and J. J. McMurtry,Co-operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Co-operation Across Borders,Hardback,978-1-4438-0189-8,39.99,"In their efforts to internationalize in the emerging global economy, co-operatives not only face a variety of problems that are common to all firms, but encounter specific challenges due to their particular value commitments, forms of incorporation and organizational structures. These features of cooperatives are generally seen as a major source of competitive disadvantages and may cause significant trade-offs, forcing cooperatives to choose between living up to their principles of member ownership and control and remaining economically viable. Critics argue that such trade-offs signal the increasing irrelevance of cooperatives in a global economy. Advocates, however, counter that cooperatives may have unique competitive advantages which can be exploited in a global economy and that current trade-offs facing cooperatives can be overcome with the development of new international and transnational cooperative institutions and practices. Cooperatives, they claim, represent a much more sustainable and equitable form of production and may form the basis for viable, alternative approaches to development. This collection examines these debates about the roles of cooperatives in our increasingly global economy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Rila Mukherjee and M. N. Rajesh,"Locality, History, Memory: The Making of the Citizen in South Asia",Paperback,978-1-4438-0188-1,39.99,"Locality, History, Memory: The Making of the Citizen in South Asia was born out of the need to interrogate the tropes through which place, history and memory underpin notions of citizenship in present Southasia.
Time as both time present and time past is framed here in two settings: as privileging both place (material or ideological site) and space. The latter refers to religion, oppression, marginalization and/or dalitisation. Time transcends both site/location and actual physical boundaries. Locality or location is therefore envisioned in terms of both actual place as well as a gateway to a larger space, in terms of a situation where historical memory negotiates the increasingly complex present. Agency and contingency therefore assume a critical importance here.
Citizenship, far from being a discrete entity, is found to be multidimensional: it refers to formal status and the legal status of nationality and citizenship authenticated in the passport, but it also refers to rights and privileges; identity and solidarity, religious beliefs and a sense of belonging. Moving away from the role of the state, which has been at the centre of all inquiries on citizenship, we ask here the following questions in Locality, History, Memory: How does our history enforce or dilute the notion of the citizen? How far does memory strengthen or weaken it? What role does features not normally associated with citizenship such as access to natural resources, or ritual, faith and religion play in reinforcing such a status?
History in the end is written by the historian and it was easy to map the changing methodologies used by the historians to essay the past but this is becoming increasingly difficult now. Another twist is the shift to hypertext at a popular level echoing what the late E H Carr had once called ‘bringing more and more people into history’. These so called alternative histories or people’s histories are becoming more and more popular because of the point at which we are located in time. Moreover, devices afforded by the new media enable these alternative histories to have an immediacy that the conventional historical format lacked. The collapse of state control over the new media has led to the resurgence of many archaic voices unimaginable just a decade ago.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and Chris Van Der Merwe,"Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past",Hardback,978-1-4438-0158-4,49.99,"The United Nations’ declaration of 2009 as the International Year of Reconciliation is testimony to the growing use of historical commissions as instruments of reconciliation in post-conflict societies. Since the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has had a profound impact on international efforts to deal with the aftermath of mass violence and societal conflict, this is an appropriate time for scholars to debate and reflect on the work of the TRC and the wide-ranging scholarship it has inspired across disciplines. With a foreword by Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow, Memory, Narrative, and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past offers readers a front-row seat where a team of scholars draw on both theoretical analysis and case studies from around the world to explore the themes of memory, narrative, forgiveness and apology, and how these themes often interact in either mutually supportive or unsettling ways. The book is a vibrant discussion by scholars in philosophy, psychology, psychoanalytic theory, history, literary theory, and Holocaust studies. The authors explore the complex, interconnected issues of trauma and narrative (testimonial and literary narrative and theatre as narrative), mourning and the potential of forgiveness to heal the enduring effects of mass trauma, and transgenerational trauma-memory as a basis for dialogue and reconciliation in divided societies.
The authors go well beyond the South African TRC and address a wide range of historical events to explore the possibilities and the challenges that lie on the path of reconciliation and forgiveness between victims, perpetrators, and bystanders in societies with a history of violent conflict and unspeakable injustice. The book provides readers with a cohesive, theoretically well-grounded analysis of the impact of traumatic memories in the personal and communal lives of survivors of trauma. It explores how narrative may be creatively applied in processes of healing trauma, and how public testimony can often restore the moral balance of societies ravaged by trauma. The book deepens understanding of the ways in which lessons from the TRC might be developed and both usefully and cautiously applied in other post-conflict situations.
","""This is a very important and timely book for everyone concerned with a holistic approach to justice and peace. The significance of memory, truth recovery, and forgiveness cannot be underestimated. This book of essays promises to stimulate a very necessary interdisciplinary debate concerning trauma, apologies and healing.""
—Alex Boraine, Chairperson and founder of the International Centre for Transitional Justice, author of A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Oxford, 2001).
“Although volumes have been written about South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process, high-quality, analytical work has been relatively sparse. Until now! In breadth, depth, and generality, Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness is an unparalleled collection of research papers. This is not a book about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; nor even about South Africa itself. Rather, the various chapters explore and analyze fundamental processes of memory, healing, forgiveness, and memorialization of the past. This volume is an extraordinarily useful contribution to our understanding of truth and reconciliation throughout the world.”
—James Gibson, is the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in the Department of Political Science at Washington University. He is the author of Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile A Divided Nation? (Russell Sage, 2004).
""This excellent collection of essays provides us with thoughtful distinctions between forgiveness and apology, atonement and moral repair, and reconciliation and social reconstruction. These distinctions themselves add nuance to what has become a growing and essential debate about how societies that have been torn apart by horrendous, violent conflict, can collectively engage in the process of healing and reconstruction. The essays engage the growing terrain of trauma theory …. The authors, however, not only look at social institutions but also at representations in art and literature, which enhances the rich quality of the text. Moreover, several of the authors, writing about reconciliation in post colonies, particularly in Africa, address the need to develop African ethical ideals, such as Ubuntu, as crucially important in the growing literature on transitional justice. This book will be a much-welcomed text in departments ranging from sociology, anthropology, law and comparative literature. ""
—Drucilla Cornell is the Chair of Customary Law, Indigenous Values and Dignity Jurisprudence and co-director of the uBuntu Project at the University of Cape Town's Law Faculty.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Nandita Batra and Vartan P. Messier ,"Narrating the Past: (Re)Constructing Memory, (Re)Negotiating",Paperback,978-1-4438-0170-6,16.99,"Narrative constitutes an integral part of human existence, being omnipresent in our ordering of the world and the ways in which we transmit both knowledge and experience. Narrative construction has challenged the supremacy of empirical fact and has questioned our ability to know the past Aas it really was. Examining a wide range of texts, from ancient Greece and medieval Britain to contemporary America, Asia, Australia, Britain and the Caribbean, the essays in this volume address the inconsistencies in master narratives to reveal that all representations of the past, like knowledge, are situated.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,María Amelia Viteri and Aaron Tobler,Shifting Positionalities: The Local and International Geo-Politics of Surveillance and Policing,Hardback,978-1-4438-0186-7,39.99,"The local-level and international contributors of Shifting Positionalities encompass particular common themes through in-depth social science research in an effort to understand the meanings of the reformulation of state discourses and practices in this post-9/11 era. Current conjunctions between sexual, racial and ethnic identities—and the surveillance practices of those identities—calls for a thorough examination of the multiple and usually unexpected meaning-making practices adapted by individuals. Far from being predictable, the latter speaks to the possibility of individuals and communities utilizing techniques of actively resisting—as opposed to passively embracing—the policing of their daily lives. Shifting Positionalities: The Local and International Geo-Politics of Surveillance and Policing addresses surveillance and policing as practices and sites that speak to the various ways in which bio-power, displacement and resistance converge to constitute particular subjectivities across borders.
","""Thank you very much for the opportunity to read and comment on your terrific book. Below you will find my reactions. The book is a terrific achievement and a wonderful contribution to resisting the dangerous expansion of surveillance and policing in all our lives.
In the post-September 11, 2001 world, surveillance and policing have become pervasive, and yet mostly unexamined, parts of our lives—from ubiquitous security cameras and exhaustive airport searches to unprecedented levels of government wiretapping and surveillance of phone and web communications to the monitoring of library and financial records to the expansion of corporate surveillance of individual internet usage to the targeting of ethnic and religious minorities by police forces for observation, disappearance, and detention. Shifting Positionalities makes a critical contribution to documenting and understanding how these and other forms of surveillance and policing are shaping and damaging our lives and our society. Beyond the more obvious restriction of freedoms and rights, Viteri and Tobler’s diverse collection of essays insightfully shows how practices of surveillance and policing are subtly influencing our thoughts about ourselves and others, reshaping ethnic, racial, gender, sexual, and national identities, deepening state and corporate control over our bodies, and contributing to the further marginalization and demonization of Muslims, Arabs, and others deemed to be “terrorist” threats. Encouragingly, Shifting Positionalities also reveals how the expansion of surveillance and policing has led to the invention of surprising forms of resistance to these forms of dangerous social control. Given the threat that surveillance and policing pose to basic democratic and human rights, Shifting Positionalities strikes an important blow against a new and increasingly insidious Big Brother.""
- David Vine, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington, DC
Author of the book ""Island of Shame: The secret history of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia"" by Princeton.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Roderick Neilsen,Travellers’ Tales: The Expatriate English Language Teacher in the New Global Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-0150-8,39.99,"Most of the research into ELT has focused on its linguistic and methodological aspects, which are based on Western scientific traditions. The contributions and experiences of English language teachers themselves, especially their work in overseas contexts, have frequently been overlooked. This volume aims to document the complexity of ELT as ‘work’ in new global economic and cultural conditions, and to explore how this complexity is realised in the everyday experiences of ELT teachers. The development of ELT from the colonial experience to its current status as a global commodity is explored; ELT is then situated in the discourses of globalisation, specifically within Appadurai’s theorisation of global flows of people, images, ideas, technology and money, or scapes. Within this framework, narratives are constructed from the experiences of Native-speaking English teachers. These reveal much about the personal, pedagogical and cultural dimensions of ELT work in non-Centre countries, and will contribute to a greater understanding of the intercultural dimensions of ELT for all those who work in it, and in related educational fields.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Hugh O’Donnell and Malcolm Foley,Treat or Trick? Halloween in a Globalising World,Hardback,978-1-4438-0153-9,39.99,"In 1999 the French bishops condemned the celebration of Halloween in France. In 2003 the Moscow Department of Education recommended the banning of Halloween celebrations in all educational institutions under its control. In 2008 a group of Catalan intellectuals launched an internet petition against the Halloween celebrations organised by the Port Aventura theme park, arguing that they were detrimental to long-standing Catalan traditions associated with 31 October. In the meantime children and young people all over Europe—and increasingly adults—are energetically adopting and adapting the American version of Halloween as a source of fun, community building and general revelry. So are we all being tricked by rampant cultural imperialism, or responding creatively to the arrival of Halloween as a welcome onset-of-winter treat?
This book, which arose out of the first-ever conference on the topic of Halloween held in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 October 2006, brings together a series of studies examining the phenomenon of Halloween from a wide range of perspectives: its origins; the ways in which it is now and has been in the past celebrated in the British Isles; its spectacular arrival in both Eastern and Western Europe over the last two decades; its links with tourism; and its multifaceted presence in the media. What emerges is a phenomenon of astonishing complexity, characterised by multiple meanings and intense battles over ownership.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Karen Frostig and Kathy A. Halamka,"Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism",Paperback,978-1-4438-0239-0,19.99,"How has feminism matured over the years?
What are the pressing agendas for today’s feminists working in the arts?
Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism, emerges as a navigational text, celebrating past victories while charting new directions for today’s second wave and third wave feminists. A feminist anthology, Blaze is comprised of feminist artists, art historians, critics, journalists, curators, interdisciplinary artists, and arts administrators of diverse backgrounds, living across the United States. The book grows out of the 2006 Annual National Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts.
Blaze features 15 detailed and well-documented feminist histories that narrate a number of pertinent strands of activism regarding feminist art, scholarship, and organizational development while exploring current crossroads. Conversations occur between myriad groups of women: second wave to third wave; third wave to second wave; second wave to second wave; third wave to women who do not identify themselves as feminists. The book addresses a number of timely issues related to representation, work, collaboration, environmental interventions, and social justice platforms.
Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism captures feminists arts professionals working together across differences. In a world filled with strife, it is this form of engagement that inspires continued activism.
For further information, please also see www.blazediscourse.com
","“BLAZE is a work of love and commitment that chronicles the breadth and depth of American feminist creative practice across generations, as it speculates on the position of women in society and manifests in the making of art.”
Carol Becker
Dean of the School of the Arts, Columbia University
Her latest book: Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art
""A fascinating potpourri of essays ranging from a succinct account of how to start your own excellent museum to art criticism and blogging, from past history of the WCA to the return of the nude in recent art. Everyone will find something valuable in this collection, to which many of the smartest minds writing about women and art have contributed.""
Ann Sutherland Harris
Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
First President of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA)
BLAZE contains a provocative and piercing analysis of contemporary feminist art, spanning “35 years of passionate fury, sacrifice, and camaraderie between women.” Its informed and intelligent essays, written by a diversity of voices, are mandatory reading for anyone interested in tracking the impact of the revolution which demolished male domination in the art world. The book usefully contributes to a wide range of subjects: expansion of the canon; increased exhibition opportunities for women; the rise of eco-feminism and collaborative methodologies; public art projects; art education; and the history of a still thriving national Women’s Caucus for Art. It successfully maps the complexities of several generations of shifting feminist agendas, and makes a valuable contribution to where things might be headed now.
Suzi Gablik
Has Modernism Failed? And The Reenchantment of Art
For more than 30 years, feminist artists, curators, critics, organizations, and institutions have transformed the visual arts. BLAZE: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism is a dynamic anthology of articles by a stunning collection of second and third wave American feminist art world participants. This outstanding volume documents the recent history of feminist art in America, providing a fascinating array of perspectives that reveal the struggles and triumphs of women in the arts. Co-editors Karen Frostig and Kathy Halamka have provided readers with multiple visions from some of the most respected figures in recent American cultural history. Artists, scholars, journalists, arts administrators, and anyone interested in the state of the arts will find BLAZE compelling and essential-all the more so as women artists continue their righteous quest for full dignity and equality in all fields of human endeavor.
Paul Von Blum
African American Studies and Art History, UCLA
This book is a must to understand the Feminist Art Movement and the significant role it has played and still does play in shaping contemporary art ideas. It does double duty by documenting the day-to-day history of the Feminist Art Movement as seen through the eyes of participants in the Women's Caucus for Art, providing information on the participating women, on the exhibitions and events that brought the Feminist Art Movement to the public, its goals, and growing pains, and at the same time, by presenting the theoretical and intellectual issues that gave rise to the movement and that are key to its impact. Very few books intermix documentation and theory. In doing so, the editors and authors enlighten readers in a way that a book focused only on one or the other cannot. The book also enlarges the discourse around the movement. Many books document the artists involved, but few give information about the art historians, curators, administrators, and institutions that were key to giving the movement the visibility and support necessary for it to make an impact. The footnotes and bibliographies attached to each chapter are a valuable resource, providing direction for the reader to explore the feminist movement further. Until now, the Women's Caucus for Art has remained under-documented and under-appreciated for its role in furthering the Feminist Art Movement and ensuring its place in the cultural record. This book remedies that oversight.
Judith K. Brodsky
Third President of the Women's Caucus for Art and past President of College Art Association
Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Visual Arts, Rutgers University and Founding Director, The Brodsky Center for Innovative Multiples. With Dr. Ferris Olin, she is the Founding Director of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, and co-facilitator of The Feminist Art Project, a national program to celebrate the achievements of the Feminist Art Movement
The breadth of subjects in BLAZE that are of interest to women’s studies faculty and students is impressive, such as feminist generations, ecofeminism, attention to mother-daughter art, rituals, mentoring, and the role of personal history. BLAZE will also be welcomed by women’s studies faculty who teach “women in the arts” courses, for whom the entire book will be of value. Faculty who teach introduction to women’s studies from a humanities (or even more interdisciplinary) perspective will find it much easier to incorporate the arts into their courses by using this text… BLAZE will fill many niches and stimulate many minds.
Phyllis Holman Weisbard
Distinguished Academic Librarian, University of Wisconsin System Women’s Studies Librarian
Editor of Feminist Collections: A quarterly of women's studies resources
I admire both the scope and ambition of this volume of feminist essays. It ranges from a lively and accurate historical account of the formative period of the 70’s allowing the reader to relive the challenges and camaraderie of those early days, to new topics and preoccupations such as eco-feminism and feminism in the digital era of blogs and anonymity. Nevertheless, I am struck by certain enduring traits. Our desire to promote the proactive and the empathetic is a hallmark of feminism, and feminist organizations now as then. Whatever the tensions and differences between first, second and third wave feminisms, there is a dynamic mix of view points in this volume which will be of great value to all its readers.
Ruth Weisberg, Dean, Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California
BLAZE offers a multitude of feminist voices in the arts - from individual artists, to women who work collaboratively, to women who participated in the very birth of the feminist art movement. For this reason and many others, Blaze belongs on the bookshelf of anyone teaching contemporary art, women's history, and the emergence of women's organizations. Blaze also reminds us how important the Women's Caucus for the Arts has been both to individual careers and to the creation of a whole new phase of art-making.
Shula Reinharz
Jacob Potofosky Professor of Sociology
Founding Director, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Founding Director, Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,"Graeme Watson, Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Elisabetta Viggiani and Máiréad Collins",Friends and Foes Volume II: Friendship and Conflict from Social and Political Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-0333-5,34.99,"The product of an international, multi-disciplinary conference at Queen’s University Belfast, the two-volume Friends and Foes series offers an illuminating investigation of the relationship between friendship and conflict by established and emerging scholars. This second volume explores the topic from political, sociological and psychological perspectives. Many of these essays examine what types of friendships are forged, and how, in contexts of potential, or actual, social and political conflict, such as in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Others focus on how situations of conflict can be transformed into friendship, using insights from psychology, philosophy, history and anthropology. The papers in this volume will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, and all those concerned with themes of conflict resolution, identity, social capital, community-building and well-being.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Joanna N. Paull,From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks: Teaching about Culture in the Composition Classroom,Paperback,978-1-4438-0238-3,19.99,"From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks is a text designed to invigorate composition teachers’ classroom approaches for getting students to better understand American culture(s). The contributors share their strategies from their classrooms, including such exciting topics as food, comedy, music, technology, and photography. Readers may use this collection in a pragmatic way or as inspiration for developing and revising their current cultural curriculum. In general, these essays trace semester-long course structures to allow readers to see how one assignment leads into the next, often offering student writing samples along the way. There is not another collection out there quite like this one. Ideal for graduate students learning strategies for teaching, new teachers seeking some effective strategies or even seasoned professors looking for new teaching ideas, From Hip-Hop to Hyperlinks is an exciting addition to any composition instructor’s collection of teaching texts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,K. Jaishankar,International Perspectives on Crime and Justice,Hardback,978-1-4438-0198-0,64.99,"In a world of growing interdependence, crimes are no longer confined by national boundaries. In this context, the necessity to understand criminological developments across the globe becomes imperative. This book aims to offer cross-cultural perspectives of different criminological issues and criminal justice systems operating worldwide. This book emphasizes the collective understanding of criminological problems from an international perspective. This book is a quintessence of contemporary criminological developments, with a global outlook.
The book is an edited volume of articles collected from criminologists all over the world. It is a peer reviewed collection. The chapters focuses on various criminological issues such as Bullying, Child abuse, Corrections (Institutional and Community), Cyber crimes, Corporate crime, Corruption, Costs of crime, Crime Analysis, Crime prevention, Crime Mapping and GIS, Criminal justice systems, Environmental crime, Ethnic/communal/caste conflicts, Family violence, Fear of crime, High tech crimes, Homicide, Human trafficking, Juvenile Delinquency, Organized crime, Offenders including women offenders, Policing, Prisons, Public attitudes, Restorative justice, Sexual assault, Stalking, Theories of crime, Transnational crime, Victimology, Violence, White collar crime, and Workplace violence.
The book aims to provide theoretical frameworks and pragmatic discussions on Criminology and Criminal Justice. It is intended for Academics, Criminal Justice professionals, and Graduate Students who want to improve their understanding of the issues and challenges that arise when issues related to criminology and criminal justice cross national boundaries. Also, practitioners and academics of allied fields like sociology, psychology, geography, political science, public administration and forensic sciences whose research interests include either crime/criminal justice system/Victim or crime analysis will find this book useful.
“The comprehensive framework of this book means that it provides a rich variety of international perspectives on an array of crime and justice-related issues. The thirty chapters presented here are a treasure trove of insights in terms of both topical variety and approaches within topic. Dr. Jaishankar has assembled a valuable collection of readings that will find broad acceptance internationally.”
Prof. Keith Harries (From the Foreword)
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Kelvin E. Y. Low,Scent and Scent-sibilities: Smell and Everyday Life Experiences,Hardback,978-1-4438-0215-4,39.99,"Smells are distinct and ubiquitous. They envelope us, enter our bodies, and emanate from us. Yet, they remain relegated to the background of everyday life experiences. This book attempts to highlight the social salience of smell in social actors’ day-to-day encounters where issues involving morality and social othering, presentation of self, and personhood intertwine with analyses of smell as a social conduit. These encounters include the experiences of anosmic individuals, which capture non-olfactive social worlds that are rarely addressed hitherto. Further deliberations on olfaction in relation to social memberships of race, class, and gender, elucidate upon social boundaries of inclusion and exclusion constructed vis-à-vis smell as a social marker. Olfactive adjudications of race and class are then expanded upon through the author’s discussion of various smellscapes in the context of Singapore. Olfaction, sanitary discipline, and olfactive simulacra are also expounded upon, thereby underscoring the control and manipulation of scents in the contexts of modernity and postmodernity. Smells therefore offer insights into the workings of social relations and power structures in society.
By predicating analyses on empirical data procured from Singapore, along with case studies from the region and beyond, this study draws much needed attention on smell which has been a neglected sense in the wider literature. In addition, the concurrent employment of the other senses will also be explicated, which therefore demonstrates the social character of smell and other sensory modalities through historical and contemporary milieux. This book is a pioneering effort in offering sociocultural interpretations of scents based on primary and secondary data analysed using the trajectory of sociology of everyday life.
","""The author takes us on an odouriferous journey through current scholarship and fascinating ethnography of the meaning of smell in society. More than a contribution to current interest in exploring cross-cultural ""scent-scapes"", Kelvin E.Y. Low provides an argument for the centrality of smell to the key processes of identity formation and differentiation, thus placing the senses at the heart of contemporary social science.""
- David Sutton, author of ""Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory"" (2001); Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Southern Illinois University
""Smell matters centrally to the construction of others and presentation of self in everyday life in Singapore. Kelvin Low brings a highly refined and discerning nose to bear on the social dynamics of scents and stenches in this bustling Asian capital. By breaking the smell barrier, he adds an important new chapter to the sociology of the senses. This book will also be of key interest to geographers for its olfactory cartography of Singapore.”
- David Howes, author of Sensual Relations and co-author of Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell teaches in the Department of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Noel Packard,Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum,Paperback,978-1-4438-0199-7,39.99,"These papers advance sociological discourse beyond the classical “collective memory” model, into critical terrain of overlapping and contested relationships between personal, private, public, or commodity memory Since memory ranges from a personal memory, to a history book, to a monument, to the memory inside a personal computer, or inside a person’s body, to the photos stored in cell phones (at home, on the streets, in war and elsewhere), to massive data-mining operations by corporations, to government-funded DNA banks, or to continuous satellite surveillance photos, sociological questions arise regarding who “owns” what kind of memory, and for what social or private purposes? These papers present simultaneously forward–thinking, backward–reflecting, and historically contextualized, theoretical, conceptual and applied models with which to study the sociological ramifications of a society increasingly dependent on automated and banked electronic and biological memory for economic, legal, governmental, law–enforcement, agribusiness and medical purposes, as well as for the social “re”construction of society, the preservation of historical and tourist sites, knowledge production and ultimately, human re–production.The models and theoretical work presented in these papers revisit and expand upon work of “cannon” sociologists: Durkheim, Halbwachs, Marx, Addams, Mead and Weber. Revisiting classical sociologists’ work regarding collective memory, personal memory and narrative, provides a way to compare and contrast how sociologists have approached the study of memory. Provocative insights into theoretical, methodological and political differences between early American and European sociological approaches to the study of memory are considered. Contemporary theoretical work by Foucault, Bourdieu, Berger, Lowenthal, Anderson, Misztal, Nora, Olick, Zerbavel, Alexander, Lifton, Prager, Ricoeur, Schudson, Schwartz, Zerubavel, Elias, Luhmann, Deegan, Habermas and others, are incorporated into and evoked, in these research papers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Peter Baofu,The Future of Post-Human Mass Media: A Preface to a New Theory of Communication,Hardback,978-1-4438-0327-4,44.99,"Why should mass media be informational and accurate as much as its proponents would claim—and, conversely, disinformational and propagandistic as much as its critics would argue?
Contrary to the conventional wisdom held by many since the modern era of mass media, neither of the two opposing views is correct, to the extent that a total analysis of media influence has yet to be adequately explored and understood. Something fundamentally vital to the analysis of communication has been missing.
This is not to say, however, that the literature on media studies hitherto existing in history has been much ado about nothing; on the contrary, indeed, much can be learned from different theoretical approaches in the field.
But the important point to remember here is that this book aims to show an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of mass media (which goes beyond both the pros and cons in the literature on media influence, while learning from them all).
If true, this seminal view will alter the way of how mass media are to be understood, with its enormous theoretical implications for going beyond the existing paradigms on the future of communication, in a small sense—and for predicting the future of open and closed societies, in a large sense.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Damien W. Riggs and Barbara Baird,"The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges",Hardback,978-1-4438-0326-7,44.99,"The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges takes on the urgent task of chipping away at existing racial and ethnic hierarchies that obstruct global and local movement towards human rights and social justice. It imagines subjective, social and political spaces which might enable this movement. Many authors engage with Indigenous sovereignties, from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. While most authors write from an Australian perspective, the issues addressed both have relevance beyond antipodean borders and complicate the idea of national boundaries. Chapters include a comparison of Indigenous struggles for land in Canada and Australia, the situation of minority ethnic and religious communities in the European Union, a meditation on teaching an Australian film about colonial history to German university students, and the story of the delicate positioning of a man of mixed Maori and Irish heritage finding cultural citizenship in the US academy in the mid 20th century. Other chapters focus on children’s storybooks, media representations of suffering, and websites aimed at gay and lesbian youth – all international phenomena, and all places where racialised politics are at play. The book also offers insights into contemporary Australian racial politics via analyses of the treatment of asylum seekers, the health of Indigenous women, the education of young Indigenous people and the development of national histories in local tourist promotion. Readers looking for international perspectives on racial issues will find this book a diverse but rewarding approach to vitally important subject matter.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Ramkrishna Mukherjee,Why Unitary Social Science?,Paperback,978-1-4438-0212-3,24.99,"Why Unitary Social Science? pleads for a comprehensive appraisal of social reality. Tracing the visionary and transformative paths of reality from the subjective to the objective points of view, Mukherjee argues that it is precisely the division of social science into discrete compartments as disciplines that thwarts the emergence of an objective science of society. Social science is seen here as unitary with diverse specialisations emerging from a single base but proliferating endlessly as knowledge advances; neither as different social science disciplines nor as the unified social sciences.
","""Ramkrishna Mukherjee has made a strong case, with his usual insight and clarity, for a unitary social science. This is a book to be taken very seriously by the world's social scientists.""
—Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Mary Gallant,A Feminist Case Study in Transnational Migration: The Anne Jemima Clough Journals,Hardback,978-1-4438-0498-1,39.99,"Although until now virtually unacknowledged in the field of women’ education, Anne Jemima Clough was active throughout her long life in the field. Among other positions, she held the position of principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, for more than a decade, from 1880 until her death in 1892. But in spite of her prominent position, her achievements were overshadowed by her more visible and vocal contemporaries in higher education, such as Emily Davies and Josephine Butler. Nevertheless, she was always a loyal and tenacious follower and an uncomplaining worker. In a subdued way she lived and laboured fervently for the furtherance of women’s education. Quietly, and with remarkably little encouragement or guidance, she pursued and finally realized her dream, a dream that would at last allow her to help make education accessible to all women.
In this volume I have compiled, edited, and annotated most of Anne Jemima Clough’s unpublished papers. In addition to transcribing her diaries, or notebooks, I have incorporated chronologically into the text some examples of the voluminous amount of correspondence she wrote and received during a long life filled with activity The Anne Jemima Clough.papers will not only provide raw material for scholars studying the women’s movement during the nineteenth century, but they will also be a useful and engaging read for all students and scholars of the women’s movement, education, Victorian feminism and gender studies.
","""What Mary Gallant is offering here is a tremendous insight into the life of Miss Clough before her prestigious nomination to Newnham, giving the reader a remarkable view of a Victorian girlhood, and the formative years and experiences which helped forge her personality and her career.
The records are extremely vivid, and offer superb insights into a variety of domains. . .
One reads these evocations with fascinations and often delight, as both an era, and the remarkable life of a single woman, are brought into view. The reader's task is made all the easier by very detailed notes accompanying each chapter, in which the editor gives background historical and biographical information, cross-references certain entries, recalls the different stages of Anne's life and highlights links to more recent historical studies.
. . . the reader can only be enchanted by the rich work and grateful to Ms Gallant for having brought to light such a rich documentary source that had been so long overlooked. She thus paves the way for a subsequent generation of students and scholars who can conflate these papers with others of the same era, explore new aspects of Victorian life. . .
Claire Davison-Pegon, Universite de Provonce, Cahiers Victoriens et Edourdiens, no73, April 2011
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo,"A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium",Hardback,978-1-4438-0444-8,44.99,"How relevant is Foucault’s social thought to the world we inhabit today?
This collection comprises several essays considering the contemporary relevance of the work of Michel Foucault. While Foucault is best remembered for his historical inquiries into the origins of “disciplinary” society in a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries, it seems that today, under the conditions of global modernity, the relevance of his ideas are called into question. With the increasing ubiquity of markets, the break up of centralized states and the dissolution of national boundaries, together with new scientific and political discourses on biological life, the world of today seems far removed from the bounded, disciplinary societies Foucault described in his most famous books. Yet in recent years, it has become apparent that Foucault’s thoughts on modern society have not been exhausted, and, indeed, that much remains to be explored. Within this volume, novel interpretations and thematic developments of key Foucauldian concepts are presented in the works of 24 authors. Prominent among them are new forms of neoliberal economic conduct framed by distinct governmentalities; new critical concepts of biological life reflected in Foucault’s analysis of biopower, and new theoretical treatments of the effects of subjectivation. Moreover, included among these theoretical departures are empirical studies of contemporary formations of religion and spiritual practice, consumerism, race and racism, the discourse of genetics and the life sciences, surveillance and incarceration, and new social movements. Drawn from a conference held at the University of Massachusetts, Boston bearing the same title, A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governnentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium both expands our understanding of Foucault’s central theoretical legacy, and applies his ideas to a range of contemporary empirical phenomena.
","""...the editors have provided a broad cross-section of essays that take Foucault's ideas in interesting directions""
P. Taylor Trussell, Independent Scholar in Foucault Studies, No. 8 Feb 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Nelson R. Block and Tammy M. Proctor,Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-0450-9,39.99,"Despite the fact that Scouting has touched the lives of a quarter of a billion boys and girls and their leaders around the world in the past century, its history has been largely ignored. Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century is the first book to discuss the history and principal themes of the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements on an international scale. Inspired by presentations at the ground-breaking 2008 Johns Hopkins University symposium, ""Scouting: A Centennial History,"" the authors examine the world's greatest youth movement through the diverse experiences of its members and their organizations. From Muslim Scouts in Wales to French Scouts in Syria to Girl Guides in colonial Kenya, Scouting has responded to the challenges of international expansion and transformed itself to address cultural, political and social diversity. Scouting Frontiers focuses particularly on the intersections between Scouting’s origins and its transformations over the last century as it faced frontiers of nation, empire, religion, race, class, and gender.
","By drawing together a number of the eminent names in the history of youth movements and empire, and ranging - appropriately - across a variety of different contexts and geographical spaces, 'Scouting Frontiers' gives a richly layered account of the alluring concept that has fundamentally shaped and informed Scouting - its challenges for the young, its identity, its history - since its inception just over one hundred years ago: the far frontier.
--Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford, and editor of the Oxford edition of Baden-Powell's 1908 'Scouting for Boys'
The great virtue of this volume is that, for the first time, we have a set of excellent essays reflecting Scouting and Guiding's astonishing international reach. Many non-religious institutions and movements claim to be world wide, but only the Scouts and Guides can really claim the status.
In addition to the book's global sweep, it is unique in the way that it brings together Scouting and Guiding. It not only places them side by side, but explores how they interacted and how gender affected both movements. The analysis presented here reflects a high level of sophistication with respect to gender and age relations. It is aware of the complications of race and class, as well as religion. Indeed, it reflects the cutting edge of a new frontier of historiography.
-- John R. Gillis, Professor of History Emeritus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and author of Youth and History
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Ian Dieffenthaller,Snow on Sugarcane: The Evolution of West Indian Poetry in Britain,Hardback,978-1-4438-0355-7,44.99,"As recently as the early 1970s, scholars were able to argue conclusively for the existence of West Indian poetry as distinct from the English canon. Because much of its development occurred in Britain, hybridising with British practice was inevitable and this book makes a case for a West Indian British poetry which at first parallels and later becomes distinct from either of its parent bodies, relying instead on a cross-cultural aesthetic that continues to evolve.
Early chapters examine the work of Claude McKay, Una Marson and Phyllis Allfrey in tandem with West Indian novels and calypsos of the 1950s and incipient critical practice fronted by Kamau Brathwaite. Subsequent chapters chart the influence of the Caribbean Artists Movement and poets such as John La Rose, Andrew Salkey and Faustin Charles. The politicising of the West Indian British community in the 1970s gave rise to the work of Linton Kwesi Johnson and ‘dub’ poetry. It also initiated the concept of ‘black Britain,’ which continues to obscure developments in West Indian British poetry into the twenty-first century. Later chapters examine these developments and chronicle the literary strategies of poets such as E. A. Markham, John Agard, James Berry, Fred D’Aguiar, Amryl Johnson and Grace Nichols, who along with poets from a non-West Indian heritage enrich the new hybrid voice and ensure its continued existence.
In History of the Voice, Kamau Brathwaite questioned the cultural basis of West Indian children in the 1950s who wrote of snow falling on cane fields. It is in West Indian British poetry that such collisions are made possible – and culturally viable.
","“As defined and established in Snow on Sugarcane, “West Indian British poetry” has hardly been acknowledged by other commentators. Ian Dieffenthaller breaks new ground with his nuanced account of both the Caribbean roots and the contemporary British flowering of this “hybrid voice”. This original and important study, written with critical wit and real style, both complicates the conventional story and enriches our understanding of this distinctive body of work.”
- Dr. Stewart Brown, Reader in Caribbean Literature, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. Hon. Research Fellow, Centre of Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick. Editor: The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse
""Impressive in its scope, this original study examines the development of West Indian poetry in Britain, spanning several decades from the 1920s to the present, and focuses on famous and lesser known voices. Dieffenthaller's wide-ranging analysis, both textual and contextual, traces the rise of a unique cross-cultural sensibility. Snow on Sugarcane is a source of precious information for any reader interested in the literature of the Caribbean diaspora.""
Bénédicte Ledent
Université de Liège (Belgium)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani,The Public Sphere and Media Politics in Malaysia,Hardback,978-1-4438-0360-1,39.99,"This book analyses Malaysian media from the Jurgen Habermas’ perspectives of “the public sphere” especially from the aspects of bourgeois public sphere, mass press, the commercialisation of the press and refeudalisation. Malaysia has also faced all of those aspects. However, the highlight of this book is the process called defeudalisation. The 2008 General Election has shown that a new public sphere of cyberspace or the Internet and the mobile phone was accessed and utilised significantly and was enough to be used by the opposition in influencing the public to vote them. It became one of the major factors in determining the result of the election which is for the first time the opposition denying the ruling government a two third majority in the parliament and taking control or governing of five states. This new and influential public sphere in Malaysia has reversed the Habermas’ argument of refeudalisation to a process called “Defeudalisation”. However, in creating a civil public sphere for the people to deliberate views, this book also argues that Malaysia needs a responsible media or freedom of the press with social responsibility. This book urges Malaysia to accept the idea or theory of social responsibility and the concept of public journalism in the public sphere.
This book is suitable for all interested–politicians, journalists, academia, and students of politics, media studies, laws and Malaysian studies–in the issues of media politics, free press and the role of media in Malaysian society as well as those interested in civil liberties, democratisation, political theory, media theory, law and Malaysian studies.
","Azizuddin Sani has written a vitally important book on the interactions among media ownership, political bias, and public debate in Malaysia. His emphasis on the impact of the changing nature of mass media on the public sphere brings together a careful inventory of print and online publications with an assessment of government regulation and its technological limits, all measured against a strong theory of the need for vigorous public debate. This book is a major contribution to the study of politics, public policy, and applied political theory in Malaysia.
—Donald L. Horowitz, James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science, Duke University, US
In this bold and original work Azizuddin Sani uses Jurgen Habermas’s idea of the public sphere to develop his conception of “defeudalisation” as a tool for analysing the changing political role of the Malaysian media. In particular, he explores the development and impact of new communication technologies in the context of the 2008 election. This book should be of interest to all students, scholars and members of the educated public concerned with
democracy in Malaysia.
—John Horton, Professor of Politics, Keele University, UK
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Fatima Festić,Betraying the Event: Constructions of Victimhood in Contemporary Cultures,Hardback,978-1-4438-0516-2,39.99,"In gaining an instrumental part, becoming a fashion, the victimhood theme has drawn attention to its fascinatory and manipulative aspects, and has asked for a critical reconsideration.
This volume makes note of an attempt to sustain a conversation about changes in the ways the processes of victimization are written out and comprehended. The contributors aim to expose some recent instances and modalities of cultural and political constructions of victimhood in various parts of the world. Our concern with the overlapping areas of victimhood and rhetoric points to the ambiguous manner in which language and images thread their way into the critical discourses of today, and even devise a vicious reversal of the victimized/victimizer positions.
Although we ask: can the victim’s real ever be fully represented?, we keep holding on the simple assurance that only an attempt at representation of the real in an actual performance can bring us closer to the victimizing event, make us grasp its other contested constructions and foresee the materiality of the effects of its linguistic implications.
We try to suggest a comparative approach that would link different experiences of victimization, possibly enabling a cognitive exchange, and emphasize the necessity of raising the writers’ and readers’ awareness of the narrative consequences of victimizing processes and the policies following on from them.
","“Bloody the spectacle; tamed its society. Yet, even if atrocity is our contemporary, rather than curating a gallery of token victims, Fatima Festić offers a collection that attempts to give victims the right to not speak on the stage that the lobbyists of pity keep unfolding. From Singapore’s minorities to the Romanian communist Holocaust, from the rape trials in South Africa to the crushing theatricality of the Bosnian war, and from the Turkish coup d’état narratives to the heavily biased Western broadcasting of the horrors of the war in Iraq, banalized victimhood comes undone. Against white guilt’s self-mirroring display, if you think you are a victim, read this book and think again.”
- Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Western Ontario”
“’In ""Betraying the Event’, Fatima Festić brings together a significant collection on the construction of victimisation in contemporary cultures that takes a comparative approach. This volume is a reconsideration of a vital topic. Rhetoric, imagery and political manipulation are all part of the representation and reception of victims. Festić and her contributors examine key questions of power and authority in legal, political, literary and other forms of communication, such as the media. What event occurred in the world and how and the way that events are represented become central to the task at hand. Otherness and genocide are also at the core of the collection. The very victims and their representations and narratives of victimisation come to be challenged, misused and exploited and can be displaced into political metaphor. This impressively wide-ranging collection reconfigures a pressing question about victims and genocide, the nature of texts and the world, the place of literature between actual and possible worlds and in the context of social and political stresses.“
- Jonathan Hart, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and History, University of Alberta
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Cathleen Maslen,Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Women’s Melancholia,Hardback,9781847186614,34.99,"It’s fatal making a fuss ... .
-Jean Rhys, Quartet.
Cathleen Maslen’s Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Women’s Melancholia closely engages with the most obvious theme of Rhys’s writing: the speaking and inscription of feminine anguish. Maslen resists easy generalisations with respect to Rhys’s portrayal of women’s psychic pain, attending carefully to the nuances of sexual, cultural and ethnic displacement which inform the suffering of Rhys’s protagonists. Acknowledging the many fine recent critical engagements with Rhys’s unique corpus of novels, Maslen insists that Rhys’s particular articulation of women’s pain presents a significant literary transgression, defying the intractable cultural interdiction against women ‘making a fuss.’ At the same time, this book engages with the problematic privileging of melancholic and nostalgic discourse in the Western canon in general. Rhys’s work, Maslen argues, simultaneously celebrates and resists fundamentally Eurocentric and anti-feminist paradigms of melancholia and nostalgia. In short, the ferocious melancholia of Jean Rhys’s female voices poses constructive paradoxes and points of departure for feminist and post-colonial debates in the 21st century.
","“This book pursues an original and fascinating analysis of melancholic identification in Rhys’s fiction ... one of the pleasures of reading this book was Maslen’s excellent and subtle reading of the texts, again and again giving new and sophisticated explications of how they work”.
Helen Carr
“Rhys’s heroines have always been a problem for feminist critics ... this book offers a way to read both the profound alienation of these heroines and also Rhys’s narratives with their gaps between female subjective experience and brittle satirical surfaces.”
Coral Ann Howells
‘At all times deeply engaging ... this book is a major contribution to Rhys scholarship and is sure to establish Rhys – rightly – as a major, deeply moving and critical writer within the melancholic tradition.’
Sue Thomas
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,Akanmu G. Adebayo and Olutayo C. Adesina,Globalization and Transnational Migrations: Africa and Africans in the Contemporary Global System,Hardback,978-1-4438-0535-3,44.99,"The past three decades have proved extremely challenging for Africa and its peoples, both at home and in the Diaspora. Coincidentally, these were also the decades that globalization reached maturity and that the world became more interconnected and interdependent. The paradox of globalization for Africa has included increase in marginalization, poverty, inequality, migration and instability. This book highlights global asymmetries by interfacing the notion of “one world” or “flat world” with the challenges thrown up by transnational migration, brain drain, citizenship, identity, multiculturalism, religion and ethnicity. It presents researches and discourses on globalization across disciplines and across regions, and fosters ongoing inquiry into important assumptions, beliefs and perspectives about the implications of globalization for Africa and Africans. It covers major areas of concern—movement of refugees, xenophobia, transition from economic migration to citizenship, challenges of integration, and conflict of identity. The authors investigate the experiences of Africans in various economic sectors and geographical locations, and the trends in hegemony, inequality, cultural changes and the dynamics of social movements and struggles. Through illuminating narratives and copious explanations, this book assists readers to make sense of globalization and the position of Africa and Africans in it.
","“Taking views from the dimly-lit basement of an allegedly ""flattened"" world, this book provides diverse – and sometimes surprising – perspectives on the experience of Africa and Africans in the age of globalization. It covers the experience of Africans as migrants to the North as well as in other African countries; it studies refugees and highly-qualified migrants alike. While taking seriously the analysis of socio-economic and policy dimensions of African migration, this book goes beyond it and explores aspects of the wider cultural impact of globalization on Africa and Africans. Examples extend from changes in gender stereotypes to the literary expression of the diaspora experience.
Joining together a diversity of views and perspectives, this book provides a remarkable example of fruitful collaboration between African and African diaspora academics.”
- Axel Harneit-Sievers, Director, East & Horn of Africa Office, Heinrich Böll Stiftung
“This is an important collection of essays by an impressive team of scholars who interrogate the meanings and implications of the processes of globalization for the continent and its peoples. Focusing on both transnational migrations and local transformations wrought by globalization, its dynamics as a historical process of growing interconnectedness and an ideological project of neoliberal capitalism, the authors offer fresh insights into the exceedingly complex subject of Africa’s globalization. With admirable theoretical sophistication and ample empirical data, they probe, expand, and enrich our understanding of African migrations and new diaspora formations, how these developments are affecting the constructions of and contestations over the identities and notions of citizenship, nationality, race, culture, ethnicity, gender, and class. “
- Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago; President, African Studies Association
“Globalization and Transitional Migrations provides a road map into the complex world of globalization by examining the etiology of its making, and because it is conceived and written mostly by African scholars in Africa, and African scholars who have settled in the West, there is an effect of deep intimacy, akin to eavesdropping on a conversation among family members… The book questions the necessity and investigates the sufficiency of globalization in relation to African living... It helps us to understand better the balance sheet of globalization in Africa by providing new structures and new perspectives with which to think about our world and our role in it.”
- Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, Director, Center for International Education, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,"Maria Serafimova, Stephen Hunt, and Mario Marinov, with Vladimir Vladov, Consulting Editor and translations from Bulgarian",Sociology and Law: The 150th Anniversary of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917),Hardback,978-1-4438-0502-5,39.99,"Emile Durkheim’s conceptual framework outlined social reality as a moral social environment consisting of supra-individual norms for thought and action. Law, morals and other spheres of social order are generated within and by society. Law is a visible external symbol. Durkheim reaches the conclusion that penal law is religious in its nature.
Most of the texts deal with the relations between Sociology and Law and refer to Durkheim's heritage in dealing with specific problems in different societies and fields of study. Topics range from Socio-Legal Studies and Law, to analyses of constitutions, case studies from the judicial system and civil servants, new religious movements, Durkheim's place in the Sociology of Religion. Other topics cover contemporary ethnic conflict, cyberspace, media, morality, education, gender studies, etc. This book will be of interest to sociologists, lawyers, anthropologists, historians, scholars in cultural studies, religious studies, students, researchers, etc.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-05-01,"Joseph R. Chaney, Judd Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister",The Computer Culture Reader,Hardback,9781847185563,39.99,"The Computer Culture Reader brings together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to probe the underlying structures and overarching implications of the ways in which people and computers collaborate in the production of meaning. The contributors navigate the heady and sometimes terrifying atmosphere surrounding the digital revolution in an attempt to take its measure through examinations of community and modes of communication, representation, information-production, learning, work, and play. The authors address questions of art, reality, literacy, history, heroism, commerce, crime, and death, as well as specific technologies ranging from corporate web portals and computer games to social networking applications and virtual museums. In all, the essayists work around and through the notion that the desire to communicate is at the heart of the digital age, and that the opportunity for private and public expression has taken a commanding hold on the modern imagination. The contributors argue, ultimately, that the reference field for the technological and cultural changes at the root of the digital revolution extends well beyond any specific locality, nationality, discourse, or discipline. Consequently, this volume advocates for an adaptable perspective that delivers new insights about the robust and fragile relationships between computers and people.
","Tracing computer culture to mechanical thinking machines of the 1600s, Judd Ruggill, Ken McAllister and Joseph Chaney offer an absorbing journey into the diversity and historical sweep of computer culture. Contributors from diverse disciplines write about web design, games, and users, but also about art and art museums, World War II, self-help, crime and more. The Computer Culture Reader has lots to offer the curious and the novice as well as the cyber-experienced and the cyber-addicted.
- Mary Beth Haralovich, Professor, School of Media Arts, University of Arizona
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Shraddha Kumbhojkar,19th Century Maharashtra: A Reassessment,Hardback,978-1-4438-0603-9,34.99,"Maharashtra in the nineteenth century exhibits all the characteristics of a society standing at the crossroads of civilization. Western education, press, industrialisation and material changes in production and consumption patterns resulted in fundamental changes in the thinking of the people. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed the beginning of the Postal Service in 1837, rise and spread of the native press and rudimentary education. The second half witnessed more dramatic events such as the coming of the Railways and the establishment of the of Indian National Congress that changed the destiny of the subcontinent forever.
The book takes a fresh look at the various aspects of nineteenth century Maharashtra. It includes the critiques and reviews of literature, language, history writing and women’s reforms in this period. It argues that the elite attempts at social reform had their own inherent limitations. They could not reach the level of radicality reached by the subalterns whose lived experience of discrimination was the biggest stimulus for reform. Mahatma Phule stands out from among a range of thinkers in this period for his innovative understanding of the Indian reality. Phule was one of the rare thinkers who reconciled the Indian reality with its Universal counterpart.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,R. Victoria Arana,“Black” British Aesthetics Today,Paperback,978-1-4438-0601-5,19.99,"“Black” British Aesthetics Today is a collection of twenty-four exciting critical and theoretical essays exploring current thinking about the hottest artistic, literary, and critical works now being produced by “black” Britons.
This book features a number of chapters by the avant-garde “black” British novelists, poets, and artists themselves. It includes, for instance, aesthetic manifestos by Diran Adebayo, Anthony Joseph, Roshini Kempadoo, Sheree Mack, Valerie Mason-John, and SuAndi as well as key essays by globally renowned critics, including Amna Malik, Kobena Mercer, Lauri Ramey, Roy Sommer, and many others. As a compendium, this book represents a powerfully fresh intellectual current of thought. It provides readers with important insights into contemporary “black” aesthetics, and it includes an array of important clarifications initially voiced at the groundbreaking international symposium that took place on April 8, 2006, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by outstanding new scholars in this burgeoning field of study: e.g., Kevin Etienne-Cummings, Valerie Kaneko Lucas, Michael McMillan, Magdalena Maczynska, Courtney Martin, Jude Okpala, Deirdre Osborne, Koye Oyedeji, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Sandra Ponzanesi, Andrene M. Taylor, Samera Owusu Tutu, and Tracey Walters.
The authors contextualise contemporary “black” British aesthetics in relation to the African, African American, and Postcolonial aesthetic traditions; they explore an exciting array of critical theories, trends of feeling, and lively aesthetic movements thriving today in “black” Britain; and they examine and assess embodied aesthetics at play in a wide range of specific works by today’s most brilliant “black” British novelists, poets, photographers, live performance artists, dramatists, architects, musicians, graphic artists, and cinematographers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Muna Ndulo and Margaret Grieco,"Power, Gender and Social Change in Africa",Hardback,978-1-4438-0582-7,44.99,"Gender plays a hugely significant and too often under-considered role in predicting how accessible resources such as education, wage-based employment, physical and mental health care, adequate nutrition and housing will be to an individual or community.
According to a 2001 World Bank report titled Engendering Development—Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice, enormous disparities exist between men and women in terms of basic rights and the power to determine the future, both in Africa and around the globe. A better understanding of the links between gender, public policy and development outcomes would allow for more effective policy formulation and implementation at many levels. This book, through its discussion of the challenges, achievements and lessons learned in efforts to attain gender equality, sheds light on these important issues.
The book contains chapters from an interdisciplinary group of scholars, including sociologists, economists, political scientists, scholars of law, anthropologists, historians and others. The work includes analysis of strategic gender initiatives, case studies, research, and policies as well as conceptual and theoretical pieces.
With its format of ideas, resources and recorded experiences as well as theoretical models and best practices, the book is an important contribution to academic and political discourse on the intricate links between gender, power, and social change in Africa and around the world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,N. J. Kurian and Jacob John,Sub-national Fiscal Sustainability in a Globalised Setting,Hardback,978-1-4438-0611-4,39.99,"This collection of papers addresses the issues of fiscal federalism, centre-state relations, fiscal decentralization, unconventional methods of resource mobilization for filling the huge gap in infrastructure financing and strategies for achieving fiscal sustainability at the national and sub-national level in the globalized setting. Though a number of articles are in the context of Kerala, the overarching fiscal problems of sub-national governments are common to all. It contains detailed and in-depth analysis by eminent scholars and seasoned economic administrators, based on empirical and theoretical studies.
Six decades of federal fiscal arrangement in India has resulted in centralization of fiscal powers, increase in regional imbalances and increased vertical and horizontal imbalances. Central and state government finances came under great stress during the last decade, and the situation continued in the early years of the current decade on account of a variety of reasons. The five-year period since 2003-04, however, saw significant fiscal correction and consolidation at the central and state levels. The still-unfolding implications of the global financial and economic crisis on the union and state finances are going to be severe. Both the centre and the states may take years before the targets of deficits set for March 2009 under fiscal responsibility legislations could be realized.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Ruhanita Maelah,Sustaining Competitiveness in a Liberalized Economy: The Role of Accounting,Hardback,978-1-4438-0618-3,44.99,"The International Management Accounting Conference 4 was held in August 2007 in Kuala Lumpur to discuss issues pertaining to the role of accounting in liberalized economy.
From the conference, it was clear that liberalized economy does impact the direction, nature and practices of accounting. In response to these challenges, accounting must play a proactive and relevant role to sustain the competitiveness of companies in the business environment. Therefore it is the intention of the conference organizers to share the issues, problems and challenges in sustaining competitiveness in liberalized economy with a larger audience through the publication of this book. The book is organized in the following themes:
Cost and Information Management
Performance Measurement
Strategic Alliance
The articles included in this book were selected from the papers reviewed and presented at the International Management Accounting Conference 4. The articles were written based on research findings of studies conducted in several countries including Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, UK, India, Saudi Arabia and Botswana. Therefore they are expected to have high academic value, each complete with literature review, methodology, data analysis and references. Even though that is the case, the papers have been carefully chosen and edited for mass readers. This book is suitable for researchers, academicians, graduate students, and practitioners with interest in business, economics and accounting:
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,José Manuel Resende and Maria Manuel Vieira,"The Crisis of Schooling? Learning, Knowledge and Competencies in Modern Societies",Hardback,978-1-4438-0957-3,34.99,"The dynamics of schooling and learning are central issues to debate modernity. As they represent an essential feature of socializing processes in contemporary societies, they gather the ambivalences related to the production of individuals in modernity. On the other hand, these dynamics occur in a context of enlarged globalization, despite implying specific local translations, often composite. This book raises some questions concerning schooling in modern societies. What means learning in a globalized world? Does lifelong learning introduce new challenges to knowledge and the scholastic form of transmission? Are competences prevailing as a new form of qualification in modern societies? How teachers deal with these new professional dilemmas?
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,José Manuel Resende and Maria Manuel Vieira,"The Crisis of Schooling? Learning, Knowledge and Competencies in Modern Societies",Paperback,978-1-4438-0963-4,16.99,"The dynamics of schooling and learning are central issues to debate modernity. As they represent an essential feature of socializing processes in contemporary societies, they gather the ambivalences related to the production of individuals in modernity. On the other hand, these dynamics occur in a context of enlarged globalization, despite implying specific local translations, often composite. This book raises some questions concerning schooling in modern societies. What means learning in a globalized world? Does lifelong learning introduce new challenges to knowledge and the scholastic form of transmission? Are competences prevailing as a new form of qualification in modern societies? How teachers deal with these new professional dilemmas?
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Marie-Claire Considère-Charon, Philippe Laplace, Michel Savaric ",The Irish Celebrating: Festive and Tragic Overtones ,Paperback,978-1-4438-0607-7,19.99,"The Irish Celebrating is a collection of essays which focuses on the complex dynamics of celebrating, its significance and its scope, through Ireland’s past and present experience. This book studies the dual aspects of celebrating —‘the festive’ and ‘the tragic’— which, while not necessarily functioning as a binary opposition, have long proved mutually constitutive of the Irish experience. Many different occasions and ways of celebrating are explored, be they associated with feasts, festivals, commemorations, re-enactments or mere merry-making.
Irish literature abounds with motifs, symbols, allusions and devices that stand as ample testimony to the essential part played by celebration in the creative process. Both the treatment of mythical themes and figures, and the perception of contrasted realities and moods, all linked in some way or another with celebrating, are examined in the works of Irish novelists, poets and playwrights.
If celebrations undeniably had a crucial role to play throughout Ireland’s troubled past, they continue to shape Irish society today, part and parcel of the deep social, economic and cultural changes it is currently experiencing. New representations of Irish identity as they are expressed through new forms of celebrating are explored in such varied contexts as emigration and immigration, alcohol addiction, church allegiance and European membership.
The way the nationalist and unionist communities have been celebrating their past in Northern Ireland, often complacently and ostentatiously, is a theme dealt with in the final section of this collection. Irish, English, French, Spanish, Italian and American scholars apply a broad range of interdisciplinary expertise to original and illuminating essays which will undoubtedly provoke a new insight into the interplay between current trends and issues and the long-established patterns that thread through the volume.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Dominique Colas and Oleg Kharkhordin,The Materiality of Res Publica: How to Do Things with Publics,Hardback,978-1-4438-0958-0,44.99,"For the last 100 years, political science has traditionally concentrated on the publica part of the expression res publica, conceiving this notion as a form of government opposed to, say, monarchy. However, the Ancients and citizens of Renaissance republics were just as attentive to the res part of the expression. The goal of this richly illustrated volume—containing 94 images—is to draw attention to this res, things and affairs that bring people together. The book first focuses on the central role played by the Rialto Bridge in Venice and by the main bridge in Novgorod the Great in the lives of the respective republics. It includes studies of res in other res publicae: an analysis of the republican icon of a woman crowned with ramparts found in three European cities; and a detailed study of iconography figuring Hobbes’ theory of res publica.
","""Situating itself on the boundary between disciplines, it draws from a wide range of perspectives in archaeology, classical studies, sociology and political science...That is the great strength of this book: in bridging disciplinary boundaries, it makes new connections betweekn hitherto disparate fields.""
Matt Edgeworth, University of Leicester in The Society for Medieval Archaeology Journal; Vol. 54, November 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Ramkrishna Mukherjee,The Measure of Time in the Appraisal of Social Reality,Hardback,978-1-4438-0576-6,34.99,"Coming on the eve of the Indian elections of 2009, The Measure of Time in the Appraisal of Social Reality is a timely and an explosive expose of what went wrong in Indian developmental planning.
Focussing on the land, caste and gender issues, and advocating a place-time-people based research agenda, the Measure of Time is a scathing critique of how the elite nexus between politics and academic neo colonialism has subverted the course of genuine development in India. This is a must read for those who wish to understand contemporary India.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Enric Castelló, Alexander Dhoest and Hugh O’Donnell",The Nation on Screen: Discourses of the National on Global Television,Hardback,978-1-4438-0614-5,44.99,"“But we can still rise now”, runs a line of Scotland’s unofficial national anthem Flower of Scotland, “and be the nation again” who defeated the English King Edward II in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. These short lines tell us much about the concept of the nation. Firstly, the pronoun of the nation is “we”. Secondly, nationhood remains aspirational for some, while it is entirely taken-for-granted for others. Thirdly, nations often trace their origins back to an implausibly dim and distant past. Finally, it points to the fundamentally discursive nature of the nation: the nation appears not as something which simply is, but as something which can be, called into existence through talk, official documents, official and unofficial national anthems, ceremonies and parades, monuments and statuary, press coverage and, increasingly, television.
This book, which arose out of a conference held in Tarragona in 2007, focuses on the complex discourses of the nation to be found in the television systems of twelve different countries, examining how these circulate in fiction, in news and documentary (including re-enactment formats), and in entertainment programmes, adverts and the coverage of large-scale sporting events. The nation which emerges is everywhere and nowhere, talked about endlessly but never finally grasped, repeatedly staged and re-enacted but lacking a foundational script. In short, it is a site of struggle. The stakes are high, since the nation when mobilised is a force to be reckoned with, and the on-going attempts to define it are many, varied and often highly creative. This book details many such events, from the high drama of war reporting to the self-mocking irony of ten-second commercial spots.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,"Larry Stillman, Graeme Johanson and Rebecca French",Communities in Action: Papers in Community Informatics,Hardback,978-1-4438-0959-7,39.99,"ICTs have become a very powerful community resource, viewed by many authors in this volume as two-way mechanisms, facilitating the perpetuation of and reflecting esteemed community values. The contents of this volume make it clear that ICTs have a huge capacity for incorporation into different forms of community action, including social change, community learning, community connection, and community development. Through studying the papers in this volume, readers can learn about multiple forms of ICTs and action and how action is understood, and improve their grasp of the complexities of social-technical relations.
The chapters in this volume began life as papers at the Conference on ’Community Informatics – prospects for communities and action’ in 2007, the fourth successful community informatics conference held at the Monash University Centre, Prato Italy. This book creates a platform for exchanging experiences, case studies, and possible solutions to address the difficulties in deploying ICT in many contexts, and will be of interest to all researchers and practioners who engage with ICT, particularly those in the community and developmental informatics field.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Catherine Kevin,Feminism and the Body: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-0986-3,39.99,"By definition, feminism is concerned with the historical, social and political meanings of sexual difference in the human body, and the spectrum of experiences those meanings produce. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, gendered forms of violence persist, abortion remains a political issue, reproductive and cosmetic technologies and their concomitant ethical questions are proliferating, and the presence of women’s bodies in public spaces and for public consumption produces a range of anxieties about women’s well-being and the common good. Feminist scholars from across the disciplines grapple with these issues in Feminism and the Body. In so doing they continue a history of intellectual endeavor that, for centuries, has striven to identify the interplay between corporeal differences and relationships of power.
This collection will take the reader on a journey into myriad domains in which a variety of discursive effects come to life in the embodied subject: from the theatres of medical surgery and law to the discussion fora of sex therapy and marriage guidance experts; from Peruvian villages of the late twentieth century to African American plays of the 1920s and 1930s; from explicitly feminist novels and films to the mainstream press and right into feminist scholarship that theorises the female body.
In so doing, this collection restates and reinvigorates feminism’s long-standing, necessary and emphatic engagement with the female body.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Ana Lucia Araujo,Living History: Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery,Hardback,978-1-4438-0998-6,39.99,"This book focusses on the several forms of reconstructing the slave past in the present. The recent emergence of the memory of slavery allows those who are or who claim to be descendents of slaves to legitimize their demand for recognition and for reparations for past wrongs. Some reparation claims encompass financial compensation, but very often they express the need for memorialization through public commemoration, museums, and monuments. In some contexts, presentification of the slave past has helped governments and the descendants of former masters and slave merchants to formulate public apologies. For some, expressing repentance is not only a means to erase guilt but also a way to gain political prestige.
The authors analyse different aspects of the recent phenomenon of memorializing slavery, especially the practices employed to stage the slave past in both public and private spaces. The essays present memory and oblivion as part of the same process; they discuss reconstructions of the past in the present at different public and private levels through historiography, photography, exhibitions, monuments, memorials, collective and individual discourses, cyberspace, religion and performance. By offering a comparative perspective on the United States and West Africa, as well as on Western Europe, South America, and the Caribbean, the chapters offer new possibilities to explore the resurgence of the memory of slavery as a transnational movement in our contemporary world.
","""As other regimes of politically imposed truth, one must wait for an Alice to lead us through the mirror. Ana Lucia Araujo and the volume contributors invite us to an enlightening travel to the other side of the mirror of oblivion and silence tightened by the public space.""
- Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Université Laval, Canada
""The various contributors look at both sides of the Atlantic, at the descendants of masters and slaves, at the societies that profited and those that were created by the Atlantic slave trade. They explore folklore, photography, art, published literature, religious practices, and the struggles over the creation of suitable memorials. The different contributions are about efforts to shatter silences and to preserve them, to remember formally, to memorialize, and sometimes, to hide from history"".
- Martin Klein, University of Toronto, Canada
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Ayelet Zohar,"PostGender: Gender, Sexuality and Performativity in Japanese Culture",Hardback,978-1-4438-0990-0,44.99,"Postgender: Gender, Sexuality and Performativity in Japanese Culture is a collection of articles by leading researchers in the fields of gender studies, visual culture and performance studies in Japan. Articles in this volume discuss fundamental issues in relation to the body, sexuality, gender, and their respective representations in the visual field. The volume contains texts considering gender and temporality in Takashi Murakami's superflat dimension; gender issues in relation to male pregnancy, motherhood and the family as represented in Hiroko Okada, Mako Idemitsu, Miwako Ishiuchi and Yasumasa Morimura's works; sexual identity of the otaku, and sexual representations in manga and anime; sexual organ depictions in the contemporary Japanese art and photography of Yayoi Kusama, Ryudai Takano, Yurie Nagashima, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Makoto Saito's advertisements; literary representations of hermaphrodites in Tokuda Shusei's Arakure and fictional genders in Kachikujin Yapû; the history of prostitution and Bubu de la Madeliene and Yoshiko Shimada's performance art; a Buddhist reading of Yoko Ono's Cut Piece; gender passing and masquerade in Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh; and gender issues in Duras / Rennais' Hiroshima mon amour. The contributors include leading researchers and curators such as Jennifer Robertson, Michiko Kasahara, Tamaki Saito, Maki Isaka, Bracha Ettinger and others.
","“Adopting the temporality of post-gender, this exciting collection of essays goes well beyond the boundaries of dominant psychoanalytic paradigms in its explorations of the rich, mutually transformative relations between artistic practice and gender theory in contemporary Japan.”
—Brett de Bary, Professor, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell University
“The essays are eclectic in both theme and style, running the gamut from highly theoretical discussions of Freudian psychoanalytic discourse to practical descriptions of how gender has been portrayed in Japanese butoh performance.
. . . the book's numerous black-and-white images depict everything from traditional shunga to monster film promos; these are extremely helpful.
Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.”
—C. Lanki, University of British Columbia, Choice Magazine, Vol. 47, No. 11, August 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Joseph D. Lewandowski and Milan Znoj,Trust and Transitions: Social Capital in a Changing World,Paperback,978-1-4438-0995-5,19.99,"Employing a range of empirical and theoretical approaches, contributors to this volume examine the nature and function of trust from within the framework of social capital theory. The empirically oriented chapters focus on post-Communist countries, including Serbia and Montenegro, Romania and, especially, the Czech Republic. Indeed, the collection contains an entire section devoted to analyzing trust and transition in the wake of the “velvet revolution.” The theoretical chapters engage the work of Tocqueville, Putnam, and Uslaner, among others, as they seek to clarify and rethink what in fact trust is, where trust originates, the causal relevance of trust for successful marketization and democratization, and the extent to which existing conceptions of social capital can be adequately deployed in diverse contexts.
With contributions from noted American and Central European political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers, this book presents an illuminating set of contemporary perspectives on the complex role of trust in times of transition.
","“This timely collection offers a wealth of profound reflections about the role that trust and democratic convictions can and should play in transitions to market-based democracies. In fact, we still face the central dilemma described—in rich and varied ways—by the contributors here: Is it sufficient that society be driven forward by the egoistic desires of individuals? Or, do successful transitions require some sense of democratic solidarity?”
—Lubomír Zaorálek, Vice-Chairman, Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Vasile Boari and Sergiu Gherghina,Weighting Differences: Romanian Identity in the Wider European Context,Hardback,978-1-4438-1001-2,39.99,"Irrespective of the level of analysis, identity remains a vague concept, slippery, and insufficiently elaborated and defined. Be it individual or collective, ethnical or social, local or general, regional (e.g. the EU) or global, identity is a recurrent subject in political debates. Situated on the edge of history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and psychology it increasingly becomes a leading paradigm in the area of social sciences. Starting from the broader European perspective, this volume has a multidisciplinary approach and gathers relevant works of internationally renowned scholars who tackle questions related to the Romanian identity: Who are the Romanians? What is the essence of their identity and how has it evolved along history? What are their primary qualities and flaws? How do Romanians perceive their Europeanness and how do they assume their European condition? With no claim to unique answers, the book provides a multi-layered view of what Romanian identity means in contemporary period and how it develops in the broader European context. By challenging the common sense understanding of identity, we raise even more questions to be anasered by further research.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Mícheál Ó hAodha,Migrants and Cultural Memory: The Representation of Difference,Hardback,978-1-4438-1114-9,34.99,"This volume explores the discourses and representations that have circumvented the image that is the Traveller, the Roma (Gypsy) and migrant “Other”. It is generally acknowledged that the globalisation and mass-media dissemination which characterise the current era have overseen a range of complex socio-cultural forces, many of which have blurred the once-reified borders of the post-Enlightenment, “modern”, nation-state. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of cultural diasporas and “traditionally”- nomadic groups such as Travellers, Roma and other migrant cultures. This book points to the ongoing reconfiguration of once-dominant cultural narratives and explores the manner whereby aspects of the migrant experience are themselves echoed in the increasingly hybrid and diverse discourses that characterise Western countries of the present-day.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Lili Hernández and Sabine Krajewski,"Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Taboo, Bodies and Identities",Hardback,978-1-4438-1234-4,39.99,"To cross boundaries, to go beyond borders: an evocative idea, but what are the implications and consequences of transgression? How are boundaries challenged, redefined and overcome within the intricacies of taboos, bodies and identities? Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Taboos, Bodies and Identities brings together a range of articles that address this theme using different frameworks of interpretation.
As in the case of taboo, boundaries are often internalised and may function as regulators for a society. Their existence becomes visible the moment they are violated. The essays in this book explore voluntary and accidental encounters with boundaries not only from theoretical perspectives but also from the experience of those who are part of transitions on a regular basis in their everyday lives. The notion of otherness is central to the articles in this book. The definition and interpretation of cultural others become part and parcel of the process of negotiation of bodies and identities. While ‘the other’ is marked by outward bodily signs, spaces, taboos and cultural practices, the self is empowered by resisting submission to dominant modes and descriptions. Deconstructing boundaries becomes part of the project of redefining the self.
This book will appeal to academics and researchers in communications, cultural studies, sociology, health sciences, anthropology, literature, and applied linguistics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-09-01,Michael Hayes and Úna Ní Aodha,"Migrancy, Memory and Repossession: Women on the Historical Margins",Hardback,9781847186928,24.99,"The writing of women's history has witnessed a huge increase in recent decades. In the past, the focus of some of this work was the representation of the “heroine” or the “grand dame”. Recent theoretical writing, particularly as relating to historical anthropology, has focussed on a more “rounded” view of women’s historical representation and experience, however. This book explores aspects of Western visual culture and the cultures of so-called “marginal” groups, groups which have, as yet, seen little light shed on them. By analysing the discursive and “hidden” histories of a range of women artists who worked on the periphery of “mainstream” society or whose representational subjects were deemed “marginal” (Travellers, Roma (Gypsies and Circus people)), it is possible to come to some new conclusions regarding the historical relationships that have existed between different cultures and peoples. Such a process can generate a better understanding of the shifting power dynamic as between diverse historical phenomena. It is through such explorations also that we can enable the historical recovery and emergence of new identities in an increasingly multicultural world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,"Margaret Grieco, Muna Ndulo, Deborah Bryceson, Gina Porter and Talia McCray","Africa, Transport and the Millennium Development Goals: Achieving an Internationally Set Agenda",Hardback,978-1-4438-1300-6,39.99,"Transport is an essential service that must contribute to national development objectives in health, education, agriculture and other sectors in guiding sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty. Developing policies aimed at providing safe, reliable and affordable transport infrastructure and services can and will make a substantial and sustainable contribution to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, improving health care and reducing HIV/AIDS. Although transport is identified as a priority in poverty reduction strategies, it has not generally been adequately addressed. Global responses tend to focus on rural transport infrastructure—principally roads—with little attention given to sub-sectors such as rivers, lakes, and railroads; and important geographical and econological differences are ignored. The needs of the urban poor have been weakly addressed, as have the access and mobility needs of women, the disabled and other disadvantaged groups, while strategies for adapting transport to agricultural production/distribution or social services (e.g. health and education) have not been adequately developed. A systematic approach to the development of sound, comprehensive transport sector programs that provide clear guidance on what is to be done is much needed.
This volume—the product of an expert workshop held at Cornell University’s Institute for African Development in May, 2007—provides accounts of an array of African operational spaces in which transport is relevant to the Millennium Development Goals. It addresses many heretofore ignored dimesions of transport—mobility issues of the urban poor, of women and children, and issues of access to employment, education and health services. It provides an alignment of transport with the MDGs in what proves to be fertile ground for research with important messages for policy makers and consequences for policy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Amanda du Preez,Gendered Bodies and New Technologies: Rethinking Embodiment in a Cyber-era,Hardback,978-1-4438-1323-5,39.99,"In this era of ubiquitous information flow, heightened mobility and limitless consumer convenience, human interaction with new technologies has become increasingly seamless. In the process, the human body is effectively and steadily reduced to just another interface, or a “second life”, so to speak. What is easily forgotten during this translucent transaction is that being human also necessarily implies being embodied. In other words, to constitute a body in its non-negotiable physicality is still what it entails to be human (amongst other things). To live daily in and through the complicated and dynamic intersection between “mind” and “body”, psychology and physiology―also known as embodiment―is what makes us human.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Sudhir Kumbhar and Govind Dhaske,Jata Removal Movement: Unfolding the ‘Gender’ in Politico-Religious Society,Hardback,978-1-4438-1305-1,34.99,"For centuries, India has been known for its politico-religious structures, which have developed casteism and discrimination. Gender-based oppressions have been prominent features of the patriarchal culture in India – both obvious and subtle forms of gender inequity. Multiple rites, customs, traditions and protocols reflect gender discrimination, and in most cases show gender oppression. The subordination of women visible in Indian context can be referred in historic shift from matrilineal structure to bramhinical patriarchy. The body politics and allied symbolism about gender has been rooted in the deceiving collusion and integrated function of political and religious entrepreneurs.
Jata (or matted hairs) have been a symbol used by the patriarchal oppressors for a number of sexual, social and gender oppressions. Multifarious oppressions have been created by developing superstitious religious belief systems and hijacking social communication. Through fatalistic sentimentalism of irrational beliefs, progress of rational social communication has been suppressed. The existence of oppressive Devdasi and Jata tradition signifies deep-rooted psychosocial control by the oppressors.
Jata Nirmulan Abhiyaan (Matted Hair Removal Movement) has been a scientific movement rooted in rational thinking about beliefs and traditions. The collective act of removing the oppressive symbol of Jata is essential to value of human rights and gender rights. The negative social, psychological, health and development implications of matted hairs need collective attention for remedial actions. At the same time, it is essential to understand the politico-religious traditions , belief systems which rules the psyche of society to act on it
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Tina L. Thurston and Roderick B. Salisbury,Reimagining Regional Analyses: The Archaeology of Spatial and Social Dynamics,Hardback,978-1-4438-1328-0,44.99,"Reimagining Regional Analysis explores the interplay between different methodological and theoretical approaches to regional analysis in archaeology. The past decades have seen significant advances in methods and instrumental techniques, including geographic information systems, the new availability of aerial and satellite images, and greater emphasis on non-traditional data, such as pollen, soil chemistry and botanical remains. At the same time, there are new insights into human impacts on ancient environments and increased recognition of the importance of micro-scale changes in human society. These factors combine to compel a reimagining of regional archaeology.
The authors in this volume focus on understanding individual trajectories and the historically contingent relationships between the social, the economic, the political and the sacred as reflected regionally. Among topics considered are the social construction of landscape; use of spatial patterning to interpret social variability; paleoenvironmental reconstruction and human impacts; and social memory and social practice. This book opens a discourse around the spatial patterning of the contingent, recursive relationships between people, their social activities and the environment.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,"Hurriyet Babacan, Narayan Gopalkrishnan and Alperhan Babacan","Situating Racism: The Local, National and the Global",Hardback,978-1-4438-1324-2,34.99,"This book explores the global development of contemporary racism and uncovers the complex manifestations and causes of racism. It critically draws upon and analyses the global economic and the legislative frameworks relating to racism. The boundaries of racism continue to shift and the authors critically analyse new developments in racism and unpack the points of intersection between the new and the old racisms. The impacts of factors such as fear, politics, the use of the “race card”, and nationalism are also explored.
The book examines the changing dynamics of racism, manifesting itself in different spatial, economic and social situations but demonstrating similarities and differences in a globalized world. In light of these complexities, the book examines the challenges of theorizing, identifying, and challenging racism, as well as the challenges of developing an anti-racist future.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-10-01,Peter Baofu,"The Future of Post-Human Organization: A Preface to a New Theory of Communication, Decision-Making, and Leadership",Hardback,978-1-4438-1319-8,49.99,"What exactly makes the nature of organizations so miracular that their very purpose is “to achieve performance” and that it is now regarded, in this capitalist age of ours, as the central aim to be both possible and desirable for any organization?
After all, there is simply no lack of organizations which “achieve performance” with questionable means and goals—be they about “greed” and “excess” in the corporate world, or “evil” and “injustice” in the public sphere, just to cite two main examples (although there are others too, of course).
Contrary to the conventional wisdom preciously accepted by many contemporaries, this obsessive craze for organizational performance is fast becoming a seductive trend, such that the dark sides of organizational performance have yet to be systematically understood and that its very purpose is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that its proponents would like us to believe.
Needless to say, this is not to suggest that the purpose of organizations is to reject performance, or that the literature in organizational studies (and other related fields like political science, media studies, and business management, for example) hitherto existing in history are full of scholarly worthlessness.
The aim of this book, however, is to provide an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of organization, in special relation to communication, decision-making, and leadership—while learning from different views in the literature, without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them), and, in the end, transcending them in a new direction not thought before.
This seminal project, if successful, will radically change the way that we think about the nature of organization, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"Lindsay Eufusia, Elena Bellina and Paola Ugolini",About Face: Depicting the Self in the Written and Visual Arts,Hardback,978-1-4438-1374-7,39.99,"How do we represent ouselves and the cultures we live in? Is it possible to trace any boundaries between reality and self-representation? Because the self represented is the product of a process of selection and choice, in many ways to represent the self is, often simultaneously, to create the self and negate the self. What, then, becomes of the self once it is represented?
Because the process of self-representation cumulates in a tangible result and given that any representation of the self is necessarily a construct which aims to render visible or knowable in concrete form the unseen and unknown, self-representation is vulnerable to assessments of its naturalness or artificiality, its honesty or deceit. Many issues affect the author or artist’s self-representation, both as process and form: the medium through which the self will be represented, the motivation for representing oneself, and the role of the audience, to name only a few relevant factors.
This book explores the multifaceted nature of self-representation in relation to culture from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance up to contemporary Italian, American and Australian culture with reference to concepts and questions connected to literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, history, ethnicity studies, gender studies, and visual arts.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Jas Laile Suzana Jaafar and Sherri McCarthy,"Building Asian Families and Communities in the 21st Century: Selected Proceeds of the 2nd Asian Psychological Association Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June, 2008",Hardback,978-1-4438-1358-7,74.99,"This book provides an overview of current research in psychology throughout Asia, including papers that demonstrate the adaptation of the discipline to issues specific to families and communities within that region of the world. The papers which appear here were presented at the 2nd Convention of the Asian Psychological Association, hosted by the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during June 2008. The Asian Psychological Association (APsyA) was founded in Bali, Indonesia in August 2006 to give a voice to academic psychologists from all countries teaching throughout Asia and to psychologists practicing in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, Thailand, Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Philippines and other countries on the Asian continent. Until its recent establishment, no large professional organization existed for Asian psychologists. Psychology is growing more rapidly as a discipline within Asia than in any other part of the world. It is adapting to the philosophies, history and religions within Asia as it blends Western science with Eastern practices. The information presented here is a valuable window into how the discipline is developing in Asia and a must-read for psychologists, counsellors, academics and others with an interest in psychology throughout the world.
","The phenomenal growth of psychology that North America experienced in the years following World War II was repeated in Europe in the past 20 years and is now emerging in Asia. Economists have long referred to the Asian countries as sleeping giants, and that characterization has generally applied, with a few exceptions, to psychology as well. But the giants are now awakening and this book is clear evidence of that.
Most efforts over the years to organize psychologists across national lines have not been successful, which is not surprising considering the vast territory and population represented. The Asian Psychological Association, only 3 years old, has prospered because of its recognition that Asian psychologists are happy to meet together around conferences that bring together cutting edge thinkers and a sensitivity to Asian cultures. This book give a generous sampling of the diversity of current Asian research. Readers not familiar with the unique perspective represented here will find it a rewarding feast.
- Raymond Fowler, Ph.D, Former Preseident and CEO of the American Psychological Association, President-elect of the International Association of Applied Psychology
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,K.M. Ziyauddin and Eswarappa Kasi,Dimensions of Social Exclusion: Ethnographic Explorations,Hardback,978-1-4438-1342-6,39.99,"Dimensions of Social Exclusion focuses largely on social exclusion in the context of communities and social groups who have or have not been considered in discussing the benefits of mainstream inclusive society or development. Contemporary understanding of social exclusion has revived great interest among academics, researchers and policy makers in understanding problems from the perspectives of social exclusion. The decision to adopt the perspective of social exclusion has not been universal; rather the nature of this is very heterogeneous. In addition, the concept of social exclusion is not static; in reality, it is a process. The process is seen in the marginalization and discrimination of people in their everyday lives and interactions.
The term ‘exclusion’ has become a part of the vocabulary in Europe and other developing societies like ‘poverty’ or ‘unemployment’; it is one of those words which seem to have both an everyday meaning and an underlying sense. It emphasizes the social aspects of concerns such as housing, health, employment, education, participation in social activities and festivities, social interaction and social intercourse. It excludes certain communities and groups from interaction and access to social resources through social arrangements, normative value systems and customs. Exclusion based on caste is one example and patriarchy is another, which is a form of systemic or constitutive exclusion. Having social, cultural, political and economic ramifications, it is also a complex and multi-dimensional concept. These dimensions are interwoven and are addressed in the different papers of the volume.
This book revolves around the societal interventions and institutions that exclude, discriminate, isolate and deprive some groups on the basis of group identities such as caste or ethnicity. It covers a wide spectrum of societies and communities living in various cultural environments. The multidisciplinary nature of the book will render it helpful to students and researchers of sociology, anthropology, historical and political studies, demography, social work and gender studies in particular and the humanities in general.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,"Elya Tzaneva, with Fang Sumei and Liu Mingxin","Disasters, Culture, Politics: Chinese-Bulgarian Anthropological Contribution to the Study of Critical Situations",Hardback,978-1-4438-1348-8,39.99,"The articles in the volume contribute to a relatively new domain of scholarly research – the ecological anthropology, focusing especially on contemporary crises and disasters from different background: natural, social, technological, etc.
Based upon expanded field work, in some cases – from a terrain difficult to access, the authors investigate a variety of disasters’ situations in two contemporary societies of the developing world – China in Southeast Asia, and Bulgaria in the Southeast European Balkans. The forms of disasters researched, include: epidemics and health-threads (SARS, AIDS, Bird Flu, rat disease, small pox, typhoid fever, etc.); ecologically related disasters (bio-disasters), social catastrophic events (transition in political regime, and towards reforming and opening, also towards a market economy), natural crises (arid areas, snow-falls, rain-falls, draughts). Attention is paid to a full scale disasters’ life-cycle from the creation and evaluation of a risk-vulnerability, individual and social reaction and coping strategies, up to the relief management. The articles investigate the interrelationships between cultural, demographic, political, economic, and environmental domains related to the disasters – e.g., the social context of the crisis. It is the authors’ understanding that this context defines the preparedness, mobilization, and prevention of disasters for each discrete group of people or society. The volume applies a broad ethnological approach to the field of disasters’ study, which interprets them comparatively, contextualy, and in cross-cultural perspective. It is conceived as a first volume of a series investigation papers of a joint research team on this topic.
","“…it is unusual to have such a joint effort to approach a single topic as manifested in such differing regions. I am struck by a volume that is certainly more than the sum of its parts. It is especially important to note the differing cultural responses to such threats. The volume is timely…”
- Robert M. Hayden, Professor of Anthropology, Law and Public & International Affairs, University Center for International Studies Research Professor Director, Center for Russian & East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-11-01,Savina Ammassari,Migration and Development: Factoring Return into the Equation,Hardback,978-1-4438-1352-5,44.99,"This book focuses on international migration and return of highly-skilled Ghanaians and Ivorians and presents empirical research findings that demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, return migrants can act as key development agents in their home country. It investigates the influence of a number of factors that condition their motivation to return and their capacity to stimulate change in their countries of origin. The aim of the study is the assessment of policy implications related to élite returnees’ development impact in evolving socio-economic contexts.
The comparative and multi-method research strategy adopted revealed that migrants tend to return home with considerable savings (financial capital), new knowledge, skills and ideas (human capital), as well as with valuable contacts (social capital). Besides their level of education, work profile, and particular life experience, whether these migrants have worked abroad for a significant period, proved the most critical factor influencing their acquisition of different kinds of capital. However, there seems to be an ‘optimum’ work duration abroad – approximately five years – after which the benefits deriving from human and financial capital acquisition tend to stabilise.
At the micro level, back home skilled migrants attained their goals, improving their relative income levels, expressing satisfaction with their work conditions and, more generally, enjoying a higher quality of life. At the meso level, they provided support to others in line with expectations and pressures they faced. They also introduced many kinds of new knowledge, skills and ideas in their workplace. At the macro level, return migrants promoted economic and political transformations through, among others, the creation of new businesses and various community development initiatives.
The role of return migrants is influenced by many factors linked also to their situation back home. Reintegration into their home context proved challenging, especially for women, and returning migrants need time to overcome initial hurdles and get settled before they can start to make any meaningful contribution. That is one of the reasons why there is a need to facilitate their reintegration and create a conducive environment which can also foster return migration of the highly-skilled élite. More importantly, however, evidence is produced in favour of arguments and ideas about ‘brain circulation’, a strategy that can help in maximising the positive effects stemming from migration and return.
","""Previous research on return migration has tended to come up with disappointing results - returning labour migrants, with relatively low human capital, are not agents of home-country development. This new study, by focusing on highly-skilled returnees, and based on rigorous survey and interview research in Europe and West Africa, yields more optimistic results, especially in the economic and political realms. The book provides both a model of excellent, multi-method research, and highly policy-relevant lessons.""
- Professor Russell King, University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research
""This book makes a valuable contribution to the debate on ‘brain drain’, ‘brain re-gain’ and ‘brain circulation’. Empirical evidence of this kind is needed to devise concrete policy measures aimed at maximising the benefits arising from highly skilled return migration. The book is very timely in providing sound research findings and recommendations to inform migration policies and programmes at a time where the topic of migration ranks higher than ever on domestic and international development agendas.""
- Dr. Piyasiri Wickramasekara, Senior Migration Specialist, International Migration Programme, International Labour Organization
""This interesting book provides a fascinating insight into the process of return of 'elite' migrants to Africa. It is based on extensive interviews in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, and provides a multi-faceted analysis of how and why people return, and what influences whether this works to the broader benefit of home societies. It should be recommended reading for anyone with an interest in contemporary return movements.""
- Professor Richard Black, Professor of Human Geography, Director, Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty University of Sussex
""Research on return migration is still lacking and thus this study fills an important gap. The study is innovative because it adopts a cross-country and multi-level analytical approach to investigate the impact of returning migrants in their country of origin. Rarely is migration policy research designed with policy-makers’ needs in mind. This research constitutes a valuable exception. Its findings are conclusive and provide ready-made answers to those wanting to devise policies and programmes aimed at facilitating return migration of the highly skilled and at enhancing their role as agents of change. ""
- Dr. Frank Laczko, Head of the Research Division, International Organization for Migration (IOM)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Diana Patterson,Harry Potter’s World Wide Influence,Hardback,978-1-4438-1394-5,44.99,"The Harry Potter series forms a single epic story that has been published in nearly 70 languages, and has been examined in a large number of disciplines. This collection of essays contributes to the scholarly discourse that forms Potter Studies.
These essays take on the consideration of Rowling's work as being worthy of study as a phenomenon and influence, as well as a work of literary value. They add genuine statistical information about the reasons for the books' popularity, consider their effects on child readers, and examine some deep-rooted reasons for their having been manipulated in American publishing, in film adaptations, in musical complements, and in their thingification in popular culture around the world. Some of these essays take on the critics of the books' religion and considerations of psychological, as well as philosophical good and evil, and well as some stylistic anomalies.
The fact that scholars from China, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Israel, in addition to English-speaking nations, have felt compelled to examine these books in detail testifies in part to Harry Potter's world-wide influence.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,María Amelia Viteri and Aaron Tobler,Shifting Positionalities: The Local and International Geo-Politics of Surveillance and Policing,Paperback,978-1-4438-1441-6,19.99,"The local-level and international contributions to Shifting Positionalities encompass particular common themes through in-depth social science research, in an effort to understand the meanings of the reformulation of state discourses and practices in this, post-9/11, era. Current conjunctions between sexual, racial and ethnic identities—and the surveillance practices of those identities—calls for a thorough examination of the multiple and usually unexpected meaning-making practices adapted by individuals. Far from being predictable, the latter speak to the possibility of individuals and communities utilizing techniques of actively resisting—as opposed to passively embracing—the policing of their daily lives. Shifting Positionalities: The Local and International Geo-Politics of Surveillance and Policing addresses surveillance and policing as practices and sites that speak to the various ways in which bio-power, displacement and resistance converge to constitute particular subjectivities across borders.
","""Thank you very much for the opportunity to read and comment on your terrific book. Below you will find my reactions. The book is a terrific achievement and a wonderful contribution to resisting the dangerous expansion of surveillance and policing in all our lives.
In the post-September 11, 2001 world, surveillance and policing have become pervasive, and yet mostly unexamined, parts of our lives—from ubiquitous security cameras and exhaustive airport searches to unprecedented levels of government wiretapping and surveillance of phone and web communications to the monitoring of library and financial records to the expansion of corporate surveillance of individual internet usage to the targeting of ethnic and religious minorities by police forces for observation, disappearance, and detention. Shifting Positionalities makes a critical contribution to documenting and understanding how these and other forms of surveillance and policing are shaping and damaging our lives and our society. Beyond the more obvious restriction of freedoms and rights, Viteri and Tobler’s diverse collection of essays insightfully shows how practices of surveillance and policing are subtly influencing our thoughts about ourselves and others, reshaping ethnic, racial, gender, sexual, and national identities, deepening state and corporate control over our bodies, and contributing to the further marginalization and demonization of Muslims, Arabs, and others deemed to be “terrorist” threats. Encouragingly, Shifting Positionalities also reveals how the expansion of surveillance and policing has led to the invention of surprising forms of resistance to these forms of dangerous social control. Given the threat that surveillance and policing pose to basic democratic and human rights, Shifting Positionalities strikes an important blow against a new and increasingly insidious Big Brother.""
- David Vine, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington, DC
Author of the book ""Island of Shame: The secret history of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia"" by Princeton.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Margaret Keane and Maria Villanueva,"Thinking European(s): New Geographies of Place, Cultures and Identities",Hardback,978-1-4438-1435-5,39.99,"Unthinking prejudice is a major challenge in an ever-changing, pluralist Europe where local and global identities intermingle and contested pasts clash. The new geographies constructed in response to this are at the core of Thinking European(s). It has been written to bring these geographies alive and to foster active and reflective citizens who are able to work productively within Europe’s changing cultural environment. This integrated work provides a framework to stimulate students’ critical thinking and to prompt reflection. It seeks to stir geographical imaginations through case studies carried out in Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors of Thinking European(s) cross cultures, religions, languages, genders, ideologies and political boundaries; they stress dialogue, negotiation and value multiple geographical knowledges. University teachers and undergraduates will find Thinking European(s) a valuable resource for courses on Europe, Regional Geography, European Integration, European Studies, Cultural Studies, Social Studies or Area Studies.
","“This collaborative, pioneering work offers insights into students' world views and points to ways of widening their vision.”
—Professor Janice Monk, University of Arizona
“Thought-provoking and a handy illustration of the constructive use of geographical teaching and learning at the European scale.”
—Professor Martin Haigh, Oxford Brookes University
“A highly impressive collection showcasing a broad diversity of perspectives on European identity, culture and politics.”
—Dr Michael Solem, Educational Affairs Director,
Association of American Geographer
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Didier Chabanet and Frédéric Royall,Mobilising against Marginalisation in Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-1674-8,39.99,"This book brings together twelve scholars from various universities and research centres in Europe and Canada. All look at developments in the collective action of marginalised and/or disadvantaged people such as Gypsies, migrants, cleaners, or unemployed people in contemporary West European societies. The authors analyse how these people organise and mobilise within or across countries such as Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, or Italy. They note that although the collective actions of marginalised and/or disadvantaged people are not necessarily unusual, all these nationally based or cross-national mobilisations have in common the fact that many of these people seek to overcome various cultural, social, and political obstacles, act collectively, and intervene in the public space.
The various contributors in this book observe that the mobilisations of the marginalised and/or disadvantaged are often linked to new patterns and forms of social and political marginalisation and inequality. The contributors analyse, therefore, these emerging patterns and they investigate the extent to which marginalised and/or disadvantaged people are of political significance in many of today’s West European societies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-01-01,Wessel Bentley,The Notion of Mission in Karl Barth’s Ecclesiology,Hardback,978-1-4438-1671-7,39.99,"As the church moves towards its 21st century of existence, it is confronted by challenges it has never known before. Globalization, the rise of different socio-political orders and a growing tendency towards a post-modern understanding of the world are but some of the issues. This changing world demands self-reflection from the church. It has to consider its place, identity and function, thereby giving rise to the exploration of its mission.
In this book, the ecclesiology of Karl Barth is explored. By considering Barth’s understanding of the church’s relationship with different parties such as God, other religions, those outside the Christian faith, the State and its own inner dynamics, the church will be reminded of its missionary function in the world. The church’s relationships are important for they direct the way in which it fits into the world. When it considers that it exists purely because of God’s self-revelation, and that its own existence is an act of faith in response to this divine self-disclosure, it becomes aware of defined parameters within which the church can operate under the banner of mission.
","“I believe Dr Bentley’s book makes a significant and necessary contribution as he brings a fresh and lively perspective to the theology and practise of mission in and through the Church in the pages of this volume. What is particularly useful is the manner in which he has made the complex theology of Professor Karl Barth accessible and vital for the contemporary Church. There has been a recent resurgence of interest in Karl Barth’s theology. This interest has stemmed from many quarters. Among the more notable proponents of Barth’s ecclesiology are Stanley Hauerwas, and there are even traces of Barth’s missiology and ecclesiology in the work more avant-garde Christian thinkers, such as Brian Mclaren. This interest is not surprising when one considers Barth’s critical and significant insights into the relationship between the Church and prevailing culture, the relationship between the Church and the State, and of course the Church and the churches. The importance of these issues seems to be a timeless concern for Christians across the globe.
I discovered a wealth of theological and practical insight in the pages of Dr Bentley’s book that has helped me to reflect critically upon my own theology and practise of mission (and ministry in general), as well as the theology and methodology of others. The scholarship that informs the insights in these pages is meticulous, thorough and challenging. I have little doubt that this book will be a significant resource for mission and ministry in and through the Church.”
—Rev Dr Dion Forster, Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation (Theology Working Group), Research Associate, Department of New Testament, University of Pretoria, Adjunct Faculty, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
“ Barth’s context could hardly have been more daunting – twentieth century Europe in the iron grip of a godless power that threatened the lives of millions and invaded the very soul of the church itself. Barth was one of the few to stand against the Nazi power. It must never be forgotten that his famous Church Dogmatics is not only a massive, epoch making theological statement, but is a major declaration of the church’s struggle for its identity and mission in that deadly context.
Wessel Bentley, as an emerging scholar of Karl Barth’s work, clearly sees the relevance of Barth for our own time and place. Barth’s struggle informs our struggle and strengthens us in the conflict today. For Bentley as for Barth, the church is not a static institution but a dynamic event. Church happens as mission is engaged and faith is generated. There could hardly be a more important message for our time. Our context of conflicting cultures and confusing ideologies urgently needs such a church and such a mission.
Dr Bentley is to be highly commended for the diligence and insight of his work. This is an important book for all who take the Christian gospel seriously in this day and age, and who yearn for a church that truly seeks to partner God in God’s mission to our suffering world.”
—Rev Dr Neville Richardson, (Chaplain and Senior Tutor at Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary, Pietermaritzburg, and Senior Research Associate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky,Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International Initiatives and Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-1722-6,44.99,"For many years, the fields of citizenship education and participatory democracy have often operated independently from each other. During the last decade, the Transformative Learning Centre of the University of Toronto has nurtured multiple spaces for an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars, practitioners and students from these two fields.
One of those spaces was the Second International Conference on Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy, where close to 300 participants from all over the world shared ideas in more than 150 sessions, including discussions, round-tables, workshops and keynote addresses. This volume brings together a selected collection from the many papers submitted to the conference.
Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International Initiatives and Perspectives includes an introductory essay, 18 chapters and a postscript, and is organized in three sections:
I. Learning democracy in educational institutions
II. Learning democracy in communities
III. Learning democracy in participatory budgeting
The articles in this book represent a variety of perspectives (as the authors come from different geographical and disciplinary locations), but they all share a commitment to improvements in theory, research and practice in the worldwide movement for deepening democracy and for an emancipatory citizenship education.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Kathleen Starck,Between Fear and Freedom: Cultural Representations of the Cold War,Hardback,978-1-4438-1859-9,39.99,"The field of Cold War studies has recently undergone a cultural turn. Scholars from many disciplines outside – but increasingly also from within – diplomatic history have come to understand that, just as the Cold War was marked by a political and military competition, it was also characterised by a cultural one. As a result, it is now widely accepted that everyday culture was itself infused with political and ideological messages. The Cold War was ubiquitous.
In an attempt to comprehend this complexity of the superpower conflict, as well as the way it affected and still affects people’s lives globally, this collection of essays brings together the work of scholars from nine countries and a wide range of academic disciplines. They explore strategies, mechanisms and legacies of the Cold War in areas as diverse as film, propaganda, conspiracy theories, education, music, comic books, architecture, fiction, autobiographical writing and theatre.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Tracey Bowen and Mary Lou Nemanic ,Cultural Production in Virtual and Imagined Worlds,Hardback,978-1-4438-1780-6,39.99,"Cultural Production in Virtual and Imagined Worlds foregrounds how the two important fields of visual culture and Internet culture interact. This collection of essays explores the intersections, overlaps and disparities in terms of how the two discourses illuminate our everyday negotiations as we become increasingly dependent on the Internet and virtual/visual imaginings for constructing who we are. What is being examined here are the ways in which we use visual/virtual lenses to see the world both individually and collectively. This book represents a transnational effort that began as a series of conversations during the Mid Atlantic Popular/American Culture conferences from 2005–2009. The editors, a Canadian and an American, have included contributors across national and geographic contexts. Cultural Production is aimed at raising questions, crossing borders and presenting points of departure for future scholarship in the relatively new and very rapidly changing disciplines of visual and virtual cultures. Our critical approach to this study includes viewing Internet images as contested sites of cultural activity and also as sites that advance ideologies related to cultural transformation.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Michael Chiou,NP-Anaphora in Modern Greek: A Partial Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Approach,Hardback,978-1-4438-1861-2,39.99,"Anaphora is one of the most fascinating linguistic phenomena as it constitutes a unique and universal property of human language. Every single natural language provides linguistic means which facilitate speakers to refer to entities in the world. The understanding of the complexity of anaphora and of the problems surrounding it will ameliorate our understanding of the nature of human languages. This explains why anaphora constitutes a central research topic in contemporary linguistic science.
This study examines the phenomenon of NP-anaphora with the main focus on modern Greek. By maintaining the empirical and theoretical benefits of the classical generative approach to binding, in this study we propose a partial pragmatic reduction of the interpretation of NP-anaphora in modern Greek in terms of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles of communication. The proposed analysis is articulated on the following basis: it is argued that the choice of anaphoric expressions and their interpretation by Greek speakers and addressees respectively is heavily dependent on preference, which is regulated by principles of language use and communication. Therefore, by employing a model, which is based on the systematic interaction of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles of communication, we provide a neat and more elegant approach to NP-anaphora resolution for modern Greek.
In a nutshell, this study offers a quite new perspective into the study of NP-anaphora in modern Greek but it is also a little step towards a better understanding of the phenomenon of anaphora across languages.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Chiara Valentini and Giorgia Nesti,"Public Communication in the European Union: History, Perspectives and Challenges",Hardback,978-1-4438-1846-9,49.99,"This book is a collection of essays that analyse and discuss EU information and communication policies and activities towards, with, by different publics developed both by the EU institutions at the European, national and local levels and by public organizations and civil society actors. Throughout six thematic parts, the authors examine from different theoretical perspectives (political communication, journalism, public relations and public diplomacy, political science, and cultural studies) and reflect on what it means for the European Union to communicate in multi-national and multi-cultural settings.
The originality and strength of this book stand on the capacity to discuss EU communication policies, strategies and actions in their diverse features and, at the same time, to have a clear general picture of the role and function that communication has within the European Union’s governance.
The combination of different theoretical frameworks with the latest empirical research findings makes this book a fresh and fascinated collection of insights of what the European Union can achieve with strategic communications.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Adenrele Awotona,Rebuilding Sustainable Communities for Children and their Families after Disasters: A Global Survey,Hardback,978-1-4438-1776-9,49.99,"Disasters impose enormous misery on children, the most vulnerable members of the community. Records show that two million children have died as a direct consequence of armed conflict over the past decade. Globally, millions more have suffered death, disease, and dislocation as a result of such natural disasters as earthquakes, droughts, and floods. And even when emergency relief is available, permanent human damage remains; all too often, families fall apart, women are assaulted and degraded, and children are left to take care of themselves.
In November 2008, the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA, hosted an international conference to examine how to reconstruct sustainable communities that would be safe and secure for children and their families after disasters.
This volume collects some of the papers that were presented at the conference. It is remarkable for the sheer assortment of topics covered. These include the role of gender equality in alleviating poverty and assisting children, their families and their communities after disasters; war and child soldiers; lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami; the nature of psychosocial resilience and its significance for managing mass emergencies, disasters and terrorism; and, the promotion of human dignity in the creation of sustainable environments that empower families in the aftermath of disasters.
","""I write to strongly recommend this book to researchers, scholars, university professors, mid-management development personnel, governmental and non-governmental officials concerned with matters of sustainable development and communities.
.... The book provides compelling and powerful arguments for the sustainability of communities. It is with the highest level of enthusiasm that I recommend this book.""
- Valentine Udoh James, Ph.D.; CES; CAQS, Professor & Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Clarion University of Pennsylvania
“….Professor Awotona has put together an excellent collection of essays from people who have been at the forefront of responding to the needs of the most vulnerable groups after such disasters. …This book is a must have for everyone, for we are all potential victims of disasters, and knowing how to protect and heal ourselves and our families is the starting point to disaster recovery.”
- Michael A. Burayidi, Ph.D., Irving Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Urban Planning, Ball State University, USA
""Everybody working with advocacy for young children should read this book. When you then have read it and just feel overwhelmed by the situation for many children in the world, read A WORLD FIT FOR CHILDREN published by UNICEF, and you will realize that children themselves have the answers to many of the questions dealt with here.""
- Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson, Professor & UNESCO Chair in Early Childhood Education and Sustainable Development
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Caroline Fleay,Australia and Human Rights: Situating the Howard Government,Hardback,978-1-4438-1942-8,39.99,"The Howard government's term in office in Australia from 1996 to 2007 is often portrayed as one where Australia retreated from its international human rights obligations. Throughout this era a range of government policies attracted much criticism for downplaying or ignoring human rights. Less attention has been given to the human rights policies of previous Australian governments and the heritage they provided for the Howard government. Situating the policies of the Howard government within those of previous Australian governments provides a greater understanding of human rights in Australia.
This book examines human rights policies in Australia in three key areas: human rights in Australia-China relations; responses to asylum seekers and refugees; and engagement with human rights at the United Nations. These areas highlight where the Howard government clearly deviated from some of the more positive human rights policies of its predecessors. The book also challenges the perception that Australia has a proud history of human rights policy by revealing where the Howard government continued or revived policies of earlier Australian governments that were not consistent with international human rights standards. Such an understanding of human rights in Australian policy is imperative for informed analysis and debate on current and future policy trends.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Susana Rivera-Mills and Juan Antonio Trujillo,Building Communities and Making Connections,Hardback,978-1-4438-1957-2,39.99,"Building Communities and Making Connections explores areas of academic and community engagement, through various studies that include community service learning, and the development and implementation of university programs that contain a community dimension. Academic endeavors have long been seen as separate from the realities of local and regional communities. This book closes the gap by looking at ways in which both academia and the communities its serves can collaborate to create authentic and applied learning environments.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Eleanor Milligan and Emma Woodley,Confessions: Confounding Narrative and Ethics,Hardback,978-1-4438-1920-6,39.99,"This edited collection draws on a range of disciplines in exploring the central place of narrative in social inquiry and understanding the ethical life. It provides scholarly and practical insights into the rewards and potential pitfalls of working in, and with narrative. It offers readers a broad range of carefully considered examples; the use of art in enhancing insight into the plights of rural communities in Australia; the use of illness narratives in medical education; applying narratives of torture survivors and torturers in shaping humane political response and policy in the face of terrorism, and the place of the music, as a vehicle of story telling and moral growth. This volume illuminates the explicit links between the importance of narrative, that is, the telling of stories to create shape and meaning in our lives, and ethical engagement so critical to the achievement of a good life.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Peter Kell and Gillian Vogl,"Global Student Mobility in the Asia Pacific: Mobility, Migration, Security and Wellbeing of International Students",Hardback,978-1-4438-1908-4,39.99,"Over 2.7m students study in a country other than their own. Most of those students come from the Asia-Pacific region and undertake study in universities in the developed world. This trend is predicted to grow exponentially but features many dilemmas. In the post-9/11 global environment, international students experience hostility and harassment as well as ambivalence about their value to the academy.
Some live an uncertain life of poverty and alienation. Many also struggle to come to terms with living and studying in a foreign land where there are concerns about international students eroding academic standards, having poor English language proficiency and being unable to “integrate” and contribute to their new communities. But some also seek to make new homes in their host countries.
The contributions in this book explore the complex and diverse aspects of transnational education and propose some pragmatic approaches to these dilemmas. These contributions explore new ways of looking at the phenomena of international students, their social and cultural needs, as well as the challenges for teaching and learning, research supervision and English language in the academy. The book presents case studies and documents initiatives that are positive responses to the dilemmas of global student mobility.
","“A significant and timely study of student mobility and migration by leading scholars of international education.”
—Dr Bill Cope, Research Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies, College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA
“The case studies detailed in this book are essential reading for researchers and university administrators throughout the Asia Pacific region, and serve as a timely reminder of the complexities of the issues faced by international students as they negotiate the often taken for granted path to academic achievement and future professional careers.”
—Dr Tim Scrase, Director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) The University of Wollongong, Australia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,"Raúl Acosta, Sadaf Rizvi and Ana Santos",Making Sense of the Global: Anthropological Perspectives on Interconnections and Processes,Hardback,978-1-4438-1921-3,39.99,"Anthropology is more relevant than ever before to making sense of the constant intercultural encounters taking place around the world. Even though the discipline was born out of the need to understand the way humans interact, it had for decades been trapped in a counter-cultural stance that effectively disarmed it of any direct influence on public affairs. Recent global trends, however, have brought this academic discipline to the attention of governments, agencies, and social entrepreneurs, because of its capacity to create bridges of understanding between people of contrasting cultures. This ability is today more necessary than ever before in facing the challenges posed by the shrinking of our world. This volume provides reflections on what anthropological research can offer through its “thick” analyses. We are convinced that ethnographic research can contribute to a better understanding of social phenomena in our global times.
","“It was once thought that the discipline of anthropology would fade away with the ‘end of empire’. But in recent decades the subject has survived, grown, and attracted increasing attention. British anthropologists, for example, first ‘came home’ in some numbers to study villages and towns in England, Scotland, France—to be joined by a new generation of researchers especially from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe whose work again, at first, focused on home areas as such. But in today’s interconnected world, ‘home’ has changed—whether one comes from Aberystwyth or Azerbaijan, Zurich or Zambia. And anthropologists now find themselves alongside historians, political scientists, economists, investors, NGO managers and activists, investigating the links between such places, their projects, and the lives of their people.
My own reading of these chapters certainly suggests there is perhaps as much disconnection happening as ‘linking up’ in the new hi-tech global system; anthropologists, alert as always to the ambiguity of the games that people play, are well placed to spot what may lie behind the promises of global integration.”
—Wendy James, Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford
“This book brings together established scholars and researchers at the start of their careers in a volume that is argumentative, engaging and innovative from cover to cover and deserves to be widely read inside and outside anthropology ... the way that the young scholars who have edited this book have provoked such insightful and challenging critical debate on the part of all the contributors certainly bodes well for the future.”
—John Gledhill, Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology, The University of Manchester
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Lemi Baruh and Ji Hoon Park,Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse,Hardback,978-1-4438-1915-2,49.99,"In the mid-1980s, Neil Postman claimed that television made entertainment the natural format for the representation of all experience. While Postman’s argument still is pertinent to a description of contemporary television shows, it also seems increasingly more accurate to argue that “reality-based” entertainment is quickly becoming the referential format for televisual representations of our experience in the 21st century. Chapters in this edited volume explore reality television’s place within contemporary media landscape in terms of its potential for political engagement. The authors engage with a variety of issues such as politics of authenticity and performance, audience reception of political issues, ethics and media regulation, politics of self-presentation, modernity, and collective identity. The diversity of perspectives and issues presented in this book cautions readers both against quickly dismissing reality television’s potential as a platform for political discourse and against subscribing to the celebratory rhetoric regarding the democratic potential of reality television. Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse furthers our understanding of the semiotic openness of the reality text and the variations in social, cultural and political contexts across which the reality television genre formulas migrate.
","“This book delivers even more than it promises. In accomplishing its mission—to analyze the international eruption of Reality TV and to debate its pros and cons—this book confronts fundamental questions of media research. It asks, for example, how television genres evolve; whether their content relates to the zeitgeist; what gratifications they provide; whether they contribute to (or undermine) deliberative democracy; and how they cause new and old media to ‘converge.’”
—Professor Elihu Katz, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,David Perusek,"Between Jihad and McWorld: Voices of Social Justice, Papers presented at a Conference with Benjamin Barber",Hardback,978-1-4438-1968-8,39.99,"This volume is the outgrowth of a conference aimed at situating questions of social justice within the broad social-historical context of our times as outlined by Benjamin Barber in the international bestseller Jihad vs. McWorld. In it, 15 contributors from across the academic spectrum grapple with questions of inequality, culture, communication, education, language, representation, democracy, poverty and power in a variety of local, global, and cross-cultural contexts that extend from North America to Japan, the Middle Ages to Post-Modernity. They are joined by Benjamin Barber whose wide-ranging and insightful contribution focuses on democracy and terrorism, celebrates civil society and includes what he enumerates as “6 rules for democracy.”
Written at a time, 5 years out from 9/11, when the Patriot Act and color-coded terror alerts loomed large across the American Landscape; when “water boarding,” “rendering,” “Blackwater,” and “Gitmo” had become household words in much of the world; when globalization and de-industrialization were penetrating and re-shaping societies and lives North and South as the world’s rich grew richer and its poor poorer and wars without end in sight continued in the Middle East and elsewhere, these essays are artifacts of those times—our times. This book should be of interest to many.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Wendy A. Paterson,Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce,Hardback,978-1-4438-1971-8,39.99,"Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce opens an intimate window on the lives of divorced men. Literature on divorce focuses primarily on its effects on women and children, but fair and personal accounts of the lived experiences of custodial and non-custodial fathers are less available. In this highly accessible text, ten American men share intensely personal reflections of guilt, pain, frustration, sacrifice, loneliness and pride. The men do not see themselves as exemplary; rather, their stories are graphically honest, revealing what Paterson calls ordinary men “with all their warts.” The author reviews significant works on the male experience of divorce from psychological, legal, educational and sociological experts, interspersing commentary and research with the men’s own voices. From the initial discussion of why men marry and why they divorce through the men’s painful memories of being pushed out of their children’s lives by angry and resentful mothers, the author illuminates the legal, fiscal, emotional and practical experiences of men struggling to reinvent their fathering while they find themselves reconfigured into deserters, deadbeats and visitors. The societal myth that fathers are less valuable parents than mothers is thoroughly deconstructed in this text. The book will help divorced and divorcing men and those who work with them to fully understand the experiences of fathers who never stopped loving and caring for their children, in spite of the fact that the contributions of fathers are still largely discounted by schools, courts, and worst of all, by their children’s mothers. From this book, readers will understand that there are just too many reasons why fathers must never be forgotten in the lives of their children.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,J. Normann Jørgensen,Love Ya Hate Ya: The Sociolinguistic Study of Youth Language and Youth Identities,Hardback,978-1-4438-2061-5,39.99,"This volume shows the formidable range of variation in youth language. Youth language is analyzed as a phenomenon in negotiations of identities and social relations. The contributions particularly concentrate on youth language in late modern urban societies. This is an area of study which has been gaining increasing attention in sociolinguistics over the past few years. One observation that is almost inevitable is that there is a string of similarities to be found between youths in quite different circumstances, ranging from university students in Argentina, to juvenile delinquents in Greece and to skaters in Greenland. A wide range of language situations are covered, from Danish, Cypriot Greek, Turkish, to Spanish, Greenlandic, Norwegian, Catalan, and of course English. The articles in this anthology document and analyze linguistic youth styles and behaviors as well as attitudes. In their totality they present a picture of youth language as functional, socially valuable, and flexible, with a special emphasis on identity negotiations.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka,Pragmatic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics Volume II: Pragmatics of Semantically-Restricted Domains,Hardback,978-1-4438-2063-9,49.99,"Pragmatics of Semantically-Restricted Domains, the second volume of Pragmatic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics, edited by Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka, gathers papers which partly complement and develop the first volume, Speech Actions in Theory and Applied Studies (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). Most of the texts collected in this book, representative of advanced independent research and that of an informed exercise in the application of a pragmatic framework, result from the Fourth Symposium on “New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics,” organized at the University of Łódź, Poland, in May 2008.
Accepting the inevitable failure of any attempt to pose a strict and clear-cut division between the research area of semantics and that of pragmatics, the volume focuses on pragmatics-oriented analyses of data which are best described as “semantically” limited. While Volume One concentrated on speech as a type of action, the present volume, without denying the inherently actional nature of language use, concentrates on limited contexts. Pragmatic phenomena in semantically-restricted domains are addressed from a variety of both theoretical and applied perspectives.
The book is divided in three parts. Part One, “Pragmatics, Politics and Ideology,” gathers seven papers centered on issues pertaining to political linguistics. In Part Two, “The Pragmatics of Humour, Power and the Media,” there are eight papers which explore issues of politeness and modesty, pragmatic aspects of mediated and gendered discourse, or dynamicity of power relation in interaction. Part Three, “Focus on Textual Properties,” concentrates on text, excluding political discourse. It integrates discussions of equivalence and specialized translation, intertextual properties and pragmatically-motivated lexical choices in business communication, in law, and in science.
","“This volume is the second collection of papers in the series Pragmatic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics, carefully edited by Dr Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka (Vol 1: Speech Actions in Theory and Applied Studies, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2010). The volume explores pragmatic phenomena such as power distribution and humour which appear in selected semantically and lexically restricted domains, i.e. political discourse, translation, and terminology. The collection is recommended both to individual scholars and to libraries—it is representative of today’s cognitive-functional orientation in pragmatics and includes contributions by well-known scholars alongside with new voices entering the field.”
—Prof. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, University of Lodz, Poland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Nicola Queally,"Rebellion, Resistance and the Irish Working Class: The Case of the ‘Limerick Soviet’",Paperback,978-1-4438-2058-5,19.99,"Rebellion, Resistance and the Irish Working Class: The Case of the ‘Limerick Soviet’ explores the background and history of a major strike which occurred in Limerick city, Ireland, in 1919. This industrial dispute made headlines worldwide given that many central aspects of the dispute impacted on controversies as relating to workers’ rights in both Ireland European at this juncture. In this volume the “Limerick Soviet,” as it was known, is considered as a seminal element within Ireland’s local and regional history. This volume is an important addition to the historical literature, one which illuminates Ireland’s symbolic role within more large-scale European events of this historical period—the Russian Revolution and the mass protests by striking workers in both Germany and Scotland being just two examples.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,"Stephen Scales, Adam Potthast and Linda Oravecz",The Ethics of the Family,Hardback,978-1-4438-2057-8,49.99,"Our families are our first and most important ethical training grounds. But what is the family? And what are our ethical commitments to our family members and to the broader moral community? After a brief introductory chapter on basic ethical concepts and theories, the essays in this volume provide readers with ethical analyses of issues ranging from same-sex marriage to a controversial proposal to “license” parents. The chapters cover love, sex, marriage, parents and children, the relationship between the family and the larger moral community, and the influence of emerging technologies on the ethical issues inherent in family life. The volume is intended to open up this exciting territory in applied ethics to those interested in philosophy, family studies, social work, and to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the ethical forces at work in this most basic social institution.
","“The Ethics of the Family is not just about ethics. And it is not just about family. It presents a cross-disciplinary and up-to-date scholarly approach to numerous social and philosophical controversies that involve different traditions, contrasting frameworks of justice, and current medical and technological developments. This could easily be used for several philosophy courses, including Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy and Human Nature. In addition, it would fit well into any ethics course in a Family Studies Department. Students will be surprised to find elements of their own lives in many of these chapters.”
—Dr. Alex Hooke, Stevenson University
“This comprehensive foray into the ethical issues inherent in family life marks an exciting frontier for ethical inquiry. The papers take us from artificial reproductive technologies to Confucian filial piety, from the ethics of same-sex marriage to claims of intergenerational justice between children and parents. This is fertile ground for students of ethics to explore and this volume is an excellent guidebook for the journey.”
—Dr. Wolfgang W. Fuchs, Towson University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-05,Diane Poulin and Sébastien Tran ,Information and Communication Technology and Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: From Theory to Practice,Hardback,978-1-4438-1326-6,34.99,"The arrival of Information and Communication Technology may play a role in restoring competitiveness, since these technologies are also a factor in relaxing the constraints specific to SMEs. ICT makes a number of services possible in a large range of processes and transactions within and between companies. Internally, ICT applications can improve knowledge and information management practices; they can also allow more rapid and more reliable transactions between businesses (B2B) and between businesses and consumers (B2C). They are equally quite effective in improving external business communications and service quality for both new and existing clients. They also appear to be a source of competitive advantage for SMEs under certain conditions.
Few studies have focused on the ways that SMEs can use ICT to improve and defend their competitive positions. This book provides a synthesis of the advantages of ICT for SMEs. Seven chapter illustrate the technologies used in such companies. Each of these chapters provides a theoretical and/or practical view of the way that SMEs can use ICT. This book is an indispensable reference for both academics and for practitioners.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo,"A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium",Paperback,978-1-4438-2078-3,29.99,"How relevant is Foucault’s social thought to the world we inhabit today?
While Foucault is best remembered for his historical inquiries into the origins of “disciplinary” society, some question whether his ideas are relevant to contemporary conditions defined by global (post) modernity and consumer capitalism. Yet as the works comprising this volume suggest, Foucault’s thoughts are far from exhausted. Within this volume, novel interpretations and thematic developments of key Foucauldian concepts are presented in the works of 24 authors. Prominent among them are new forms of neoliberal economic conduct framed by distinct governmentalities; new critical concepts of biological life reflected in Foucault’s analysis of biopower; and new theoretical treatments of the effects of subjectivation. Also included are empirical studies of religion and spiritual practice, consumerism, race and racism, the discourse of genetics and the life sciences, surveillance and incarceration, and new social movements. This volume both expands our understanding of Foucault’s central theoretical legacy, and brings his ideas to a range of contemporary empirical phenomena.
","""...the editors have provided a broad cross-section of essays that take Foucault's ideas in interesting directions""
P. Taylor Trussell, Independent Scholar in Foucault Studies, No. 8 Feb 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Logie Barrow and the late François Poirier,A Full-Bodied Society,Hardback,978-1-4438-2118-6,34.99,"The human body is always changing its meanings. Historical research on this can draw on a host of specialisms. Historians, lettrists and linguists contribute to this book a coherent little tumult of perspectives: what was thinkable for pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxons, and how far did the two really differ? Why did New English Puritans stop addressing God as if He were their breast-feeding Mother? How did Western colonisers’ perspectives on animals and on ‘subject races’ interact? How did Victorian and Edwardian women’s participation in sports grow? How transgressive was the figure of the ‘dandy’? What motivated late-Victorian panics over prostitution, and on what terms were victims helped? Why, in an increasingly ‘democratic’ age, did reactions to Britain's first universal health-measure become a basis for cynicism about the masses?
Repeatedly, the rigidity of separation between male and female fluctuated, as did the boundaries themselves. Sometimes, the greater the rigidity, the less the sources may tell us of resistance to them. But sometimes this can be inferred indirectly.
Better testimony than this volume to the liveliness and variety of body-studies is hard to imagine.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Andrea D. Bührmann and Stefanie Ernst,"Care or Control of the Self? Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, and the Subject in the 21st Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-2135-3,39.99,"The beginning of the 21st century is characterized by fundamental societal changes: in addition to changing demographics and the globalization of economic flows, the transformation of an industrial-Fordistic society to a non-industrial service society is significant. For more than twenty years, these large-scale trends and their inherent chances and risks have been the topic of vivid discussions in all the social sciences. Keywords are ‘risk-society’, ‘post-industrial society’, ‘knowledge-society’ and ‘information-society’.
The implications of these developments are also reflected in the challenge to the traditional, hegemonic and rational understanding of subjectivity. Against the background of these great social changes, several factors indicate that the forms of self-regulation or self-governance are also being transformed. A one-sided consideration of the homo economicus and its varieties would underestimate, for example, certain non-rational forms of self-perception and self-reflection, as well as non-rational practices of self-management and subjectivation.
The aim of this anthology is to discuss the question, to what extent the relationship to oneself (its regulation with respect to its governance) and the relationship towards others in (post-)modern societies are being transformed. The perspective of Norbert Elias’ process sociology as well as Michel Foucault’s post-structural theory seem especially promising, as they appear to have been the first researchers consistently and convincingly analysing the ‘nature’ of the individual by reflecting upon its long-term historical process of transformation. Both have different visions but similar concerns: they deal with structures of control that exist within society and within the individual.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Sharon C. Sewell,Decolonization and the Other: The Case of the British West Indies,Hardback,978-1-4438-2121-6,39.99,"In 1962 Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent countries; Barbados followed in 1966. In the years leading up to these events, the history of the British West Indies was written largely by the British, the colonial power, who focused on the process of decolonization and the key local players involved. After independence, local scholars also focused on the role of political leaders in the newly independent countries. To date, scholars have paid little attention to the impact of these events on the local populations of these islands.
Decolonization and the Other: The Case of the British West Indies explores the local perspectives on, and reactions to, events by using West Indian literature to supplement the historical record. Beginning in the 1930s when local demands for political participation increased, through the process of decolonization, and into the early years of independence, West Indian writers used their life experiences to document local reaction. West Indian literature first appeared in 1950, when British publishers became interested in island authors and their novels. By using the novels to supplement the historical record, we can gain a better understanding of the process of decolonization and the early years of independence in the British West Indies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Adam Luedtke,Migrants and Minorities: The European Response,Hardback,978-1-4438-2111-7,49.99,"Europe stands on the brink of a new era of diversity and immigration. Although many Europeans would prefer to ignore this fact, the signs are everywhere. Societies and politics are being irrevocably changed by their encounters with migrants, both recent and settled. This book pinpoints the specific trends and emerging patterns that allow us to understand what these changes mean for the future of Europe.
On the ground level, institutions like schools and local governments have charted unique courses for dealing with diversity. And from above, the institutions of Brussels become ever more important for regulating the big picture. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty means that common EU rules on immigration will now be easier to achieve (and more likely). But what exact role is played by the institutions of the EU in Brussels, and how does this vary across policy areas? How are Europeans on all levels dealing with the sensitive questions raised by Islam, and how are migrants and minorities dealing with the hostility and xenophobia they routinely encounter? And finally, how have the experiences of different European countries in integrating their immigrants and minorities changed our comparative understanding of race, ethnicity and citizenship?
These three sets of issues—EU-level regulations, Islam and Xenophobia, and comparative integration policy—are the topics that motivate and structure this book. Noted experts on each topic offer the latest research findings, which collectively advance our understanding of how Europe will deal with diversity in the 21st Century.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Alperhan Babacan and Supriya Singh,"Migration, Belonging and the Nation State",Hardback,978-1-4438-2081-3,34.99,"The book questions how modern migration and globalisation have impacted upon notions of belonging and identity within nation-states across the world. This book provides theoretical and empirical accounts of the relationship between identity, rights nationalism, race and ethnicity. The authors cover the complexity of the topic as identification has become much more multifaceted. The authors cover difficult and cutting edge issues relating to citizenship, nation formation, identity, remittances, transnational families, migration and asylum in the context of Australia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These critical issues inform and shape key policy and program responses of many governments and are subject of topic in international relations forums between nation states.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Elaine Pereira Rocha,Racism in Novels: A Comparative Study of Brazilian and South African Cultural History,Hardback,978-1-4438-2137-7,34.99,"During the first half of the twentieth century, both countries witnessed the advance of capitalism, translated into an aggressive police of development, with the exploitation of minerals, construction of railways and roads, urbanization and industrialization. Along with the economic development, Brazilian and South African society tried to take control of their society, meaning to control the population in order to maintain the status quo. For that end, racial definitions, classifications, theories and policies were fundamental.
As the features of South African politics and policies of racial segregation emerged with new colors for the world after the end of the Apartheid regime, given the testimonies, the released documents and the new analysis, Brazilians have been pushed to face the problem of racial exclusion, unmasking its image as a “racial paradise” under the lights of new studies as well.
Elaine Rocha uses novels published in both countries between 1912 and 1953 as a window from were one could see how cultural perceptions, policies and of racial differentiation were reflected in the everyday life. The analysis of the literary content, plus the authors’ biographies, political ideologies and the problems they were facing and interacting, together with their intentions of affecting the lives of the readers with the tragedy they illustrated in their novels claiming for a change in the real world.
","“This work is an important and highly innovative contribution to the comparative history of racism in South Africa and Brazil. Using key works of literature to explore attitudes to race in both countries during the first half of the twentieth century, Rocha offers some acute observations about such attitudes, and reveals some telling points of comparison and contrast. Her discussion on attitudes to miscegenation in South Africa and Brazil, for example, illustrates a common preoccupation with sexuality and race in both societies, but profoundly differing views on its social, cultural and political implications in each case. This work is highly recommended for students and scholars with an interest in the cultural history of South Africa or Brazil, as well as all those with an interest in the comparative history of racism.”
—Alan Cobley, Professor of History, University of The West Indies
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Graeme Baber,"The Impact of Legislation and Regulation on the Freedom of Movement of Capital in Estonia, Poland and Latvia",Hardback,978-1-4438-2113-1,49.99,"One of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union’s Internal Market is the free movement of capital. National barriers to the cross-border movement of capital and payments are prohibited, not only between Member States of the Union, but also between these States and third countries. The book investigates to what extent Estonia, Poland and Latvia have implemented laws that comply with this principle. It compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between these three Member States in how their legislation and regulations affect such free movement.
The research investigates whether there is an association between the national legal restrictions to the free movement of capital and cross-border capital flows to and from Estonia, Poland and Latvia. It reports the views of executives in the business sectors most affected by these restrictions as to the importance of the free movement of capital to their companies, as to whether the European Union’s regulatory framework supports the free movement of services and the freedom of establishment, and as to whether the national law limits these freedoms.
","“The free movement of capital is by now a familiar element of European Union law. Dr. Baber’s book, however, conducts a very thorough analysis of the extent to which the legal and regulatory framework, in three of the Member States which acceded to the EU in 2004, actually complies with this principle and exposes some key weaknesses. Unusually for a book on law and regulation, the work includes a model more often found in the finance or economics literature to examine the actual effect that the compliance or otherwise has in practice on capital flows. That Dr. Baber’s book brings together consideration of Polish, Estonian and Latvian measures in one work will make it possibly a unique contribution and indeed one which I myself would find highly useful to refer to for my own work, both teaching and research.”
—Richard Alexander, Lecturer in Financial Law, Centre for Financial and Management Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
“Dr. Baber’s manuscript conducts a thorough analysis of the extent to which the legal and regulatory framework of European Union law which sanctions free movement of capital, in three of the Member States which acceded to the EU in 2004, actually complies with the principle of free movement of capital. This analysis leads to the exposure of a number of key weaknesses in term of compliance in these three countries. While there is emerging literature in English examining certain limited aspects of law and regulation in Poland, the coverage of its counterparts in the Baltic states is in short supply.
A comprehensive consideration and comparative analysis of Polish, Estonian and Latvian measures in financial law and regulation make this book possibly unique in the literature and in the market.”
—Laixiang Sun, Professor and Head of Department, Centre for Financial and Management Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Ibtihaj S. Arafat and P. Chudi Uwazurike,"At Home Dads and Sex Role Reversals: Men, Gender and Family in a Changing America",Hardback,978-1-4438-2223-7,34.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Maria Tamboukou,In the Fold between Power and Desire: Women Artists’ Narratives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2148-3,39.99,"This book explores entanglements of power relations and forces of desire in life narratives and visual images. The analysis draws on paintings and archival auto/biographical writings of six fin-de-siècle women artists, who are brought together as narrative personae in a genealogical exploration of the constitution of the female self in art. The author offers an innovative theoretical approach to narrative research by bringing together feminist theories with Foucauldian and DeleuzoGuattarian analytics. The book will be of particular interest for researchers and graduate students in the fields of feminist, narrative and visual studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,"Susan Finding, Logie Barrow and the late François Poirier",Keeping the Lid on: Urban Eruptions and Social Control since the 19th Century,Hardback,978-1-4438-2150-6,34.99,"The contributors to this book have explored various aspects of urban imagination, so intimately related to a peculiar social environment. They are historians and geographers, linguists and cultural students. Their methodologies are very different, their sources poles apart. And yet, they address the same object of study, social and spatial segregation and urban eruptions, though severally defined: from epidemics to anarchist scares, urban uprisings to mental maps, or the reverberations of urban memories in song, novels and museums. Case studies consider the towns of Liverpool, London, Hull, New York, Salvador de Bahia, or more generally France and America. The networks created among intellectuals and labourers, anarchists and migrants, or the lack of communication between those who feel oppressed (rioters, strikers, anti-vaccination protesters) and those in control, are a further common denominator.
In a way, urban epidemics were the epitome of the repulsive character large cities possessed in the eyes even of their own inhabitants. If they were the receptacle of so many foreigners, and shady political characters, if they were the scenes of social and ethnic conflict, and violence, and promiscuity, and prostitution, and drunkenness, and pauperism, they were of necessity a festering sore which nothing could eradicate.
It is strange that something of this fear should linger on today—otherwise, how can one explain the lacunae in the official memory of museums?—despite the cultural efforts produced in the opposite direction, with Ackroyd's love for East-End London, with the revival of a Little Italy in every major American city, with the nostalgic folklorisation of past miseries in Salvador de Bahia and in popular song. What sense of belonging can be generated by an obliteration of the past, what dynamic local culture can spring from an absence, from a hole in collective memory? This book goes some way to filling those gaps.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Edmund Christopher Matotay,Place and Tourism Promotion: Urban Regeneration?,Hardback,978-1-4438-2153-7,34.99,"Cities around the world adopt place promotion and marketing activities as one of their development strategies. They do this through engaging in selling their images through the use of sceneries like national parks, museums, historic monuments and flag institutions such as hotels and conference facilities. These sceneries and flag institutions act as symbols to profile and market these cities to the world for different socio-economic purposes. The present book exposes some findings derived from two major study objectives done in Tanzania. One of the the objectives was to find out different place promotion strategies in Arusha, and the other was to set out to find the impact of the place promotion strategies on tourism. Reasons for place promotion and the targets of the strategies are also widely covered in the book.
In its specialized chapters, the book reveals that there are three major elements of place promotion in use in the northern Tanzanian tourist city of Arusha. These are national parks and game reserves located in Arusha like Arusha National Park, Manyara National Park, Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The city of Arusha also uses flag institutions in and around Arusha like The Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC), Arusha Natural Museum, The Arusha Declaration Museum, The Cultural Villages of El-Kiding’a and best Hotels to profile itself to the world. Gratifyingly, the book exposes that the main reasons for these strategies are to boost tourism in the city and that most of the targets of these strategies are international tourists. Through the good use of the strategies, and the city revenues turnover, the region itself has been enormously popular and the number of visits to the attractive sceneries and flag institutions has been growing steadily over the years.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Janusz Mucha and Katarzyna Leszczyńska,"Society, Culture and Technology at the Dawn of the 21st Century",Hardback,978-1-4438-2156-8,39.99,"The articles in this collection analyse methodological aspects of today’s hard sciences and humanities and of applied research in the field of high technology. The authors explore structural and cultural contexts of scientific research, relations between information technologies and our everyday life, as well as relations between innovation and business culture.
","“In this book we see scholars attempting to bridge the percieved gap between social and natural sciences. Through detailed observation of past and present events they try to foresee future trends and contribute to the establishment of a new transciplinary paradigm that can help us cope with new types of social challenges. ‘Society, Culture & Technology at the Dawn of the 21st Century’ is strongly recommended for anyone interested in socio-cultural framework of recent and future scientific and technological progress.”
—Professor Franc Mali, University of Ljubljana
“This collection is a methodologically diverse multiplicity of perspectives on the relationships between technology, society, and culture. The authors offer a strong foundation for the collection; a well-grounded and wide-ranging review of literature from classical sociology and philosophy of science to more recent studies of science, technology, and society. The result is a timely, often fascinating, and generally thought-provoking comparative analysis of society, culture and technology as we complete the first decade of the new millennium.”
—Professor Mike Keen, Director of the Center for a Sustainable Future, Indiana University South Bend, and author of “Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociologists”
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,"Robert Crawford, Judith Smart and Kim Humphery",Consumer Australia: Historical Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2270-1,39.99,"Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country claimed that “Australia was one of the first nations to find part of the meaning of life in the purchase of consumer goods.” Significantly, similar views had been expressed in the late 18th century, where everyday life in the antipodean outpost of Empire was regarded as being pecuniary and acquisitive in nature. While references to Australia as a “consumer society” continue to be made, the question of how Australia came to be so has attracted less attention. The chapters in Consumer Australia actively redress this omission by examining the ways in which the processes of selling, buying, and exchanging have characterised the experiences of consumption in every day Australian life. Prepared by leading and emerging scholars, the chapters in this unique collection critically explore the different ways that Australians have consumed products, brands, and even consumption itself from the 19th century and through the 20th century. By charting the growth and development of consumption in Australia, Consumer Australia reveals how Australia came to be a “consumer society” and asks where it is headed.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Marcelline Block and Angela Laflen,Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative,Hardback,978-1-4438-2230-5,49.99,"Gender is an exciting area of current research in the medical humanities, and by combining the study of medical narratives with theories of gender and sexuality, the essays in Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative illustrate the power of gender stereotypes to shape the way medicine is practiced and perceived. The chapters of Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative investigate gendered perceptions and representations of healers and patients in fiction, memoir, popular literature, poetry, film, television, the history of science, new media, and visual art.
The fourteen chapters of Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative are organized into four cohesive sections. These chapters investigate the impact of gender stereotypes on medical narratives from a variety of points of view, considering narratives from diverse languages, time periods, genres, and media. Each section addresses some of the most pressing and provocative issues in theories of gender and the medical humanities: I. Gendering the Medical Gaze and Pathology; II. Monitoring Race through Reproduction; III. Rescripting Trauma and Healing; and IV. Medical Masculinities.
Along with these sections, Gender Scripts Medicine and Narrative features a preface by Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Director and Founder, The Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University, a foreword by Marcelline Block, and an introduction by Angela Laflen. This collection takes a truly interdisciplinary look at the topic of gender and medicine, and the impressive group of contributors to the anthology represent a wide range of academic fields of inquiry, including medical humanities, bioethics, English, modern languages, women’s studies, film theory, postcolonial theory, art history, the history of science and medicine, new media studies, theories of trauma, among others. This approach of crossing boundaries of genre and discipline makes the volume accessible to scholars who are concerned with narrative, gender, and/or medical ethics.
Click here for a recent review of this title.
","“In light of current debates over healthcare, this volume could not be more timely. As a whole, it critiques the claim of the mimetic and objective, recognizes the instrumentality of representation, and examines definitions of normal and the stigmatization of disease and disfigurement. These chapters underscore the collection’s historical range and geographical diversity. Each essay highlights the uniqueness of a specific moment, but also points towards the continuity of narrative, representational models and their interpretation across cultures.”
—Carl Fisher, Chair, Comparative World Literature and Classics, California State University Long Beach
“The topic of the book is timely, innovative, important. What is important about the volume is its emphasis on issues of medicine in representation and its focus specifically on gender. A further innovative aspect is its interdisciplinary focus including American and European literature, the media, philosophy and cultural studies and medicine. Articles are on a broad range of texts from classic fiction to House MD and Children of Men (2006). It will be a valuable contribution to the fields of medicine, narrative, literature and the media.”
—E. Ann Kaplan, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Stony Brook University; Director, The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook; Past President, The Society for Cinema and Media Studies
“The volume conjoins important new areas of study in gender, medicine and cultural studies of medicine. One of its great strengths is its historical and disciplinary range from a consideration of medieval art to contemporary television. The essays include treatments of the medical gaze in literary works as well as engagement with the literariness and visuality of medical publications. The emphasis on gender gives this volume a tight, unifying focus. I am persuaded that it will have a broad audience among scholars across disciplines and will be widely taught.”
—Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women's Studies, Duke University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Marta Kempny,Polish Migrants in Belfast: Border Crossing and Identity Construction,Hardback,978-1-4438-2258-9,39.99,"Polish Migrants in Belfast: Border Crossing and Identity Construction proposes an understanding of identity as a multidimensional and multilayered entity whose various layers are in a dialogue. The book investigates the processual nature of one’s sense of belonging formed as a result of a dialectics between people’s efforts to preserve the boundaries of their culture of origin and the urge to transgress them, detectable in everyday life, religious holidays, and ethnic festivals. The book examines also the role of religion as an important factor shaping ethnic identities of Poles and explores how the “Polish” self-ascription remains a powerful building block of migrants’ identities. The work is based on a rigorous and original ethnographic study of the Polish community in Belfast, Northern Ireland and a review of the existing literature on the topic.
Both East Europe specialists and casual readers who are interested in study of migration, identity and religion will find this book invaluable. Whilst it is ethnographic in nature, it also synthesizes the existing literature on the identities and cultures in postmodern world, pointing out to different angles from which these issues have been discussed in anthropological theory.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Şebnem Toplu and Hubert Zapf,Redefining Modernism and Postmodernism,Hardback,978-1-4438-2268-8,44.99,"Literary and cultural studies in the later twentieth century were very much shaped by debates about modernism and postmodernism as labels for successive periods, but also for different competing interpretations of recent cultural history. In the twenty-first century, the shock waves that were sent through the global system on political, cultural, economic, and ecological levels by terrorist attacks, regional conflicts, poverty, the financial crisis and the threat of environmental disaster raise anew the question of how and to what extent the tradition of modernity can be newly defined in a situation where the problematic aspects of these ideas have rightly been exposed, but where they nevertheless appear to be crucial for any responsible assessment of contemporary world culture and its future perspectives.
Redefining Modernism and Postmodernism offers a collection of critical articles that resulted from the International Cultural Studies Symposium at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey in 2009. Scholars from around the world have contributed to this volume reflecting the current perspective on modernism and postmodernism, shedding new light on literature, literary theory, philosophy, politics, religion, film and art. Providing an account of this field, this book enables readers to navigate the subject by introducing essays on transformations of modernism and postmodernism in the twenty-first century, and the debates beyond the modernism/postmodernism dichotomy.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Neil Carr and Yaniv Poria,Sex and the Sexual during People’s Leisure and Tourism Experiences,Hardback,978-1-4438-2229-9,39.99,"Sex and the sexual have for far too long been consigned to the dark corners by social scientists in general and tourism and leisure scholars in particular. Sex and the Sexual During People’s Leisure and Tourism Experiences seeks to begin to rectify this situation by bringing the position and nature of sex and the sexual into the light of academic debate. As such, this book is designed to highlight cross-disciplinary emerging work on sex and the sexual in leisure and tourism and provide the readers with insights into this social realm. It encompasses a broad array of sex-related issues and tourism and leisure environments from across a variety of countries. The book should appeal to researchers and students across the humanities and social sciences both for the value of the research in its own right and the ability of it to be used as a lens through which to view the position of sex and the sexual as well as tourism and leisure in today's world. Overall, it is argued that sex and the sexual should play a part in the academic discourse, especially if we wish to describe what is actually happening out there as far as tourism and leisure are concerned.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-08-01,Lindy Heinecken and Heidi Prozesky,"Society in Focus—Change, Challenge and Resistance: Reflections from South Africa and Beyond",Hardback,978-1-4438-2257-2,39.99,"The chapters in this book showcase current sociological research, as undertaken both by established and budding social scientists in South Africa and Africa. The book covers a variety of topical themes, the first of which concerns the link between society, power and the environment, and how competing interests, whether these be corporate, legal, socio-ecological or environmentalist, relate to each. Another theme includes contributions on development, democracy and service delivery. Workplace change, resistance and well-being within the agricultural, manufacturing, mining and the service sector constitute a further central focus. The remaining theme addresses the interplay of race, class, gender and power within the context of specific topics, such as HIV/AIDS, tertiary education and minority groups. The collection of work presented in this book reflects a critical stance towards reification of roles, highlights contradictions between principles and practices in society, and underscores the complexity of societal issues on a broad range of contemporary themes. As such, the chapters are notable for their empirical richness and methodological pluralism, which are of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, whether scholars, professionals or practitioners.
","“Society In Focus is a refreshingly different book that informs the reader about important current and enduring themes of social significance. The thematic analyses of the environment, development, work place change and gender/race relations follow innovative applications in thinking about the classic sociological processes of power and resistance and the challenges these pose. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants an update about sociology in South Africa.”
—Cornie Groenewald, Professor Emeritus, Stellenbosch University
“This compilation provides an overview of current concerns and contributions of sociologists in South Africa and Africa. The central focus on environmental issues demonstrates the greater importance of this field for sociologists. The expanded focus of political sociology to embrace issues of development and service delivery are aptly dealt with in this book within a broad context, as are issues within the post-Apartheid workplace and tensions around gender and race within this society. All in all, this book is a significant contribution that attests to the current healthy state of sociology in South Africa and offers an enlightening and encouraging insight into its expanded domains of research and scholarship.”
—Ken Jubber, Professor Emeritus, University of Cape Town
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Iain Walker,"Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World",Hardback,978-1-4438-2337-1,39.99,"The island of Ngazidja lies at the southern end of the monsoon wind system and its inhabitants, the Wangazidja, have participated in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean for two millennia. The enduring contacts between the Wangazidja and their trading partners have subjected them to a variety of social and cultural influences—from the Swahili coast, from the African hinterland, from the Arabian peninsula, from Indonesia and, more recently, from Europe.
This book looks at the strategies called into play by Wangazidja in negotiating this encounter with the outside world; it discusses how they incorporate this variety of influences into their own social and cultural modes of practice while all the time remaining (in the words of one observer) “authentic.” Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, René Girard and Michael Taussig, the author develops the theoretical concept of mimesis in an analysis of these transformations, increasingly relevant in the contemporary context of globalization, showing how firmly anchored social structures are able to incorporate what seem to be practices imitative of the Other.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,"José Eduardo Franco, Ana Cristina da Costa Gomes and Beata Elzbieta Cieszynska",Gardens of Madeira—Gardens of the World: Contemporary Approaches,Hardback,978-1-4438-2275-6,44.99,"The volume Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the World. Contemporary Approaches displays present tendencies in calling upon the idea of gardens, being a wide-range approach to their literary, sociological and cultural representations. The book`s four parts: “Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?”, “Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches”, “Gardens as an Expression. Socio-cultural Perspectives” and “Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden – Discourses and Practices” refer to vast geographical and cultural areas, starting with the very complex sample of the overseas-yet-European Island of Madeira, and then joining the exemplification material from historical and contemporary European communities (with some luso-centric accents), including examples from the less known Slavonic and Eastern European countries. Those European issues are confronted with various non-European societies such as from Africa, Asia, and both Americas.
Gardens evoke and express in many ways the present human condition, and - as such a process goes on - this book provides proposals for patterns to connect them to the modern and post-modern rules of self defining, reading the Other, interpreting world/national/cultural literatures, as well as to the various attempts to introduce the idea of gardens into the basic spatial and temporal aspects of contemporary communities. It also demonstrates the theoretical and practical attempts to project our “gardens` dependence” on to one of the essentials for contemporary societies which are multicultural, urbanised, technologically equipped and dependent, but which still are keen on reading and constructing paradises as environmental and cultural spaces for both asylum and encounter.
The huge advantage of the book is showing to scholars and the wider public how discourses from the past meet with the quests of both the Humanities and the Sciences for gardening inspirations, not only for the sake of the today’s societies, but also when projecting the future of the Earth.
","“This collection is a highly successful encounter of interpretations of the idea of the garden in historical and present-day societies by joining different methods, points of view, research areas and perspectives well introduced by the titles of its four parts: “Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?”, “Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches”, “Gardens as an Expression. Sociocultural Perspectives” and “Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden – Discourses and Practices”.
Among the advantages of the book Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches one could point to the editors´ tendency to unite both practical and theoretical dimensions of the research field under discussion. It allows its readers to join the philosophical and literary analysis dedicated to gardens in the context of the triad “Nature – Art – Science” with the very concrete and actual attempts to introduce the archetypical aspects of gardens in various social activities, such as the search for recreational spaces or intergenerational approximation.”
—Danuta Künstler-Langner (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland)
“This book under review certainly could be of interest to a wider public with an interest in the Humanities as it offers a fresh attempt to reconstruct social and cultural spaces through the ideas of gardens.
It is also worth mentioning that the Gardens of Madeira – Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches covers very wide topical and geographical areas, joining e. g. the analysis from the well represented European communities (including noticeable representations from the less known former Eastern Bloc countries), and some non-European societies (American, African and Asian). That certainly makes the referred book the widest present day approach to the literary, sociological and cultural representations of gardens.
This book under review is also an excellent attempt to join leading research and social activity related to this topic. In fact, the volume provides a pattern to connect gardens to the modern and post-modern rules of self defining, reading the Other, interpreting the world/national/cultural literatures, as well as to the various attempts to introduce the idea of gardens into the basic spatial and temporal structures of contemporary mostly urban societies.”
—Maria do Carme Fernández Pérez-Sanjulián (University of Coruña, Spain)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Paul Tabar and Jennifer Skulte-Ouaiss,"Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora",Hardback,978-1-4438-2329-6,44.99,"This book is a collection of essays that were originally presented at a conference at the Lebanese American University in late May 2007, entitled “Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora.” It looks at various facets of the Lebanese Diaspora and examines the politics and culture of Lebanese migrants and their descendants in different parts of the world while detailing the communal, national and transnational elements of these practices and exploring the changing characteristics of politics and culture in respect to migration, Diaspora and globalization. The essays raise questions about the (in)compatible and interpenetrating relationships between these dynamics, and analyze processes of identity formation as cultural manifestations of migratory politics.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with issues of identity and multiculturalism among Lebanese emigrants, concluding that identities are continuously molded and negotiated in the diaspora. It examines the formation of identities among second and third-generation migrants, and the changing conceptions of the meaning of roots and homelands. The second section deals with politics and activism in the Diaspora. It looks at how diasporas relate to the political processes in their homelands during post-conflict resolution and explores the role of Lebanese migrants abroad in the process of peace-building back home. The third part deals with the Diaspora in literature and media through the assessment of key writings on the explorations of self of the Lebanese abroad, drawing on how symbols of identification and conventions of representation become sites of conflict over time.
The wide variety of perspectives presented in these papers invite us to challenge the notion of a fixed, bounded, and rigid homeland and identity, and move towards one that is more nomadic and fluid. They call us to pay attention to the symbols used in the cultural construction of both homelands and identities in the country of immigration and to think of the complex ways in which transnational politics affect the homeland and are in turn affected by it.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,"Carey Noland, Jimmie Manning and Janet MacLennan",Case Studies in Communication about Sex,Hardback,978-1-4438-2373-9,39.99,"This exciting new textbook is a compilation of communication case studies that identify the most salient issues regarding communication about sex in relationships. The text provides a basis for developing tangible communication skills, clearer understandings of how interpersonal concepts and theories play into practice, and an examination of ideas not often considered by students. Understanding interpersonal communication elements of sexual relationships is an indispensable component of any model of an overall healthy human sexual development. Moreover, being able to transform such understandings into practice in relationships is a leap toward being able to have the kind of meaningful communication with sexual partners that can potentially improve relationships, encourage safer sex practices, highlight responsible family planning, and work against limits of gendered and cultured expectations related to sex and sexuality. Twenty-one case studies from leading researchers in sexuality from Communication Studies, Sex Science, English and Medicine focus on interpersonal communication, cultural aspects of sexuality, media influences, health, and dark side of communication while building communication skills about these difficult to discuss topics. Each chapter features a series of possible discussion questions and a reference list of the resources that were used as a knowledge-base for composing that case study.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Ratheesh Kumar,"Classrooms and Playgrounds: Mapping Educational Change, Kerala",Hardback,978-1-4438-2376-0,44.99,"What is schooling in our contemporary societies? Is it to equip students for functioning in an information culture and to develop skills that would enable them to become productive agents in a fast globalizing world? Or is it to develop the capability to think and analyze? Mapping the complex transitions that mark primary education today in the state of Kerala, South-West India, this book offers fresh insights, both empirical and theoretical.
Schooling here implies a set of cultural practices that cannot be reduced to processes of teaching and learning of prescribed texts and topics. With playground and classroom as the axis points that extend beyond their conventional meanings and temporal and spatial properties the book sites schooling as a cultural practice that shapes our everyday lives.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Chris Rumford and Stephen Wagg,Cricket and Globalization,Hardback,978-1-4438-2370-8,39.99,"Cricket has changed dramatically in recent years and now can claim to be a truly global game, thanks in large part to new media technologies which bring a global audience for World Cups and other major competitions. However, the globalization of cricket has not followed a pattern familiar in other sports: concentrations of wealth, media, and marketing leading to the domination of Western countries over the rest, and this fact alone makes it interesting for scholars of the globalization of sport. Cricket has followed a very different global path; the non-Western countries (former British colonies) have begun to dominate and have taken control of the economics and politics of the game. In short, cricket has been “Indianized”.
The globalization of cricket has received a massive boost from the popularity of the newest form of the game (Twenty20) which is helping promote cricket as a mass TV sport. The rise of Twenty20, particularly the Indian Premier League (IPL), is transforming the way cricket is organized, played, and watched all over the world. This development both reinforces the globalization of cricket and also underlines that the “movers and shakers” within cricket are no longer the traditional elites in metropolitan centres but the businessmen of India and the media entrepreneurs world-wide who seek to shape new audiences for the game and create new marketing opportunities on a global scale.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Clara Sarmento,From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues,Hardback,978-1-4438-2366-1,49.99,"From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues sees interculturalism as movement, transit, travel, and the dynamics between cultures. Contemporary intercultural travel is a global journey, a circumnavigation at the speed of light that underwrites all the comings and goings, the departures and arrivals, the transmissions and receptions that are implicit in this title. Hence, From Here to Diversity examines the motivations, characteristics and implications of cultural interactions in their perpetual movement, devoid of spatial or temporal borders, in a dangerous but stimulating indefinition of limits.
In the contemporary intercultural dialogue, new voices are making themselves heard, as valuable sources of study: the voices of women; non-occidentals; the non-powerful; forgotten narratives of a past that was as intercultural as the present (after all, what is colonialism other than a perverse form of interculturality?); global entertainment; tourism; oral literature; diaries; mythical narratives; the cinema; ethnography; and new teachings, among so many others.
Because this project is also intercultural at its source and subject, From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues adds to the coherence of the project by including contributions from the most wide-ranging backgrounds and nationalities, without fear of the alterity that, after all, we propose to study.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Subrata Kundu,Health Sector Reforms in Orissa: Lessons for Developing Countries,Hardback,978-1-4438-2343-2,44.99,"In analysing the phenomenon of health sector reforms, this book proposes a new conceptual framework of analysis and ethnography as a methodological tool which could be used effectively in various country contexts compared to what the existing theoretical frameworks do. Thus, apart from generating new knowledge in health sector, this study has significance for policy makers across the world.
When the states themselves accept the fact that increasing private participation in health care in the form of health sector reforms is happening because of deliberate state policy, they will be better positioned to take decisions which ensure effective private sector regulation and universal access to quality health care within a democratic or participatory framework of governance.
Increasing privatisation of health care has also led toward citizens losing their democratic spaces with regard to decisions on universal access to quality health care. This has wider implications, not only for improved health status in general, but also about how we live in a modern society with our values of liberty, equality and justice intact.
The book would be a useful guide for policy-makers, researchers, students and layman across the world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,Agnieszka Widera-Wysoczańska and Alicja Kuczyńska,Interpersonal Trauma and its Consequences in Adulthood,Hardback,978-1-4438-2400-2,39.99,"The source of interpersonal psychological trauma is a traumatic event that is repetitive, chronic and complex in nature, and is caused by the action of a closely related person, most frequently in a dysfunctional and pathological family. This book presents studies on the influence of various forms of abuse experienced in childhood on the personal functioning of that individual in adulthood, including various types of symptoms, problems, and personality and neurobiological disorders. It also contains psychotherapeutic issues connected with interpersonal trauma.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-10-01,John Yarwood,"Urban Planning after War, Disaster and Disintegration: Case Studies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2342-5,39.99,"This book concerns the relationship between urban planning (and similar things) on the one hand, and war, natural disaster and societal or political disintegration on the other. The supposition is that one may mitigate the other. The book recounts the author’s professional experience of specific cases of disaster (earthquake and flood) in the Philippines, war in Bosnia, Afghanistan and South Sudan, and disintegration in Albania and Ireland. He identifies the key themes in urban and regional planning which these case studies illustrate.
The themes include (a) the delivery of building land with site preparation, infrastructure and property rights; (b) the size and amount of plots able to match both demographic projections and wealth distribution; (c) the creation of a property market able to deliver affordable land and buildings to match demand, encourage investment and further the development of the economy; (d) the spatial or geographic adjustment of institutional patterns to reflect the components of identity—making for ‘fuzzy’ sovereignty; (e) a form of organisation which leads to effective project management and implementation, and so on. The view is taken that lack of suitable development land supply, a land market unable to deliver affordable property to the people and unable to support economic growth, and a spatial-institutional pattern unable to match key aspects of identity, are all causes of war as well as societal or political decline.
The book contains many drawings prepared by the author, including plans of urban projects described in the text. It will be of interest particularly to architects, town planners, municipal engineers and civil engineers, urban administrators, urban economists, politicians, diplomats, soldiers, and staff of NGOs and international agencies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Engin Arik,A Crosslinguistic Study of the Language of Space: Sign and Spoken Languages,Hardback,978-1-4438-2491-0,34.99,"This book examines spatial language in sign languages (Turkish Sign Language, Croatian Sign Language, American Sign Language, and Austrian Sign Language) and spoken languages (Turkish, English, and Croatian). The book presents a novel model, the Crossmodal Spatial Language, to account for similarities and differences in these languages. The model, which consists of Spatial Representations, Reference Frames, Temporal Representations, Conceptual Structure, and Linguistic Representations, shows that the features from spatial input are not necessarily mapped on the spatial descriptions regardless of modality and language.
The book reports several studies to examine the descriptions of static and dynamic spatial scenes which involve, among others, spatial relationals such as left-right, front-back, besides, in, on, to, toward, pass by, away, and cause to move. The findings suggest that language users construct a spatial relation between the objects in a given time, employ a reference frame, which may not be encoded in the message, and use the same conceptual structure consisted of BE-AT for static spatial situations and GO-BE-AT for static dynamic situations.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Joan Burbick and William Glass,Beyond Imagined Uniqueness: Nationalisms in Contemporary Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2409-5,49.99,"Beyond Imagined Uniqueness: Nationalisms in Comparative Perspectives is a collection of essays from a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives that explore the contentious issue of nationalism in historical and contemporary settings. They adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of nationalism and its permutations and modes of expression. The unspoken context of these essays is the trends subsumed under the processes of globalization. Though the world may be becoming more integrated economically, these essays suggest social, cultural, and political forces, historically rooted, keep the nation and national identity alive and well.
The comparative perspectives offered by the essays appear in two ways: one set is the explicit comparisons of nations made by several authors within their essays and between the essays themselves when the authors focus on developments within a single nation. A second, and indeed more thought-provoking set of comparisons come from the way the essays address nationalism in disparate scholarly approaches that include visual culture, history, sociology, and literature. Moreover, while traditional themes in the study of nationalism are not ignored, these essays expand the discussion with case studies of nationalism in Turkey, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Even when nationalism is considered in those areas that have been the central focus of nationalism studies (Western Europe and the USA), the authors bring unique voices to the conversation as in the use of portraiture as a vehicle of nationalism in Cold War America or children’s literature shaping a Swedish American identity or in the idea of a covenant as a source of Dutch nationalism or the role of minority languages in West European societies.
Section One of this volume contains essays that examine the terrain of the national imaginary through language, monuments, and visual culture. Several of the essays in this traverse the cultural sites of representation and commemoration of the nation, looking carefully at the “politics of memory” in places, material objects, and texts. Section Two provides more individual case studies of nations, though many of these essays engage significant regional and international tensions especially in a post Cold War world that has often influenced the internal dynamics of nation-building. Section Three moves the focus away from the nation to immigrant communities, especially those in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Diasporas throughout the world have challenged many theories about the nation, as crossing borders becomes the norm rather the exception.
","“The present collection of essays, including contributions of scholars from all over Europe and the United States, proves that nationalism, described and analyzed from various angles, has recently been very much alive and kicking. Nationalism or, rather, nationalisms of different locations and colors, are still with us and there is little hope that they will disappear in spite of globalization and the spread of such metaphors as the ‘global village.’ The contributors to Beyond Imagined Uniqueness have identified their influence in politics, historiography, and culture, using mainly methods and instruments provided by contemporary cultural studies. It is an important book that sheds much needed light on social processes continuing in all parts of the world.”
—Marek Wilczyński, University of Gdańsk, Poland
“This book should reignite discussion of a topic which had begun to die out. These contributions by a new generation of Central and Eastern European scholars are especially welcome.”
—Hayden White, Presidential Professor of Historical Studies, University of California, USA
“Ranging widely across political and linguistic traditions, Beyond Imagined Uniqueness presents a set of challenging and provocative reassessments of nationalism in the context of global culture.”
—Eric Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Robyn Lincoln and Shirleene Robinson,Crime Over Time: Temporal Perspectives on Crime and Punishment in Australia,Hardback,978-1-4438-2417-0,39.99,"Crime Over Time features original contributions from some of Australia’s most respected criminologists and historians. The book marries these two disciplines to offer a unique examination of crime and deviance over more than 200 years of Anglo-Australian history. This innovative compilation explores the intriguing ways in which Australian crime has evolved and the pioneering ways criminal justice agencies have dealt with offenders. The topics investigated range from colonial bushranging to terrorist attacks, along with emerging forms of criminal activity, such as cybercrime. The book also highlights the social construction of crime by using case studies, including the way that homosexual activity was policed in earlier times. The collection provides an engaging and thorough examination of the historical factors that have shaped crime and punishment and its contemporary context.
","“Here is a volume that dips deeply into the hidden pockets of a nation that was actually founded upon the interstices of crime and punishment. Every chapter makes an arresting, original contribution, weaving together a compelling tale of frontier relations, racial conflict, moral panics, psychiatric scandals, stolen children and community policing in a composite account that travels all the way from convicts and bushrangers to terrorism and cyber-crime. Here is both a broadly ranging work of outstanding scholarship and a cracking good read.”
—Professor Raymond Evans, Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
“From bushrangers to cyber criminals, from the colonial period to contemporary time, this fine collection of essays traverses largely neglected yet important issues associated with crime and punishment in Australian society. The product of a rich collaboration between scholars of history and criminology it affords a colourful and unique portrayal of numbers of criminogenic factors which have influenced criminal justice law and policy since 1778. It is a book which should be read with as much interest and gratification by devotees of ‘Underbelly,’ students of criminology or law makers bent upon learning from past experience how best to respond to the crime problems of the future.”
—Professor Duncan Chappell, Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Scott Waldron,Modernising Agrifood Chains in China: Implications for Rural Development,Hardback,978-1-4438-2507-8,39.99,"China faces major challenges in generating viable and inclusive agricultural and rural development. However, rapid economic growth provides new opportunities to meet the challenges. In particular, the development of higher value agrifood chains provides opportunities for rural households to increase their levels of specialisation, scale and incomes, and for rural areas to broaden their employment and tax bases.
While an agricultural and rural development strategy based on upgrading agrifood chains is widely described and prescribed, it has not proceeded without problems and has been the subject of little rigorous scrutiny. This book presents an industry case study that draws on a novel methodological framework and reliable micro-level data to provide a nuanced, grounded and diachronic analysis of China’s efforts to upgrade agrifood chains. While China seeks to fast-track the development of high value agrifood chains through interventionist policies, a more viable and inclusive modernisation strategy is to incrementally develop mid-value agrifood chains through facilitative policies.
This and other findings of the book will be of interest to policy makers, researchers and development agencies working on agricultural and rural development in China and other developing and transition countries.
","""This book enlightens debate over strategies for the modernisation of China’s agriculture. Its case study of China’s beef industry from farm to plate highlights new opportunities and challenges. Arguments are developed for an appropriate modernisation strategy that aims at ‘mid-value’ markets, which is aligned to market forces and the interests of industry participants. The book’s new insights will be of great value to policymakers, development agencies and researchers.""
- Allan N. Rae, Professor Emeritus, Massey University, New Zealand
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,"Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Hanif and Hassen A. Muttlak",Ranked Set Sampling,Hardback,978-1-4438-2494-1,39.99,"Ranked Set Sampling is one of the new areas of study in this region of the world and is a growing subject of research. Recently, researchers have paid attention to the development of the types of sampling; though it was not welcome in the beginning, it has numerous advantages over the classical sampling techniques. Ranked Set Sampling is doubly random and can be used in any survey designs.
The Pakistan Journal of Statistics had attracted statisticians and samplers around the world to write up aspects of Ranked Set Sampling. All of the essays in this book have been reviewed by many critics.
This volume can be used as a reference book for postgraduate students in economics, social sciences, medical and biological sciences, and statistics. The subject is still a hot topic for MPhil and PhD students for their dissertations.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Jeremy R. Porter,Tracking the Mobility of Crime: New Methodologies and Geographies in Modeling the Diffusion of Offending,Hardback,978-1-4438-2505-4,34.99,"Recently, increased attention has been given to the social and environmental context in which criminal offending occurs. This new interest in the human ecology of crime is largely demographic, both in terms of subject matter and increasingly in terms of the analytic methods. Building on existing literature within the social ecology of crime, this study introduces a new approach to developing and examining sub-county geographies of reported crime through the use of existing Census place and county definitions coupled with spatial demographic methods. This process of spatially decomposing counties into Census places and what Esselstyn (1953) earlier called “open country,” or non-places, allows for the development of a unique, but phenomenologically appropriate sub-county geography. The new sub-county geography substantively holds meaning jurisdictionally given the current organization of the criminal justice system as well as demographically in the conceptualization of “rural” and “urban” in the demographic analysis of crime. Using 1990 and 2000 Agency-level Uniform Crime Report data in conjunction with recently developed spatial statistics, significant processes of spatial mobility in regards to the spread of criminal activity are identified. This represents an extension and adaptation of current and evolving methods used in identifying processes of the spatial diffusion of crime.
","“Porter's study successfully integrates recent attempts to spatialize the quantitative analysis of reported crime on both theoretical and analytical grounds. His tour de force of combining sub-county geographies with administrative-level crime reports to the FBI and the use of cutting-edge spatial statistics sets a new bar for criminologists who wish to speak to the ecology of crime. The founders of the Chicago School who traded on Galpin's use of maps must be smiling!
Furthermore, while his use of federally collected data of reported criminal offending is used for substantive purposes, it is obvious that this work holds much potential beyond criminology. In fact, it is applicable to the fields of statistics, demography, sociology, and criminology. The application and replication of this research with any aggregate-level count data makes the research an extremely useful tool for any research involving the use of aggregate level count data.”
—Frank M. Howell, Adjunct Professor, Emory University & Emeritus Professor, Mississippi State University
“The analysis in this work offers more promise for reinvigorating county-level analysis that any other I have encountered. As both a demographer and human ecologist what is most impressive is the command of the theoretical basis of the works on the geography of crime, with the knowledge base of a demographer and the empirical bases of spatial analysis. The merger and/or interaction of these areas will clearly be a fruitful area of scholarship for years to come and this research is at the cutting-edge of such work.
I was particularly impressed by the author’s ability to show how crime spreads spatially across and among areas, something that has been virtually impossible to assess in analysis using counties in standard multivariate regression models or factorial models. This work is theoretically grounded, methodologically innovative and substantively important. I would adopt the book for use in a criminology, demography or human ecology course.
In sum, I congratulate the author for writing a work that contributes to each of the disciplines noted above and most importantly rigorously examines the important linkages between them. If I can help in any way in disseminating information about this work please let me know and please continue this innovative and integrative area of research.”
—Dr. Steve H. Murdock, Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology, Rice University & Former Director of the U.S. Census Bureau (2006-2008)
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-11,"Lucy Burke, Simon Faulkner and Jim Aulich",The Politics of Cultural Memory,Hardback,9781847189349,34.99,"This edited collection explores the political dimensions of cultural memory work in its varied forms of representation, from public monuments to literary texts. Addressing the different ways that cultural texts represent the past in the present, the collection demonstrates that cultural memory is something actively made: the site of a struggle over meanings that can serve a range of political and cultural purposes.
The collection offers essays that discuss the politics of cultural memory both in theory and in practice, and features work by some of the leading scholars in the field including Susannah Radstone, Graham Dawson, Felicity Collins and Therese Davis. Contributors explore the ways in which memory comes to be articulated through particular cultural practices, from film and photography to literature and public monuments, all of which have their own codes and conventions, modes of address and audiences. As such this volume brings together scholars working in a range of disciplines (literary studies, history, art history, film studies) and in so doing seeks to establish a dialogue between different disciplines and methodologies and to explore cultural memory work in a range of different intellectual fields, cultural forms and political and historical contexts, for instance, the Holocaust, Northern Ireland, Australia, Palestine, and the former Soviet Bloc.
The collection will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars working in the area of cultural memory studies, for whom it will represent an invaluable collection of current work in the field. It will also interest scholars working in the particular areas with which it engages, for instance, postcolonial studies, Holocaust studies, Eastern European Studies, Irish Studies, Art History and English Studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Maggie Bolton and Cathrine Degnen,Animals and Science: From Colonial Encounters to the Biotech Industry,Hardback,978-1-4438-2556-6,39.99,"What exactly does a focus on animals bring to anthropological studies of science? This is a question that the various contributors to this edited collection set out to answer. This range of studies explores the intersections between animals and science across different ethnographic settings and in different historical periods. The contributions to this volume look at what it means to be human, the place of human beings vis à vis other species on this planet, our ideas of what nature and culture are, the limits to our ideas of kinship, the ethical debates that surround science, together with their interpretation by both scientific communities and the lay public, and the moral comportment of scientists. Through focusing on science, our contributors not only demonstrate that people elsewhere have different relationships with, and knowledge of, beasts (and that different possibilities of relating to animals exist within our own Western worldview), but further suggest that our Western knowledge about animals and their positions in society, arrived at through Western science and the social sciences, is itself in need of rethinking—to incorporate other ways of knowing. This volume contends that accounts in which animals meet science provide important theoretical insights for anthropologists and can set new agendas for theory in anthropology and science studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,"Bo Bengtsson, Per Strömblad and Ann-Helén Bay","Diversity, Inclusion and Citizenship in Scandinavia",Hardback,978-1-4438-2574-0,44.99,"Diversity, inclusion and citizenship are highly contested concepts. This book sheds light on how the traditionally homogeneous welfare-states of Scandinavia struggle to develop as democratic societies in the globalisation era. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, migration from all parts of the world continues to challenge the idea of social citizenship—highly endorsed in the Scandinavian tradition.
The volume brings new perspectives on immigration and integration strategies employed by the three countries, and their consequences for social and political relations. Presenting in-depth analyses, based on up-to-date empirical data, the 19 authors scrutinise a number of dilemmas related to diversity and inclusion in multicultural societies. Exploring tensions in terms of rights and obligations, participation and identity, the chapters provide new insights into the complexity of majority-minority interaction, political traditions and democratic legitimacy.
Drawing on case studies as well as comparative analyses, the authors present new and original empirical findings, and they also offer important theoretical contributions to general social science discourses. Taken together the chapters provide an indispensable source, not only for those seeking to understand the current trends in Scandinavian integration policies, but also for those who are generally interested in issues of diversity, inclusion and citizenship.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Charmaine A. Nelson,"Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada",Hardback,978-1-4438-2564-1,44.99,"Ebony Roots, Northern Soil is a powerful and timely collection of critical essays exploring the experiences, histories and cultural engagements of black Canadians. Drawing from postcolonial, critical race and black feminist theory, this innovative anthology brings together an extraordinary set of well-recognized and new scholars engaging in the critical debates about the cultural politics of identity and issues of cultural access, representation, production and reception. Emerging from a national conference in 2005, the book records, critiques and yet transcends this groundbreaking event. Drawn from a range of disciplines including Art History, Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Education, English, History and Sociology, the chapters examine black contributions to and participation within the realms of popular music, television and film, the art world, museums, academia and social activism. In the process, the burning issues of access to cultural capital, the practice of multiculturalism, definitions of black Canadianness and the state of Black Canadian Studies are dissected. Attentive to issues of sexuality and gender as well as race, the book also explores and challenges the dominance of black Americanness in Canada, especially in its incarnation as hip hop. Acknowledging a differently constituted and heterogeneous black Canadianness, it contemplates the possibility of an identity in dialogue with, and yet distinct from, dominant ideals of African-Americanness.
Ebony Roots also explores the deficit in Black Canadian Studies across the nation’s universities, drawing a line between the neglect of black Canadian populations, histories and experiences in general and the resulting lack of an academic disciplinary infrastructure. Poignant blends of the personal and the political, the chapters are both scholarly in their critical insights and rigour and daring in their honesty. Ebony Roots defiantly foregrounds the often-disavowed issues of institutional racism against blacks in Canadian academia, education and cultural institutions as well as the injurious effects of everyday racism. In so doing, the book challenges the myth of Canada as a racially benevolent and tolerant state, the ‘great white north’ free from racism and the legacy of colonialism. Instead the very definitions of Canada and black Canadianness are unpacked and explored. Ebony Roots is a necessary history lesson, a contemporary cultural debate and a call to action. It is a momentous and overdue contribution to Black Canadian Studies and a must read for academics, students and the general public alike.
","“This [book] indeed makes a significant contribution to studies on race and in particular race in Canada . . . it attempts to separate issues of race from that in the US, clearly delineating key areas of differences . . . this study to my knowledge is unparalleled. It is also fresh, nuanced, and contemporaneous, exploring such topics as hospitality and urban music (hip-hop) and dress. The book will also be relevant for university administration and politicians wanting to take seriously the issue of race in the academy and in government.”
—Professor Sandra Jackson
“I believe that this book would make a significant contribution to the field . . . [it is] breaking new ground. Much like the works that gave birth to African American and Black Studies in the US, this book asserts the importance of examining race and its working . . . foregrounding the academy. It poses issues salient to not only the curriculum and pedagogy, but also matters related to inclusion of black faculty and other faculty of color . . . When these things are critically examined, and realities laid bare, then they can no longer be ignored or seen as the mere imaginings of Others . . . I would also highly recommend it to Vice Presidents of Diversity and Provosts or Chancellors of Academic Affairs who are responsible for exercising leadership in implementing institutional commitment to diversity.”
—Professor Jude Nixon
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Helena Wahlström,"New Fathers? Contemporary American Stories of Masculinity, Domesticity and Kinship",Hardback,978-1-4438-2554-2,34.99,"What do novels such as Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World, and Jayne Anne Phillips’ MotherKind have in common with films such as Smoke and Mrs Doubtfire?
This study explores the intersection of masculinity and domesticity in contemporary film and literature. It argues that these texts, produced since the 1990s, address with some urgency the notion of “new fatherhood” in the United States. They offer explorations of the idea that American fatherhood around the turn of the twenty-first century is changing, and they problematize the legitimacy of “new fathers” and “alternative families” in a national culture where the “old” patriarch and the nuclear family still often loom large in the imagination of many Americans.
","“Helena Wahlström’s New Fathers? Contemporary American Stories of Masculinity, Domesticity, and Kinship is a timely and astute critical analysis of key American fictions since the 1990s that deal with changing family structures and particularly with portraits of fathers in relation to their partners, their children, and their own fathers. Solidly placed in the contexts of popular rhetoric and scholarly masculinity studies, the book illuminates current anxieties in American culture about changing family structures and a supposed ‘masculinity crisis.’ . . . In 2000 Sally Robinson’s Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis unpacked fictional representations of privileged men in American fiction. A decade later Wahlström’s study updates feminist analysis of the ways that male and female authors envision new families and the men that inhabit them.”
—Judith Kegan Gardiner, Professor of English and of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA; Editor of Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory
“The media has been proclaiming the ‘new fatherhood’ for decades. But how do we understand the relationship between masculinity and fathering? In this intriguing study, Helena Wahlström shows how changes among American fathers have been accompanied by images in film and novels that both describe and define the boundaries of the new fatherhood.”
—Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA; Author of Manhood in America and The Gendered Society
“New Fathers? offers an innovative and original analysis on active fatherhood . . . for students and scholars of both humanities and social sciences that are interested in family history, gender, fatherhood, and masculinities this is a must-read book.”
—Jørgen Lorentzen, Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway; Author of Maskulinitet: blikk på mannen gjennom litteratur og film and Co-Editor of Män i Norden
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,"Ronald Eric Matthews, Jr. and Michele A. Gilbert",Obamagelicals: How the Right Turned Left,Hardback,978-1-4438-2550-4,34.99,"Obamagelicals: How the Right Turned Left demonstrates how rhetorical strategies normalized, marginalized, and/or anaesthetized the traditional views of the white Protestant evangelical voter and gave younger white Protestant evangelicals, whose self-identify as being centrists or modernists, a voice that had otherwise been drowned out by the traditional old guard of the Protestant evangelical religious right. Obamagelicals argues President Obama capitalized on this completely different set of value issues that resonated with white Protestant evangelical centrists and modernists in ways never dreamed possible. Obamagelicals is a unique contribution to the current, interdisciplinary conversation about the role of white Protestant evangelicals in the democratic process and the victorious presidential election. It is unique because it treats Protestant evangelicalism not as a monolith but as a mosaic—comprised of numerous denominations and belief patterns. Through this creation of space on the theological continuum of Protestant evangelicalism, believers draw attention to themselves by creating distinction and attention. This book examines how the shift in theological interpretations of the Scriptures lead to shift in cultural and political issues that went undetected by Republican candidate Senator John McCain but embraced by President Obama. Obamagelicals provides a consistent methodological approach that is easy to understand for those interested in religion and politics. Using data analysis and cross-tabulations, each topic or theme employs simple, easy to understand variables thereby allowing for a cross-comparison. Obamagelicals allows us the opportunity to begin to examine the connections between religiosity and political participation on such key policy issues as the economy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and same-sex marriages, within the mosaic of Protestant evangelicalism in the shadow of the 2008 election.
","""This book asks all the right questions and should be required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of religion and politics. Support for public policies that address the economy and poverty have never come from such a diverse electorate. This important research traces the roots of how religion matters in public policy, using the critical case of electing President Obama to tell the story. Their analysis provides a rich narrative to how the deep recession, with very real economic consequences, can shift political alignment in the most critical of cases. Few would have guessed that Christian evangelicals would align with an African American president, running on several progressive social and economic positions. This became the new swing vote, the new “soccer mom” of 2008.
What’s remarkable about this analysis is how it enables us to understand voting behavior and ideology across a myriad of demographics. This shift facilities an intriguing policy feedback loop between voters and policymakers. Only time will tell how permanent this shift will be. But to understand the real “why” questions of religion and politics, start with this book! ""
- David Rothstein, Policy Analyst, Policy Matters Ohio, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Constantinos N. Phellas,Sociological Perspectives of Health and Illness,Hardback,978-1-4438-2548-1,44.99,"Medical sociology has evolved from being considered as an unimportant area of enquiry to being regarded as central to the study of private troubles and public issues. At present, much of what is deemed in sociology as exciting is advancing or contributing to the field of health. It is appropriate, therefore, that an edited text is published to specifically examine some of the important themes currently in medical sociology research and writing. This volume documents thinking, frameworks and processes that are actively shaping the medical sociology research of today. It covers a wide range of topics ranging from the morality of death and euthanasia to the conflict that exists between different status health care providers.
Sociological Perspectives of Health and Illness will be of interest to students across a wide range of courses in sociology and the social sciences. Specifically, students undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate courses in health studies, and health promotion would benefit by reading this textbook. However, professionals will also be attracted to the book due to the dissemination of current practises in health promotion issues and practices.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,"Maija Jäppinen, Meri Kulmala and Aino Saarinen","Gazing at Welfare, Gender and Agency in Post-socialist Countries",Hardback,978-1-4438-2581-8,44.99,"The volume presents a new and unique view of welfare in Russia and Eastern European countries from an intersectional perspective of welfare, gender and agency. Since the collapse of socialism, the welfare structures of the post-socialist states have experienced large and rapid changes. The discussions on the reforming welfare models serve as the integrating theme for the volume.
The authors discuss past and current developments and make comparisons in time and space–between the early 1990s and late 2000s and between post-socialist and transitional countries. Welfare and political democratization are analyzed on the one hand as structures and processes and on the other hand as cultural meanings and through agency, which all are strongly gendered.
Macro-level analyses and in-depth case studies by scholars from different countries and disciplines provide a wide and multilayered picture of welfare developments and gendered practices of social services, caregiving and civic activism, among others. Special attention is given to research methodologies, particularly on fieldwork and micro-level understanding of the related topics. The contributors come from social and political sciences and from both former socialist and “Western” countries – from Russia and Slovenia as well as the US, the UK, Germany and Finland. In their studies, the authors examine various regions of Russia and other post-socialist countries, such as the Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova and Slovenia.
","“In this work, a truly international array of outstanding scholars uncover the role of society in the European post-communist transitions. The collection constitutes a great advance in our understanding of this complicated subject, illustrating how social groups have negotiated a changing economic and political environment. Diverse methodologies, local case studies, and intensive field work provide a solid empirical foundation for each of the contributions in the volume. Together, the authors uncover the reciprocal relationships between state social welfare reforms and citizens’ strategies to provide for themselves and each other. This work will be an invaluable resource for readers interested in European studies, comparative social welfare, and gender studies.”
—Professor Andrea Chandler, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
“How do the poor, sick, disabled and elderly cope in ‘post-socialist’ societies? How do state, civic initiatives, informal networks and market actors intersect in the diverse welfare regimes that once had been pretty similar? Why are welfare practices still feminized so much? These urgent questions are approached by authors from different countries looking at such different societies as the Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova, Slovenia and Russia. The anthology presents a new and unique view of welfare in contemporary Russia and Central and South-Eastern European countries from an intersectional perspective of welfare, gender and agency. The book combines a macro-level approach on welfare, with a deep and rich analysis of concrete cases (with difficult access). Focus on the small sites of welfare—villages, municipal regions, organizations, networks— helps the reader to [comprehend] viewpoints of various vulnerable groups as well as everyday practices of agents engaged in providing the services.”
—Elena Zdravomyslova, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta,Health and Cultural Values: Female Circumcision within the Context of HIV/AIDS in Cameroon,Hardback,978-1-4438-2642-6,39.99,"This book provides a nuanced analysis of the transformations that the ritual cutting of Female Circumcision (FC) recently underwent within the changing medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic among Ejagham tribes in Southwest Cameroon.
Based on local level ethnography, it captures the multivocal perspectives and agency of participants thereby putting to question the uncritical feminist stance that “Third World Women” lack agency and are chattel. As the highest rite of patriarchy, the quintessential icon of gendered personhood and femininity, FC remains salient even when it is no longer the criterion for membership into the Moninkim secret society especially within the new medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic because it is intertwined with the whole cultural political economy of the Ejaghams. The commercialization of this feminine institution charged with feminine personhood through its spectacular performances (enacting matrimonial relations) within and beyond the Ejagham locale is evidence of its continuous centrality in the life world of participants. By focusing on health alone, anti-HIV/AIDS and anti-FC interventions by both the state and civil society actors miss the point. FC is increasingly becoming a human, social, gender rights and development issue calling for a multi-pronged development approach. The threat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic led to ferocious intergenerational debates over moral values about female inordinate sexuality and to the double appropriation of the concept of human security. Conservatives maintain that FC tempers women’s sexuality and is therefore a useful mechanism to keep women in matrimonial service, a moral check on inordinate sexuality and a ‘‘native’’ antidote against the scourge of the pandemic. Anti-FC advocates point to the bloodletting entailed by the ritual procedures as fuelling the spread of the pandemic through the spread of diseases with HIV/AIDS inclusive among participants. A third group of cultural insiders opt for the cautious appropriation of modernity while simultaneously maintaining tradition: medicalisation of the ritual procedures. By reducing the complexity and nuances of the ritual cutting to health alone, anti-FC activism has instead produced a backlash marked by simultaneous contestation and practice. Paradoxically, the anti-FC campaigns have resulted in the privatization of FC on increasingly younger girls. However, the recent waiving of the ritual cutting as a precondition for membership into the Moninkim cult—because of the ageing of the initial initiates, the health risk of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and anti-FC advocacy campaigns by local NGOs—shows that change is underway. Simultaneously, inter-tribal marriages with members of non-circumcising tribes and romantic love relationships beyond the purview of the traditional patriarchal orbit have led younger lovers increasingly to seek mutually satisfying love relationships for which FC, a “virtuous cut,” becomes an obstacle.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Ruhanita Maelah,Research in Management Accounting: Malaysian Environment,Hardback,978-1-4438-2584-9,39.99,"This book focuses on research in management accounting that uses Malaysia’s business environment as the scope of study. The motivation to embark on this publication was due to the recognition that although management accounting has received increasing interest from various organizations including government, businesses and educators, published documents that report findings from research in management accounting undertaken in Malaysia are still limited. The objective of this book is to address the gap by providing readers with five research oriented articles on management accounting issues, namely Performance Measurement Design in Service Organizations; Management Accounting and Control Systems in the Service Sector; Activity Based Costing; Intellectual Capital and Management Accounting Practices; and Customer Focused Manufacturing Strategy and Performance Measurement Systems.
The articles are written by a pool of active researchers in the area of management accounting, and are expected to have high academic value. Each is complete with a literature review, methodology, data analysis and references. Even though this is the case, the articles have also been carefully chosen and edited for the general reader. This book is suitable as a reference for researchers, academics, managers, accountants, and policy makers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Andy Brader,Songs of Resilience,Hardback,978-1-4438-2652-5,39.99,"The chapters of this book form a persuasive chorus of social practices that advocate the use of music to build a capacity for resilience in individuals and groups. As a whole they exemplify music projects that share common features aligned with an ecological view of reform in health, education and social work systems. Internationally renowned and early career academics have collaborated with practitioners to sing ‘Songs of Resilience’; some of which are narratives that report on the effects of music practices for a general population, and some are based on a specific approach, genre or service. Others are quite literally ‘songs’ that demonstrate aspects of resilience in action. The book makes the connection between music and resilience explicit by posing the following questions—Do music projects in education, health and social services build a measurable capacity for resilience amongst individuals? Can we replicate these projects’ outcomes to develop a capacity for resilience in diverse cultural groups? Does shared use of the term ‘resilience’ help to secure funding for innovative musical activities that provide tangible health, education and social outcomes?
","“Practitioners working with those facing adversities know that music is a source of untapped educational power. This important volume documents resilience through music projects, the making of meaning and the remaking of lives and cultures.”
—Allan Luke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
“In a world increasingly beset by polarizing and fragmenting forces, this book sets an example of activism that is deeply rooted in analysis and critique. Both the scholarly and practitioner communities will benefit from this work, which recounts compelling stories of compassion and empathy building a strong case for understanding the nexus between music and resilience.”
—André de Quadros, Boston University, USA
“Music, including singing, is one of the core features of our human communication and identity. Research is also providing significant details of how music can have extremely positive benefits to health (physical and psychological). This book is an important contribution to our growing awareness of why music should be integral to lifelong educational experiences.”
—Graham F. Welch, Institute of Education, London
“This important volume offers an excellent resource for those musicians who conceive of their work within a politics of social intervention. With a particular focus towards public funded projects, the authors integrate and challenge our notions of how music can be understood within the domains of health, education and social services. Located in the practical business of music making, this set of chapters is a must read for those of us who believe that music can effect transformation.”
—Lee Higgins, Boston University, USA
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Eleanor Milligan,The Ethics of Consent and Choice in Prenatal Screening,Hardback,978-1-4438-2648-8,39.99,"Increasingly, notions of individual autonomy, personal “choice” and preference have become woven into our reproductive expectations. With respect to prenatal screening, the choices sought, offered or denied are shaped and interpreted through a range of social, personal, institutional and philosophical lenses. While prenatal screening seeks to promote parental choice and early intervention, for the most part, the genetic anomalies commonly targeted are inherently “unfixable.” Frequently, the only further intervention on offer is selective termination. Hence, the practice of prenatal screening raises complex ethical questions, forcing judgement on the desirability or undesirability of certain traits in our future offspring. This book explores the numerous factors that shape how such ethical choices are interpreted from the perspective of individual mothers and health care providers, and considers the impact of these factors on personal autonomy and consent to prenatal screening.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Karen Fog Olwig and Karsten Paerregaard,"The Question of Integration: Immigration, Exclusion and the Danish Welfare State",Paperback,978-1-4438-2635-8,19.99,"The question of integration has become an important concern as many societies are experiencing a growing influx of people from abroad. But what does integration really mean? What does it take for a person to be integrated in a society? Through a number of ethnographic case studies, this book explores varying meanings and practices of integration in Denmark. This welfare society, characterized by a liberal life style and strong notions of social equality, is experiencing an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. The authors show that integration is not just a neutral term referring to the incorporation of newcomers into society. It is, more fundamentally, an ideologically loaded concept revolving around the redefining of notions of community and welfare in a society undergoing rapid social and economic changes in the face of globalization.
The ethnographic analyses are authored by anthropologists who wish to engage, as scholars and citizens living and working in Denmark, in one of the most contentious issues of our time. The Danish perspectives on integration are discussed from a broader international perspective in three epilogues by non-Danish anthropologists.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Karen Fog Olwig and Karsten Paerregaard,"The Question of Integration: Immigration, Exclusion and the Danish Welfare State",Hardback,978-1-4438-2634-1,39.99,"The question of integration has become an important concern as many societies are experiencing a growing influx of people from abroad. But what does integration really mean? What does it take for a person to be integrated in a society? Through a number of ethnographic case studies, this book explores varying meanings and practices of integration in Denmark. This welfare society, characterized by a liberal life style and strong notions of social equality, is experiencing an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. The authors show that integration is not just a neutral term referring to the incorporation of newcomers into society. It is, more fundamentally, an ideologically loaded concept revolving around the redefining of notions of community and welfare in a society undergoing rapid social and economic changes in the face of globalization.
The ethnographic analyses are authored by anthropologists who wish to engage, as scholars and citizens living and working in Denmark, in one of the most contentious issues of our time. The Danish perspectives on integration are discussed from a broader international perspective in three epilogues by non-Danish anthropologists.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Will Rollason,"We Are Playing Football: Sport and Postcolonial Subjectivity, Panapompom, Papua New Guinea",Hardback,978-1-4438-2589-4,39.99,"Sport is an important part of the lives of rural Papua New Guineans, and a significant connection to global imaginaries for economically marginal villagers. Such grassroots sport, however, is rarely studied and has never previously been the subject of an ethnographic monograph. This book represents a pioneering study of the history and effects of grassroots sport in Papua New Guinea.
We Are Playing Football explores Panapompom people’s attempts to recreate the international game, and the social and subjective effects of this effort. From a raw ethnographic starting-point, the book moves through historical and interpretive materials, exploring the motives, methods and results of Panapompom people’s work to recreate global images of football, and to turn them to their own political ends. As the argument proceeds, we see how playing football implicates Panapompom people in circuits of domination, power and humiliation that tether them to colonial modes of control, and derogatory racialist identities, which they themselves reproduce in their communities.
From its effects on the most intimate self-understanding, through the embodied experience of playing football, to the details of colonial history and the values and ideas underpinning community life, this book offers an original and challenging assessment of what it means to be “globalised.” It charts the new outlooks and imaginaries, the disruptions, failures and disappointments, and above all the vital synergies between different people that define the global situation of Panapompom people.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Maria Nawojczyk,"Economy in Changing Society: Consumptions, Markets, Organizations and Social Policies",Hardback,978-1-4438-2699-0,44.99,"Economy is embedded in ongoing concrete social networks, and economic processes are increasingly international in character. Three interrelated processes are crucial for setting the frame of analysis for this book: globalisation, development of post-industrial societies, and transformation of European post-socialist countries. Within this framework the main issues are as follows: (1) Economies in transition: reliable patterns, imitation, local adaptation, cultural embeddedness; (2) Multiplicity of markets: commodification of life, new markets in old societies; (3) Economic behavior: households, micro-enterprises, local and global influences; (4) Contemporary polities, i.e. states, the European Union and global corporations. The stress will be placed on actors, relations and institutions as the driving forces of the above described processes.
The authors of this collection, based on their empirical material, analyze very interesting socio-economic issues. These are: ethical consumption from the perspective of the moral economy and its connection to political institutions in Europe (and particularly in Hungary); the cultural context of consumption, both in the case of social networks in Bangladesh and of counterfeited goods on the Russian market; the new and old, individual and organizational actors in transition economies, for instance in Poland and Croatia; the new approach to corporations as global actors, stressing their social responsibility; the dynamics of managerial practices in the example of Russia; the influence of EU funds and policies on the Polish SMEs market; the cultural embeddedness of economic behavior, in the case of Poles working in the Scottish market and of entrepreneurs in Damascus; the retirement policy in the fast aging societies of Spain and Poland; and the emergence of the new markets, like that of health services, in Russia and that of the property market in Eastern and Central Europe.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Lisa Featherstone,Let’s Talk About Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill,Hardback,978-1-4438-2736-2,44.99,"From the start of the new Australian nation in 1901, to the use of the female contraceptive pill in 1961, Let’s Talk About Sex explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in Australia. Far from being something hidden and private, this work brings sexuality out into the open, and explains why sex is of social, cultural, political and economic importance.
Let’s Talk About Sex is an inclusive history, surveying multiple and interwoven forms of sexuality, desire, pleasure, regulation and resistance. It begins with the long Victorian period: the hidden desires of women and the “hydraulic” sexual needs of men, both in the cities and on the frontier. It moves across the decades, considering heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbians and nascent ideas about queer and sexual difference. Lisa Featherstone highlights the tensions of the ages: venereal disease, homophobia, birth control, rape and child sexual assault. She analyses the ways non-normative sexuality was constructed as evil and perverse, but also how men and women responded to this pathologising of their desires.
Let’s Talk About Sex provides a fascinating account of sex, gender, age and race, across the formative years of Australian society.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,"Carey Noland, Jimmie Manning and Janet MacLennan",Case Studies in Communication about Sex,Paperback,978-1-4438-2875-8,19.99,"This exciting new textbook is a compilation of communication case studies that identify the most salient issues regarding communication about sex in relationships. The text provides a basis for developing tangible communication skills, clearer understandings of how interpersonal concepts and theories play into practice, and an examination of ideas not often considered by students. Understanding interpersonal communication elements of sexual relationships is an indispensable component of any model of an overall healthy human sexual development. Moreover, being able to transform such understandings into practice in relationships is a leap toward being able to have the kind of meaningful communication with sexual partners that can potentially improve relationships, encourage safer sex practices, highlight responsible family planning, and work against limits of gendered and cultured expectations related to sex and sexuality. Twenty-one case studies from leading researchers in sexuality from Communication Studies, Sex Science, English and Medicine focus on interpersonal communication, cultural aspects of sexuality, media influences, health, and dark side of communication while building communication skills about these difficult to discuss topics. Each chapter features a series of possible discussion questions and a reference list of the resources that were used as a knowledge-base for composing that case study.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,"Stephen Hutchings, Chris Flood, Galina Miazhevich and Henri Nickels",Islam in its International Context: Comparative Perspectives,Hardback,978-1-4438-2886-4,39.99,"Changing attitudes to Islam profoundly influence political cultures and national identities, as well as policies regarding immigration, security and multiculturalism. Given that the majority of relevant scholarly works have either adopted monocultural perspectives, or approached Islam in its general, non nation-specific dimension, the need for in-depth, multi-nation studies is urgent. Islam itself, and responses to its rise, are becoming increasingly internationalised. It is therefore important that analyses of Islam-related phenomena are sensitive to the particular cultures in which they are encountered. This volume does precisely that. Contributions, some explicitly comparative, others implicitly so, cover perspectives from across Europe, the USA and the Middle East, along with new treatments of the rich diversity to be found in Islamic art, and discussions of inter-faith exchanges. They also represent a range of disciplinary approaches. Among the many issues addressed are: the challenges posed by the rise of Muslim radicalism to multicultural societies; various media treatments of the ‘War on Terror’; the national specificities of Islamophobic xenophobia; contemporary visual arts in Islamic societies; differing attitudes to the translation of religious texts. The authors include authoritative, international experts, balanced by promising, younger scholars.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,John-Henry Harter,"New Social Movements, Class, and the Environment: A Case Study of Greenpeace Canada",Hardback,978-1-4438-2863-5,29.99,"New Social Movements, Class, and the Environment explores the history of Greenpeace Canada from 1971 to 2010 and its relationship to the working class. In order to understand the ideology behind Greenpeace, the author investigates its structure, personnel, and actions. The case study illustrates important contradictions between new social movement theory and practice and how those contradictions affect the working class. In particular, Greenpeace’s actions against the seal hunt, against forestry in British Columbia, and against its own workers in Toronto, demonstrate some of the historic obstacles to working out a common labour and environmental agenda.
The 1970s saw an explosion of new social movement activism. From the break up of the New Left into single issue groups at the end of the 1960s came a multitude of groups representing the peace movement, environmental movement, student movement, women’s movement, and gay liberation movement. This explosion of new social movement activism has been heralded as the age of new radical politics. Many theorists and activists saw, and still see, new social movements, and the issues, or identities they represent, as replacing the working class as an agent for progressive social change. This paper examines these claims through a case study of the quintessential new social movement, Greenpeace.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Attila Krizsán,"""The EU is Not Them, But Us!"": The First Person Plural and the Articulation of Collective Identities in European Political Discourse",Hardback,978-1-4438-2860-4,39.99,"This volume contributes to the latest trends in discourse studies by presenting a Hallidayan corpus-driven critical linguistic analysis. The results are tested statistically, which enhances their reliability as compared with most previous corpus-driven systemic functional analyses. The linguistic analysis is conducted on context-specific corpora built out of speeches delivered on the topic of European integration by key politicians of similar institutional functions in their respective countries, Finland, Hungary and the UK.
The empirical findings offer insights into differences and similarities between articulations of collective identities in the political discourse on EU integration. The results indicate that the different (power) positions assigned in the enlargement negotiations were reflected in the language use of politicians. The findings also reveal shared European patterns of identification among speakers of different national backgrounds. What is more, these patterns reflect the limitations set on ‘being European’ by the so called ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU.
This monograph can be of interest to researchers, postgraduate students and advanced undergraduates working in the fields of discourse analysis, applied linguistics, political science, sociology and European studies. EU institutions and national government agencies running projects connected to European integration may find this volume useful as well.
","“Krizsán has written a book which is a more than welcome addition to the currently under-populated field of large scale corpus research projects grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Krizsán’s book illustrates the gains not only of using SFL theory to make sense of corpus data but also shows how rigorous quantitative findings can be enhanced by follow up qualitative investigation.”
—Dr Gerard O'Grady, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Wales
“[This] is a well structured and interesting book with clear innovative aspects in the field of political discourse in general and EU political discourse in particular. The results of the study—through both qualitative and quantitative analyses—contribute substantially to the understanding of how the EU as a political project is construed in practice.”
—Prof Kjersti Fløttum, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway
“In this volume Krizsán contrasts construals of self-inclusion in the discourse of representatives of three member states of the EU. The methodology developed provides a positive step in integrating micro and macroanalysis of textual features in the critical analysis of discourse.”
—Dr Tom Bartlett, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Wales
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Wendy A. Paterson,Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce,Paperback,978-1-4438-2941-0,24.99,"Diaries of a Forgotten Parent: Divorced Dads on Fathering Through and Beyond Divorce opens an intimate window on the lives of divorced men. Literature on divorce focuses primarily on its effects on women and children, but fair and personal accounts of the lived experiences of custodial and non-custodial fathers are less available. In this highly accessible text, ten American men share intensely personal reflections of guilt, pain, frustration, sacrifice, loneliness and pride. The men do not see themselves as exemplary; rather, their stories are graphically honest, revealing what Paterson calls ordinary men “with all their warts.” The author reviews significant works on the male experience of divorce from psychological, legal, educational and sociological experts, interspersing commentary and research with the men’s own voices. From the initial discussion of why men marry and why they divorce through the men’s painful memories of being pushed out of their children’s lives by angry and resentful mothers, the author illuminates the legal, fiscal, emotional and practical experiences of men struggling to reinvent their fathering while they find themselves reconfigured into deserters, deadbeats and visitors. The societal myth that fathers are less valuable parents than mothers is thoroughly deconstructed in this text. The book will help divorced and divorcing men and those who work with them to fully understand the experiences of fathers who never stopped loving and caring for their children, in spite of the fact that the contributions of fathers are still largely discounted by schools, courts, and worst of all, by their children’s mothers. From this book, readers will understand that there are just too many reasons why fathers must never be forgotten in the lives of their children.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Jane Dowling,"'Just' a Fisherman’s Wife: A Post Structural Feminist Exposé of Australian Commercial Fishing Women’s Contributions and Knowledge, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Crisis’",Hardback,978-1-4438-2943-4,44.99,"This book provides a unique exposé of women in family businesses in the Australian commercial fishing industry and explores their visibility, contributions, barriers and opportunities for participation, and knowledge. Recognising the need to move beyond an exploration of women’s ‘roles,’ this book applies a detailed, well articulated and sophisticated feminist post structural approach which explores women’s identity, power/knowledge and positioning in relation to the current industry climate, in the context of discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘sustainability.’ This is particularly pertinent with climate change looming as the next industry ‘crisis.’ As such, this book has significant interdisciplinary appeal, and will benefit feminist, gender, natural resource management and fisheries scholars and policy makers. Ultimately, it is hoped that this book will have a substantial impact on industry women in both Australia and elsewhere, and reduce their marginalisation; increase awareness about their contributions; and result in greater opportunities to voice their unique knowledge on social issues with a view to enhancing industry sustainability.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Michelle Moravec,Motherhood Online,Hardback,978-1-4438-2913-7,44.99,"It may take a village to raise a child, but increasingly that means a virtual village. While the media may focus on the so-called “mommy wars,” and babyrazzi follow every move of celebrity moms, millions of mothers world-wide are creating online communities. These mommy groups provide an alternative context for understanding how women construct modern motherhood together. Motherhood Online explores the mutifaceted lives that moms live online. Ranging from longitudinal studies to focused explorations of identity, and the newest community context, mommy blogs, this book documents the millions of mommies who have found an outlet online. Whether centered on region, religion, race, or something else altogether, these communities of mothers are creating a new space for mom and allowing many women to maintain a grasp, however tenuous, on sanity in this crazy-making world of modern motherhood.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Fred Dervin,Analysing the Consequences of Academic Mobility and Migration,Hardback,978-1-4438-2978-6,34.99,"The figure of the medieval “wandering scholar” (Pietsch) has never been as true as today: Academic Mobility and Migration have now become a reality for most people involved in higher education. We also know for sure that they are actively contributing to the postmodern transformation of the “social as society” into the “social as mobility” (Urry).
Written by leading and emerging scholars, this volume explores the impact of Academic Mobility and Migration on institutions, people and their social environment. It also considers up-to-date aspects which remain relatively underexplored: Academic migration (vs. mobility), virtual academic mobility, North-South mobility, language policies at a “glocal” level, and questions of identity. The authors examine the personal, social, professional and educational consequences of Academic Mobility and Migration from a variety of disciplinal orientations including sociology, language education, linguistics and education. Some of the chapters also seek to propose alternative ways of analysing these phenomena.
This unique book is an invaluable resource for anybody with an interest in educational mobility in the 21st century: researchers, teachers, policy-makers, politicians, administrators, but also college and university students.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Jacek Tittenbrun,Economy in Society: Economic Sociology Revisited,Hardback,978-1-4438-3145-1,54.99,"The book offers an in-depth analysis of sociology, e.g. such classics as Weber, Parsons and Homans and its adjacent social sciences with special reference to economics, including public choice theory, property rights theory, the Austrian school and others. This discussion submits many fresh observations; giving the theories under consideration their due, it at the same time exposes their flaws. In addition, the book contains a constructive programme of the research field in question termed socio-economic structuralism which involves many theoretical innovations, notions of ownership and class included. This positive theory draws on, albeit is far from mimicking, achievements of the thinkers considered in the remaining parts of the book. From the reader’s viewpoint, it is interesting to note that the book is written in plain, non-technical language. To put it in a nutshell, „Economy in Society” is a must for everyone interested in economic matters as well as both pastt and contemporary social sciences. This refers equally to the peer scholar and the layman. And the latter is virtually everybody, since, as the author sets out to demonstrate, the economy is omnipresent in social and individual life. In any case, both should find the book thought-provoking. Thanks to its merits the book may certainly serve as a textbook.
","“Jacek Tittenbrun is a sociologist with a keen interest in economic processes and a courage to go against the grain of the prevailing philosophy of science and ideology of public discourse. His methodological roots can be found in Max Weber. In his book a reader gets a crash course in Max Weber, Parsons, Smelser, Homans and has to decide between sugar daddy and nanny state or between the invisible hand and the public interest. My personal prize goes to the Gary Becker and shareholder/stakeholder chapters, though more fashion-conscious readers will probably focus on property rights and a critical assessment of a theory of open access property.
The author does not hesitate to criticize his masters, past economic sociologists, even if they are as influential as Bourdieu or Becker or as monumental as Weber or Marx. His critique, however, is not meant to mask his piggy-backing on them. He wants to interest a non-specialist reader (students or general educated public). In my library, Jacek Tittenbrun’s book will stand next to Sheldon Wolin’s, Theda Skocpol’s and Luc Boltanski’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if it became an academic best-seller in business schools, where it would offer a welcome nourishment after a dull diet of the mainstream US handbooks on market economy and business enterprise.”
—Prof. dr S.J. Magala, Erasmus University of Rotterdam
“Jacek Tittenbrun’s painstaking work truly astounded me. I have nothing but deep admiration for this book. Since many years I have not come across at a work of equally encyploadic intent and fully fulfilled at that. In our runaway world it would be difficult to find someone who, like Jacek Tittenbrun, would endeavour to thoroughly examine the entire, accumulated for many decades and by an extensive discipline, knowledge. Indeed, Tittenbrun has created a compendium of all what sociologists have managed to say on the economy and a manual for everyone who would wish to deal with economic sociology and develop further models and approaches worked out by it. Thousands of scholars would be grateful to Jacek Tittenbrun for his labours. My praise is redundant since the book stands on its own owing to its merits: an enormous size of knowledge accumulated in it. Insight of its considerations and meticulousness of its delivery.”
—Zbigniew Bauman, University of Leeds
""Jacek Tittenbrun’s painstaking work truly astounded me. I have nothing but deep admiration for this book. Since many years I have not come across at a work of equally encyploadic intent and fully fulfilled at that. In our runaway world it would be difficult to find someone who, like Jacek Tittenbrun, would endeavour to thoroughly examine the entire, accumulated for many decades and by an extensive discipline, knowledge. Indeed, Tittenbrun has created a compendium of all what sociologists have managed to say on the economy and a manual for everyone who would wish to deal with economic sociology and develop further models and approaches worked out by it. Thousands of scholars would be grateful to Jacek Tittenbrun for his labours. My praise is redundant since the book stands on its own owing to its merits: an enormous size of knowledge accumulated in it. Insight of its considerations and meticulousness of its delivery.""
— Zbigniew Bauman, University of Leeds
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Rajbala Singh,Psychological Model of Illness,Hardback,978-1-4438-2981-6,34.99,"It is important to address various psychological factors associated with chronic illness. Chronic illness requires proper health management because it cannot be cured fully but can be managed by both patients and medical professionals. The bio-medical perspective emphasizes the cure of illness based on objective clinical tests and ignores the importance of the patient’s own psychological perspective regarding illness. Psychological Model of Illness highlights the role of psychological factors in adaptation to chronic illness such as, myocardial infarction (heart attack).
Psychological Model of Illness attempts to understand the illness behavior of myocardial infarction patients. It provides an empirical investigation of illness cognition, personality, coping and health related effects on quality of life. The findings reported in this book are empirically confirmed and also make sense intuitively and experimentally.
Psychological Model of Illness provides a good blend of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The qualitative analysis indicates a number of ways in which the investigation of illness cognition, coping and health related quality of life might be viewed in a cultural context.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,"Bart L. Weathington, Christopher J. L. Cunningham, Brian J. O’Leary and Michael D. Biderman",Applied Psychology in Everyday Life,Hardback,978-1-4438-3188-8,34.99,"The practice of psychology involves more than the clinical treatment of mental illness. Although the media may perpetuate the view that all psychologists are healthcare professionals, or specialists who deal with deviant or non-normal behaviors, the majority of psychologists study and practice in diverse areas of human functioning other than clinical psychology. Psychology is the scientific study of human thought and behavior, all human behavior. It is a science with the same rigorous research standards as physics, chemistry, or biology. This book showcases a variety of applications of psychological science in the areas of health, law, sports, business, religion, and money. It is an outgrowth of the River Cities Industrial-Organizational Psychology Conference held at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA, in October 2008. The theme of the 2008 conference was “Applying Psychology to Everyday Life.” We hope the content of this volume enhances your awareness of the importance of applied psychology and that it motivates you to further explore its potential to impact our daily lives.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Maria Borges and Cinara Nahra,Body and Justice,Hardback,978-1-4438-3190-1,34.99,"Body and Justice is written by two female Brazilian philosophers, in language which is at the same time academic and accessible to the wider public. It is a must read for anyone interested in subjects connected with the body, justice, sexual morality, ethics and philosophy. Body and Justice insightfully looks at the western woman today: their bodies, sexuality and where we stand at the start of this new millennium. The book asks the questions: How far have we advanced in terms of fairness and justice? How fair is a world where women are still being forced into extreme measures such as dieting, plastic surgery or even bulimia or anorexia to conform to certain traditional patterns of beauty in order to be loved by men? Are we still submitting to male desire, and is this submission still the destiny of women?
Drawing on diverse examples from popular culture and history, the authors also look at the moral issues related to sexuality. Is prostitution immoral? Is sado-masochism wrong? Where do we draw the line in our quest for the ultimate sexual experience? Or does anything go?
The issues of fairness, justice, freedom, and autonomy raised in Body and Justice culminate with a call for a profound reflection on the way that we make our moral judgments and the urgent need to establish a morality for the third millennium – a morality that could steer us through the future, helping us to build a world where we free our bodies from all kinds of oppressions, reaching the fair and just world that we have all always strived for.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Pritha Chandra,(Dis)Agree: Exploring Agreement Mechanisms,Hardback,978-1-4438-3146-8,39.99,"Agreement plays a pivotal role in the generative theory of natural language. More recently, the minimalist paradigm suggests positing a separate operation: Agree – for agreement, alongside Merge – the recursive structure building operation, and Move – the displacement operation in grammar. Though Agree, it would seem, is well-supported by ample empirical data, there is reason to doubt the existence of such an operation in grammar. The advent of minimalism in linguistic theory necessitates doubting all attributes of the language faculty that seem unique to it. If language is part of cognition, the rest of cognition should be reflected in its workings, thus ruling out the possibility of the language organ standing out for being too idiosyncratic. Agree is very language-specific and yet the literature that readily accepts it hardly ever tries to locate it within the cognitive domain. This book makes an effort in this direction and shows that this operation is not conceptually necessary to the language system. It cannot be justified on general economy considerations. Alongside these conceptual arguments, the book also takes up long-distance agreement constructions from languages as diverse as Basque, Chamorro, Chukchee, Hindi-Urdu, Icelandic, Innu-aimun, Itelmen, Japanese, Kashmiri, Passamaquoddy and Tsez to show that what seemingly appear as evidence for Agree at first glance, on closer inspection, turn out to be instances of local, sisterhood relations in grammar.
(Dis)Agree: Exploring Agreement Mechanisms will interest linguists and cognitive scientists, especially students and scholars of syntactic theory and the mind-language interfaces at graduate level and above.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Roberta Trapè,Imaging Italy Through the Eyes of Contemporary Australian Travellers (1990-2010),Hardback,978-1-4438-3197-0,34.99,"For centuries Italy has been the destination of a lifetime for an endless stream of travellers. This book – focussing on the experience of contemporary Australian intellectuals – explores an aspect as of yet scarcely studied within the global phenomenon of travel to Italy, and discovers an image of the country starkly different from the one that prevailed in previous writings. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards there has been a sizeable output of books by Australian writers set in or about Italy. After a meticulous examination of these works, Roberta Trapè has selected and analysed those that she considers the most interesting examples of Australians’ continuing fascination with Italy – works of Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard, and of Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb. Examining the ways the four authors describe Italian places, Imaging Italy looks into what it is that continues to attract Australian writers and artists to the country, and tries to detect new trends in their attitude towards it. The image of Italy that emerges from the most recent works is, no doubt, a superb picture – not flattering but certainly not false – of its contemporary times.
","“Roberta Trapè’s thought provoking study is a timely investigation into the most recent stage of Australian travel to Italy; her hypothesis of the beginning of a new phase which has broken away from the traditional view, makes her work a significant catalyst for further critical thinking.”
– Prof. John Hajek, School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne
“Roberta Trapè’s study is an exploration of contemporary Australian travel literature about Italy. She concentrates on writings of these last twenty years in order to identify possible new trends in Australian intellectuals’ attitudes towards Italy and in their way of approaching and responding to this country. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world. Her purpose is mainly achieved through the juxtaposition of works of four authors, and is developed over three chapters, which highlight the differences between Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard on the one side, and two writers of a younger generation, Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb, on the other. Trapè analyses the four writers’ views of Italy by focussing on the ways their narrators describe the country, making the most of her interviews with Dessaix and Robb as well as of an unpublished notebook the former kept during his 1991 and 1995 visit to Italy. By building up a thought-stimulating image of contemporary Italy, Imaging Italy is an important contribution to the history of the unexhausted (because inexhaustible?) fascination this country exerts on travellers from all over the world.”
– Prof. Gaetano Prampolini, Università degli Studi di Firenze
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Danielle A. Hidalgo and Kristen Barber,Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina,Paperback,978-1-4438-3200-7,24.99,"For those interested in learning more about the personal impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Narrating the Storm serves as an essential read. This important and timeless volume is a compilation of sixteen narratives that address the experiences of Gulf Coast residents, faculty, and graduate students who were caught up in the largest (not so) natural disaster in United States history. Each contributor deploys storytelling sociology as a methodological approach in order to illustrate how “personal” experiences with disaster are not so personal, but rather reflect and are informed by larger social phenomena related to issues including race, class, gender, age, bureaucracy, risk, collective memory, the blasé, and more. The narratives in this volume exemplify how inequality and injustice are unveiled, exacerbated, and created by the occurrence of disaster; and reveal the sociological in everyday and not-so-everyday experiences.
","“Before we are done with it, hundreds of books and thousands of articles will be written about that set of events we have come to call Katrina. But none of them will be anything like this remarkable collection of memoirs. The authors gathered here all know how to spin a tale and how to do so with a rich sociological sensibility. But, far more to the point, they all have gripping stories to tell.”
– Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters
“. . . Narrating the Storm is must reading for anyone interested in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath. Emotionally evocative, riveting at times, this engaging collection of original essays is replete with sociological insight. The book is an important contribution, as well, to the genre of storytelling sociology.”
– Ronald J. Berger, author of Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry
“The stories told by these individuals provide compelling applications and examples of sociological concepts and theories that serve to stimulate our sociological imaginations. Narrating the Storm is an important contribution to society’s efforts to better understand this latest American tragedy unleashed by Katrina.”
– Duane A. Gill, editor of Voices of Katrina, the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy
“The authors . . . give us thoughtful, personal, often emotional narratives as well as clear analytical insight on a wide range of issues . . . Narrating the Storm humanizes the disaster with its honest stories and aptly uses theoretical tools to place the stories in a larger sociological context. This is a unique and engaging book.”
– Alice Fothergill, author of Heads Above Water: Gender, Class, and Family in the Grand Forks Flood
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,Series Editors: Tayo Fashoyin and Michele Tiraboschi; Guest Editors: Pietro Manzella and Lisa Rustico,"Productivity, Investment in Human Capital and the Challenge of Youth Employment",Hardback,978-1-4438-3174-1,44.99,"From an international and comparative perspective, young people’s access to the labour market is a complex issue with certain contradictory aspects reflecting the level of development of labour law and industrial relations in their respective countries. In the most advanced economies, there has been a steady increase in the age at which young people exit the educational system and enter the labour market, giving rise to significant economic and social problems. The increase in levels of educational attainment is associated in some cases with an alarming rate of unemployment among those with academic qualifications, while employers encounter considerable difficulty in recruiting workers for unskilled and semi-skilled positions. The economies of developing countries, on the other hand, are characterized by different trends, reminiscent of the early stages of modern labour law, with the large-scale exploitation of young workers and children, many of whom join the flow of migrants towards the more highly developed regions of the world, with the consequent risk of impoverishing human capital in the country of origin. The ADAPT Labour Studies Book-Series has in connection been set up with a view to achieving a better understanding of these and other issues in the field of Labour and Employment relations in a global dimension, through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-09-01,John Yarwood,Urban Planning in the Middle East: Case Studies,Hardback,978-1-4438-3187-1,39.99,"This book describes diverse urban planning projects in Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (Dubai and Sharjah) Kuwait, Afghanistan, Albania, Syria and Yemen. One thing in common between these countries is that the author has personally worked on all of these projects, and thus the book is a partial professional autobiography.
Each chapter tackles not only a different country but also a different aspect of urban planning and development, as follows: upgrading or improving recent illegal or informal slums, including detailed local planning and strategic planning; urban conservation of Al Muharraq, a historic Gulf city; traditional building construction as a reference point for modern design; urban design of new city centre areas in three prosperous Gulf cities – Kuwait, Dubai and Sharjah; the recreation – post-war – of an urban planning system in Kabul; a historical account of urban planning in the Zog-Mussolini period in Albania, which is contrasted with the currently collapsed system; an account of urban economic regeneration in Syria; and local planning aiming at economic revival in Aden.
These essays articulate eight themes: tradition versus modernism; regionalism and identity; the property market in the urban economy; privacy, the family/tribe etc.; arts and crafts, industrialised construction; the impact of the motor car, and urban infrastructure; the courtyard house; and public administration, local politics and corruption.
The book will be of interest to urban and regional planners, infrastructure engineers, urban economists, architects, urban managers and local government experts as well as those with an interest in the region itself. The book will be useful as an academic textbook in the region, because it presents a wide range of views of the topic, and a wide spread of countries and backgrounds.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Karl Brettig and Margaret Sims,"Building Integrated Connections for Children, their Families and Communities",Hardback,978-1-4438-3277-9,39.99,"Research and practice shows that many vulnerable children and families face more than one challenge and require more than one intervention. However our service system has evolved historically to deal with one thing at a time or to provide services from multiple sources. This lack of integration can have a devastating effect on some families where key information or warning signs are missed. Coronial and judicial inquiries constantly stress the negative impact of a ‘siloed’ approach to services.
Many researchers, practitioners and policy makers have struggled to address this issue. This book has been compiled from a series of presentations given at the 2010 Children Communities Connections conference in Adelaide. Over 300 professionals from NGOs, state and federal departments and academics from all states in Australia attended and focused on three key ideas: what do we know about these families and children, what are we doing to help them and what could we do better. Papers covered a range of topics from neurobiology, to service redesign and family engagement.
Here we have a snapshot of some of the most promising programs and research being undertaken in Australia. It provides a platform for starting conversations on the need to focus on the child and family in the context of their whole life, the need to cross service and professional boundaries and the need to change the way we as professionals do things to improve outcomes for families. It is a book that captures the challenges, the opportunities and the hope for the future.
*Includes contributions from more than 40 practitioners, policy makers and researchers who work in community services, education and health for state, federal government and non government sectors.
","“This is a very special book, filled with innovative and inspiring ideas, and underpinned by an ethos of hope for vulnerable families and their children.”
– Emeritus Professor Dorothy Scott, Australian Centre for Child Protection
“Giving the best start in life to every child should be a policy imperative at all levels. However, in the words of Dr Fraser Mustard ‘Establishing integrated programs for early child development... will be difficult and slow.’ That is why sharing the learnings gained from research and on the ground practice is essential to making this imperative a reality. Congratulations on this compilation of proceedings from a very successful conference – it should be close at hand for every practitioner to consult, reflect on and share.”
– Hon Lea Stevens, Chair Northern Adelaide Early Childhood Development Steering Committee
“This book makes a major contribution to the debate about how we can make services available to the families that most need them. It also addresses the critical issue of co-producing services with children, families and communities so that they feel powerfully engaged in the process. Families don’t want to be passive recipients of welfare handouts. They want to be treated as citizens with voice and choice – equal and active partners in developing public services”.
– Dr Margy Whalley, Director of Research at Pen Green Research, Development and Training Base and Leadership Centre
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,J. Donald Ragsdale,Compelling Form: Architecture as Visual Persuasion,Hardback,978-1-4438-3286-1,44.99,"Compelling Form: Architecture as Visual Persuasion is an assessment of the visual persuasiveness of buildings. It demonstrates that architecture is as capable of social influence as speeches or advertisements are and that an awareness of this influence provides an insight into buildings’ cultural roles. The book considers a diverse array of structures ranging from museums, to performance halls, to universities, to cathedrals, to governmental buildings, to palaces, and to skyscrapers.
Compelling Form is an important extension of theories of persuasion and visual communication to architecture and engineering. The book bases its assessments on the elements of visual literacy and then on the elements of architectural design to demonstrate that buildings, monuments, and even such means of commerce as bridges affect the viewer in such a way as to have social impact.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Alperhan Babacan and Hussein Tahiri,Counter Terrorism and Social Cohesion,Hardback,978-1-4438-3292-2,34.99,"This book critically examines Australia’s counter terrorism measures by looking at the country’s legislative framework within the context of an international law framework and norms relating to human rights. It discusses the Australian governments justifications for the war on terrorism and sociological theories relating to ‘risk society’ as a way to explain Australia’s counter terrorism policies and the impact of the war on terror on social cohesion in Australia. It looks at the adverse impacts of the war on terror on Muslims in Australia and their sense of belonging in a multicultural society and analyses these developments from a sociological perspective. The book also explores the recent shift in the Australian governments’ approach to countering terrorism, a shift from a coercive approach to tackling terrorism to a community engagement approach focused on building relationships and trust with Australia’s diverse communities, particularly the Muslim community.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Susan Farrall,Disclosing a Value System in a Living Will Could be in Your Best Interests,Hardback,978-1-4438-3210-6,49.99,"This book raises the question of whether the values or value system of a competent person, when they have been disclosed in a living will, could play a role in medical treatment decision-making processes under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
The investigation seeks to address a contemporary issue in medical law that directly or indirectly affects many members of society. It arises out of the fact that medical scientific and technological advances are helping people to live for longer. This is consistent with the medical purpose which is to preserve the life, health and well-being of patients. However, medical advances that contribute to people living longer have precipitated a proportionate rise in diseases such as dementia. Likewise medical innovations that enable physicians to artificially preserve and maintain life ensure that fewer people die following serious injury or illness but will inevitably preserve the life of some where mental functioning is unduly compromised. Whether through injury or disease, patients who suffer a permanent loss of decision-making capacity will be incapable of exercising autonomy to safeguard their own body, life and life plan.
As a result, provisions of the MCA governing who decides and the principles on which they should decide how best to act are set to become increasingly relevant to many more people. On that basis the author examines the ethical underpinnings of the law to show why autonomy, not medical beneficence, has succeeded in becoming the primary principle of medical law in respect of the capable patient. Next, the author investigates whether principles that are relevant to capable patients inform the law related to mentally incapacitated patients also. Accordingly, this study is ultimately concerned with the circumstances under which the Mental Capacity Act 2005 authorises the administration of a medical treatment in respect of formerly competent patients; shows why the law might fail to deliver what it promises in respect of this patient group and suggests ways for how the law might be made to work better.
This research is timely and could benefit many people. The range of issues covered in this book will appeal to a wide readership, including medical ethics and law students and tutors, medical and legal professionals and interested members of the public.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Georgeta Raţă and Maria Palicica,Academic Days of Timişoara: Social Sciences Today,Hardback,978-1-4438-3335-6,54.99,"Academic Days of Timişoara: Social Sciences Today is a book of the proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium “Social Sciences Today: Between Theory and Practice” held in Timişoara, Romania, on May 6–7, 2011, under the auspices of the Romanian Academy. It will appeal to teachers of social sciences, no matter the level of instruction. The papers it contains deal with economics (economic crisis, communications, and Total Quality Management), education (systems of formal education, process of education, and educational theory), philosophy (education of the future, orthodoxy and nationalism, philosophy of history, Islamic tourism, rites and beliefs, and aesthetics), psychology (family imaginary, self-esteem, stress, personality, behaviour, intelligence, violence, and communication), and sociology (education, communication, social rituals, and non-formal education).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Syed Najiullah,Muslim Minorities and The National Commission for Minorities in India,Hardback,978-1-4438-3344-8,34.99,"Plural societies all over the world are facing the challenge of integrating the minorities into mainstream polity and society. India is a land of many languages, cultures and religions. It is an ideal place where one can see the minorities in their different dimensions. It is the home to the second largest Muslim population in the world, and their integration into mainstream politics has remained a challenge to the secular polity of India.
The present work ‘Muslim Minorities and the National Commission for Minorities in India’, deals with the Muslim situation in India and the institutional response of the state towards them. It locates the problem of Muslim minorities in the larger context of minority rights and discusses the efficacy of the redress mechanisms, like National Commission for Minorities, in forging the community within larger society. The study highlights that the institutionalization of minority rights and the safeguards, like the monitoring mechanisms, are not just enough, and should also be supported by strong appreciation for the principle of pluralism for the integration of minority communities in the plural societies. The book will be useful to academicians, researchers, students and general public interested in the study of political science, public policy, sociology, plural societies, and minority rights.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Doğancan Özsel,Reflections on Conservatism,Hardback,978-1-4438-3355-4,44.99,"In comparison to other political doctrines, conservatism is an understudied subject and there are few books that bring together works of scholars studying conservatism from different perspectives. Reflections on Conservatism is among these few pieces and is written for those who are interested in conservative thinking and conservative movements in different countries.
In Reflections on Conservatism, readers will find 13 articles covering a wide range of aspects on conservatism. Six of these articles offer analyses of certain theoretical aspects of conservatism and focus on issues such as the definition of conservatism, the theme of inequality in conservative thinking and the applicability of conservative principals to postcolonial politics. Following these, there are seven articles that focus on conservative movements or thinkers from different countries. Here, readers will find detailed discussions on the contemporary state of British and US conservatisms as well as Sarkozy’s UMP. There are also other articles that present the portrayal of post-war cultural conservatism in Denmark, Antall’s conservatism in Hungary and radical conservative trends in Turkey.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Thorsten Botz-Bornstein,The Crisis of the Human Sciences: False Objectivity and the Decline of Creativity,Hardback,978-1-4438-3353-0,34.99,"Centralization and over-professionalization can lead to the disappearance of a critical environment capable of linking the human sciences to the “real world.” The authors of this volume suggest that the humanities need to operate in a concrete cultural environment able to influence procedures on a hic et nunc basis, and that they should not entirely depend on normative criteria whose function is often to hide ignorance behind a pretentious veil of value-neutral objectivity.
In sociology, the growth of scientism has fragmented ethical categories and distorted discourse between our inner and outer selves, while philosophy is suffering from an empty professionalism current in many philosophy departments in industrialized and developing countries where boring, ahistorical, and nonpolitical exercises are justified through appeals to false excellence.
In all branches of the humanities, absurd evaluation processes foster similar tendencies as they create a sterile atmosphere and prevent interdisciplinarity and creativity. Technicization of theory plays into the hands of technocrats. The authors offer a broad range of approaches and interpretations, reaching from philosophy of education to the re-evaluation of business models for universities.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,Tor Halvorsen and Atle Nyhagen,Academic Identities—Academic Challenges? American and European Experience of the Transformation of Higher Education and Research,Hardback,978-1-4438-3439-1,49.99,"The university in Europe – as a central institution of society – is presently met with many new expectations challenging established practices and self-understandings of academics across Europe. In the European Union, the higher education and research system has become a foremost tool of change. Current reforms across national higher education systems are seen as a potential for creating a European Higher Education Area, as well as an opportunity to introduce EU policies and ideas addressing how reforms can contribute to promote this as an EU dimension. An argument that only reforms of the higher education institution – in particular the research university, as a European institution – can make Europe regain its competitive force and economic growth-potential has gained currency in the last decade with reference to the US. The university system of the US, particularly its highly regarded elite universities, is also held forth as a model for the developments in the EU, and thus for the reforms of the different countries of EU.
In this book, however, it is demonstrated that much of the political rhetoric about the construction of the future knowledge economy of Europe and the promotion of a European Higher Education Area may contradict basic values that give Europe its identity as a cultural region. Promoting the US university as an ideal model does not do justice to the kind of problems the US is facing in their own reform efforts, nor does it reflect properly the social costs of copying such an elite system. The book raises a number of issues relating to elitism and democracy, internationalisation and regionalisation, and new forms of governance in higher education and research which current EU policies seem to neglect.
","“This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how current transformations of higher education and research play out in European and US settings. With contributions from a number of well known scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, it offers an inspiring variety of perspectives through which these processes may be understood. This book will be an illuminating guide to current scholarly debates on the internationalization of higher education and research in the early 21st century.”
– Ivar Bleiklie, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen; Project Leader of TRUE (“Transforming Universities in Europe”)
“This book offers a welcome wealth of perspectives on how to understand the changing politics of knowledge, and the impact on traditional academic understandings of the role of universities in Europe and the US. A lively addition to the literature for seeking explanations in historical and political analyses at European and institutional level as well as the familiar neo-liberal variants of globalisation, competition, and corporate forms of academic leadership.”
– Anne Corbett, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-12-01,"Fred Dervin, Anahy Gajardo and Anne Lavanchy",Politics of Interculturality,Hardback,978-1-4438-3365-3,39.99,"Politics of Interculturality fulfills the need for a thorough and critical evaluation of the notion of interculturality. Taking institutional and educational discourses on the ‘intercultural’ as its main focus, the volume captures vigorous debates currently underway across four continents – the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
The volume’s prominent and emerging scholars all agree that change is needed in the way interculturality is used and conceived, especially at a time when the ‘Other’ is an increasing issue of social concerns and political debates. The authors break with tradition by teasing out the hidden assumptions and implications of interculturality – making explicit the implicit presence of the tired old notion of ‘culture’. They also look to establish new ways of engaging with interculturality.
The book will be of substantial interest to a wide range of readers who are interested in international communication, education, migration studies, critical race studies, cultural studies, anthropology, linguistics and business. Undergraduates and novice researchers will also find invaluable advice on how to research politics of interculturality.
","“This collection of essays proposes a novel perspective on the notion of ‘interculturality’, taking it seriously as an actant in a complex and politicized field of interaction. Through in-depth, comparative empirical work, the authors show that while ‘interculturality’ indexes very different meanings and policies in a large variety of contexts, it always transforms as much as it describes the field in which it is deployed. Neither accusatory, nor apologetic, these essays represent contemporary interdisciplinary inquiry at its best – alert to global processes and politics, and yet attentive to the influences of everyday interactions and local representation.”
– Ellen Hertz, Professor of Anthropology, Institut d’ethnologie, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Peter Whiteman and Katey De Gioia,"Children and Childhoods 1: Perspectives, Places and Practices",Hardback,978-1-4438-3456-8,39.99,"The early years of life are fast gaining prominence around the world. It is well documented that investment in early childhood results in exceptionally high returns in multiple arenas; greater than those resulting from enterprise focused on later periods in people’s lives. This book presents current early years research that reflects the transdisciplinary nature of childhood. The first in the Children and Childhoods series, this volume examines multiple perspectives, places and practices that constitute early childhood. The many facets of how children and childhoods are seen, where they are enacted and how they are played out are explained through explorations of playgrounds, hospitals, museums, child care centres and other locations. Similarly diverse are the methodologies that underpin these investigations. Children, practitioners, families and researchers all contribute to this cornucopia of children and childhoods.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Manon van der Heijden,Civic Duty: Public Services in the Early Modern Low Countries,Hardback,978-1-4438-3501-5,39.99,"This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?
It throws light on the ways in which responsibilities were shared between city dwellers and the factors which influenced the allocation and reallocation of public services between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The present study looks at those who provided various services to their communities, the ways in which they were rewarded and monitored, and the gain they may have sought.
It focuses on the situation in the Low Countries, but in many respects, it also describes the development of the provision of public services in most towns in early modern Western Europe. The complex mixture of central and local, private and public, ecclesiastical and secular, individual and corporate initiatives, characterized – to a greater or lesser extent – urban communities everywhere in Western Europe. Above all, early modern towns were civil societies in which community services such as health care, poor relief, and public security were largely shaped and formed by conceptions of citizenship and collective interest.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Fatima Festić,Gender and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Dialogues,Hardback,978-1-4438-3496-4,39.99,"This volume presents eight integrated essays that explore the intersection of the scholarly fields of gender and trauma, combining work that can broadly be located in the subject areas of literary studies, the humanities, and the social sciences.
The contributors search for a more comprehensive theoretical ground to analyze the overlapping, inter-agency, and also, the lines that separate the issues of gender and trauma, to establish a more political linking of the materiality of the effects of trauma to the performativity of gender, as well as to examine the ways in which the categories of sex, sexual difference and sexual identity figure within such a relationship. Likewise, our discussion is guided by the increasing awareness of the cross-cultural delineation, dynamics, and translatability of these fields – the awareness that facilitates the understanding of the instances of their interference in the rhetoric of a dominant culture and in dominant societal structures. This specific input which refers to structurally quite comparable identity formations or to their prevention, and also to complex terms of symbolic legitimacy and intelligibility, is the attainment of a joined intercultural and interdisciplinary work on some of the key concerns we are confronting today.
","“This is a fascinating collection of essays on gender and trauma across history, nations and the disciplines. Violence as both product and process links war, genocide from 16th century South America to 20th century Europe and Asia, mastectomies, slavery, rape, pornography and refugee camps. This is a book that should be used in the interdisciplinary classroom to teach students how violence structures gendered, racial and sexual identities. It illustrates from a number of different angles how memory narratives break the silence around atrocities and create communities where before traumatized individuals had thought they were alone. The reader learns how the telling of an individual story stands in for collectively shared pain and allows mourning to play its role in therapy.”
– Miriam Cooke, Professor, Duke University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,Kamille Gentles-Peart and Maurice L. Hall,"Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas",Hardback,978-1-4438-3453-7,34.99,"Cultural traditions transmitted within the primary and secondary migratory communities of the Caribbean are continually subject to loss, gain and reinterpretation. Communication practices play a role in these processes as they help to sustain and challenge the diasporic subjectivities of the Caribbean. Re-Constructing Place and Space: Media, Culture, Discourse and the Constitution of Caribbean Diasporas seeks to explore the influence of embodied, discursive and mediated communicative forms on the construction and maintenance of Caribbean diasporic communities.
The volume emerged from the 2009 New Media and the Global Diaspora Symposium: Exploring Media in Caribbean Diasporas held at Roger Williams University in the United States. The event sought to encourage interdisciplinary academic discourse on Caribbean migratory populations, foregrounding the role of communicative practices in sustaining their traditions. In keeping with the spirit of the symposium, this volume applies a transdisciplinary lens to understanding the diversity and complexity of Caribbean peoples’ production of and engagement with communication practices.
The objectives for the book are two-fold. The general objective is to contribute to discourse on diasporic identity and performativity. The more specific aim of the book is to present a more complex picture of peoples from the Caribbean region and their diasporic communities.
—From the Introduction
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Heon Kim and John Raines,Making Peace In and With the World: The Gülen Movement and Eco-Justice,Hardback,978-1-4438-3567-1,34.99,"Making Peace In and With the World: The Gülen Movement and Eco-Justice is a representative study and working analysis of contemporary Islamic thought on eco-justice. It cuts through problems facing humanity today, ranging from inequality and violence in the smaller globalized world to “the end/death of nature” as signaled by various environmental and ecological crises. Addressing these problems, this volume sheds light on two dimensions of peace in the earth community – making peace between differing human communities, and making peace between humanity and nature. The phrase Eco-Justice in this volume signifies this dual reality, thereby offering a unique and insightful view that justice in the world must go hand in hand with ecological justice if “peace” is to be made.
With its dual foci of peace, this volume contributes to multi-disciplinary academic areas. It adds to a burgeoning field of religious ecology, by exploring the dynamics at play in the interaction between religion, human communities and nature, and by providing natural scientific works with considerable theoretical, philosophical and ethical implications. This volume also corresponds to studies in the interdisciplinary field of “war and peace.” Since it deals centrally with the question of religion and eco-justice, this volume challenges assumptions of exclusivist religion, religion-oriented violence and the religion-based “Clash of Civilizations.”
The contributors of this volume from diverse academic backgrounds take Gülen and the Gülen movement as the case study. Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is one of the most significant Islamic theologians in the contemporary world, and his inspired Gülen movement is the fastest growing Islamic civic movement worldwide. This volume provides a key reference to studies in Gülen and his movement for new discussions and criticisms. And, by taking this figure and his movement as a case, it reveals a new dimension of peace among differing human communities and between humanity and nature.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Ricardo Gil Soeiro and Sofia Tavares,Rethinking the Humanities: Paths and Challenges,Hardback,978-1-4438-3528-2,34.99,"“In what we consider to be a timely collection of essays, the volume Rethinking the Humanities: Paths and Challenges tries to reflect upon the present condition of the humanities and their manifold challenges, acutely dramatized in an era of increasing contingency and globalization. By drawing upon a wide variety of perspectives and areas of research (from literary studies to philosophy, from cultural criticism to the history of ideas), we hope to surpass the now dominant rhetoric of crisis (as it features, for example, in George Steiner’s essay ‘Humanities – At Twilight?’), not only by devising new horizons for a humanistic-literary culture (Cândido de Oliveira Martins) and envisioning literary studies in a Post-literary age (David Damrosch), but also by advocating an ethical turn for the humanities (Peter Levine and José Pedro Serra) – seen as an education toward autonomy (Richard Wolin), as well as by reconsidering the very notion of crisis within the humanities (Marjorie Perloff and António Sousa Ribeiro). By doing so, and whilst it does not claim to offer definitive answers, the volume nevertheless strives to open up new fields of debate and innovative perspectives.”
– The editors
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,"Will Jackson, Bob Jeffery, Mattia Marino and Tom Sykes","Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges",Hardback,978-1-4438-3612-8,39.99,"Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges brings together a range of original contributions that seek to critically interrogate the concept of ‘crisis’, a seemingly omnipresent and defining metonym of our times. Both international and interdisciplinary in perspective, the leading doctoral scholars and early-career researchers represented in this volume unsettle hegemonic notions of crisis (and possible remedies) by exploring both a very wide range of extant crises (in and of politics, economics, communities, technologies, urban policy, literary representation, media studies, language learning, nationalisms and national identity, and the legitimation of the state), as well as the roots of our contemporary understandings of crisis and the politics of ‘crisis representation’. The book is broadly divided into two sections, ‘Politics and Society’ and ‘Arts, Media and Humanities’.
Originating in the University of Salford Arts, Media and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Conference of 2010, Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety provides both an accessible and wide-ranging general introduction to various applications of the concept of crisis, as well providing a more specialist resource for students exploring crisis in one of the many disciplinary fields represented in this collection. Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety will be of particular interest to students with interdisciplinary interests that encompass cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, politics, sociology and urban studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Henrik Lindberg and Nils Karlson,"Labour Markets at a Crossroads: Causes of Change, Challenges and Need to Reform",Hardback,978-1-4438-3610-4,39.99,"The European labour market models are at a crossroads. Almost all Western European countries have experienced a lack of job creation, productivity and growth for an extended period of time. There is a problem of unemployment overall, but most urgently for the young, for immigrants and for the disabled. There is a clear need for reform.
This volume, Labour Markets at a Crossroads: Causes of Change, Challenges and Need to Reform, investigates a number of vital aspects of the European labour markets and the challenges they face. The chapters give new perspectives on how the different labour market models in Europe work, and what consequences they have. The contributing authors are academic scholars in economics, political science, sociology and economic history from a variety of European countries.
The book is structured around three main themes:
Flexicurity and Labour Market Dynamics
Trade Unions and Industrial Action
Wages and Bargaining
A central conclusion made by the editors is that one of the main causes of the shortcomings of the European labour markets is the existence of what they call “corporative cartels.” Moreover, there are clear options for policy choice, both for legislators and the social partners themselves.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Matt Mollgaard,Radio and Society: New Thinking for an Old Medium,Hardback,978-1-4438-3607-4,39.99,"Radio is the original mass electronic medium and it continues to be critical for audiences wanting news, information, music and entertainment. For over a century enthusiasts, scholars, practitioners, governments, businesses and listeners have developed and influenced radio, making it a fascinating medium to explore today. There is still no mass medium as ubiquitous as radio and the Internet has extended its geographical and temporal reach even further. Radio remains a key media form and technology, not only surviving the challenges of the screen and digital ages, but developing despite and because of them.
This book is a collection of contemporary research by radio scholars from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It explores different aspects of this both simple and complex medium, from early radio histories to the contemporary developments of radio on the Internet. Chapters engage with critical debates about the role of government, business and communities in how radio is used in our societies. Some chapters provide important new insights into making radio, and radio as a cultural force. Other chapters explore developments in research methodologies that enable deeper insights into contemporary radio and its audiences. This book provides a range of platforms for engaging with radio and radio research as a rich, vibrant and fruitful way to further our understandings of the media and ultimately, ourselves.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Christine Bell,"Visible Women: Tales of Age, Gender and In/Visibility",Hardback,978-1-4438-3631-9,44.99,"Visible Women: Tales of Age, Gender and In/Visibility is a reflective, questioning, subjective, self-indulgent and moving narrative exploration of the experiences of women growing older and not disappearing. What lies behind stories of older women becoming invisible and disregarded? How true are they, where do they come from, and what do they mean? How might they be challenged, and what other stories can be told?
The core of the book is the poetic representation of the thoughts and lives of a group of women between 50 and 70. Their narratives are drawn from the email correspondence between the author and her seven co-researchers.
Starting with a search for the anecdotal and mythical ‘invisible woman’, the author’s own story is woven into, and becomes part of, the journey. The landscape – which is beautifully observed in clear, non-academic language – takes us through feminist and poststructuralist theory, existentialism, auto/biography, journalism, fictional writing, art, film, poetry and the internet. In ‘examining the bones’ of tales of invisibility, Christine Bell is motivated by indignation as much as curiosity.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Bahaa-eddin M. Mazid,HateSpeak in Contemporary Arabic Discourse,Hardback,978-1-4438-3650-0,34.99,"HateSpeak in Contemporary Arabic Discourse fills in an obvious gap in discourse studies on Arabic. After a detailed semantic and metaphorical account of hate in English and its equivalents in Arabic and an exploration of the causes of hate, the book illustrates major cases of hate and HateSpeak in contemporary Arabic discourse – Arabs vs. Israel, Sunnis vs. Shi’ites, Ahly vs. Zamalek, Egypt vs. Algeria, Men vs. Women, Rebel vs. Mainstream, and Sa’idi vs. Cairene. There is a separate section on HateSpeak in Arabic in the context of the revolutions in many Arab countries – the Arab Spring – with a focus on Egypt. The book contains a number of apt and interesting digressions on hate in general and hate in Arabic in particular, and a discussion of the issues involved in translating HateSpeak in Arabic. The ultimate goal is not to celebrate hate and HateSpeak, not to side with any party at the expense of another, but to provide a diagnosis followed by a number of remedies that may help convert HateSpeak into HeartSpeak.
","“Dr Mazid is one of the few linguists anywhere with such an amazing range of talent in both Arabic and English linguistics, including stylistics and language variation. He has my highest praise and recommendation as a scholar, colleague . . . and author.”
– The late Professor Alan S. Kaye, communication with LINCOM Europa, 2007
“In addition to its treatment of HateSpeak in Arabic, this book is a very timely exploration of the many technical problems and possible solutions facing translators in an era of globalization, where communication across languages becomes ever more important [in] maintaining clarity of meaning without engendering conflict and hate.”
– Stephen A. Bird, Chair, Department of General Linguistics, UAE University
“Mazid’s HateSpeak is refreshing, humorous and educational [and makes] the reader aware of many facets of a specific contemporary Arabic discourse. Although hate speech is far more pervasive in the Arab world than recognized, this is the first scholarly work to explore its ramifications, semantics and uses as generated from different historical and cultural settings well into the current Arab Spring. Undoubtedly, a fascinating must-have book for readers interested in the Arab world.”
– Iván Humberto Jiménez-Williams, Visiting Professor, Department of General Linguistics, UAE University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,"Filippo Arfini, Maria Cecilia Mancini and Michele Donati","Local Agri-food Systems in a Global World: Market, Social and Environmental Challenges",Hardback,978-1-4438-3664-7,39.99,"Local Agri-food Systems in a Global World: Market, Social and Environmental Challenges is an important new collection of essays making a landmark contribution to the ongoing debate on local agri-food systems, local development in rural areas and new patterns of agri-food systems. There is a new awareness of the links between local and global strategies of food production and processing, and these have become an increasingly important topic of research worldwide.
Effective analysis of the spatial dynamics of agri-food systems requires an interdisciplinary approach involving economics, geography, sociology, demographics and agronomy. Chapters cover areas such as: current spatial dynamics in agri-food systems; the socio-environmental impact of agri-food systems on rural development; the role of local resources in agri-food systems; the governance and public policies of local agri-food systems; and, last but not least, new methodological approaches to spatial dynamics of agri-food systems. The book provides an essential tool for researchers and academics in rural economics, sociology, geography and social sciences as well as policy makers.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,José-Luis Álvarez-Galván,Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy: The Case of Call Centres in Mexico City,Hardback,978-1-4438-3738-5,39.99,"This book examines the impact of outsourcing on workers and their employment conditions in the new economy. To do so, the call centre industry in Mexico City is analysed through a large number of in-depth interviews with workers and managers, available statistics and visits to leading firms in the sector. The case of call centres is paradigmatic as it is often seen as a flag-ship industry of the new economy, rapidly growing and subject to high pressures for costs reduction. The Mexican experience is crucially relevant to understand employment conditions in a weak institutional setting where labour protection is low and business competition intense.
Overall, outsourcing has gained popularity as a mechanism to deal with the uncertainty of increasingly challenging business environments. Nonetheless, the practice of outsourcing also raises important concerns. This book identifies those managerial practices which have a substantial impact on workers and their employment conditions such as: job designs; customer segmentation; non-standard contracts; intensified supervision; union avoidance; limited career opportunities; and strict social divisions in the workplace. These findings also suggest that a number of practices that were common in the ‘old’ economy are still dominant in the organisation of work in the twenty-first century.
The book is a useful reference for scholars and students concerned with employment and labour studies, economic development, and globalisation.
","“Call center workers are the proletariat of the 21st century, and the rising countries of the global South are the economic epicenter of the 21st century. So, José-Luis Álvarez-Galván’s book could hardly be more timely, or more on target. Álvarez-Galván’s fascinating study introduces us to the invisible organizations, managers, and ‘infoproletarians’ who are creating the new world of commerce, information, and work.”
– Chris Tilly, University of California Los Angeles
“In the new global division of labour, the service sector and outsourcing have gone through dramatic changes: multi-employer workplaces have become one major mechanism to change capital-labour relations in favour of clients. The empirical analysis undertaken by Dr Álvarez-Galván for the case of call-centres in Mexico shows not only increasing segmentation and precarious labour conditions, but also increasing control of clients. The analysis allows for an interesting conceptual debate, and provides insight into new forms of collective responses by workers.”
– Enrique Dussel Peters, National Autonomous University of Mexico
“In Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy, José-Luis Álvarez-Galván gives original insight into the dynamics of the call centre industry, through detailed case studies of call centre subcontractors in Mexico City. This innovative study situates worker experiences within a sector in which day-to-day operational and management decisions are profoundly shaped by negotiations with client firms. Dr Álvarez-Galván sheds new light on how the responses of call centre managers to their clients affect worker experiences and working conditions, situated within the distinctive social and political institutions of Mexico.”
– Virginia Doellgast, London School of Economics and Political Science
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Kipton E. Jensen,Parallel Discourses: Religious Identity and HIV Prevention in Botswana,Hardback,978-1-4438-3718-7,34.99,"Animated by the belief that public health programs in Botswana, or other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, would be more effective if those who designed and implemented them possessed a better understanding of existing ethno-medical as well as religious beliefs and cultural practices, Parallel Discourses provides a revised topology of religious identity in Botswana and then shows why it is important to disaggregate or otherwise distinguish between diverse faith-based communities – from traditional African religions and African Independent Churches to mainline Christian denominations and Muslim communities – when designing or implementing faith-based HIV prevention programs. It also describes the identity politics at work within various faith communities as well as between the faith sector and public health officials. And while it may be true that there have existed parallel if not competing discourses on HIV and AIDS in Botswana, between the public health sector and the faith sector or between traditional healers and allopathic physicians, each with their own paradigms of authority and evidence, these strands of discourse are, as suggested throughout this book, amenable to a dialogical rapprochement. Interweaving parallel discourses on HIV and AIDS is itself instrumental to the implementation of increasingly effective HIV prevention programs, enhanced HIV diagnostic capacities and better care for PLWHA (People Living with HIV and AIDS). Though these essays focus on the many obstacles to collaboration between faith communities and the public health sector in Botswana, they also suggest common ground for increasingly collaborative and effective faith-based HIV prevention interventions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Donna West,Signs of Hope: Deafhearing Family Life,Hardback,978-1-4438-3654-8,39.99,"Signs of Hope tells the story of a narrative inquiry with three deafhearing families. For many of us, deafness represents loss and silence. For others, being deaf is a genetic quirk; an opportunity for learning, spiritual adventure and reward. For yet others, it is the most natural thing in the world; a connection to a genealogical layer of signing ancestors and the continuation of a culture. Amid the noise of mainstream, medical and educational discourses of deafness, here are family voices demanding to be heard – whether spoken or signed – that challenge audiological and surgical intervention, that call for scrutiny and critique of ‘inclusive’ deaf-related pedagogical practices, that rail against marginalisation of members of minority cultures. Over four years, Donna West has recorded the stories of three families who wish to counter and resist what they see as damaging misconceptions and discriminatory constructions of deafness and deafhearing family life. Here, spaces are created that respect and acknowledge human beings – adults, children, deaf, hearing – as storytellers. The poetic and performative narratives at the heart of this book reveal not only the ways in which hurtful definitions of, and discrimination towards, deaf people and signing deafhearing families is destabilised, but also the ways in which celebration of deaf culture and sign language are affirming and vital for healthy family life.
","“This is a joyful book which takes the reader on an unexpected ride through seemingly familiar territory (families with deaf children) but which is totally transformed by Donna West’s creative approach. Her ever-reflexive eye entices us to examine the assumptions we bring to the text and makes space for us to think in different ways about the experiences we find recorded there. The book blends critical thought and poetry, history and contemporary life, identity and performance with infinite subtlety and radical scholarship. Anyone with an interest in ‘deaf lives’ will be refreshed by this book.”
– Alys Young, Professor of Social Work Education and Research, University of Manchester
“This is a beautifully written, powerful and extraordinary book which will appeal to a wide range of readers within the Deaf community and beyond. It should be read by families, professionals, practitioners, academics and policy makers and those working in organisations concerned with deafness. It should also be read by researchers who are interested in feminist and narrative inquiry – because this book is an exemplar of those approaches.
Donna West has created a text based upon her own experience of working in the field of Deaf Studies over many years; her in-depth exploration of the history of deafness; theories; practices; and methodologies, all woven together with intimate, moving stories that vividly bring alive the experience of individuals and families who live with deafness.”
– Kim Etherington, Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Juan de Dios Martínez Agudo,Teaching and Learning English through Bilingual Education,Hardback,978-1-4438-3713-2,39.99,"These days, numerous studies document and advocate the potential effectiveness of the CLIL approach, which is viewed as a real revolution in second language pedagogy. European bilingual education models are currently exemplified by CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning – a new generic and/or umbrella term for bilingual education, which has been rapidly spreading throughout Europe since the mid-nineties. Over the last decade there has been an explosion of interest in CLIL pedagogy in Europe and beyond. However, CLIL pedagogy also involves complex challenges concerning its implementation and the professional development of teachers.
This publication provides readers with a collection of original papers covering essential aspects of CLIL pedagogy. This collection of papers serves as a good indication that valuable research is being conducted throughout Europe and that CLIL research is establishing itself as an important area of applied linguistics.
This book is mainly addressed to those in-service teachers who teach in bilingual classrooms anywhere in the world, under any circumstances, and who wish to know more about CLIL pedagogy. It can also be used as a helpful handbook for EFL student teachers. The book is also for teacher trainers running both pre-service and in-service courses.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,"Ivan Biliarsky, Ovidiu Cristea and Anca Oroveanu",The Balkans and Caucasus: Parallel Processes on the Opposite Sides of the Black Sea,Hardback,978-1-4438-3652-4,44.99,"The overall character of the Black Sea region has been defined over time in various ways. For specialists in economy and trade, it has represented a region at the crossroads of the trade routes between Europe and Asia; for political scientists and historians, it has been a space of confrontation between the great terrestrial and naval powers; for the scholars attentive to its cultural dimensions, it has been a contact zone, a space of interaction between different peoples, religions and cultures. These attempts at a definition all revolve around an essential (and ambivalent) feature of the Black Sea as a factor of connection, a bridge, and at the same time a border, a dividing line between Europe and Asia, between the Baltic and the Mediterranean region. In this fluctuation between the two, the predominance of one over the other (“bridge” or “border”) has depended on a number of factors, first among them the distribution of power relations in the region.
This volume, which originated in a symposium hosted by the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest, brings together contributions coming from scholars within the Black Sea region and outside it, in an attempt to look at the Balkans and Caucasus from a comparative and multi-disciplinary perspective, highlighting their differences, as well as their common features. The overarching question this volume and the papers included in it address – and leave open – is to what extent we are dealing with a coherent zone, whose past, present and future can legitimately be considered as being traversed by meaningful interrelations, suggesting a shared destiny.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Jonathan White and I-Chun Wang,"The City and the Ocean: Journeys, Memory, Imagination",Hardback,978-1-4438-3719-4,39.99,"Throughout history cities have been locations of human encounter. Equally they have been contexts for the trade of goods and services, for the evolution of various forms of urban space, and for the production, development, and enrichment of culture and technology. Many cities grew up along shorelines, which themselves constitute some of the globe’s most important cultural boundaries. For above all else, it is water that has separated but also connected different communities, races, religions and nations, down through recorded time. With the rapid advance in technologies of communication, encounters between cultures have multiplied at a rate that no individual can follow or control. The present book constitutes a space of “memory” in its own right, one of its chief raisons d'être being that a group of diverse scholars herein maps certain key encounters between peoples, past as well as present, and the urgent issues generated in consequence. No one person could have traced such diversity and made sense of it, whereas a scholarly grouping of persons reporting on phenomena from around the world, such as is provided here, offers its readers a vision of global change and development.
With the twentieth and twenty-first centuries a new set of mega-cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America has emerged to challenge the primacy of European and North American metropolitan centres. This expanded landscape is here interpreted with special attention, as already mentioned, to cities located at coastlines, hence (generally speaking) more exposed to globalizing trends. Migrants, exiles and refugees, ethnic and racial minorities, as well as alternative or countercultural groupings continue to complicate the ways in which cities articulate their now pluralized identities, in terms of (and by means of) literature, history, architecture, social events, and other forms of artistic and cultural production. The international scholars whose work is assembled in these pages are well placed to engage with the intersecting themes and issues of the volume. Contributors have mapped different examples from Homeric narrative, through Renaissance drama and its representation of crossways of culture such as Rhodes and Malta, to an earlier time in the development of a New World city such as Boston: others look at the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ complexity of great world cities and of oceanic migration or trade between them. Shanghai, Singapore, London, Detroit, Shantou, Macau, and Saigon are some that are dealt with in detail. Emphasis falls on both the historical reality of those contexts as well as how they have been culturally represented.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,"Damon Talbott, Marike Janzen and Christopher E. Forth","Bodies and Culture: Discourses, Communities, Representations, Performances",Hardback,978-1-4438-3741-5,34.99,"Bodies and Culture is a collection of contemporary interdisciplinary research on bodies from emerging scholars in the humanities and social sciences disciplines that addresses issues relating to a range of historical and contemporary contexts, theories, and methods. Examining the diversity and capabilities of bodies, this volume focuses on the role of culture in shaping forms and conceptions of the corporeal. In particular, these essays interrogate the role of the body in articulating and reinforcing social differences, especially the effects of racist, colonialist, and other hegemonic ideologies on the agency and diversity of bodies. Bodies and Culture also considers the place of the body in forming identities, images, and narratives of individuals, and the practices of modifying bodies and social roles through physical activities from exercise to artistic performance. This collection will appeal to scholars in a wide range of areas, including literature, anthropology, sociology, art history, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and fat studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,"Edited by Wojciech Kalaga, Assistant editor Agnieszka Kliś",Civilisation and Fear: Anxiety and the Writing of the Subject,Hardback,978-1-4438-3750-7,44.99,"Paradoxically, if nature has always been a source of fear, civilisation – its other and at the same time the epitome of progress and order – has not only doubled fear itself, but also added its new sister, anxiety. In effect, the notions of civilisation, fear and anxiety can hardly be separated. Fear – either linked with anxiety or distinct from it – lies at the foundation of civilisation, which as much promises to shelter us from these afflictions as it does proliferate them. Confronted no longer with the adversary powers of nature, humans have to face now the adversary powers produced by their own endeavours and ideologies. Each effort aimed at attaining an equilibrium results in new, unexpected rifts and breaches into which fear and anxiety grow. Out of the games played between fear and civilisation there emerge new versions of the human subject: homo anxious, homo civilis, homo rationalis.
This volume represents a collection of papers devoted to the many various relations between fear and society, culture and civilisation – both Western and Eastern, contemporary and past. The articles collected here approach the relationship of civilisation, fear, anxiety and the subject from multiple perspectives. Relating to modern critical thought, including that of Kant, Freud, Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, they investigate the objects, causes and effects of fear: reality, nature, reason, libidinal excess, atheism, critical discourse, technological advances, conspiracy, terrorism, capital punishment, the diversity of cultures, and the breakdown of civilisation as a whole: most of all, however, they explore the various shades of fear itself.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Cheryl Lynn Duckworth and Consuelo Doria Kelley,Conflict Resolution and the Scholarship of Engagement: Partnerships Transforming Conflict,Hardback,978-1-4438-3766-8,39.99,"As the field of conflict analysis and resolution continues to grow, scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize that we can learn from one another. Theory must be informed by practice and practice must draw on sound theory. Above and beyond this lies a further recognition: without at least attempting to actually engage and transform entrenched conflicts, our field cannot hope to achieve its potential. We will merely remain in a more diverse, multi-disciplinary ivory tower. This edition breaks new ground in explicitly connecting the Scholarship of Engagement to the work of conflict resolution professionals including those in the academy, those in the field, and those who refuse to choose between the two. The text explores a wide variety of examples of, and thinking on, the Scholarship of Engagement from participatory action research to peace education, and from genocide prevention to community mediation and transitional justice.
","“[Conflict Resolution and the Scholarship of Engagement] provides us with insightful examples of town-gown relationships at the local as well as global level that benefit both the community and the university. [It] shows us how research projects can be used to build sustainable bridges and working partnerships through the Scholarship of Engagement.”
– Dr Linda M. Johnston, Executive Director, Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics and Character, Kennesaw State University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Simon McMahon,Developments in the Theory and Practice of Citizenship,Hardback,978-1-4438-3745-3,34.99,"The institution of citizenship has traditionally been understood as equal membership of a political community. Developments in the Theory and Practice of Citizenship comes at a time when this is undergoing a period of intense scrutiny. Academics have questioned the extent to which we can refer to unified, homogeneous national citizenries in a world characterised by globalisation, international migration, socio-cultural pluralism and regional devolution, whilst on the other hand in political practice we find the declared Death of Multiculturalism, policy-makers urging for active, responsible citizens, and members of social movements calling for a more equitative, equal and participatory democracy. Citizenship is being reassessed and redefined both from above and from below in politics and society.
The contributions to this volume engage in analysis of the processes which are bringing about an evolution of our understanding of citizenship and the individual’s relationship to the state, the polity and globalisation. Through empirical case studies, they highlight how in practice the terms of membership of a citizenry are negotiated in society through laws, political discourse, cultural associations, participatory processes, rituals and ceremonies. In doing so, these contributions offer an illustration of the diversity of venues and processes of citizenship and illustrate the benefits of an understanding of citizenship as a social practice. The book thus provides an opportunity to pose theoretical, practical and moral questions relating to these issues, as well as offering avenues for further research in the future.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Lilia Gurova,"Inference, Consequence, and Meaning: Perspectives on Inferentialism",Hardback,978-1-4438-3778-1,34.99,"Inferentialism as a theory of meaning builds on the idea that what a linguistic expression means depends exclusively on the inferential rules that govern its use. Following different strategies and exploring various case studies, the authors of this collection of essays discuss under what circumstances and to what extent the central tenets of inferentialism are tenable.
The essays in this volume present the results of a three-year research project “Representation and Inference” which was conducted from the beginning of 2008 to the end 2010. The aim of the project was to assess the research program of inferentialism as it has been pursued recently by Robert Brandom, Mark Lance, and Jaroslav Peregrin. Earlier versions of these texts were presented at the conference “Inference, Consequence, and Meaning” held in Sofia on the 3rd and 4th of December, 2008.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Ian Rivers and Richard Ward,Out of the Ordinary: Representations of LGBT Lives,Hardback,978-1-4438-3743-9,34.99,"Out of the Ordinary: Representations of LGBT Lives is a book that introduces readers to the politics and practices of representation as they apply to the lives and perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups and individuals. The chapters collected in this volume issue a challenge to the ordinariness of heterosexuality, and an associated invisibility of those who are situated outside of or beyond the ordinary. The book demonstrates that social and cultural representations serve as both a site of fruitful reinvention and a battleground for the emergence and visibility of ‘non-normative’ voices and interests. It will support readers in developing an in-depth understanding of the politics of sexuality and gender identity alongside a broader appreciation of the diverse terrain and conditions under which a multiplicity of identities are negotiated, contested and regulated in everyday life.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Adenrele Awotona,Rebuilding Sustainable Communities with Vulnerable Populations after the Cameras Have Gone: A Worldwide Study,Hardback,978-1-4438-3739-2,54.99,"This volume focuses on the status of the elderly and the disabled after disasters globally as well as the challenges of post-earthquake rebuilding in Haiti.
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has estimated that between 1987 and 2007, about 26 million older people were affected each year by natural disasters alone and that this figure could more than double by 2050 due to the rapidly changing demographics of ageing. People with disabilities (physical, medical, sensory or cognitive) are equally at risk of utter neglect during and after disasters. The Australian Agency for International Development estimates that 650 million people across the world have a disability and about 80 per cent of them live in developing countries.
Similarly, before the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti was a “country with tremendous development needs and numerous impediments to development,” according to Congresswoman Maxine Waters when introducing a Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to cancel Haiti's debts in March 2007. These impediments included an overwhelming burden of international debt; lack of personal and community assets; and, very little or no internal and external capacities, all of which have been exacerbated by the aftermath of the earthquake.
It is against this background that the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters at the University of Massachusetts Boston organized two international Conferences in 2010 – in April, on Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Haiti in the wake of the January Earthquake; and, in July, on Rebuilding Sustainable Communities with the Elderly and Disabled People after Disasters.
This edited book consists of selected papers that were presented at these academic events. The topics include Disaster Experiences of the Elderly and the Disabled in Nigeria; The Vulnerability of Elderly People in the Aftermath of Earthquakes in Iran; Methods for Assessing and Developing Understanding of Resiliency in Communities; The Tuareg’s traditional Shelter for Disaster Mitigation and Reconstruction in Libya; and, People with Disabilities in Haiti Before and After the 2010 Earthquake.
","“This book will make a very-much-needed contribution to the analysis and procurement of resources needed when catastrophes occur. You may be aware that the Minister for Overseas Development in the U.K. recently bewailed inadequacies in swiftly bringing International resources to bear when major calamities happen. Chapters in this book highlight such problems and address solutions. It should therefore be an important guide to Governments and resource providers worldwide for appropriate action in the face of unforeseeable major disasters.
In addition, the text will make clear definitions of social vulnerability. This is an area exercising the minds of many governments around the world. In Britain in 2011 we saw reactions to the economic climate; but the picture has become confused as various politicians give their slant on public disorder. Chapters in this book should help to clarify the situations and behaviours of people who are most vulnerable. Through this one might hope that Governments will more sensibly be guided in finding a response which permanently and sympathetically ameliorates the situation for many people.
Professor Awotona is an expert in the fields this book addresses, and has worked for many years with others in attempting to find permanent solutions in physical form as well as in social relationships, to lift the lot of the worst effected by natural disasters and poor governmental administration.“
—William Frank Hill, Professor of Architecture (retired), Surrey, United Kingdom
“This book has been based on two important meetings that were organised in CRSCAD in the year 2010 related to rebuilding sustainable communities with the elderly and disabled after disasters. It is an excellent collection of essays from people who have made profound contributions to this field from around the world. It is also a book that displays consistent quality of content which illustrates the interconnectedness of the different aspects and dimensions of rebuilding sustainable communities after disasters and clarifies key terminology in the field such as “vulnerable population”.
I strongly recommend this book to researchers, professionals, managers and everyone who are potential victims of disasters and who have to create awareness, understanding and actions in emergency planning and response.”
—Gülsün SAĞLAMER, Professor of Architecture and Former Rector, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey; also, Former Chair of the European Council of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP).
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Simon Toms,The Impact of the UK Temporary Employment Industry in Assisting Agency Workers since the Year 2000,Hardback,978-1-4438-3747-7,44.99,"Temporary agency work has been a central topic of employment discourse in recent years, and the flexible working arrangements it can provide individuals and organisations has served to increase this attention in the current economic climate. Temporary employment agencies can provide organisations with fast access to potential staff and individuals with a variety of flexible working opportunities. However, negative worker experiences and the lack of contractual protection have been a source of criticism that resulted in the EU’s adoption of the Agency Workers Directive towards the end of 2011.
This study is concerned with assessing the impact of the UK temporary employment industry in assisting agency workers since the year 2000, and incorporates four research questions: (1) To what extent have temporary employment agencies provided employment opportunities to vulnerable groups since the year 2000? (2) How are individuals psychologically affected by working as temporary agency workers, and what are the implications? (3) Individual agency workers often interact with several different groups including temporary employment agencies, third party employers, permanent workers and trade unions. Are there tensions that exist between these groups, and how do they manifest themselves? (4) Recent legislative development has occurred with the adoption of the Agency Workers Directive. What are the implications for individual agency workers and temporary employment agencies?
The study incorporates semi-structured interviews with agency workers and their permanent colleagues, as well as recruitment consultants and their clients. Additional data from participants’ follow-up interviews and analysis of researcher diary extracts serves to build a picture of the temporary employment industry at an individual and organisational level. The findings of the study include the influence that motive can have upon how agency workers view their ensuing employment, the negative psychological impact that reduced contractual obligation can have upon the individual, and the detrimental outcomes that can result from the short-term and cyclical nature of agency employment. Further findings are also discussed, and the text concludes by outlining the study’s contribution to knowledge.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-03,Sandra J. Lindow,Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development,Hardback,978-1-4438-3988-4,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Henrique Jales Ribeiro ,Inside Arguments: Logic and the Study of Argumentation ,Hardback,978-1-4438-3880-1,49.99,"This volume includes a collection of eighteen essays that provide a decisive input to the study of logic and argumentation theory by some of the finest specialists in these areas, covering the main schools of thought and contemporary trends in the beginning of the 21st century. In these essays, the authors clarify the status of what we currently call, ambiguously and problematically, “logic” and “argumentation theory”, and discuss the no less controversial issue of the relationship between these two concepts when applied to the study of argumentation and its problems. At the same time, they take stock of the most recent developments of argumentation theory considered as an ongoing research subject.
It is the first time in the last few decades that a work this comprehensive and up-to-date on such matters is published. This volume is an essential tool for all of those interested in the study of the relations between logic and argumentation, particularly at the university level. It provides not only an introduction to these subjects, but also the necessary framework for further specialised research development in the future.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,"Murray Leith, Iain McPhee and Tim Laxton",Scottish Devolution and Social Policy: Evidence from the First Decade,Hardback,978-1-4438-3790-3,39.99,"Through the analysis of specific policy areas in Scotland and a consideration of key social issues, this work examines devolved policy in a number of specific areas, and the changes wrought by the first decade and more of devolution in those areas. Each chapter considers specific aspects of social policy in Scotland, and then the final chapter addresses whether the founding principles of Scottish devolution have transferred from principles to policy. The various ideas and themes all relate to the core ideas that underpinned devolution and the creation of the Scottish Parliament. While policy areas are directly addressed within most chapters, others consider class, equality, and the removal of the democratic deficit. This work judges whether these larger issues, as well as individual areas of social policy, have been better addressed within contemporary Scottish society since devolution took place.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Frank A. Salamone ,The Heroic Anthropologist Rides Again: The Depiction of the Anthropologist in Popular Culture ,Hardback,978-1-4438-3881-8,29.99,"This collection of papers, presented at the 2011 American Anthropological Association meetings in Montreal, Canada, represent the beginning of the anthropological investigation of the way in which anthropologist have been portrayed in popular culture. Frank A. Salamone provides an overview of the field today, looking for depictions of anthropologists in various genres – film, fiction, TV, and everyday life. The contributors look at specific portrayals of anthropologists in popular media, including using popular fiction to teach anthropology. The work is lively, accessible, and profound.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Christina Staudt and Marcelline Block ,Unequal Before Death,Hardback,978-1-4438-3792-7,39.99,"Death has been deemed the “great equalizer,” but each journey towards our shared, ultimate fate is unique. The length of our lives, the quality of our last days, how our deaths are perceived by others, and the handling of our remains are governed by nature and many socio-cultural factors. Unequal Before Death is an edited collection that addresses inequalities surrounding death from the perspectives of scholars in a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines, including art history, anthropology, Film and media studies, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, sociology, and statistics. The majority of the chapters of this interdisciplinary anthology are revised versions of papers presented at the second Austin H. Kutscher Memorial Conference, entitled “Unequal Before Death,” organized by the Columbia University Seminar on Death in March 2010 and attended by leading experts in academia, healthcare and the not-for-profit sector. The purpose of this volume is to bring attention to the many inequalities affecting the end of life experience and to encourage collaborative research and action that can improve the experience for the dying and those around them. This volume does not question the truism of death as the ultimate equalizer but rather, seeks to explore the many ways in which the final journey is not equal.
","""Death is anything but the great equalizer. Unequal Before Death is a critically important collection that illuminates how the politics of life are inextricable from the politics of death. From the AIDS epidemic to martyrdom in Palestine, from the death of soldiers to the death of celebrities, this book unpacks the complex relationships between death, illness, grieving, embodiment, power, culture, and nation. In the face of such inequalities, we readers cannot go gentle, but must rage, rage for the birth of justice even at the dying of the light.""
- Sayantani DasGupta, MD MPH, co-chair, Columbia University Seminar in Narrative, Health and Social Justice
""This book brings a dozen excellent minds to bear on the intersection of two of our universals, inequality and death. It advocates neither of them, but puts social, medical, and many other kinds of expertise together to reflect on what they mean. Those who make policy, study it, or have to deal with it need to master the lore and the thinking it offers us.""
- Robert L. Belknap, PhD, Columbia University, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages; Director Emeritus of University Seminars
""French founder of modern semiology Roland Barthes stated that the title of a work marks what follows as a product worthy of purchase. That concept is vital to this anthology. The snappy title Unequal Before Death introduces, through lucent prose, a splendid topos and field of knowledge that deserve to be consumed. Read this book as a tool-kit for comprehending, surviving, and perhaps even counter-mastering the lies, lures, deceptions, and miscreant acts of the Lords of Inequality.""
-Marshall Blonsky, PhD, New School University
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Kristy Beers Fägersten,Who’s Swearing Now? The Social Aspects of Conversational Swearing,Hardback,978-1-4438-3793-4,44.99,"Who’s Swearing Now? represents an investigation of how people actually swear, illustrated by a collection of over 500 spontaneous swearing utterances along with their social and linguistic contexts. The book features a focus on the use of eight swear words: ass, bitch, cunt, damn, dick, fuck, hell, shit and their possible inflections or derivations, e.g., asshole or motherfucker, offering a solution to the controversial issue of defining swear words and swearing by limiting the investigation to the core set of words most common to previous swearing studies. The specific focus results in accurate depictions of contextualized swearing utterances. Precise frequency counts are thus enabled which, along with offensiveness ratings of contextualized and non-contextualized swearing, enable a clarification of The Swearing Paradox, referring to the phenomenon of frequently used swear words also being those which traditionally are judged to be the most offensive.
The book revisits the relationship between gender and swear word usage, but considers the distribution based on the core subset of swear words, revealing similarities where others have claimed differences. Significantly, Who’s Swearing Now? considers the aspect of race with regards to swear word usage, and reveals behavioral differences between, for example, White and African American males and females with regards to word preferences as well as social impetuses for and effects of swearing. Questionnaire and interview data supplement the swearing utterances, revealing participants’ individual credos about their own use or non-use of swear words and, interestingly, about others’ allowed or ideally prohibited use of swear words. These sets of data present thought-provoking and often entertaining statements regarding the unwritten set of rules governing swearing behavior. Who’s Swearing Now? concludes with close analyses of four recent and highly publicized incidences of public swear word usage, considered in light of the spontaneous swearing utterances, speaker and addressee variables such as gender, race and age, and perceptions of offensiveness and propriety.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Marc Arnold,"Disease, Class and Social Change: Tuberculosis in Folkestone and Sandgate, 1880-1930",Hardback,978-1-4438-3967-9,44.99,"This social and medical history of tuberculosis during the late Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war periods assesses the shifting inter-relation of medical, political and social forces in determining responses to this devastating disease. The previously unexamined history of the beginnings of open-air treatment for the poor and destitute in English coastal resorts demonstrates how contrasting meanings were assigned to the disease along lines of class. It also permits an analysis of the effects of scientific ideas, in particular social evolution and germ theory, on attitudes to poverty and chronic disease.
In Folkestone and Sandgate these conflicting perceptions of the disease were highlighted in a clash of interests between reformist public health officials in overcrowded London boroughs and a provincial plutocracy with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in an elite health resort. This local controversy precipitated calls for state treatment of the disease and throws light on the ways in which doctors, politicians and other social commentators, including historians, have tended to frame the issue of tuberculosis according to their own political perspectives and values. Medical attitudes to tuberculosis varied between viewing it as a disease of poverty that could most efficiently be eradicated through addressing problems of poor housing and overcrowding to a focus on the isolation and sterilisation of those deemed to possess an hereditary taint.
Heroic accounts of the impact of bacteriology on the development of public health in England in the early twentieth century have often been simplistic and misleading. A pervasive eugenic consciousness and the growth of workers' mutual aid societies as public health providers were also significant factors leading to state provision for the tubercular under the National Insurance Act of 1911. Although concerns over the dangers of infection from tuberculosis were prevalent from 1898, after World War I a movement away from a focus on infection is evident and a more holistic approach emerged that emphasised strengthening the immune system of the tubercular through improvements to diet and housing. Conflicts between an infection model of tuberculosis and a focus on social reform still characterise approaches to tuberculosis treatment today.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Sybille Reinke de Buitrago,"Portraying the Other in International Relations: Cases of Othering, Their Dynamics and the Potential for Transformation",Hardback,978-1-4438-3903-7,34.99,"Portraying the other in international relations significantly shapes interaction among actors in the international field, consequently colouring views of the other and legitimating behaviour toward the other. This edited volume presents current analyses by international scholars on othering processes and self-other constructions within international relations, attempting to fill a gap in the debate on this fascinating topic and its socio-political implications. Othering is illustrated in three thematic sections: I) Othering in interstate and interregional relations, II) Othering in the policy field of terrorism and counterterrorism, and III) Possible transformations of othering. Contributions discuss othering from diverse angles and with different conceptual approaches, illustrating the multiple forms othering can take. They show how othering can be studied and its dynamics and consequences critically analysed and more comprehensively understood, but also the limits to these attempts. Various motivations for engaging in othering are elaborated. The images, ways of representations and stylistic means that are applied are exposed and their internal logic as well as effects on thinking and behaviour in the international arena examined. Furthermore, possibilities for modifying othering processes, that is, how negative self-other constructions may be transformed, with the goal of enabling the peaceful existence of different groups, are presented
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Develeena Ghosh,Shadowlines: Women and Borders in Contemporary Asia,Hardback,978-1-4438-3978-5,39.99,"Shadowlines: Women in Asia explores the often ambiguous and contradictory roles of Asian women in the postcolonial world. As globalisation advances, labour mobility is transforming traditional definitions of women’s work. The commodification of female sexuality in both the international and the national marketplace generates conflicting dynamics of oppression and liberation, as do the wider possibilities of employment and migration more generally. The consequences can be enslaving or empowering depending on context. How do the women themselves experience these changes? What are their opportunities for engagement with the wider political world which shapes these processes? In this volume a range of eminent academics address these questions by placing the testimony of individual women within the wider discourse of postcolonialism and gender studies.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Gregory J. Durston,Burglars and Bobbies: Crime and Policing in Victorian London,Hardback,978-1-4438-4006-4,49.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Rory T. Cornish and Marguerite Quintelli-Neary,Crafting Infinity: Reworking Elements in Irish Culture,Hardback,978-1-4438-3987-7,39.99," Crafting Infinity is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that investigates how aspects of traditional Irish culture have been revised, retooled, and repackaged in the interest of maintaining the integrity of Irish myth tales, artistic values, spiritual foundations, and historic icons. From perspectives on early Irish Christianity to national mythology, traditional Irish music, Irish history represented in film, literary inventiveness, and evidence of the Irish diaspora, this study examines how artists, writers, theorists, and emigrants from Ireland re-interpreted, and reshaped Irish traditions, often invoking Ireland’s relationship with other nations before it acquired independence.
Because with each retelling of legend, reworking of musical styles, and recreating of historic events, there has been inventiveness and alterations, inconsistencies affirm that the continuators of Irish tradition both preserve and alter their source materials and reshape iconic figures. The end product of these endeavors is tantamount to infinity, for just as Standish O’Grady, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Jennifer Johnston, and Edna O’Brien craft fiction or rewrite folklore, with Irish characters and themes, while borrowing from other cultural wellsprings (such as Orientalism or French design), so exporters of Irish art forms and dispositions towards musical style, nationalism, and spirituality necessarily reconfigure the original, as no tradition can remain pure indefinitely.
Each facet of Irish culture takes on the quality of a Celtic knot, artistically infinite in its circular design, and indestructible in its universal presence and recognition. In Crafting Infinity, each contributor dismantles a quality of Irish history, culture, or the arts, revealing how a multiplicity of interpretations can be applied to Irish traditions.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-08-01,Peter Baofu,"The Future of Post-Human Migration: A Preface to a New Theory of Sameness, Otherness, and Identity ",Hardback,978-1-4438-3984-6,64.99,"Is migration really so constructive that, as Ralph Emerson (1909) once wrote, in the context of the New World, “asylum of all nations… will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new…smelting-pot”? (WK 2012)
This noble lie (the “melting pot” in the 20th century) can be contrasted with an opposing noble lie (of the “salad bowl” in the 21st century), when those in multiculturalism like Tariq Modood (2007) argue nowadays that multiculturalism “is most timely and necessary, and…we need more not less.” (WK 2012a)
Contrary to these opposing noble lies (and other views as will be discussed in the book), migration (in relation to both the Same and the Others) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe.
Surely, this exposure of the opposing noble lies about migration does not mean that the specific field of study on migration is a waste of time, or that those interdisciplinary fields (related to the study of migration) like animal migration, gene migration, diaspora politics, culural assimlation, human trafficking, urbanization, brain drain, tourism, ethnic cleansing, environmental migration, globalization, religious persecution, national identity, gentrification, fifth column, migration art, xenophobia, space colonization, multiculturalism, and so on are worthless. Needless to say, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.
Instead, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of migration, especially in the dialectic context of the Same and the Others—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the theory of the cyclical progression of migration) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way.
If successful, this seminal project is to fundamentally change the way that we think about migration in relation to Sameness, Otherness, and identity, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.
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