Search results for ""DEBATE""

The purpose of this book is to excavate and recover a wealth of under-examined artworks and research materials directly to interrogate, debate and analyse the tangled skeins undergirding visual representations of transatlantic slavery across the Black diaspora. Living and working on both sides of the Atlantic, as these scholars, curators and practitioners demonstrate, African diasporic artists adopt radical and revisionist practices by which to confront the difficult aesthetic and political realities surrounding the social and cultural legacies let alone national and mythical memories of Transatlantic Slavery and the international Slave Trade. Adopting a comparative perspective, this book investigates the diverse body of works produced by black artists as these contributors come to grips with the ways in which their neglected and repeatedly unexamined similarities and differences bear witness to the existence of an African diasporic visual arts tradition. As in-depth investigations into the diverse resistance strategies at work within these artists’ vast bodies of work testify, theirs is an ongoing fight for the right to art for art’s sake as they challenge mainstream tendencies towards examining their works solely for their sociological and political dimensions. This book adopts a cross- cultural perspective to draw together artists, curators, academics, and public researchers in order to provide an interdisciplinary examination into the eclectic and experimental oeuvre produced by black artists working within the United States, the United Kingdom and across the African diaspora. The overall aim of this book is to re-examine complex yet under-researched theoretical paradigms vis-à-vis the patterns of influence and cross-cultural exchange across both America and a black diasporic visual arts tradition, a vastly neglected field of study.

Read more less

The European Union is rarely out of the news and, as it deals with the consequences of the Brexit vote and struggles to emerge from the eurozone crisis, it faces difficult questions about its future. In this debate, the law has a central role to play, whether the issue be the governance of the eurozone, the internal market, 'clawing back powers from Europe' or reducing so-called 'Brussels red tape'. In this Very Short Introduction Anthony Arnull looks at the laws and legal system of the European Union, including EU courts, and discusses the range of issues that the European Union has been given the power to regulate, such as the free movement of goods and people. He considers why an organisation based on international treaties has proved capable of having far-reaching effects on both its Member States and on countries that lie beyond its borders, and discusses how its law and legal system have proved remarkably effective in ensuring that Member States respect the commitments they made when they signed the Treaties. Answering some of the key questions surrounding EU law, such as what exactly it is about, and how it has become part of the legal DNA of its Member States so much more effectively than other treaty-based regimes, Arnull considers the future for the European Union. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Read more less

American Errancy is a wide-ranging study of the connection between ideology and the sublime in the work of twentieth-century poets, all American with two, or perhaps three important exceptions. The poets chosen are in debate with the Romantic individualism of Emerson - some reject it outright, but the remainder have devoted substantial work to adjusting to the changed circumstances of their century. The link between Romantic individualism and ideological contexts has preoccupied much criticism of American literature in the last twenty years. For the most part, critics arraign this tradition, suggesting that the writers abscond from difficult political dilemmas to the realm of transcendence. In consequence, the sublime as category for thinking about literary texts has been largely abandoned. Emerson's transcendence is considered at best naive, at worst as providing the nascent corporate capitalism of the late nineteenth century with an iconography with which to execute its agenda. Justin Quinn argues that this critical approach distorts the achievement of poets in the twentieth century: many of the poets discussed extend the tradition of Romantic individualism, but they are not ideologically naive in the above sense. Their work anticipated historicist criticism of the 1980s and 1990s as they began to 'socialise' the sublime, and to explore the ways in which the inheritance of Romantic individualism could engage with ideological contexts. For some of the poets, these explorations supported their oppositional politics (i.e., Allen Ginsberg); for others, paradoxically, the explorations supported conservative politics (i.e., A. R. Ammons); others rejected the Emersonian inheritance outright (Eliot, Hill), but that rejection itself has left an enduring mark on their work.

Read more less

*A Waterstones, Financial Times and New Statesman Book of the Year*'A tremendous book, timely, wise, authoritative and clear' Stephen Fry'A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism' Owen Jones'Clear, brave, compelling' David Miliband'Inspiring ... impassioned ... full of hope' Zadie Smith'This is a fantastic book' Thomas PikettyImagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it - rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating intervention, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today.Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet.This is a book brimming with hope and possibility - a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. Free and Equal has the potential not only to transform contemporary debate, but to offer a touchstone for a modern, egalitarian liberalism for many years to come, cementing Rawls's place in political discourse, and firmly establishing Chandler as a vital new voice for our time.

Read more less

“Superb.” —Steven Pinker“An explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration. . . . McWhorter demonstrates the ‘legitimacy’ of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication, as well as the still unfolding journey that has led to its creation. . . . [His] intelligent breeziness is the source of the book’s considerable charm.” —New Yorker“Talking Back, Talking Black is [McWhorter’s] case for the acceptance of black English as a legitimate American dialect. . . . He ably and enthusiastically breaks down the mechanics.” —New York Times Book ReviewLinguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound “black.” In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect.Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tour of a nuanced and complex language that has moved beyond America’s borders to become a dynamic force for today’s youth culture around the world.John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilization, music history, and American studies at Columbia University. A New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker, he is a columnist for CNN.com, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, and the host of Slate’s language podcast, Lexicon Valley. His books on language include The Power of Babel; Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue; Words on the Move; Talking Back, Talking Black; and The Creole Debate.

Read more less

In Different, world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal draws on decades of observation and studies of both human and animal behavior to argue that despite the linkage between gender and biological sex, biology does not automatically support the traditional gender roles in human societies. While humans and other primates do share some behavioral differences, biology offers no justification for existing gender inequalities. Using chimpanzees and bonobos to illustrate this point—two ape relatives that are genetically equally close to humans—de Waal challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and common assumptions about authority, leadership, cooperation, competition, filial bonds, and sexual behavior. Chimpanzees are male-dominated and violent, while bonobos are female-dominated and peaceful. In both species, political power needs to be distinguished from physical dominance. Power is not limited to the males, and both sexes show true leadership capacities. Different is a fresh and thought-provoking approach to the long-running debate about the balance between nature and nurture, and where sex and gender roles fit in. De Waal peppers his discussion with details from his own life—a Dutch childhood in a family of six boys, his marriage to a French woman with a different orientation toward gender, and decades of academic turf wars over outdated scientific theories that have proven hard to dislodge from public discourse. He discusses sexual orientation, gender identity, and the limitations of the gender binary, exceptions to which are also found in other primates. With humor, clarity, and compassion, Different seeks to broaden the conversation about human gender dynamics by promoting an inclusive model that embraces differences, rather than negating them.

Read more less

An in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the presentFor years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation—one that will purportedly change the “face” of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups.Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations—including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino—have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodríguez-Muñiz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures.Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse.

Read more less

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned. Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur. An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.

Read more less

"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir's career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir's writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translation of the 1945 play The Useless Mouths, written in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Other pieces were discovered after Beauvoir's death in 1986, such as the 1965 short novel "Misunderstanding in Moscow," involving an elderly French couple who confront their fears of aging. Two additional previously unknown texts include the fragmentary "Notes for a Novel," which contains the seed of what she later would call "the problem of the Other," and a lecture on postwar French theater titled Existentialist Theater. The collection notably includes the eagerly awaited translation of Beauvoir's contribution to a 1965 debate among Jean-Paul Sartre and other French writers and intellectuals, "What Can Literature Do?"Prefaces to well-known works such as Bluebeard and Other Fairy Tales,La Bâtarde, and James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years are also available in English for the first time, alongside essays and other short articles. A landmark contribution to Beauvoir studies and French literary studies, the volume includes informative and engaging introductory essays by prominent and rising scholars.Contributors are Meryl Altman, Elizabeth Fallaize, Alison S. Fell, Sarah Gendron, Dennis A. Gilbert, Laura Hengehold, Eleanore Holveck, Terry Keefe, J. Debbie Mann, Frederick M. Morrison, Catherine Naji, Justine Sarrot, Liz Stanley, Ursula Tidd, and Veronique Zaytzeff.

Read more less

Across the twentieth century, Earth's human population increased undeniably quickly, rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000. As population grew, it also began to take the blame for some of the world's most serious problems, from global poverty to environmental degradation, and became an object of intervention for governments and nongovernmental organizations. But the links between population, poverty, and pollution were neither obvious nor uncontested. Building the Population Bomb tells the story of the twentieth-century population crisis by examining how scientists, philanthropists, and governments across the globe came to define the rise of the world's human numbers as a problem. It narrates the history of demography and population control in the twentieth century, examining alliances and rivalries between natural scientists concerned about the depletion of the world's natural resources, social scientists concerned about a bifurcated global economy, philanthropists aiming to preserve American political and economic hegemony, and heads of state in the Global South seeking rapid economic development. It explains how these groups forged a consensus that promoted fertility limitation at the expense of women, people of color, the world's poor, and the Earth itself. As the world's population continues to grow--with the United Nations projecting 11 billion people by the year 2100--Building the Population Bomb steps back from the conventional population debate to demonstrate that our anxieties about future population growth are not obvious but learned. Ultimately, this critical volume shows how population growth itself is not a barrier to economic, environmental, or reproductive justice; rather, it is our anxiety over population growth that distracts us from the pursuit of these urgent goals.

Read more less

'Essential reading for anyone anxious to understand the background to the Brexit debate' TabletWith all the political infighting in British politics over Brexit dominating the news cycle, we almost forgot who we were negotiating with. Now, in Blind Man's Brexit, we get to see and hear exactly what was going on in the corridors of power in Brussels, and how the EU comprehensively outmanoeuvred the UK government. When Lode Desmet met Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's representative on Brexit, about filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the negotiations, he could never have imagined the unique access he would be granted and the extraordinary story that he would end up filming. As the cameras rolled, Lode sat in on private conversations with chief negotiator Michel Barnier and saw first hand how Theresa May's government's negotiating positions were knocked back time after time. The results were aired in the BBC documentary series Brexit: Behind Closed Doors. Written with distinguished political commentator Edward Stourton, who also provides a British perspective on events, Blind Man's Brexit goes beyond the documentary to reveal a staggering and unprecedented failure of diplomacy on one side and contrasts the very clearly defined aims and goals of the EU side. Many books have attempted to tell the story of what happened, but this one has completely unfiltered access to events as viewed by the EU, and shows exactly why, how and where the Brexit negotiations went so spectacularly wrong, resulting in our departure from the EU being delayed beyond 29 March 2019 as the UK was left in limbo and its political system in disarray.

Read more less

Significant Emotions is a piercing examination of the rising use of emotional signifiers in public debate and the rhetoric of an increasingly expansive array of social problems. Building on ideas developed in Ashley Frawley's previous book, Semiotics of Happiness, it examines in detail the ‘emotional turn’ across the social sciences and the broader cultural rise of the ‘age of emotion’ and its influence on how we talk about and approach new social issues. The book explores the rise of supposedly ‘positive’ emotional signifiers that have gained prominence as powerful causes of and solutions to nearly every social ill—from promoting self-esteem, happiness and mindfulness to concerns for well-being and mental health. Conceptualizing the rise and comparative decline of these emotional signifiers as cycles of discovery, adoption, expansion, and exhaustion, the book argues that rather than calling into question one or another of these signifiers, it is necessary to penetrate deeper to the underlying cultural currents that drive their adoption and contribute to their rhetorical power. Through a systematic and in-depth exploration of the appearance of these trends in a variety of claims-making activities across academia, traditional and social media, and social policy, Frawley argues that the ‘age of emotion’ does not represent a step toward a more enlightened and emotionally aware society. Rather, it signifies a preoccupation with emotional deficits and a firm belief that emotional disorientation ultimately underlies nearly every social ill. Emerging from the analysis is the conclusion that emotions have become key signifiers of broader cultural tendencies to affirm conservatism over progress, vulnerability over resilience, and the determined self over the free willing subject.

Read more less

ABSOLUTION BY MURDER is the brilliant and evocative first novel in Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, bringing 7th-century Ireland vividly to life.PRAISE FOR ABSOLUTION BY MURDER: 'In the simultaneously sharp-tongued and full womanly figure of Sister Fidelma, Tremayne has created a heroine whom many readers will willingly follow. Even Brother Cadfael might have tolerated her' Kirkus Reviews As the leading churchmen and women gather at the Synod of Whitby in 664AD to debate the rival merits of the Celtic and Roman Churches, tempers begin to fray. Conspirators plot an assassination, while mysterious, violent death stalks the shadowy cloisters of the Abbey of St Hilda. When the Abbess Etain, a leading speaker for the Celtic Church, is found murdered suspicion inevitably rests on the Roman faction.Attending the Synod is Fidelma, of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. As an advocate of the Brehon Court, she is called on to investigate the murder with Brother Eadulf, of the Roman faction. However, the two are so unlike that their partnership is described as that of a wolf and a fox - but which is which?More gruesome deaths follow and the friction among the clerics could end in civil war. Can the solution to the mysteries avert such a conflict?What readers are saying about ABSOLUTION OF MURDER:'Superb storytelling from a usually neglected era. Read this and you will certainly want to read the rest of this excellent series''I was transported back in time; Peter Tremayne brought the location and characters to life''The story moves forward with Fidelma weaving her way through to the end with skill and intelligence. Well worth reading'

Read more less

** As seen on the Victoria Derbyshire show ** Providing you with everything you've ever wanted to know about pregnancy, this is the definitive guide from conception to the first few weeks' at home with your newborn*** 'I wish there'd been a book like this when I was pregnant. It almost makes me want to have another child. Almost' Bryony Gordon ***Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan is a revolutionary new guide to pregnancy and childbirth that puts the power firmly in your hands. It won't tell you what fruit your baby resembles week-by-week, but it will cover the huge shifts happening in your relationships, body, work and emotional life right now, giving you practical tools, tips and real stories to help you make a plan that is uniquely yours yet flexible enough to accommodate whatever your pregnancy, birth and life throw at you.***Further Praise for Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan***'The book has everything a pregnant woman needs ... I'm sure this will be the go-to book for women in years to come' - Helen Thorn host of the Scummy Mummies podcast'Rebecca is a living, breathing Wonder Woman heroine. In a sea of complicated, important and sometimes angry debate around childbirth, she is a mast to hold onto.' - Cherry Healey, presenter and author of Letters to My FannyI can't think of a panicky question I had thought of through either of my pregnancies (and I thought of them at a rate of five per second) that wouldn't have been answered by this book. I wish I had had it, in fact. A very empowering guide to becoming a mother.' - Robyn Wilder, The Pool

Read more less

Buddhist intellectual discourse owes its development to a dynamic interplay between primary source materials and subsequent interpretation, yet scholarship on Indian Buddhism has long neglected to privilege one crucial series of texts. Commentaries on Buddhist scriptures, particularly the sutras, offer rich insights into the complex relationship between Buddhist intellectual practices and the norms that inform--and are informed by--them. Evaluating these commentaries in detail for the first time, Richard F. Nance revisits--and rewrites--the critical history of Buddhist thought, including its unique conception of doctrinal transmission. Attributed to such luminaries as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dignaga, and Santideva, scriptural commentaries have long played an important role in the monastic and philosophical life of Indian Buddhism. Nance reads these texts against the social and cultural conditions of their making, establishing a solid historical basis for the interpretation of key beliefs and doctrines. He also underscores areas of contention, in which scholars debate what it means to speak for, and as, a Buddha. Throughout these texts, Buddhist commentators struggle to deduce and characterize the speech of Buddhas and teach others how to convey and interpret its meaning. At the same time, they demonstrate the fundamental dilemma of trying to speak on behalf of Buddhas. Nance also investigates the notion of "right speech" as articulated by Buddhist texts and follows ideas about teaching as imagined through the common figure of a Buddhist preacher. He notes the use of epistemological concepts in scriptural interpretation and the protocols guiding the composition of scriptural commentary, and provides translations of three commentarial guides to better clarify the normative assumptions organizing these works.

Read more less

Georg Simmel is one of the most original German thinkers of the twentieth century and is considered a founding architect of the modern discipline of sociology. Ranging over fundamental questions of the relationship of self and society, his influential writings on money, modernity, and the metropolis continue to provoke debate today. Fascinated by the relationship between culture, society, and economic life, Simmel took an interest in myriad phenomena of aesthetics and the arts. A friend of writers and artists such as Auguste Rodin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Stefan George, he wrote dozens of pieces engaging with topics such as the work of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin, Japanese art, naturalism and symbolism, Goethe, "art for art's sake", art exhibitions, and the aesthetics of the picture frame. This is the first collection to bring together Simmel's finest writing on art and aesthetics, and many of the items appear in English in this volume for the first time. The more than forty essays show the protean breadth of Simmel's reflections, covering landscape painting, portraiture, sculpture, poetry, theater, form, style, and representation. An extensive introduction by Austin Harrington gives an overview of Simmel's themes and elucidates the significance of his work for the many theorists who would be inspired by his ideas. Something of an outsider to the formal academic world of his day, Simmel wrote creatively with the flair of an essayist. This expansive collection of translations, many of them prepared by the editor, preserves the narrative ease of Simmel's prose and will be a vital source for readers with an interest in Simmel's trailblazing ideas in modern European philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory.

Read more less

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In an increasingly globalized world, business ethics continues to gain importance as a field of study. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the essential concepts of business ethics related to the economy as a whole, as well as more closely understood corporate ethics related to the individual company. In contrast to more casuistic works on the topic, special emphasis is placed on a coherent theoretical foundation that puts economic analysis tools at the centre of the consideration. Both classical and experimental economic approaches and results are called upon. The importance of often-neglected dilemma structures and the resulting implications for an ethics of the modern age are given wide scope, while special attention is also paid to the value of empirical research for business ethics. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to corporate ethics and explores issues that encompass corporate responsibility in the context of compliance, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and creating shared value. This is intended to provide students and academics with an aid in the theoretical classification of the variety of concepts that often coexist incoherently in contemporary debate. As the topic has evolved, it has extended far beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries. This book is intended for students in the social sciences, particularly economics, business, and psychology, as well as the computer sciences, engineering, and the natural sciences.

Read more less

Since 1945 the modern revolution in sculpture has gathered pace, and sculpture has now ceased to be the fixed category it once was. In recent decades the modernist idea of sculpture across the UK, America, and Europe, has been challenged, and issues such as nationalityand politics have been brought in to the arena of public discussion. In this ground-breaking account of the development of post-War sculpture Andrew Causey examines innovative and avant-garde works in relation to contemporary events, festivals, commissions, the marketplace, and the changing functions of museums. He explores the use of everyday objects and the importance of sculptural context, discussing figurative and non-figurative works, Anti-form, Minimalism, experimental form, Earth Art, landscape sculpture, installation, and Performance Art. The holistic picture of post-War sculpture which emerges establishes for the first time the key events and themes round which future debate will centre. From the pre-publication reviews: Andrew Causey weaves his way adroitly through the labyrinth of post-War sculpture ... No one else has charted the territory so comprehensively |s Professor Stephen Bann, University of Kent at Canterbury stimulating and persuasive ... balances a searching analysis of the impact of institutional change, issues of sites and environment, and key critical debates with revealing commentaries on individual artists and works of art ... a discerning guide for anyone interested in contemporary art and culture. |s Elizabeth Cowling, University of Edinburgh a clear guide to the various directions of sculpture and the work of sculptors in the years when modern sculpture has begun to stand in its own right as a major art form. |s Sir Anthony Caro, Sculptor

Read more less

The policy framework advocated by Minford et al. . . . is grounded in economic theory and an incisive empirical analysis of the costs of UK's membership of the EU. Their thesis that the EU is a political union practising economic protectionism in the guise of gradualism towards free trade makes sense. . . . Minford and his associates' analysis suggests that the EU's policy framework of free trade for members but restrictions on trade of non-members with the EU countries is a second best policy adopted to promote political rather than economic objectives.'- V.N. Balasubramanyam, Lancaster University, UK'The EU got the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012, but such an award is not forthcoming for economics. In fact, the EU faces a stern public discontent throughout Europe. For years EU leaders have been unable to agree on almost anything. The eurozone's toxic monetary embrace is a colossal failure that has provoked misery in most of the participating countries and, worst of all, suffocated the hopes of prosperity for many years to come. The EU is no longer a venture that inspires people to run on barricades to defend it. Should Britain be a part of the crumbling EU project? This book provides a timely and documented answer. It is highly recommended reading.'- Miroslav N. Jovanovi , University of Geneva, Switzerland'Much too much of the debate about the UK's relationship with the European Union relies upon general declarations unsupported by facts and assertions and claims not substantiated by evidence. This is why we need so badly the careful quantitative analysis provided by Patrick Minford and his colleagues. The UK electorate will have a momentous decision to take when the EU referendum takes place. History and emotions will be important, but getting the facts straight is even more vital.'- John Mills, Founder and Chairman of JML and Co-Chairman of Business for Britain'Patrick Minford and his team have performed a hugely valuable service by quantifying the costs of Britain's EU membership. In particular, they show that Britain pays too much for too high a proportion of its imports. The EU's protectionism in its trade with the rest of the world costs Britain a significant slice of its national output. Their demonstration of this vital point is thought-provoking and sophisticated, and greatly strengthens the case for the UK to leave the EU.'- Tim Congdon, CBE, International Monetary Research LtdPlaced in the context of the upcoming referendum, this second edition brings up to date a thorough review of all economic aspects of the UK's membership of the EU. It notes the intention of the EU to move to 'ever closer union' and the nature of the regulatory and general economic philosophy of its dominant members, whose position is enforced by qualified majority voting. The book highlights the UK s dilemma that, while extending free markets to its local region is attractive, this European philosophy and closer union are substantially at odds with the UK's traditions of free markets and freedom under the common law.This comprehensive examination of the economic costs and benefits of membership uses state-of-the-art modeling methods and includes estimates of its net costs as a percentage of GDP. The book explains how the decision to leave would follow from a judgement on the political economy of the EU as compared with that of the UK. It details the misconceptions involved in much of the debate about trade with the EU, and argues that the key issue is not access to markets but rather the prices at which trade takes place. Covered in careful detail is the economics of the UK's trade with the EU in the key sectors of agriculture, manufacturing, and services.

Read more less

Socially and politically, many things have changed for women in recent years. A gender political "turn-back" is taking place. Power relations shift in micro- and macro-social areas. The election of Donald Trumps as US President – a women-disparaging man who presents a very flexible relationship not only to the reality of facts but also to the dignity of women – marks a strengthening of male-chauvinist power. Worldwide, women have been pushed back into pre-feminist places. The educated and experienced woman, who also stood for election, lost. She did not lose absolutely, but relatively. Her loss had been conditioned by the system of elections and she can easily be seen as a victim of established power structures. With her, women worldwide lost. At first glance, this seems to be very far from Europe and very placative, but it is not. Fine structures change. Realities shift. Facts lose weight. Post-factual arguments are blurring axioms of logic and science. Convictions are being based on opinions. Positions are becoming flexible. In the shifting of identity and virtuality, reality is being redefined. Feminism and Gender Studies are being defamed as ideology. Respect relativizes itself in the face of new social power relations and anonymous virtual possibilities. All of these put basic social values in question. Fundamentalism of all kinds gains space. Churches, synagogues and mosques thus become symbolic spaces of political power or powerlessness. The "European Society for Women in Theological Research" (ESWTR) dedicates its current journal to the theological reflections on religious experiences, social border-situations and traumatic events, which in Europe are not only symbolically linked to the last US presidential elections. With its deliberate interreligious and theological perspective, the journal aims to contribute to the public debate on political events in Europe.

Read more less

This fourth volume of the "History of Vatican II" reconstructs the work of the Council during the third session, which was to produce two of the most significant texts, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and the Decree on Ecumenism. As with previous volumes an international team of scholars tracks the daily progress of the assembly and its numerous assisting bodies. Using sources from all the Council's groups, as well as an unprecedented acquisition of previously unpublished documents, they provide the reader with a rich, multidimensional knowledge of the event that more than any other shaped the Roman Catholic Church.The enthusiasm of the two previous sessions had given way to a greater awareness of the enormity of the conciliar task. The general desire on the part of the bishops to conclude the Council with this third session added to the pressure from many sides to produce significant results. The agenda thus included many complex issues in various schemas, and none surrounded by more tension than the question of collegiality, which was the source of passionate debate in the previous session.Other issues to be taken up by the Council included discussions and votes on sections on eschatology and the Blessed Virgin Mary in the schema on the Church; on the care of souls in the schema on the pastoral role of bishops; an entirely new text on divine revelation; declarations on religious freedom and on the Jews in the schema on ecumenism, and two entirely new schemas on the lay apostolate and on the Church in the modern world. Many conciliar fathers were disappointed by events during the last days of this session (the "Black Week," some called it), and this created even greater interest in what would be the fourth and final session of Vatican II.

Read more less

Ancient states were rooted in agriculture, sedentism and population growth. They were fragile and prone to collapse, but there is no consensus on the causes or meaning of collapse, and there is an ongoing debate about the importance, nature and even existence of state-wide collapse. Explanations of collapse in terms of the competing mono-causal factors are found inferior to those incorporating dynamic, interactive systems. It is proposed that collapse should be explained as failure to fulfil the ancient state’s core functions: assurance of food supplies, defence against external attack, maintenance of internal peace, imposition of its will throughout its territory, enforcement of state-wide laws, and promotion of an ideology to legitimise the political and social status quo. To fulfil these functions certain necessary conditions must be met. The legitimacy of the political and social status quo, including the distribution of political power and wealth, needs to be accepted; the state should be able to extract sufficient resources to fulfil its functions such as defence; it must be able to enforce its decisions; the ruling elite should share a common purpose and actions; the society needs to reflect a shared spirit (asibaya) and purpose across elites and commoners who believe it is worthy of defence. Weaknesses and failure to meet any condition can interact to exacerbate the situation: maladministration, corruption and elite preoccupation with self-aggrandisement can induce fiscal weakness, reduced military budgets and further invasion; it can induce neglect of key infrastructures (especially water management). Inequality, a commonly neglected factor despite ancient texts, can erode asibaya and legitimacy and alienate commoners from the defence of the state. These themes are explored in relation to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, Mycenae, the Western Roman Empire (WRE), and the Maya. They all exhibit, to varying degrees, weaknesses in meeting the above conditions necessary for stability.

Read more less

This is a book about ideas. Specifically, this is a book about the evolution of a certain set of ideas, and how these ideas have come to dominate every important discussion about race, gender, and identity today. Have you heard someone refer to language as literal violence, or say that science is sexist? Or declare that being obese is healthy, or that there is no such thing as biological sex? Or that valuing hard work, individualism, and even punctuality is evidence of white supremacy? Or that only certain people—depending on their race, gender, or identity—should be allowed to wear certain clothes or hairstyles, cook certain foods, write certain characters, or play certain roles? If so, then you’ve encountered these ideas. As this reader-friendly adaptation of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Cynical Theories explains, however, the truth is that many of these ideas are recent inventions, are not grounded in scientific fact, and do not account for the sheer complexity of social reality and human experience. In fact, these beliefs often deny and even undermine the very principles on which liberal democratic societies are built—the very ideas that have allowed for unprecedented human progress, lifted standards of living across the world, and given us the opportunity and right to consider and debate these ideas in the first place! Ultimately, this is a book about what it truly means to have a just and equal society—and how best to get there.Cynical Theories is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller. Named a 2020 Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, and Financial Times, it is being translated into more than fifteen languages.

Read more less

Defending the role that science must play in democratic society--science defined not just in terms of technology but as a way of approaching problems and viewing the world. In this collection of original essays, experts in political science, the hard sciences, philosophy, history, and other disciplines examine contemporary anti-science trends, and make a strong case that respect for science is essential for a healthy democracy. The editors note that a contradiction lies at the heart of modern society. On the one hand, we inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology. On the other, opposition to science is prevalent in many forms--from arguments against the teaching of evolution and the denial of climate change to the promotion of alternative medicine and outlandish claims about the effects of vaccinations. Adding to this grass-roots hostility toward science are academics espousing postmodern relativism, which equates the methods of science with regimes of "power-knowledge." While these cultural trends are sometimes marketed in the name of "democratic pluralism," the contributors contend that such views are actually destructive of a broader culture appropriate for a democratic society. This is especially true when facts are degraded as "fake news" and scientists are dismissed as elitists. Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, the authors view such anti-science stances on either the right or the left as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and an unwillingness to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. Beyond critiquing attitudes hostile to science, the essays in this collection put forward a positive vision for how we might better articulate the relation between science and democracy and the benefits that accrue from cultivating this relationship.

Read more less

Taking a perspective rooted in evolutionary biology with a focus on brain science, two distinguished authors radically alter the fractious debate on the existence of God and the nature of religion. Two distinguished authors, renowned anthropologist Lionel Tiger and pioneering neuroscientist Michael McGuire, elucidate the perennial questions about religion: What is its purpose? How did it arise? What is its source? Why does every known culture have some form of it? Their answer is deceptively simple, yet at the same time highly complex: The brain creates religion and its varied concepts of God, and then in turn feeds on its creation to satisfy innate neurological and associated social needs. Brain science reveals that humans and other primates alike are afflicted by unavoidable sources of stress that the authors describe as "brainpain." To cope with this affliction people seek to "brainsoothe." We humans use religion and its social structures to induce brainsoothing as a relief for innate anxiety. How we do this is the subject of this groundbreaking book. In a concise, lively, accessible, and witty style, the authors combine zoom-lens vignettes of religious practices with discussions of the latest research on religion's neurological effects on the brain. Among other topics, they consider religion's role in providing positive socialization, its seeming obsession with regulating sex, the common biological scaffolding between nonhuman primates and humans and how this affects religion, and evidence that the palliative effects of religion on brain chemistry are not matched by nonreligious remedies. In a new preface to the paperback edition, Lionel Tiger discusses the paradoxical effects of religion-on the one hand, producing masterpieces of art and architecture and, on the other, fueling violence throughout history and into the present. This fascinating book provides key insights into the complexities of our brain and the role of religion, perhaps its most remarkable creation.

Read more less

Few Civil War generals attracted as much debate and controversy as Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard. He combined brilliance and charisma with arrogance and histrionics. He was a Catholic Creole in a society dominated by white Protestants, which made him appear exotic next to the likes of Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee.He was reviled by Jefferson Davis and often mocked by Mary Chesnut in her diary. Yet, he was popular with his soldiers and subordinates. Outside of Lee, he was the South’s most consistently successful commander, winning at Bull Run, defending Charleston in 1864, and defeating Benjamin Butler at Bermuda Hundred and Ulysses Grant and George Meade at Petersburg. Yet, he lived his life in the shadow of his one major defeat: Shiloh.Beauregard’s career before and after the war was no less tumultuous than his Civil War record. He was born among the Creole elite of Louisiana, but rejected the life of a planter in favor of the military, inspired by tales of Napoléon. He was considered a shining light of the antebellum army and performed superbly in the Mexican-American War. Yet, he complained about a lack of promotion and made a frustrating stab at being mayor of New Orleans in 1858.After the war, he was a successful railroad executive and took a stand against racism, violence, and corruption during Reconstruction. Yet, he was ousted from both railroads he oversaw and his foray into Reconstruction politics came to naught. Although he provided for his family and left them a hefty sum after his death, the money was mostly gained by working for the corrupt Louisiana Lottery.In Dreams of Victory: General P. G. T. Beauregard in the Civil War, Sean Michael Chick explores a life of contradictions and dreams unrealized—the first real hero of the Confederacy who sometimes proved to be his own worst enemy.

Read more less

Who invented the personal essay? That is hard to say. The ancient Roman philosopher and cynical power broker, Seneca? The 16th century French philosopher Montaigne certainly brought it to a peak of perfection. There were many 19th century masters, not so many after that. Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? That requires no debate at all. It is unquestionably Joseph Epstein. He is not only the best living essayist; he is right up there in the company of Seneca and Montaigne, but one of our own, living in our era and dealing with our pleasures and travails. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Epstein reads omnivorously and brings us the best of what he reads, passages that we would never have found on our own. How easy it is today, in the digital age, drowning in emails and other ephemera, to forget the simple delight of reading for no intended purpose. Like any master essayist, however, this one brings us more than the shared experience of a lifetime of reading. He brings us himself, alternately scolding and charming, sparkling and deep, buoyant and sad, zany and wise, rebellious and conservative, bookworm and sports fan, clever and everyman, debunker and preservationist, deep into high culture, deep into low culture, curious, fresh, and settled in his ways. This is the friend we all wish we could have, the ideal, humane companion who is completely comfortable in his own human skin. Like Plutarch, he gives us life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is pure pleasure.

Read more less

Drawing from legal and extralegal discourse but focusing on imaginative literature, Literary Executions examines representations of, responses to, and arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States over the long nineteenth century. John Cyril Barton creates a generative dialogue between artistic relics and legal history. He looks to novels, short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction as well as legislative reports, trial transcripts, legal documents, newspaper and journal articles, treatises, and popular books (like The Record of Crimes, A Defence of Capital Punishment, and The Gallows, the Prison, and the Poor House), all of which were part of the debate over the death penalty. Barton focuses on several canonical figures-James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Theodore Dreiser - and offers new readings of their work in light of the death penalty controversy. Barton also gives close attention to a host of then-popular-but-now-forgotten writers - particularly John Neal, Slidell MacKenzie, William Gilmore Simms, Sylvester Judd, and George Lippard - whose work helped shape or was shaped by the influential anti-gallows movement. Analyzing the tension between sovereignty and social responsibility in a democratic republic, Barton argues that the high stakes of capital punishment dramatize the confrontation between the citizen-subject and sovereign authority in its starkest terms. In bringing together the social and the aesthetic, Barton shows how legal forms informed literary forms and traces the emergence of the modern State in terms of the administration of lawful death. By engaging the politics and poetics of capital punishment, Literary Executions contends that the movement to abolish the death penalty in the United States should be seen as an important part of the context that brought about the flowering of the American Renaissance during the antebellum period and that influenced literature later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Read more less

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project. The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics; explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs; and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise. Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, "Competing with the Soviets" looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists' choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.

Read more less

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt's "Facebook revolution" forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile. While such "Liberation Technology" has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases - such as China and Iran - demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between "netizens" demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power. "Liberation Technology" brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of "liberation" versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia. This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi - a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya's 2007 elections - and alkasir - a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship. "Liberation Technology" will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy. Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski and Mehdi Yahyanejad.

Read more less

On February 18th, 2009, Sean Delonas published a controversial cartoon in the New York Post depicting two policemen shooting and killing a monkey with the caption: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” On the adjoining page was a photo of President Barack Obama signing this very piece of legislation into law. Although public debate over the cartoon has centered entirely on its potentially racist overtones, we might ask from a Darwinian perspective how the stereotype of the black ape works to disavow a universally shared human apehood. How might we comprehend animality in non-pejorative terms? Whereas in contemporary race and sexuality studies the topic of animality emerges almost exclusively in order to index the dehumanization that makes discrimination possible, Bestial Traces argues that a more fundamental disavowal of human animality conditions the bestialization of racial and sexual minorities. Hence, when conservative politicians such as Senator Rick Santorum equate homosexuality with bestiality, they betray an anxious effort to deny the animality inherent in all sexuality. Focusing on literary texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Chandler Harris, Richard Wright, Philip Roth, and J.M. Coetzee, together with philosophical texts by Derrida, Heidegger, Agamben, Freud, and Nietzsche, Peterson maintains that the representation of social and political others as animals can be mitigated but never finally abolished. Insofar as humanizing the abject only vacates the structurally empty and infinitely transposable position of “the animal,” he argues that all forms of belonging—no matter how open and hospitable they are toward others—inevitably produce “beasts” whose exclusion contradicts our apparent desire for nonviolence. While one might argue that absolute political equality and inclusion remain desirable—even if ultimately unattainable—ideals, Bestial Traces shows that by maintaining such principles we exacerbate rather than ameliorate violence precisely by failing to confront how discrimination and exclusion condition all social relations.

Read more less

Catholicism and Liberal Democracy seeks to clarify if there is a place for Catholicism in the public discourse of modern liberal democracy, bringing secular liberalism, as articulated by Jürgen Habermas, into conversation with the Catholic tradition.James Martin Carr explores three aspects of the Catholic tradition relevant to this debate: the Church's response to democracy from the nineteenth century up until the eve of the Second Vatican Council; the Council's engagement with modernity, in particular through Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae; and Joseph Ratzinger's theology of politics as a particularly incisive (and influential) articulation of the Catholic tradition in this area.Jürgen Habermas's theorization of the place of religion in modern democracy, both in his earlier secularist phase and after his 'post-secular' turn, is evaluated. The adequacy of Habermas's recent attempts to accommodate religious citizens are critically examined and it is argued that developments in his later thought logically require a more thoroughgoing revision of his earlier theory. These developments, it is argued, create tantalizing openings for fruitful dialogue between Habermas and theCatholic tradition.Using analytical tools drawn from communications theory, the debates on same-sex marriage at Westminster and in the Irish referendum campaign are analyzed, assessing whether Catholic contributions to these debates comply with Habermasian rules of civic discourse. In light of this analysis, the prospects of, and impediments to, Catholic participation in public discourse are appraised.Carr concludes by proposing a Ratzingerian critique of contemporary attempts to redefine marriage within a broader, more fundamental critique of the modern democratic state as currently configured. A political system founded upon secularist monism cannot but regard Christian Gelasianism, and its Catholic variant in particular, as an existential threat. Thus, Catholics, however Habermasian their political behavior, can never be more than uneasy bedfellows with modern liberal democracy.

Read more less

On August 19, 1958, Clara Luper and thirteen Black youth walked into Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City and sat down at the lunch counter. When they tried to order, they were denied service. As they sat in silence, refusing to leave, the surrounding white customers unleashed a torrent of threats and racial slurs. This first organized sit-in in Oklahoma—almost two years before the more famous sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina—sparked other demonstrations in Oklahoma and other states. Behold the Walls is Luper’s engrossing firsthand account of how the movement she helped launch ended legal racial segregation. First published in 1979, Behold the Walls now features a new introduction and 33 newly selected historical photos. Luper’s direct, unvarnished account captures the immediacy of the events she witnessed. As a Black woman, Luper refused to let either her race or her gender deter her from stepping forth as a leader. Born in 1923, Clara Luper taught history in Oklahoma public schools and led the NAACP Youth Council. The students who sat in at Katz Drug and other businesses belonged to that organization. Luper highlights the contributions of others, especially young people, in breaking down the walls of segregation in Oklahoma through numerous demonstrations, marches, and voter registration campaigns. This commemorative edition of Luper’s eye-opening autobiography, published near what would have been her 100th birthday, as well as the 65th anniversary of the sit-ins, offers invaluable insight into the history of protest in the early years of the civil rights movement. With racial inequality still at the forefront of national debate, Behold the Walls places Luper’s efforts in the larger national context of the struggle to resist injustice and inspire positive change.

Read more less

Laughter that makes your stomach hurt, the perfect cup of coffee, a few moments alone with your Bible - these are moments of joy to be found on even the most difficult days. When you know you can trust God no matter what, lasting joy will be yours. Find your joy in Simple Joys: Discovering Wonder in the Everyday by Candace Payne.Who hasn’t struggled with discontent, being overwhelmed, and the fight to be happy? You know that you have much to be grateful for, but sometimes the world feels so heavy and it’s hard to recognize the good stuff, let alone find and experience true, lasting joy.Candace Payne, better known as “Chewbacca Mom,” reached more than 200 million people when her surprise outburst of joy at the simplest pleasure of a Star Wars mask went viral. Her story of struggling with loneliness, discontent, and unhappiness came out soon after, which made the world question: What makes her different?“I could write a million words, books, and even songs to explain this,” Candace says, “but my gut feeling tells me you didn’t buy this book for a theology debate. You are reading these pages hoping to find joy - real, authentic, and unwavering in any and all circumstances. The kind of contentment that says, ‘I’m not only happy, but I’m satisfied as well. I have enough and I am enough.’ Because what I’ve discovered is this: contentment will often lead to more joy.”Do you have that kind of joy?Do you want it?Find the secret to happiness, satisfaction, joy, and more in Simple Joys, a beautiful, full-color book that walks you through Candace’s journey so that you can replicate it in your own life. Read about several simple ways you can reclaim joy in your day-to-day routine and start living more joyfully today.

Read more less

The Meditations on the Life of Christ was the most popular and influential devotional work of the later Middle Ages. With its lively dialogue and narrative realism, its poignant and moving depictions of the Nativity and Passion, and its direct appeals to the reader to feel love and compassion, the Meditations had a major impact on devotional practices, religious art, meditative literature, vernacular drama, and the cultivation of affective experience. This volume is a critical edition, with English translation and commentary, of a hitherto-unpublished Italian text that McNamer argues is likely to be the original version of this influential masterpiece. Livelier and far more compact than the Latin text, the Italian “short text” possesses a stylistic and textual integrity that appears to testify to its primacy among early versions of the Meditations. The evidence also suggests that it was composed by a woman, a Poor Clare from Pisa—an author whose work McNamer contends was obscured by the anonymous Franciscan friar who subsequently altered and expanded the text. In bringing to light this unique Italian version and building a case for its origins and importance, this book will encourage a fresh look at the Meditations and serve as a foundation for further scholarship and debate concerning some of the most compelling subjects in Italian and European literary and cultural history, including the role of women in the invention of new genres and spiritual practices, the early development of Italian prose narrative, the rise of vernacular theology, and the history of emotion. McNamer’s volume will be of significant interest to medievalists, especially those who study medieval women, devotional literature, manuscript studies, and textual criticism. The linguistic analysis expands that audience to include those of a philological bent.

Read more less

Legend and BeliefDialectics of a Folklore GenreLinda DéghAn acclaimed folklorist asks "What is legend?"Legend and Belief is a descriptive and analytical study of the legend, the most prolific and characteristic form of folklore in contemporary Western civilization. Not that the legend does not have ancient roots; like the tale, the joke, the ballad, the proverb, and mummery, it was also a part of an archaic preindustrial tradition. But the legend—as old as conversation and debate, and similarly questioning the human condition—was able to survive technological innovations. It has remained contemporaneous, whereas many other genres succumbed to their own anachronism. The legend's concerns are universal and eternal, touching on the most sensitive areas of our existence. That is why stories about supernatural encounters, possessions, divine and infernal miracles, evil spirits, monsters, and prophetic dreams, as well as horror stories about insane and criminal agencies, inundate the urban/industrial world. Industrial advancement does not change the basic fragility of human life, while commercialization and the consumer orientation of the mass media have helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are not only communicated orally, face-to-face, but also appear in the press, on radio and TV, on countless internet websites, and by e-mail to keep alive new waves of the "culture of fear."Linda Dégh, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Folklore at Indiana University, is a folklorist/ethnologist whose speciality is the analysis of personally observed creative processes of narration in both traditional and modern communities of Europe and North America. Her numerous publications include Four Lives: People in the Tobacco Belt; Folktales and Society; American Folklore and the Mass Media; and Narratives in Society.June 2001496 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append.cloth 0-253-33929-4 $49.95 s / £38.00

Read more less

2018 International Book Awards Finalist in "Business and Management" Category We shop for everything else online…why not benefits? Using private benefit exchanges (a.k.a. “online benefits marketplaces”), employers can bring a consumer-centric online shopping experience to benefits. Alan Cohen, a benefits technology pioneer, details how these platforms can offer unprecedented flexibility and choice to employees, revolutionize the way employers attract and retain talent, strengthen cost control in an era of skyrocketing premiums, and promote much-needed innovation in the U.S. health care system. Discover How To Make sense of today’s challenging benefits landscape and plan breakthrough changes that have succeeded for thousands of employers of all sizes Leverage the lessons of the online shopping revolution to drive radical innovation Incorporate the 7 key pillars of a true private benefits exchange into your benefits mindset Gain indispensable practical insights from early adopters’ experiences Clarify the new roles of employers, HR, insurers, brokers, employees, and other stakeholders Accelerate your transition away from inefficient employer-managed plans Assess the ongoing impact of health care reform, public exchanges, health care consumerism, and other trends Alan Cohen created one of the first private exchange platforms and has pioneered this approach for more than a decade. Now, in a candid discussion of how the economic principles of choice, consumerism, and defined contribution are at work in an exchange environment, he breaks down the concept for HR professionals, entrepreneurs, brokers, insurers, health care reformers, policy makers, and employees. Cohen looks to social and economic implications to forge a future in which all eyes are on a new model of the consumer for the benefits age. With insights from industry veterans, Employee Benefits and the New Health Care Landscape brings a fresh perspective to the debate on health care and health insurance in America.

Read more less

First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones. J.R.R. Tolkien’s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’. In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938–9, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled ‘A Hobby for the Home’, where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’. This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as ‘A Secret Vice’ in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished notes and drafts by Tolkien connected with the essay, including his ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, goes some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

Read more less

Important world institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have publicly recognizing the highly interconnected nature of our world and therefore the relevance of systemic thinking and cybernetics as leading knowledge foundations to deal with the complexity of economic, social, and environmental issues. This recognition was the driving force of the Internet discussions held by participants to the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics 18th Congress, which last September 27 to 29(WOSC 2021). More than ever we needed to debate and develop current ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches to the understanding of the future of humanity.WOSC organized this event in collaboration with the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Scientists of this Academy together with scientists from all over the world made contributions to improving communications beyond particular nation states and regions toward the clarification of global issues like governance, health, education, technology, art, and others. Our aim in WOSC 2021 was bringing together scientists and researchers to collaborative debates at all levels from local communities to global societies. At the end of the Congress, scientists were invited to submit contributions to this Springer Nature book, along the following four themes: firstly, philosophical and methodological foundations for the development of the systems approach and cybernetics; secondly, the cybernetics of society, ecology and governance; thirdly, digital technologies and physical realities merging into a hybrid reality , and fourthly, the transdisciplinarity of systems sciences and cybernetics applied to the further development of knowledge areas, such as education, embodiment of social policies, and the arts. About 25 contributions were accepted for publication in this book. We see this as one of WOSC’s important contribution to the scientific community around the world.

Read more less

Electricity and Magnetism (E&M) underlies many lifesaving medical devices, such as magnetic resonance imaging scanners, neural stimulators, and heart pacemakers. But E&M also attracts its share of bogus health claims, such as biomagnetic therapy. How do you separate the good from the bad? Sometimes it’s not easy: experiments are prone to artifacts, theories are limited by assumptions, and clinical trials can result in ambiguities. In this book, the author separates the wheat from the chaff, showing which applications of E&M are bogus and which are not. This book takes the reader on a tour through a range of fascinating phenomena, from effects that are constant in time at one extreme, such as transcranial direct current stimulation of the brain, to the millimeter-wave whole-body scanners which are familiar to frequent flyers at the other. Along the way, the author looks in depth at the dispute about power line magnetic fields and leukemia, a case study in what can go wrong when dubious claims inflame unjustified fears. The debate about cell phones and brain cancer still rages today, particularly for the microwave frequencies encountered with new 5G technology. Recently, the so-called Havana Syndrome has been attributed to microwave weapons, but the underlying biophysics of such weapons is unclear. For all these encounters with electricity and magnetism, the author, an eminent biophysicist, uses science and evidence to sort out fact from fantasy. This book is aimed at general readers who want to make sense of the mysterious and often controversial ways in which E&M interacts with the human body. It is also ideal for students and professionals in bioscience and health-related fields who want to learn more without getting overwhelmed by theory.

Read more less

The subject of love, in all its forms, has interested poets in every age and culture: its common consequences, namely marriage and parenthood, less so. John Elinger, author of this collection of poems on the challenging theme of how to be a 'good enough' parent, is an exception to the rule. This sequence of one hundred sonnets (with footnotes) is based on his own experience as a father of six children (and now a grandfather and step great grandfather), extensive study and reflection on what he has come to understand as perhaps the most important, and certainly the most challenging, role of our lives: parenthood. He writes: 'Good parenthood is best expressed by three / Core qualities, acceptance, care and trust, / The key components of what's meant by love.' (4) And: 'More care (not extra cash) is what the world most needs: / A parent, whose priority is love, succeeds.' (96) The poems range across a number of topics related to parenthood: nurture and nourishment, exercise, stimulation and sleep, time, talk and tenderness, love (of course) and listening, the home and environment, and the importance of parental devotion to the duty of care. The poet argues that, while parenting is a lifelong responsibility, its nature and demands alter over time, and good practice changes during the 'seven stages' of parenthood. The analysis of 'good-enough' parenting is both instructive and entertaining, written with, compassion, wisdom and poetic verve. Not everyone will agree with all the views expressed, and some may disapprove strongly of some of the assertions; but if the book serves to stimulate a public debate of the nature and importance of the principles and practice of good parenthood, it will have served its purpose.

Read more less

A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript. Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: "scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus" (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes. That Digby is from the thirteenth century adds to its appeal, for English literary remnants from before 1300 are all too rare. Scholars on both sides of the vernacular divide, French and English, are deeply intrigued by it. Many of its texts are found nowhere else: for example, the French Arthurian Lay of the Horn, the English fabliau Dame Sirith and the beast fable Fox and Wolf, and the French Strife between Two Ladies (a candid debate on feminine politics). The interpretationsoffered in this volume of its contents, presentation, and ownership, show that there is much to discover in Digby's lively record of the social and spiritual pastimes of a book-owning gentry family. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Maureen Boulton, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Susanna Fein, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Melissa Julian-Jones, Jenni Nuttall, David Raybin, Delbert Russell, J.D. Sargan, Sheri Smith

Read more less

In Government Versus the Market, Roger Middleton provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and controversial analysis of how Britain's relative economic decline from the late nineteenth century onwards generated an intense debate about the legitimate roles of government and the market. After a thorough analysis of Britain's long-run economic performance in a comparative context, which emphasizes how the problem of decline is frequently misunderstood, and an account of the long-run forces promoting and constraining government growth, he then charts how the economic role of government evolved in response to decline but produced a mix of macroeconomic and microeconomic policies which proved inadequate for the task. This major study emphasizes the institutional and political constraints to economic modernization and uses the specific characteristics of Britain's predicament, a combination of market failure and impotent state, to explain why by 1979 the burgeoning New Right were able to launch an attack upon big government. Dr Middleton then demonstrates how Britain's subsequent economic performance, while brilliantly propagandized as an economic renaissance, has in fact been lacklustre and why the Conservatives' economic strategy failed to address the underlying problems of decline and to reduce the size of the public sector. Government versus the Market brings an unrivalled historical, empirical and theoretical breadth to our understanding of the last century of British economic history as well as a wealth of material on economic performance and public sector growth, and the fullest bibliography yet published on Britain's economic decline.Comprehensive, authoritative and wide-ranging, this extensive study uses a long-term and comparative framework which draws upon the latest research of economists, historians and political scientists to show why successive governments have been unable to halt Britain's relative economic decline.

Read more less

With an ever-growing number of users, the Internet is central to the processes of globalization, cultural formations, social encounters and economic development. These aside, it is also fast becoming an important political domain. Struggles over disclosure, access and governance are only the most visible signs that the Internet is quickly becoming a site of fierce political conflict involving states, technical groups, business and civil society. As the debate over the global politics of the Internet intensifies, this book will be a valuable guide to anyone seeking to understand the emergence, organization and shape of this new issue. In this vivid study, Mikkel Flyverbom captures how questions about the digital divide and the information revolution, dialogues with stakeholders, and networked forms of organization have become key features of the global politics of the Internet. Tracing the making and stabilization of this transnational issue in and around the United Nations over almost a decade, this book demonstrates how multi-stakeholder networks make new political domains accessible and unsettle established ways of organizing transnational governance. The Power of Networks offers a rich account of the practices and effects of organizing global politics and governance through dialogues and collaborations among governments, business and societies the world over. Offering a novel analytical vocabulary for the study of ordering, governance and organization in global politics, and its relationship to the growth of the Internet, this innovative ethnographic study of hybrid organizations and entangled forms of power in global politics shows how insights from actor-network theory and the Foucauldian governmentality literature can reinvigorate studies of transnational governance and organizational processes. It will appeal to anyone interested in emergent network issues in global politics, as well as practitioners and researchers focusing on multi-stakeholder processes, and students and scholars searching for a fresh perspective on organization, power and global politics.

Read more less

This book discusses the impact of taxation on economic growth, employment, investment, consumption and the environment. The public finance literature commonly distinguishes between three major functions of taxation: the traditional function of raising revenue to finance government expenditure; the distributional function as an instrument to alter the distribution of income and wealth amongst households; and the regulatory function that uses taxation at the benefit of stabilization and other economic policies. Especially after the Second World War, OECD countries have increasingly used taxation to achieve a variety of economic and social objectives. Today many governments use the tax system to stimulate economic growth and employment. Fiscal measures also play a role in creating a favourable climate for business investment and to promote a long-term sustainable environmental policy. Currently, in the debate on global warming, the use of tax instruments to tackle climate change is on the top of the international agenda.The authors aim to provide the reader with the necessary empirical information, while at the same time presenting an overview of the latest theory and best practices. In doing so, many relevant policy issues are touched upon. Based on theoretical and empirical studies and practical experiences in OECD countries, the book establishes guidelines for effective tax policy. The book offers tools for tax design in a globalising economy and the world of the internet with increasing tax competition and a growing battle for companies and brains between countries. The book also presents a 'carrot and stick' model to promote clean technologies, reduce pollution and combat climate change. The message from the authors is straightforward: broad, low, simple, and a shift from income to consumption taxation. These principles are illustrated in a concept proposal for a so-called Second Life Tax system.

Read more less

A collection which highlights "the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterize the field". History 95 [2010] The journal's hallmark of a broad chronological, geographic, and thematic coverage of the subject is underlined in this volume. It begins with an examination of the brief but fascinating career of an armed league of (mostly) commoners who fought to suppress mercenary bands and to impose a reign of peace in southern France in 1182-1184. This is followed by a thorough re-examination of Matilda of Tuscany's defeat of Henry IV in 1090-97. Two pieces on Hispanic topics - a substantial analysis of the remarkable military career of Jaime I "the Conqueror" of Aragon (r. 1208-1276), and a case study of the campaigns of a single Spanish king, Enrique II of Castile (r. 1366-79), contributingto the active debate over the role of open battle in medieval strategy - come next. Shorter essays deal with the size of the Mongol armies that threatened Europe in the mid-thirteenth century, and with a surprising literary description, dating to 1210-1220, of a knight employing the advanced surgical technique of thoracentesis. Further contributions correct the common misunderstanding of the nature of deeds of arms à outrance in the fifteenth century, and dissect the relevance of the "infantry revolution" and "artillery revolution" to the French successes at the end of the Hundred Years War. The final note explores what etymology can reveal about the origins of the trebuchet. Clifford Rogers is Professor of History, West Point Military Academy; Kelly DeVries is Professor of History, Loyola College, Maryland; John France is Professor of History at the University of Swansea. Contributors: John France, Valerie Eads, Don Kagay, Carl Sverdrup, Jolyon T. Hughes, L. J. Andrew Villalon, Will McLean, Anne Curry, Will Sayers

Read more less

Exactly when Matisse and Picasso first met is open to debate. Their earliest encounter may have taken place during the Matisse retrospective at Galerie Druet right before the 1906 Salon des Indépendants. The latter marked the first time all the Fauves exhibited together. The centerpiece was Matisse’s monumental Le bonheur de vivre. Leo Stein bought the painting while the Salon was still running, regarding it as “the most important work of our time.” This opinion undoubtedly annoyed Picasso. Jealousy of the other man’s success goaded him to greater innovations. In his view, the new art would have to match the sense of endless discovery that science and technology were offering. The 1900 “Exposition Universelle” had already shown the latest marvels in engineering. If painting wanted to keep the public’s attention, instead of merely reproducing what the eye saw, it had to generate its own reality on the surface of the canvas, a reality more vivid than, and bearing only the mostcursory resemblance to, anything found in nature. Matisse was also a catalyst in that he was the one who introduced Picasso to African sculptures. Max Jacob recalls: “Matisse took a black, wooden statuette from a table and showed it to Picasso. It was the first piece of Negro wooden art. Picasso held onto it all evening. The next morning, when I arrived at the studio, the floor was strewn with sheets of paper, and on each sheet was drawn the head of a woman; all of them were more or less the same: one eye, an oversized nose attached to the mouth, and a lock of hair on the shoulders. Cubism was thus born” (cited in Janine Warnod, Washboat Days [New York: Grossman Publishers Warnod, 1972, p. 128]).

Read more less

Globally, the way the animal production industry copes with infectious diseases is changing. The (excessive) use of antimicrobials is under debate and it is becoming standard practice to implement thorough biosecurity plans on farms to prevent the entry and spread of pathogenic micro-organisms. Not only in farm animal production, but also in facilities where companion animals are kept, including in veterinary practices and clinics, awareness of the beneficial implications of a good biosecurity plan has raised. The book Biosecurity in Animal Production and Veterinary Medicine is the first compilation of both fundamental aspects of biosecurity practices, and specific and practical information on the application of the biosecurity measures in different animal production and animal housing settings. The book starts with a general introductory chapter on the epidemiology of infectious diseases, followed by a chapter explaining the general principles of biosecurity. Specific topics of biosecurity, including rodent and insect control, cleaning and disinfection, hygiene and decontamination of feed, drinking water and air, and measuring the biosecurity status of farms, are detailed in dedicated chapters. Explanations on the relevance of the implementation of biosecurity plans in order to improve animal health and performance and reduce antimicrobial usage are described, and a chapter on ways to motivate farmers to implement a biosecurity plan has been included. Practical chapters deal with biosecurity in the poultry, pig and cattle industry, horse facilities, dog kennels, veterinary practices and clinics and laboratory animal facilities. The book is a practical guide that can be used by farm and animal facility managers, consultants, veterinarians, animal caretakers, and people with an interest in prevention of diseases in animals. Academics and students will benefit from the book because it contains all relevant information on animal biosecurity.

Read more less