Search results for ""ibidem-verlag""

Post-communist democratic revolutions have, so far, taken place in six countries: Slovakia (1998), Croatia (1999-2000), Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005). The seven chapters in this volume situate these events within a theoretical and comparative perspective. The volume draws upon extensive experience and field research conducted by political scientists specialising in comparative democratisation, regime politics, political transitions, electoral studies, and the post-communist world. The papers by Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, Henry Hale, Paul D'Anieri, David R Marples, Taras Kuzio, Lucan A Way and Steven Levitsky, as well as Anika Locke Binnendijk and Ivan Marovic explore different regime types and opposition strategies in post-communist states, the diffusion of opposition strategies between states in which democratic revolutions were attempted, the strategic importance of youth NGO's in mobilising oppositions towards democratic revolutions, the use of non-violent strategies by the opposition, path dependent, theoretical and comparative explanations of the sources of successful and failed democratic revolutions, and the factors that lie behind divergent post-revolutionary trajectories. The volume represents a breakthrough in our understanding of why and how democratic revolutions take place in the post-communist world. It provides an integrated analysis of why such upheavals succeed in some, but fail in other states. The contributions point to, among other issues, why the post-revolutionary breakthroughs in Serbia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan have encountered obstacles, the ousted regime was never fully defeated and its representatives were able to launch counter-revolutions, as well as why, in Serbia and Ukraine, the political forces of the ousted regimes have returned to power in free elections held after democratic revolutions. Post-Communist Democratic Revolutions in Comparative Perspective will be important reading for scholars and policy makers alike.

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Ukraine's 2004 presidential election was falsified, spurring the Orange Revolution. To many observers, the Orange Revolution was a shock, and the stolen elections a recent development. However, both the election fraud and the effort to topple the government of Leonid Kuchma emerged from political dynamics that had appeared in earlier Ukrainian elections. In this path breaking volume, leading scholars place Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution in the longer perspective of Ukraine's post-Soviet electoral politics. Covering both presidential and parliamentary elections over the entire post-Soviet period, the chapters clarify the manner in which earlier elections had emerged as part of the battle for power in Ukraine well before 2004. The opposition that came to power in 2004 had also won the 2002 elections and had developed its strategies during opposition protests that had been catalysed by the Kuchmagate crisis in 2000. The evolution of the dynamics that led to the fraudulent 2004 election reveals that the events of 2004 represented continuity as well as change. By placing the 2004 elections within a longer trajectory, the volume enriches our understanding of the Orange Revolution and helps us to understand the difficulties faced in consolidating Ukraine's democratic breakthrough following the Orange Revolution. The volume contains an introduction to Aspects of the Orange Revolution I-VI by Andreas Umland followed by eight chapters by Robert K. Christensen, Edward R. Rakhimkulov and Charles Wise, Paul D'Anieri, Robert Kravchuk and Victor Chudowsky, Paul Kubicek, Taras Kuzio, Lucan Way, and Anna Makhorkina. These authors bring complex and varied perspectives that situate Ukraine's post-Soviet elections in economic reforms, constitutional law, foreign policy objectives of integrating into Europe, as well as in the broader context of the rough and tumble competition for political control of Ukraine.

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This book examines literary examples concerning William Wallace against the background of various historical sources and evaluates the construction, the changes, and the relevance of this Scottish national myth. For over 700 years, William Wallace has been fascinating people. What he achieved for his country is almost unbelievable. Already during his lifetime, Wallace's reputation must have been legendary. Over the centuries, a powerful myth has been created around his person, which was fostered by diverse writers, and even by Hollywood. There have been several periods throughout Scottish history when the interest in William Wallace intensified enormously, resulting in an increase of literary publications on the freedom fighter. These climaxes appeared whenever the Scots were dissatisfied with the English rule and brought the old animosity between England and Scotland to new life. These tensions caused many writers to revive memories of Wallace and his ideals by projecting the medieval story into their own time. Thus, more and more bits and pieces were added to the myth whose message seems to have had tremendous effects on the Scots. Wallace's unfulfilled quest of freeing Scotland even became an issue in several programs of political parties. With the release of the film "Braveheart" in the mid-1990s, the Wallace cult was reborn once more. Was it the prevailing political situation that stimulated such an overwhelming enthusiasm for William Wallace again? Did the Wallace myth influence the Devolution Movement? Is Wallace's spirit still alive today? Do the Scots still cherish what he fought for, and will they finally achieve his goal of a fully independent Scottish Nation? With regard to the current political situation, the author finds interesting answers to these questions and discusses the chances for a possible Scottish independence.

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The Crimea was the only region of Ukraine in the 1990s where separatism arose and inter-ethnic conflict potentially could have taken place between the Ukrainian central government, ethnic Russians in the Crimea, and Crimean Tatars. Such a conflict would have inevitably drawn in Russia and Turkey. Russia had large numbers of troops in the Crimea within the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine also was a nuclear military power until 1996.This book analyses two inter-related issues. Firstly, it answers the question why Ukraine-Crimea-Russia traditionally have been a triangle of conflict over a region that Ukraine, Tatars and Russia have historically claimed. Secondly, it explains why inter-ethnic violence was averted in Ukraine despite Crimea possessing many of the ingredients that existed for Ukraine to follow in the footsteps of inter-ethnic strife in its former Soviet neighbourhood in Moldova (Trans-Dniestr), Azerbaijan (Nagorno Karabakh), Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), and Russia (Chechnya).

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This book breaks into the black box of Russian cultural diplomacy's ideological underpinnings and modi operandi. Relying on publicly accessible sources such as annual reports, news from official websites, social media posts, and other pertinent materials, the contributors examine the three most significant state-affiliated or full-fledged state institutions operating in this field. Their organization and management, budget and financial details, links to oligarchs, the government and other institutions, most important activities, as well as overall geographical presence are analyzed. The discourses of these organizations during the Russia-Ukraine War, including after 24 February 2022, are given special attention.The collection discloses how the Kremlin's foreign propaganda institutions support the Russian authoritarian regime and its expansionist policies.

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Western academics, experts, and journalists specializing in Eastern Europe and Eurasia have grappled with two fundamental analytical crises in connection with the 1991 disintegration of the USSR and Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Both crises were brought about by similar lack of understanding by scholars, think tank experts, and journalists of Moscow's relations with its neighbors. Typically, they were characterized by a downplaying of the historic and current role of Russian great power nationalism.The authors of this issue of JSPPS investigate how the Kremlin's recent turbo-charging of Russia's information warfare, 24-hour TV, and social media activity has expanded on traditional pro-Russian sentiments among Western academics, experts, and journalists. The contributors analyze the downplaying of Russian nationalism, misinterpretations of the 2014 crisis, sympathetic portrayals of Crimea's occupation, and the use of the term "civil war" rather than "Russian–Ukrainian war" for the Donbas conflict in academia as well as the think tank world and media in the UK, Germany, Poland, Japan, USA, and Canada.The list of contributors includes: Olga Bertelsen (Tiffin University, Ohio), Paul D'Anieri (University of California at Riverside), Sanshiro Hosaka (University of Tartu), Andrei Znamenski (University of Memphis, Tennessee), and Sergei I. Zhuk (Ball State University, Indiana).

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At 5:08 a.m. on February 24, 2022, Kateryna woke up in Kyiv to the sound of bombing. This marked the end of her world, work plans and ideas, travels All that remained was to save herself and her children. The inevitable changes, which shook something deep and significant within her, became an impetus to write about what had caused her and all Ukrainians so much pain. She wrote, one after another, novellas, poems, and essays that reflect the story of the war during the first months of Russia's full-scale invasion. This book contains words woven with emotions and experiences of ordinary people who have become heroes. The main goal of this collection is to help people all over the world better understand what each Ukrainian felt and how this war changed us all.

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The Ukrainian response to the 2022 Russian invasion has inspired a new appreciation for their country both within and beyond Ukraine. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in the defense of their country has surprised many. The stories presented here highlight the ways in which Ukrainians have long explored the meaning of their country and culture through the arts; and the manner in which the arts and their creators have empowered Ukrainians to confront the Russian invaders. These developments also offer intriguing clues about the culture, society, and politics of a post-war Ukraine.

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Izabela Kazejak examines the process of re-establishing Jewish communities in two cities: Wrocław, which passed from Germany to Poland in 1945, and L'viv, which passed from Poland to Soviet Ukraine. She compares the similarities and differences of the two regimesʼ policies, and why the effort to create self-identified Jewish yet loyal Communist communities did not succeed.The first chapter looks into the pre-war history and wartime destruction of Jewish communities in Breslau, Germany, and Lwów, Poland. Subsequent chapters trace the efforts of the post-war regimes, supported by those Jews who had survived the Holocaust and chose to remain in Eastern Europe, to reconstitute Jewish life up to 1968 in the case of Wrocław and the 1970s in the case of L'viv.The author explores and analyzes several context in relation to this process: the official policies towards Jews of the government of the Polish People's Republic and the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; the aims and effects of these official policies; the implementation of these central policies at the local level; the national contexts of Poland and Soviet Ukraine; popular and official antisemitism and its effect on the post-war Jewish communities; and finally, the effects of the economic and social modernization carried out by the Communist regimes on the development of the Jewish communities.

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Combining social science with the multi-disciplinarity of area studies, Alexander Motyl discusses in fifteen essays the malleability and modernity of national identity, the attractions and limits of social constructivist imaginings of nations, the impact of national discourses, binary morality, and historical narratives on interpretations of the Holocaust and the Holodomor, the relationship between liberalism, nationalism, and fascism, and the role of national identity and nationalism in Eastern Europe in general and the Soviet Union, Ukraine, and Russia in particular. Throughout the chapters, Motyl questions conventional wisdom, exposes its inconsistencies and weaknesses, and encourages readers to rethink their views in light of conceptual clarity, theoretical rigor, elementary logic, and empirical evidence.

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Most studies of consciousness proceed from a standpoint where external reality already pre-exists. As such, these studies would be inherently unable to recognise it if consciousness in fact arose at the same level where reality itself takes its source -- at the level where wave functions collapse and thereby generate the fabric of material reality. At the same time, a number of compelling contemporary interpretations of physics strongly hint that consciousness must most likely be a fundamental constituent of reality, that it cannot be emergent, and that the role of the brain is limited to the harnessing, optimisation, and deployment of consciousness within material reality -- aka the realm of collapsed wave functions. This view seems to be also supported by a range of credible observations made by a number of credible professionals who operate at the margins of studies of consciousness, such as psychiatrists, who occasionally observe puzzling cases involving unusual phenomena related to consciousness. If we back-engineer the inevitable macroscopic consequences of a consciousness born at the same level as the building blocks of physical reality itself, we discover that such marginal phenomena become then fully explainable. The book offers readers new insights into interpretations of current research in physics and enables readers without a background in physics to understand the implications and their relevance to our understanding of consciousness.

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This book is above all a commitment to encounter. Is the research result of a Working Group (Grupo de Trabajo) of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), which brings together people who study and research, but who, above all, carry out collective actions from social organizations to transform the reality of our continent. This character of thinking doing, or rather, of doing thinking, of the Grupo de Trabajo gives this text a peculiar cadence. A cadence that demands a collective and cooperative authorship. It is also a recovery of the struggles that precede us, the sutures of the loom of memory that patriarchal and colonial capitalism strives to pierce, and that is another of the powers of this book. The book invites to dismantle the patriarchal and colonial legacies embedded in the very foundations of hegemonic academic thought, and demonstrates the urgent need to understand this as a political task of the moment. It is organized into three main stations, which, like a train journey, can be travelled through sequentially from beginning to end, or entered randomly, stopping at one or another section according to the interests and concerns of the moment. The volumes contributors are Alicia Migliaro Gonzaìlez, Ana Luciìa Ramazzini, Colectivo Magdalenas UruguayTeatro de las oprimidas, Cristina Cucuriì, Cristina Vega, Delmy Tania Cruz Hernaìndez, Dina Mazariegos Garciìa, Elvira Cuadra Lira, Eva Vaìzquez, Gabriela Ruales, Gabriela Veras Iglesias, Giulia Marchese, Inþigo Arrazola, Ivonne Yaìnez, Jonatan Rodas, Juliana Diìaz Lozano, Lisset Coba, Lorena Rodriìguez Lezica, Manuel Bayoìn, Mariano Feìliz, Mauricio Arellano Nucamendi, Melissa Moreano, Miriam Garciìa-Torres, Miriam Lang, Rosa H.G. Govela Gutieìrrez (), Rossana Cantieri Cagnone, Sofiìa Zaragocin, and Walda Barrios-Klee (). Rosa Govela Gutiérrez and Walda Barrios-Klee died while the book was being edited.

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When Megan Buskeys grandmother Anna dies in Cleveland in 2013, Megan is compelled in her grief to uncover and document her grandmothers life as a native of Ukraine. A Ukrainian American, Buskey returns to her familys homeland and enlists her relatives there to help her in her questand discovers much more than she expected. The result is an extraordinary journey that traces one womans story across Ukraines difficult twentieth century, from a Galician village emerging from serfdom, to the bloodlands of Eastern Europe during World War II, to the Siberian hinterlands where Anna spent almost two decades in exile before receiving the rare opportunity to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960s. In the course of her research, Megan encounters essential and sometimes disturbing aspects of recent Ukrainian history, such as Nazi collaboration, the rise and persistence of Ukrainian nationalism, and the shattering impact of Russias full-scale invasion in 2022. Yet her wide-ranging inquiries keep leading her back to universal questions: What does family mean? How can you forge connections between generations that span different cultures, times, and places? And, perhaps most hauntingly, how can you best remember a complicated past that is at once foreign and personal?

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Martina Napolitano explores the poetics of one of the most significant Russian authors of the 20th century. Sasha Sokolov's oeuvre represents a milestone in the development of Russian literature; his legacy can be traced in most prose and poetry appearing in post-Soviet Russia. Taking as point of departure the studies and analyses written so far and considering the new suggestions contained in Sokolov's last published book Triptych (2011), Napolitano further examines the keystones and the theoretical framework that arise from a close reading of Sokolov's works, trying to systematize the findings into what can be considered as a structured authorial theory of literary creation. The study demonstrates how Sokolov's oeuvre cannot be fully understood but within the widened perspective of inter-artistic creation: in fact, the writer, a "failed composer", as he admits, in his literary work has tried to draw natural and spontaneous connecting lines between the artificially categorized realms of art (word, sound, painting, performance). Finally, the book sets forth the first solid analysis of Sokolov's concept of proeziia, not merely a genre nor style of his own invention, but a more significant theoretical reflection of the writer about the role and value of literature, art, creation, and finally beauty.

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The geopolitics of post-communist Europe are not only important for Ukraine itself, but ultimately also for the future of the continent as a whole. This concerns the interactions between Kyiv, on the one hand, and the capitals of East-Central Europe as well as the Southern Caucasus, on the other. Where does Kyiv currently stand geopolitically and how should it engage in the region between the Baltic, Adriatic, Black, and Caspian Seas? This volume examines which interests and motivations some select countries in East-Central Europe and the Caucasus have towards Ukraine and provides answers to the question which chances there are for new multilateral networks or structures. Such multilateralism around Ukraine could go beyond the already existing, yet geographically and functionally circumscribed Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM), the Visegrad Four, the Bucharest Nine Group, and the Three Seas Initiative. The volume also illustrates how the ever-present elephant in the roomRussiashapes the international relations of the post-Soviet space. Researchers from several post-communist countries examine these issues from their specific points of view.

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Gregory Maertz has written extensively on Romantic and Modern literature, art, and ideas. In these nine related essays, he investigates the expression of Romanticism in literature, philosophy, and cultural politics from the Renaissance to Modernism. The comparative essays in Part One examine the affinity between the religious logic of Sir Thomas Browne and Søren Kierkegaard; Tolstoys enduring attraction to Schopenhauers thought; Rilkes debts to the sculptor Rodin; the identification of an early novel by William Godwin as the chief precursor text to Mary Shelleys Frankenstein; and the corresponding literary projects of Osip Mandelstam, Rilke, and David Jones. In Part Two the essays are clustered around the literary activity of writers and philosophers associated with radicalism in Britain and transcendentalism in America: a reconsideration of the life of William Godwin; the central role played by English radicals in the transmission of German literature; Godwins innovations in travel fiction; and the crystallization of authorial identity around the influence of Goethe in the work of women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot.

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ENTANGLEMENTS: ENVISIONING WORLD LITERATURE FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH scrutinises current debates to bring historical and contemporary South-South entanglements to the fore and to develop a new understanding of world literature in a multipolar world of globalized modernity. The volume challenges established ideas of world literature by rethinking the concept along the notion of entanglements: as a field of variously criss-crossing relations of literary activity beyond the confines of literary canons, cultural containers, or national borders. The collection presents individual case studies from a variety of language traditions that focus on particular literary relationships and practices across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe as well as new fictional, poetical, and theoretical conceptions of world literature in order to broaden our understanding of the multilateral entanglements within a widening communicative network that shape our globalised world.

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This is the first monograph to analyse Beckett's use of the visual arts, music, and broadcasting media through a transdisciplinary approach. It considers how Beckett's complex and varied use of art, music, and media in a selection of his novels, radio plays, teleplays, and later short prose informs his creative process. Investigating specific instances where Beckett's writing adopts musical or visual structures, Lucy Jeffery identifies instances of Beckett's transdisciplinarity and considers how this approach to writing facilitates ways of expressing familiar Beckettian themes of abstraction, ambiguity, longing, and endlessness. With case studies spanning forty years, she evaluates Beckett's stylistic shifts in relation to the cultural context, particularly the technological advancements and artistic movements, during which they were written. With new examples from Beckett's notebooks, critical essays, and letters, Transdisciplinary Beckett evidences how the drastic changes that took place in the visual arts and in musical composition influenced Beckett and, in turn, were influenced by him. Transdisciplinary Beckett situates Beckett as a key figure not just in the literary marketplace but also in the fields of music, art, and broadcasting.

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The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC's current resistance against-what it perceives as-Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC's arguments against-and sometimes preferences for-modernization and analyses which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book's systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC's considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC's today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favour of unity.

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By sensing the fundamental ideas of earth and the earth-thought, this collection seeks to negotiate with and react to the underlying semasiological or psycho-geographical principle of geopoetics that cuts across varied and at times conflicting schools. From reading some geopoetical texts to understanding the idea of earth in Humboldt and Marx-Engels, topolitics in Tintin, reef-thinking, geopoet(h)ics and Asiabodh, the volume tries to perceive how we poetically exist with the earth. Isn't literature, taking a cue from Hölderlin, a symptom of the way "man lives poetically on the earth"? How is our body and psyche integral parts of the earth-thought? How does literature deal with the concepts of space and place? How literature enables us to comprehend the underlying principle of geopoetics -- the principle of finding art in earth? These are some of the critical questions which this volume seeks to explore. Literature exemplifies a geographical consciousness - an "intimate and subjective" experience of the earth. This book is an attempt to conceive this eclectic infusion of art and earth, so that we are able to ensure that the world of the art always remains in touch with the earth of the world. Let us, through this book, un-earth this deep-rooted spatiality and geographicality in literature. Let us imitate earth through art, as this is the only place where we can live.

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In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the stage-of-becoming plays a vital role. Issue 2021:1 comprises, amongst others, the following interviews & articles: Constructivism in the Study of Sustainable Development; Interview with Krzysztof Żęgota on the Kaliningrad Oblast Role in the Contemporary Russian Federations Geostrategic Outlook; Democracy to come: Derridas undecidability and Laclaus Ethical as Investment Everydayness; John Searle and Posthuman Speech Acts; New Digital Aesthetics and Eventual New Global Tribes: A Brief Overview of Manovichs Instagrammism.

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In September 2017, Dr Nasser Kurdy was stabbed in the neck while entering the grounds of his local mosque. This book tells the story of that attack and how Dr Kurdy came to forgive his attacker. It lays out the international historical events that brought Dr Kurdy to be in that place at that time and it follows events after the attack, combining his surgical knowledge with his experience of the UK criminal justice system as well as a series of reflective enquiries into the nature of forgiveness. The book is the timely and inspiring story of the optimism that can emerge from violence. It also includes contributions from a number of friends, family, and colleagues of Dr Kurdy, which illustrate the impact such an attack can have beyond that on a single individual.

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At 11 o'clock in the evening of 20th August 1968, the armies of four Warsaw Pact countries, the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary, crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia, starting the Operation Danube. Literally overnight the Czechoslovak experiment with Alexander Dubček's liberalization reforms was transformed from living reality into history. Although the Soviet Unions action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for both the unity of the communist bloc and the establishment of the new Soviet foreign doctrine. This book brings the international context of the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia to the center of attention. It brought together experts from within as well as from without Central Europe with the hope of igniting, or, perhaps better, re-igniting an international discussion on the Prague spring, its origins, its unfolding, its aftermath, and, most importantly, the international context. The volumes contributors are: Ljubodarg Dimić, Jakub Drábik, Mihail Gruev, Slavomír Michálek, Miklós Mitrovits, Jackques Rupnik, Alexander Stykalin, Mirosław Szumiło, Michal tefanský, and Virgiliu Tarau.

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The future of our world over the next decade is being shaped by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that seek to uphold childrens wellbeing and, by their call to leave no one behind and to reach the furthest behind first, shine a spotlight on the worlds most vulnerable populations including children and adolescents living in poverty and exclusion. The transformative steps promised in the SDGs to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path assumes greater significance in the post-COVID-19 world where structural exclusions are starkly exposed and deep societal inequalities thickly underlined. This volume seeks to address the main drivers of poverty, exclusion, urbanization, and violence against children and adolescents and investigates how knowledge, information, data collection, measurement, and monitoring can support strategies and innovations to effectively implement the SDGs by drawing on data and experience from several countries across the world including Bangladesh, Colombia, Côte dIvoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malawi, MENA countries, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Suriname, and Thailand. As a result, it contributes to revealing the politics of social inclusion, offering policy proposals towards overcoming inequality and exclusion among children and adolescents.

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In his timely study, Andrii Demartino investigates the multitude of techniques how social media can be used to advance an aggressive foreign policy, as exemplified by the Russian Federation's operation to annex Crimea in 2014. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Demartino traces the implementation of a series of Russian measures to create channels and organisations manipulating public opinion in the Ukrainian segment of the internet and on platforms such as Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal, and Twitter. Addressing the pertinent question of how much the operation to annex Crimea was either improvised or planned, he draws attention to Russia's ad-hoc actions in the sphere of social media in 2014. Based on an in-depth analysis of the methods of Russia's influence operations, the book proposes a number of counterstrategies to prevent such "active measures." These propositions can serve to improve Ukraine's national information policy as well as help to develop adequate security concepts of other states.

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

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This book draws on the authors experience from 26 years of Ukrainian diplomatic service in, among others, Bonn, Berlin, Washington, and Vienna, and his work as a speechwriter to most Ukrainian foreign ministers for the last two decades. Scherbas captivating essays reflect his views of international affairs from a Ukrainian perspective. His deliberations are presented in uncomplicated, plain language. The articles assembled here have repeatedly caused discussion in Ukraine and abroad. By his opponents, Scherba is often described as being surprisingly undiplomatic and even provocative. For instance, his article Why nationalism cant be the national idea of a European Ukraine, published on a Ukrainian nationalist website, stirred considerable controversy in Ukraine. Aside from explaining Kyivs take on some key issues of international relations, these essays provide insights into Ukrainian political thinking since the start of Russias military aggression in 2014, and into the painful political intramural fights in Ukrainian society ever since.

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The biannual, peer-reviewed Journal of Romanian Studies, jointly developed by The Society for Romanian Studies and ibidem Press, examines critical issues in Romanian studies, linking work in that field to wider theoretical debates and issues of current relevance, and serving as a forum for junior and senior scholars. The journal also presents articles that connect Romania and Moldova comparatively with other states and their ethnic majorities and minorities, and with other groups by investigating the challenges of migration and globalization and the impact of the European Union. Issue No. 4 contains: Cosmin Sebastian Cercel: Reversing Liberal Legality: Romanias Path to Dictatorship 19301938 Ştefan Cristian Ionescu: Perceptions of Legality during the Antonescu Regime, 19401944 Mihaela Şerban: Litigating Identity in Fascist and Post-Fascist Romania (19401945) Monica Ciobanu: Writing History Through Trials: The Case of the National Peasant Party Emanuela Grama: Regimes of Evidence, Property Restitution, and Power (Un)making in Postcommunist Transylvania Dragoş Petrescu: Law in Action in Romania, 20082018: Context, Agency, and Innovation in the Process of Transitional Justice Simona Livescu: Institutional Memories and Transgenerational Conflicts: The House of Terror and the Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance

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This book is part of an initiative in cooperation with renowned Chinese publishers to make fundamental, formative, and influential Chinese thinkers available to a western readership, providing absorbing insights into Chinese reflections of late, and offering a chance to grasp todays China. In their influential book Handbook of the History of Religions in China, Zhongjian Mou and Jian Zhang present a panorama of the religions existing in China through time. In their fascinating History, they delineate the emergence and development of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity and explore the roles they played in Chinese society and the interrelations between them. In China, also due to the encompassing Confucian idea of living together harmoniously while maintaining differences, religions -- including newly arrived ones -- came closer together than anywhere else in the world and reached a unique level of peaceful societal coexistence. Despite many frictions and conflicts, communication and reconciliation were indisputably predominant in China throughout history. Buddhism was peacefully introduced into China and, later on, a harmonious, symbiotic syncretism of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism developed -- an exemplary process of how a diverse set of different religions can complement each other and contribute to a better life.

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The book series European Studies in the Caucasus offers innovative perspectives on regional studies of the Caucasus. By embracing the South Caucasus as well as Turkey and Russia, it moves away from a traditional viewpoint of European Studies that considers the countries of the region as objects of Europeanisation. This second volume demonstrates this by looking into forms of inter-regionalism in the Black Sea-South Caucasus area in fields of economic cooperation, Europeanisation of energy and environmental policies, discussing how the region is addressed in the elaboration of a new German Eastern Policy. In the section on norm diffusion, the contributors assess the normative power strategy of the EU and its paradoxes in the region, its impact on civil society development in Armenia, and democracy promotion in Georgia. In the section on legal approximation, issues of a global climate change regime and competition law in Georgia as well as penitentiary governance reform in the South Caucasus according to EU standards and policies are analysed. All contributions also review regional or local contestations for the topics discussed here.

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This book is part of an initiative in cooperation with renowned Chinese publishers to make fundamental, formative, and influential Chinese thinkers available to a western readership, providing absorbing insights into Chinese reflections of late. Haipeng Zhang and Jinyi Zhai provide us with a history of China's struggle for national independence and prosperity, reflecting the humiliation in the sinking period and the struggle during the rising period. After the Japanese aggressions against China had caused more damage to China than all previous invasions, Chinese society not only avoided the continued "sinking", but also laid the foundation for China's modernization and the recent success story to the present day.

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What would you do if one day, without any warning, your child disappeared as if the earth had swallowed it? Theres one moment, and then, in the next momentgone. This book tells the story that Ronnies mother, Anna, had to go through. Was Ronnie kidnapped? Did she run away?Did the worst thing possible happen?Or did 21-year-old Ronnie get tired of Anna? Tired of her meddling and pressing, always wanting to be there and help, sometimes a little too much. From Tel Avivs underworld of nightclubs, drug dealers, and prostitutes to the beauty and mysteries of India, Anna goes on a fascinating journey, following clues and threads of information, alongside an adventurous rescuer, all while getting help from friends and a variety of characters she had never met before. Anna is desperate to discover the fate of her younger daughter. While she realizes that maybe she didnt know her daughter as well as she thought, what awaits her is the greatest natural disaster of our time:a tsunami.

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In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the stage-of-becoming plays a vital role. Issue 2020:1 comprises, amongst others, the following interviews & articles: Zoran Kojcic & Piotr Pietrzak: Interview with Dr. Zoran Kojcic on his unique form of philosophical counselling. Dimitris M. Moschos: Paul Tillich's Critical and Political Theology and his Critique of Modernity. Venera Russo: The Phenomenology of Women. On Female Discourse in Julia Kristeva's and Simone de Beauvoir's work. Venera Russo: Cross-language Relation. The Implications of Relativity in Translation and vice versa. Anastasia Pranindita & Anak Agung Banyu Perwita: The Republic of Korea United States of Americas Strategic Patience: A counter measurement of the Alliance in Responding to Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Nuclear Development Program (2013 2017). Eliza Campbell: Dueling with Disinformation: Disinformation and Information and Communication Technologies in the Middle East. Piotr Pietrzak: How would Realists Interpret People Republic of China's wish to cultivate the image of a responsible great power?

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To say that we are embodied subjects is to affirm that we are both extended and conscious: both a part of the material world and a place where that world comes to presence. The ambiguity inherent in our being both can be put in terms of a double being in. Thus, while it is true that the world is in consciousness taken as a place of appearing, it is equally true that, taken as embodied, consciousness is in the world. How can our selfhood support both descriptions? Starting with Husserls late manuscripts on birth and death, James Mensch traces out the effects of this paradox on phenomenology. What does it mean to consider the self as determined by its embodiment? How does this affect our social and political relations, including those marked by violence? How does our embodiment affect our sense of transcendence, including that of the divine? In the course of these inquiries, such questions are shown to transform the very sense of phenomenology.

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The politico-economic reforms launched during the late twentieth century in post-Soviet Russia have led to contradictory and ambiguous results. The new economic environment and mode of governance that emerged have been subjected to serious criticism. What were the causes of these developments? Were they unavoidable for Russia due to specific factors grounded in the countrys previous experiences? Or were they an intended result of actions taken by the leaders of the country during the last few decades? The authors of this book share neither a deterministic approach, which implies that Russia is bound to fail because of the nature of its economic and political evolution, nor a voluntarist approach, which implies that these failures were caused only by the incompetence and/or malicious intentions of its leaders. Instead, this study offers a different framework for the analysis of political and economic developments in present-day Russia. It is based on four isideas, interests, institutions, and illusions.

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Globalization is not a new phenomenon. Ideas have been circulating all over Europe (and the world) since ancient times, and intercultural dialog is a wide field offering a great variety of approaches. In such times as ours, when the world is swift to change and cultures are destined to meet (sometimes, alas, to clash), the place of literature, or broadly speaking: human and social sciences, within society is often questioned and needs redefining: From the reception studies of the 1970s and 1980s to the stress laid on intermedial and intercultural relations, not forgetting the work done on cultural transfers, this question opens up a wide field of theoretic, methodological, and aesthetic research, which is explored through this volume.

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Freedom of religious expression and assembly has never been under greater threat in post-Soviet Russia. The infamous Yarovaya Law of 2016 has made good on previous legislative endeavours to curtail the activities of undesirable religious entities. Behind the curtain, the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church looms large over state policy and the decline in religious liberties and pluralism. Lincoln E. Flake explains the churchs hostility to non-traditional groups as a consequence of historical-structural factors arising from its Soviet experience and immediate-strategic factors arising from its experience in the post-Soviet religious free market. It was not until the 2014 annexation of Crimea that church-state interests coincided to produce unprecedented collusion. The Church, which had previously only served symbolic purposes for domestic political advantage, was now required for more meaningful active measures in Russias all-of-government approach to advancing its national security strategy. Reciprocation produced the Yarovaya Law and further quid pro quos account for the relapse into religious intolerance. This study contextualizes the churchs present-day posture on religious pluralism by appealing both to historical experience and insights that Rational Choice Theory offers to the study of religious actors and religious behaviour.

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David Tomasi presents new, ground-breaking research on the science and application of Mind-Body Medicine strategies to improve clinical outcomes in inpatient psychiatry settings. Much more than a list of therapeutic recommendations, this book is a thorough description of how Mind-Body Medicine can be successfully applied, from a therapeutic as well as from an organisational, cost-effective analysis viewpoint, to the full spectrum of psychiatric treatments. Furthermore, this study examines the role of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary treatment teams, with a special focus on the profession and the role of psychotherapists and group therapists, thereby providing solid scientific evidence of the benefits of patient-provider therapeutic alliances. In this sense, this book serves as a guide for professionals and institutions both in the private and the public sphere, to learn effective treatment and management strategies.

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In the US as well as in Europe, migration and migration policy is one of the top issues. This timely volume gathers distinguished authors from academic institutions throughout Europe addressing the growing importance of migration policy making and the refugee crisis that European Union member states and other countries are currently facing. By focusing on the most important effects that the migration from Third World countries has brought to the European Union, they provide a critical overview of the politicization, securitization, and social discourse of migration. The authors analyze the impacts on public administration and governance and also discuss the rise of the radical right in EU member states, the rise of populism, and the alienation of citizens from formal politics which is also caused by the growing interest in security and public safety. The pan-European character of the publications scope is vested in its narration; the contributors cover the situation in Western Europe, the critical positions of the Visegrad countries as well as foreign policy making in Slovenia and the Western Balkans. Moreover, the authors address case studies from states such as Armenia and Moldova, including their labor migrants in the Western world. The collection is completed by contrasting and discussing the immigration policies of countries that are well-known for their open and liberal immigration activities such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

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Theories about the nature and function of philosophical imagination depend on our understanding of what kind of universe we inhabit. Some theories are compelling if the universe is meaningful as a whole, but they make no sense if it is not. Raymond C. Barfield discusses conditions that would be necessary if the universe is meaningful as a whole, and then develops a theory of philosophical imagination in light of that starting place. The theory moves toward the conclusion that if the universe is meaningful as a whole, the concept of the analogia entis, the analogy of being, illuminates philosophical imagination in a way that changes our understanding of its function and potential, along with the value of its discoveries through the things it creates.

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This captivating volume brings together case studies drawn from four post-Soviet statesRussia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. The collected papers illustrate how the events that started in 1985 and brought down the USSR six years later led to the rise of fifteen successor states, with their own historicized collective memories. The volumes analyses juxtapose history textbooks for secondary schools and universities, and how they aim to create understandings as well as identities that are politically usable, within their different contexts. From this emerges a picture of multiple perestroika(s) and diverging development paths. Only in Ukrainea country that recently experienced two popular uprisings, the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignitythe people themselves are ascribed agency and the power to change their country. In the other three states, elites are, instead, presented as prime movers of society, as is historical determinism. The volumes contributors are Diana Bencheci, Andrei Dudchik, Liliya Erushkina, Marharyta Fabrykant, Alexandr Gorylev, Andrey Kashin, Alla Marchenko, Valerii Mosneagu, Alexey Rusakov, Natalia Tregubova, and Yuliya Yurchuk.

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The book series "European Studies in the Caucasus" offers innovative perspectives on regional studies of the Caucasus. By embracing the South Caucasus as well as Turkey and Russia as the major regional powers, it moves away from a traditional viewpoint of European Studies that considers the countries of the region as objects of Europeanization. This first volume emphasises the movements of ideas in both directions -- from Europe to the Caucasus and from the Caucasus to Europe. This double-track frame illuminates new aspects of a variety of issues requiring reciprocity and intersubjectivity, including rivalries between different integration systems in the southern and eastern fringes of Europe, various dimensions of interaction between countries of the South Caucasus and the European Union in a situation of the ongoing conflict with Russia, and different ways of using European experiences for the sake of domestic reforms in the South Caucasus. Topics range from identities to foreign policies, and from memory politics to religion.

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Ever since I left the land that was my home, wherever I have traveled and lived, I have been asked the same question: How could a Hitler happen, in the land of poets and scientists and thinkers, the land of music and arts, the land of plenty, the land of orderliness and efficiency, of cleanliness and dependability, the very land of humaneness? Born in Hannover in 1905 as a German Jew, Fred Harry Meyer (1905-1969) and his new Christian bride fled to the USA in the nick of time in 1937. His autobiography provides a vivid and detailed yet flowing picture of the life left behind in Germany up till 1932 and the events that led to Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust.

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This book deals with the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) that was launched on 29 August 1944 in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. In the West, the uprising is an under-researched topic in the history of WWII. The Slovak state was an ally of Nazi Germany, but the uprising proved that the population did not share the regimes ideology.

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In this daring experiment in ethnographic place-writing, cultural geographer James Riding aims to get at the heart of post-conflict Bosnia showing the past alongside the present it created via a series of journeys, and through the retelling of memories. The juxtaposition between the siege of Sarajevo and supersonic metal, the refugee journey and the aid-worker travelling in the other direction, the desperation and fury to change the present yet being stuck with many of the ethno-nationalist politicians and politics of the past -- it is a journey to Bosnia as it is understood today in popular discourse, a war-torn place defined by ethnic conflict, yet also a journey to deconstruct and reveal more than ancient ethnic hatreds portrayed on television screens across the globe from 1992 to 1995. Heavy with the weight of history on the one hand, and an inspirational place with radical emancipatory politics on the other, it is only through innovative storytelling that one can attempt to give a sense of what Bosnia itself is like in words for those who have never been, and -- most importantly -- for those who are from there.

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This book takes stock of the diverse and divergent welfare trajectories of post-socialist countries across Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. It traces the impacts, in terms of poverty, well-being, and inequality, of over two decades of transformation, addressing both the legacy effects of socialist welfare systems and the installation of new social, political, and economic structures and, in many cases, new independent nation-states. Authors from different disciplines address key aspects of social protection including health care, poverty reduction measures, active labour market policies, pension systems, and child welfare systems.

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Czechoslovakia played an important role within the Soviet bloc, yet its history remains under-researched. This monograph blends historical analysis of the superpowers foreign policies with an assessment of their impact on Czechoslovakia and its position within the Soviet bloc. The book thereby places Czechoslovakia on the map of Cold War history, i.e. the era of mutually assured destruction that lasted almost half a century. It provides a lucid introduction to some milestones in international Cold War history in their relation to Czecho-Slovak history. The books novel contribution is to explain Czechoslovakias domestic situation during the Cold War from the outside. Drawing on extensive source materials of Slovak, Czech, American, and Russian provenance, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of post-war Czecho-Slovak history while also contributing to general knowledge about the nature and impact of the Cold War.

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This timely book analyses soft power in the light of neoclassical realist premises as part of the foreign policy toolkit of great powers to expand their sphere of influence. Vasif Huseynov argues that if nuclear armed great powers compete against the same type of powers to expand or sustain their sphere of influence over a populated region, they use soft power as a major expansive instrument while military power remains a tool to defend themselves and back up their foreign policies. Presenting his model of soft power, the author explores the role of soft power projection by great powers in the formation of the external alignment of regional states. He focuses on the rivalries between Russia and the West (i.e. the EU and the USA) over the states located between the EU and Russia (the region known as the common [or shared] neighborhood) and on two of these regional states (Ukraine and Belarus) to test his hypotheses.

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