Search results for ""author john wiley"

From Pakistan to Chechnya, Sri Lanka to Canada, pioneering women are taking their places in formal and informal military structures previously reserved for, and assumed appropriate only for men. Women have fought in wars, either as women or covertly dressed as men, throughout the history of warfare, but only recently have they been allowed to join state militaries, insurgent groups, and terrorist organizations in unprecedented numbers. This begs the question - how useful are traditional gendered categories in understanding the dynamics of war and conflict? And why are our stories of gender roles in war typically so narrow? Who benefits from them? In this illuminating book, Laura Sjoberg explores how gender matters in war-making and war-fighting today. Drawing on a rich range of examples from conflicts around the world, she shows that both women and men play many more diverse roles in wars than either media or scholarly accounts convey. Gender, she argues, can be found at every turn in the practice of war; it is crucial to understanding not only ‘what war is’, but equally how it is caused, fought and experienced. With end of chapter questions for discussion and guides to further reading, this book provides the perfect introduction for students keen to understand the multi-faceted role of gender in warfare. Gender, War and Conflict will challenge and change the way we think about war and conflict in the modern world.

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From Pakistan to Chechnya, Sri Lanka to Canada, pioneering women are taking their places in formal and informal military structures previously reserved for, and assumed appropriate only for men. Women have fought in wars, either as women or covertly dressed as men, throughout the history of warfare, but only recently have they been allowed to join state militaries, insurgent groups, and terrorist organizations in unprecedented numbers. This begs the question - how useful are traditional gendered categories in understanding the dynamics of war and conflict? And why are our stories of gender roles in war typically so narrow? Who benefits from them? In this illuminating book, Laura Sjoberg explores how gender matters in war-making and war-fighting today. Drawing on a rich range of examples from conflicts around the world, she shows that both women and men play many more diverse roles in wars than either media or scholarly accounts convey. Gender, she argues, can be found at every turn in the practice of war; it is crucial to understanding not only ‘what war is’, but equally how it is caused, fought and experienced. With end of chapter questions for discussion and guides to further reading, this book provides the perfect introduction for students keen to understand the multi-faceted role of gender in warfare. Gender, War and Conflict will challenge and change the way we think about war and conflict in the modern world.

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For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou’s account of cinema. He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people – a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.

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Pain in one form or another is probably the most common symptom presented to medical and healthcare professionals. Long a subject of biomedical interest, more recent biopsychosocial theories have extended the study of pain as a concept which is highly individual in the way it is experienced. Today's landscape offers a broad array of approaches to understanding pain and, crucially, to alleviating its impact.This concise and accessible volume aims to make sense of what is at first sight an eclectic mix of theoretical and practical work on pain, from a distinctly sociological perspective. While there has been much quantitative medical research on pain, in exploring sociology's important contributions to this field Elaine Denny offers insight into the world of those living with pain and the meaning it has in their lives. She provides readers with a range of explanations of pain and various influences on the experience of pain, critically analysing competing schools of thought and embedding this work in the everyday practice of providing care. The result is an illuminating volume for students of health and medical professions studying pain, the body, and the sociology of health and illness.

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In everyday life we are not, for the most part, actively conscious of our bodies or the bodies of others – we simply take them for granted. This new edition of a lively introduction to the sociology of the body examines what certain aspects of our bodies, such as the size, shape, smell and demeanour, reveal about the social organization of everyday life and how the body is crucial to the way we engage with the world and the people around us. The human body is endowed with varied forms of social significance which sociology has addressed by asking questions such as: To what degree do individuals have control over their own bodies? What interest does the state have in regulating the human body? How significant is the body to the development and performance of the self in everyday life? What images of the body influence people’s expectations of themselves and others? Written in a clear and comprehensible way, The Body in Society introduces students to the key conceptual frameworks that help us to understand the social significance of the human body. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to take into account recent theories and debates and also includes enhanced pedagogical features. Using familiar examples from everyday life, such as diet and exercise regimes, personal hygiene, dress, displays of emotion, and control over bodily functions, coupled with examples from popular culture, the text has strong contemporary relevance and will strike a chord with all who read it. This book will be essential reading for students taking courses on the body in sociology, anthropology, gender studies and cultural studies.

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As persons, we are importantly different from all other creatures in the universe. But in what, exactly, does this difference consist? What kinds of entities are we, and what makes each of us the same person today that we were yesterday? Could we survive having all of our memories erased and replaced with false ones? What about if our bodies were destroyed and our brains were transplanted into android bodies, or if instead our minds were simply uploaded to computers? In this engaging and accessible introduction to these important philosophical questions, Amy Kind brings together three different areas of research: the nature of personhood, theories of personal identity over time, and the constitution of self-identity. Surveying the key contemporary theories in the philosophical literature, Kind analyzes and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. As she shows, our intuitions on these issues often pull us in different directions, making it difficult to develop an adequate general theory. Throughout her discussion, Kind seamlessly interweaves a vast array of up-to-date examples drawn from both real life and popular fiction, all of which greatly help to elucidate this central topic in metaphysics. A perfect text for readers coming to these issues for the first time, Persons and Personal Identity engages with some of the deepest and most important questions about human nature and our place in the world, making it a vital resource for students and researchers alike.

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How can we study organizations from a discursive perspective? What are the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each perspective on organizational discourse? To what extent do discourse and communication constitute the organizational world? This accessible book addresses these questions by showing how classical organizational themes, objects and questions can be illuminated from various discursive perspectives.Six approaches are presented and explained: semiotics, rhetoric, speech act theory, conversation analysis/ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis. These six perspectives are then mobilized throughout the book to study coordination and organizing, organizational culture and identity, as well as negotiation, decision making and conflicts in the context of meetings.The unifying thread of this volume is the communicative constitutive approach (CCO) to organizations, as implicitly or explicitly advocated by the great majority of organizational discourse analysts and theorists today. Throughout Organizational Discourse, this theme will help readers distinguish between discursive perspectives and other approaches to organizational life, and to understand how discourse matters in organizations.

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Questions about who we are, who we can be, and who is like and unlike us underpin a vast range of contemporary social issues. What makes our families so important to us? What do the often stark differences between how we self-identify and the way others see and define us reveal about our social world? Why do we attach such significance to 'being ourselves'?In this new edition of her popular and inviting introduction, Steph Lawler examines a range of important debates about identity. Taking a sociological perspective, she shows how identity is produced and embedded in social relationships, and worked out in the practice of people's everyday lives. She challenges the perception of identity as belonging within the person, arguing instead that it is produced and negotiated between persons. Chapter-by-chapter her book explores topics such as the relationships between lives and life-stories, the continuing significance of kinship in the face of social change, and how taste works to define identity. In particular, the updated edition has a new chapter on identity politics, as well as carefully compiled guides for further reading that reflect the broad importance and impact of these ideas, and the fact that, without understanding identity, we can't adequately begin to understand the social world. This book is essential reading for upper-level courses across the social sciences that focus on the compelling issues surrounding identity.

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Translated by Ciaran Cronin. The world is a state of turmoil. From the financial crisis to the chaos in the eurozone, from the Arab uprisings to protests in Athens, Barcelona, New York and elsewhere, many of the familiar frameworks are collapsing and we have to find new ways to orient ourselves in a world undergoing rapid change. Of course, it is necessary for political leaders to address local issues and react to people’s specific demands, but without a cosmopolitan outlook, such a reaction is likely to be inadequate. Ulrich Beck’s Twenty-one Observations on a World in Turmoil is a demonstration of cosmopolitan politics in practice. It is more than a mirror: it is a magnifying glass that brings into focus the processes that are transforming our world and highlights the great challenges we face today. ‘Global domestic politics’, the concept introduced and developed by Beck, is much more than a political theory, a philosophical utopia (or dystopia), a governance programme or a mental state: it is the reality of our times. Beck turns the argument that ‘global domestic politics’ is an unrealistic ideology on its head, arguing that it is the proponents of the national who are the idealists. They view reality through the obsolete lenses of the nation-state and thus cannot see the profound global changes that are transforming our reality. Global domestic politics is therefore a perspective, a political reality and a normative idea. And it is the critical theory of our times since it challenges the most profound truths which we hold dear: the truths of the nation.

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Unrecognized states are places that do not exist in international politics; they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence, but have failed to gain widespread international recognition. Since the Cold-War, unrecognized states have been involved in conflicts over sovereign statehood in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the South Pacific; some of which elicited major international crises and intervention, including the use of armed force. Yet they remain subject to many myths and simplifications. Drawing on a number of contemporary and historical cases, from Nagorno Karabakh and Somaliland to Taiwan, this timely new book provides a comprehensive analysis of unrecognized states. It examines their origins, the factors that enable them to survive and explores their likely future trajectories. But it is not just a book about unrecognized states; it is a book about sovereignty and statehood; one which does not shy way from addressing crucial issues such as how these anomalies survive in a system of sovereign states and how the context of non-recognition affects their attempts to build effective state-like entities. Ideal for students and scholars of global politics, peace and conflict studies, Unrecognized States offers a much needed and engaging account of the development of unrecognized states in the modern international system.

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Despite many predictions made over the last two hundred years that nation-states and nationalism are transient phenomena that will eventually fade away, the historical record and contemporary events show otherwise. Nationalism still remains the most popular, potent and resilient ideological discourse and the nation-state the only legitimate mode of territorial rule. This innovative and concise book provides an in-depth analysis of the processes involved in the emergence, formation, expansion and transformation of nation-states and nationalisms as they are understood today. Sinisa Malesevic examines the historical predecessors of nation-states (from hunting and gathering bands, through city-states, to modernizing empires) and explores the historical rise of organizational and ideological powers that eventually gave birth to the modern nation-state. The book also investigates the ways in which nationalist ideologies were able to envelop the microcosm of family, kin, residential and friendship networks. Other important topics covered along the way include: the relationships between nationalism and violence; the routine character of nationalist experience; and the impacts of globalization and religious revivals on the transformation of nationalisms and nation-states. This insightful analysis of nationalisms and nation-states through time and space will appeal to scholars and students in sociology, politics, history, anthropology, international relations and geography.

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Land is one of the world's most emotionally resonant resources, and control over it is fundamental to almost all human activity. From the local level to the global, we are often in conflict over the ground beneath our feet. But because human relationships to land are so complex, it can be difficult to think them through in a unified way. This path-breaking book aims to change that by combining insights from multiple disciplines to develop a framework for understanding the geopolitics of land today. Struggles over land, argues Derek Hall, relate to three basic principles: its role as territory, its status as property, and the ways in which its use is regulated. This timely introduction explores key dimensions of these themes, including inter-state wars over territory, the efforts of non-governmental organizations to protect property rights and environments in the global South, and the ‘land grabs’ attempted by contemporary corporations and governments. Drawing on a wide range of cases and examples - from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the Canadian Arctic, China’s urban fringe to rural Honduras - the book provides new ways of thinking about the political dynamics of land in the 21st century. This richly detailed and authoritative guide will be of interest to students across the social sciences, as well as anyone interested in current affairs and contemporary geopolitics.

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In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today. He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with the most recent developments in the field, introducing both longstanding theories and cutting-edge advances. As well as discussing the latest issues in ontology, Effingham also helpfully deals in-depth with different methodological principles (including theory choice, Quinean ontological commitment and Meinongianism) and introduces them alongside an example ontological theory that puts them into practice. This accessible and comprehensive introduction will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as any reader interested in the present state of the subject.

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In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation. Drawing on his reassessment of Hegel’s practical philosophy, Honneth argues that our conception of social justice should be redirected from a preoccupation with the principles of distributing goods to a focus on the measures for creating symmetrical relations of recognition. This theoretical reorientation has far-reaching implications for the theory of justice, as it obliges this theory to engage directly with problems concerning the organization of work and with the ideologies that stabilize relations of domination. In the final part of this volume Honneth shows how the theory of recognition provides a fruitful and illuminating way of exploring the relation between social reproduction and identity formation. Rather than seeing groups as regressive social forms that threaten the autonomy of the individual, Honneth argues that the ‘I’ is dependent on forms of social recognition embodied in groups, since neither self-respect nor self-esteem can be maintained without the supportive experience of practising shared values in the group. This important new book by one of the leading social philosophers of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology, politics and the humanities and social sciences generally.

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The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

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The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

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The idea was simple: pack a suitcase, go to another city where you have no connections and try to find a job, anonymously. That was the idea that took Florence Aubenas - one of France's mostaccomplished undercover journalists - on a journey into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Day after day she searched for work, one unemployed worker among others, with no special skills or qualifications. She immersed herself in the crowd of job seekers, going from one employment office toanother, eventually managing to cobble together a few hours working as a night cleaner on a ferry that crossed the English Channel. For many people the global financial crisis seems real enough but remote from their daily lives. They have little sense of what it really means to be unemployed in the midst of a recession. Florence Aubenas was determined to find out. This book is the story of herjourney. The Night Cleaner became an instant number one bestseller in France and has subsequently become a bestseller in many countries throughout the world. Better than any academic treatise on the topic, this book shows what recession means today.

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Current anxiety about the future of news makes it opportune to revisit the notion of professionalism in journalism. Media expert Silvio Waisbord takes this pressing issue as his theme and argues that “professional journalism” is both a normative and analytical notion. It refers to reporting that observes certain ethical standards as well as to collective efforts by journalists to exercise control over the news. Professionalism should not be narrowly associated with the normative ideal as it historically developed in the West during the past century. Instead, it needs to be approached as a valuable concept to throw into sharp relief how journalists define conditions and rules of work within certain settings. Professionalization is about the specialization of labor and control of occupational practice. These issues are important, particularly amidst the combination of political, technological and economic trends that have profoundly unsettled the foundations of modern journalism. By doing so, they have stimulated the reinvention of professionalism. This engaging and insightful book critically examines the meanings, expectations, and critiques of professional journalism in a global context.

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Media are poetic forces. They produce and reveal worlds, representing them to our senses and connecting them to our lives. While the poetic powers of media are perceptual, symbolic, social and technical, they are also profoundly moral and existential. They matter for how we reflect upon and act in a shared, everyday world of finite human existence. The Poetics of Digital Media explores the poetic work of media in digital culture. Developing an argument through close readings of overlooked or denigrated media objects – screenshots, tagging, selfies and more – the book reveals how media shape the taken-for-granted structures of our lives, and how they disclose our world through sudden moments of visibility and tangibility. Bringing us face to face with the conditions of our existence, it investigates how the ‘given’ world we inhabit is given through media. This book is important reading for students and scholars of media theory, philosophy of media, visual culture and media aesthetics.

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Media are poetic forces. They produce and reveal worlds, representing them to our senses and connecting them to our lives. While the poetic powers of media are perceptual, symbolic, social and technical, they are also profoundly moral and existential. They matter for how we reflect upon and act in a shared, everyday world of finite human existence. The Poetics of Digital Media explores the poetic work of media in digital culture. Developing an argument through close readings of overlooked or denigrated media objects – screenshots, tagging, selfies and more – the book reveals how media shape the taken-for-granted structures of our lives, and how they disclose our world through sudden moments of visibility and tangibility. Bringing us face to face with the conditions of our existence, it investigates how the ‘given’ world we inhabit is given through media. This book is important reading for students and scholars of media theory, philosophy of media, visual culture and media aesthetics.

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Today’s global energy system faces two major challenges: how to secure the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and how to rapidly transform to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally harmless energy supply. In this rigorous and illuminating book, Michael Bradshaw explores the key aspects of the current global energy dilemma and examines how it is playing out across the major regions and countries of the world. The book begins by charting the development of the current global energy system - exploring its key characteristics with a focus upon energy security and the relationship between energy, economic development and climate change. The next four chapters offer in-depth analyses of four distinct global energy dilemmas in different parts of the world: the challenge of sustaining affluence and decarbonising energy services in the high-energy economies of the developed world; the legacies of the centrally planned economy and the consequences of liberalisation in the post-socialist world; growing energy demand and emissions growth associated with the emerging regions; and finally, the quest to provide universal access to modern energy services in the developing world in a manner that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. Identifying the governance structures and policy options available to tackle the global energy dilemma, the book concludes that only an integrated approach - sensitive to regional issues - can reconcile the interests and needs of those facing differing energy challenges across the world today.

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This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way

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Noam Chomsky has made major contributions to three fields: political history and analysis, linguistics, and the philosophies of mind, language, and human nature. In this thoroughly revised and updated volume, James McGilvray provides a critical introduction to Chomsky's work in these three key areas and assesses their continuing importance and relevance for today. In an incisive and comprehensive analysis, McGilvray argues that Chomsky’s work can be seen as a unified intellectual project. He shows how Chomsky adapts the tools of natural science to the study of mind and of language in particular and explains why Chomsky's "rationalist" approach to the mind continues to be opposed by the majority of contemporary cognitive scientists. The book also discusses some of Chomsky’s central political themes in depth, examining how Chomsky's view of the good life and the ideal form of social organization is related to and in part dependent on his biologically based account of human nature and the place of language within it. As in the first edition, McGilvray emphasizes the distinction between common sense and science and the difference between rationalist and empiricist approaches to the mind, making clear the importance of these themes for understanding Chomsky's work and showing that they are based on elementary observations that are accessible to everyone. This edition has been extensively re-written to emphasize Chomsky's recent work, which increasingly 'biologizes' the study of language and mind and - by implication - the study of human nature. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, linguistics, and politics, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers writing today.

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With the vast majority of Facebook users caught in a frenzy of ‘friending’, ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’, at what point do we pause to grasp the consequences of our info-saturated lives? What compels us to engage so diligently with social networking systems? Networks Without a Cause examines our collective obsession with identity and self-management coupled with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture. With a dearth of theory on the social and cultural ramifications of hugely popular online services, Lovink provides a path-breaking critical analysis of our over-hyped, networked world with case studies on search engines, online video, blogging, digital radio, media activism and the Wikileaks saga. This book offers a powerful message to media practitioners and theorists: let us collectively unleash our critical capacities to influence technology design and workspaces, otherwise we will disappear into the cloud. Probing but never pessimistic, Lovink draws from his long history in media research to offer a critique of the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies that shape our daily lives.

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Media power in the global era has to do with how people understand the world, their place in it, and their relation to the others who populate it. Making connections with distant places and people is the work of cosmopolitan imagination, which involves seeing the world through the eyes of others. In this book, Robertson engages with the growing literature on cosmopolitanism to address these issues, combining theoretical debates with an innovative empirical portal. Based on the analysis of over 2000 news reports broadcast on national and global channels and interviews with journalists and audience members, Mediated Cosmopolitanism illustrates that the same everyday stories about the world can take on different meanings in different cultures. It argues that if we are to understand how media actors may help people to make the connections that underpin a cosmopolitan outlook, attention must be paid to evidence that some actors may not, and that national broadcasters could be more active agents of cosmopolitanism than global channels. Accessibly written, the book will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate and masters students, particularly of media studies, but also of sociology, politics and international relations.

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A decade ago no one except geologists had heard of tantalum or 'coltan' - an obscure mineral that is an essential ingredient in mobile phones and laptops. Then, in 2000, reports began to leak out of Congo: of mines deep in the jungle where coltan was extracted in brutal conditions watched over by warlords. The United Nations sent a team to investigate, and its exposé of the relationship between violence and the exploitation of coltan and other natural resources contributed to a re-examination of scholarship on the motivations and strategies of armed groups. The politics of coltan encompass rebel militias, transnational corporations, determined activists, Hollywood celebrities, the rise of China, and the latest iGadget. Drawing on Congolese and activist voices, Nest analyses the two issues that define coltan politics: the relationship between coltan and violence in the Congo, and contestation between activists and corporations to reshape the global tantalum supply chain. The way production and trade of coltan is organised creates opportunities for armed groups, but the Congo wars are not solely, or even primarily, about coltan or minerals generally. Nest argues the political significance of coltan lies not in its causal link to violence, but in activists' skillful use of mobile phones as a symbol of how ordinary people and transnational corporations far from Africa are implicated in Congo's coltan industry and therefore its conflict. Nest examines the challenges coltan initiatives face in an activist 'marketplace' crowded with competing justice issues, and identifies lessons from coltan initiatives for the geopolitics of global resources more generally.

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Few countries can claim to have endured such a difficult and tortuous history as that of Iraq. Its varied peoples have had to contend with externally imposed state-building at the end of the First World War, through to the rise of authoritarian military regimes, to the all-encompassing power of Saddam Hussein�s dictatorship. They have endured destructive wars, internationally-imposed sanctions, and a further bout of destabilizing regime change and subsequent state-building from 2003. The recent rise of the Islamic State, the consolidation of the Kurdistan Region, and the response of the Shi�i populace have brought the country to a de facto partition that may bring about Iraq�s final demise. The second edition of Iraq: People, History, Politics provides a comprehensive analysis of the political, societal, and economic dynamics that have governed Iraq�s modern development. Situating recent events within a longer historical timeframe, this book is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the deep histories that underpin the contemporary politics of this war-torn and troubled state.

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Important changes within the NHS and nursing have taken place over the last fifteen years. The healthcare environment has been transformed and the picture of professional nursing redrawn and sharpened. But how do these changes relate to practising nurses and student nurses at the beginning of their professional practice and what effect will they have on the everyday lives of nurses and their patients? Social Policy for Nurses aims to answer these essential questions, providing the ideal introduction to health policy for nurses at all stages of their careers. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book provides a comprehensive discussion of the current policy imperatives facing nurses across the UK. The text offers a clear overview of the nature of policy and policy-making, reminding nurses of their ability, and responsibility, to become involved. The importance of learning lessons from the past, both good and bad, is strongly emphasised and the book has helpful chapter summaries, case studies and learning activities to help readers engage with the policies discussed. The themes explored include: Working in partnership and empowering the users Building a healthier nation Professionalism Information technology The future for the profession and for a high-quality, collectively provided health service is now very much in the hands of all nurses. This book sets out to inspire the current and future generation of nurses to reflect fully on the influence that health policy has on their profession and daily practice, and on health service provision more generally.

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Official figures classify some fifty million of the world's people as 'victims of forced displacement'. Refugees, asylum seekers, disaster victims, the internally displaced and the temporarily tolerated - categories of the excluded proliferate, but many more are left out of count. In the face of this tragedy, humanitarian action increasingly seems the only possible response. On the ground, however, the 'facilities' put in place are more reminiscent of the logic of totalitarianism. In a situation of permanent catastrophe and endless emergency, 'undesirables' are kept apart and out of sight, while the care dispensed is designed to control, filter and confine. How should we interpret the disturbing symbiosis between the hand that cares and the hand that strikes? After seven years of study in the refugee camps, Michel Agier reveals their 'disquieting ambiguity' and stresses the imperative need to take into account forms of improvisation and challenge that are currently transforming the camps, sometimes making them into towns and heralding the emergence of political subjects. A radical critique of the foundations, contexts, and political effects of humanitarian action.

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This book is a fresh and engaging analysis of the city as a central concept in contemporary social thought. It probes the contested and negotiated ways in which cities are built, understood, lived and imagined. Taking a thematic approach and drawing on a range of theoretical, methodological and empirical points of reference, it examines such subjects as urban inequality, public space, creative cities, globalization, the night-time economy, suburbia, and memory and emotion. In The City Deborah Stevenson argues that, as theories and concepts shape what is known about cities and urban life, it is necessary to build conceptual frameworks that engage with the intersections and tensions between urban processes and trends, as well as with the complexities of everyday urban life. This book’s combination of original insight and critical synthesis will make it an invaluable contribution for an international, interdisciplinary readership of students and scholars in sociology, geography, urban studies and wider social science and the humanities.

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A compelling work of autobiographical fiction, Hélène Cixous's Hemlock weaves tragedy and comedy in its exploration of various human attachments: between an elderly but still truculent mother and her writer-daughter, between the mother and her sister, and between the writer and her vanished but nonetheless intensely present friend, Jacques Derrida, whose death is movingly evoked. "Here," she says in her preface, "the criss-crossing paths of my mother and my aunt will come to an end at last. When one old flower is left, what becomes of the other face?" Socrates is conjured up, along with the poisonous plants of Hamlet, the human comedies of Balzac and Proust, and other literary and philosophical ghosts who find themselves drawn into the fabric of Cixous's text: "I'm not sleeping," writes the protagonist. "A worm is drilling my brain. It's a phrase I heard in the hellish juice of the jusquiame. I pour it into my own ear. ‘I'm afraid Mama will die'." In this new work Hélène Cixous continues to explore and expand the boundaries of narrative, slipping from thought to thought and from image to image, so as to render every action, fear and thought palpable to the reader.

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The Democratic Republic of Congo has become one of the world's bloodiest hot spots. 2003 saw the end of a five-year war in which millions lost their lives - one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II. Despite recent peace agreements and democratic elections, the country is still plagued by army and militia violence. Congo remains deeply troubled, since the deep-rooted causes of conflict have not been adequately addressed. The conflict in the DRC has divided opinion; some call it a civil war, or a war of aggression by the country's neighbours; others a continuation of Rwanda's Hutu-Tutsi conflict on Congolose soil, and a war of partition and pillage. The prevalence of rape and sexual violence has led some analysts to mark it out as a hidden ‘war against women'. Tom Turner's insightful book reveals how each of these descriptions accurately captures the separate elements of this complex and multidimensional political conflict. In exploring each of these contributory factors, he shows how current attempts to rebuild the shattered state and society of DRC are doomed to fail. So long as the full complexity of the Congo crisis is not taken into account and a clear consensus as to its precise dimensions reached, the future looks bleak. The DRC, he argues, will likely remain a global hot spot for some time to come.

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The creative industries are the subject of growing attention among policy-makers, academics, activists, artists and development specialists worldwide. This engaging book provides a global overview of developments in the creative industries, and analyses how these developments relate to wider debates about globalization, cities, culture and the global creative economy. Flew considers creative industries from six angles: industries; production; consumption; markets; places; and policies. Designed for the non-specialist, the text includes insightful and wide-ranging case studies on topics such as: fashion; design thinking; global culture; creative occupations; monopoly and competition; Shanghai and Seoul as creative cities; popular music and urban cultural policy; and the rise of “Nollywood”. Global Creative Industries will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communications, cultural studies, economics, geography, sociology, design, public policy, and the arts. It will also be of value to those working in the creative industries, and involved in their development.

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Institutions are central to economic life. They have a major impact on consumer preferences, the actions and processes of firms, levels of wealth and poverty in countries, the growth of international trade, and much more. Indeed, none of the preconditions for economic activity - such as the existence of buyers and sellers, recognizable goods and services, and the information we need to make choices - would be in place without institutions. Institutions, then, do more than support economic life: they enable and shape it. These insights challenge some of the most basic postulates on modern economic theory and are at the heart of many of the most exciting works in economic sociology. This book examines the role of institutions - defined as the formal and informal rules and practices that surround us as we go about our daily lives - in the economy. Illuminating complex ideas with carefully selected, vivid examples, the investigation focuses on economic activity as it unfolds at the individual, organizational, national, and international levels. This accessible and engaging book will be essential reading for students of economic sociology, and all those interested in the intimate relationship between institutions and the economy.

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Philippines is Hélène Cixous's reverie or 'true dreaming' which intertwines Freud's uneasy views on telepathy, autobiographical memories conflating Algeria and Paris, childhood and adult life, shared with her brother 'Pete', and literary evocations from Proust and George du Maurier's forgotten novel Peter Ibbetson. Amid telepathic conversations, real or imagined, and life events uncannily answering one another from a distance, Cixous's dense evocative journey ceaselessly 'returns to its starting point' and, like the twin almonds in one shell evoked by the title, reveals intimate, secret bonds between scenes and beings, real and fictional. Its interpretive sharpness delivered with stylistic elegance and candour will make this study typical of Cixous's art, which plies between literature and criticism, appealing not only to scholars and critics interested in psychoanalysis, autobiography and the act of reading, but also to a broader readership captivated by the hallucinatory coincidences between life, dream and fiction, when 'Reality is the dream. The dream is the true reality'.

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The idea that respect for cultural diversity conflicts with gender equality is now a staple of both public and academic debate. Yet discussion of these tensions is marred by exaggerated talk of cultural difference, leading to ethnic reductionism, cultural stereotyping, and a hierarchy of traditional and modern. In this volume, Anne Phillips firmly rejects the notion that ‘culture’ might justify the oppression of women, but also queries the stereotypical binaries that have represented people from ethnocultural minorities as peculiarly resistant to gender equality. The questions addressed include the relationship between universalism and cultural relativism, how to distinguish valid generalisation from either gender or cultural essentialism, and how to recognise women as agents rather than captives of culture. The discussions are illuminated by reference to legal cases and policy interventions, with a particular focus on forced marriage and cultural defence.

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Natan Sznaider offers a highly original account of Jewish memory and politics before and after the Holocaust. It seeks to recover an aspect of Jewish identity that has been almost completely lost today - namely, that throughout much of their history Jews were both a nation and cosmopolitan, they lived in a constant tension between particularism and universalism. And it is precisely this tension, which Sznaider seeks to capture in his innovative conception of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism', that is increasingly the destiny of all peoples today. The book pays special attention to Jewish intellectuals who played an important role in advancing universal ideas out of their particular identities. The central figure in this respect is Hannah Arendt and her concern to build a better world out of the ashes of the Jewish catastrophe. The book demonstrates how particular Jewish affairs are connected to current concerns about cosmopolitan politics like human rights, genocide, international law and politics. Jewish identity and universalist human rights were born together, developed together and are still fundamentally connected. This book will appeal both to readers interested in Jewish history and memory and to anyone concerned with current debates about citizenship and cosmopolitanism in the modern world.

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We talk about irrationality when behaviour defies explanation or prediction, when decisions are driven by emotions or instinct rather than by reflection, when reasoning fails to conform to basic principles of logic and probability, and when beliefs lack coherence or empirical support. Depending on the context, agents exhibiting irrational behaviour may be described as foolish, ignorant, unwise or even insane.In this clear and engaging introduction to current debates on irrationality, Lisa Bortolotti presents the many facets of the concept and offers an original account of the importance of judgements of irrationality as value judgements. The book examines the standards against which we measure human behaviour, and reviews the often serious implications of judgements of irrationality for ethics and policy. Bortolotti argues that we should adopt a more critical stance towards accepted standards of rationality in the light of the often surprising outcomes of philosophical inquiry and cognitive science research into decision making. Irrationality is an accessible guide to the concept and will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in the limitations of human cognition and human agency.

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Globalization and the Environment critically explores the actors, politics and processes that govern the relationship between globalization and the environment. Taking key aspects of globalisation in turn - trade, production and finance - the book highlights the relations of power at work that determine whether globalization is managed in a sustainable way and on whose behalf. Each chapter looks in turn at the political ecology of these central pillars of the global economy, reviewing evidence of its impact on diverse ecologies and societies, its governance - the political structures, institutions and policy making processes in place to manage this relationship - and finally efforts to contest and challenge these prevailing approaches. The book makes sense of the relationship between globalisation and the environment using a range of theoretical tools from different disciplines. This helps to place the debate about the compatibility between globalisation and sustainability in an explicitly political and historical context in which it is possible to appreciate the ‘nature’ of interests and power relations that privilege some ways of responding to environmental problems over others in a context of globalisation.

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All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life.The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

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The rise of digital photography and imaging has transformed the landscape of visual communication and culture. Events, activities, moments, objects, and people are ‘captured' and distributed as images on an unprecedented scale. Many of these are shared publicly; some remain private, others become intellectual property, and some have the potential to shape global events. In this timely introduction, the ubiquity of photography is explored in relation to interdisciplinary debates about changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of images in digital culture. Ubiquitous Photography provides a critical examination of the technologies, practices, and cultural significance of digital photography, placing the phenomenon in historical, social, and political-economic context. It examines shifts in image-making, storage, commodification, and interpretation as highly significant processes of digitally mediated communication in an increasingly image-rich culture. It covers debates in social and cultural theory, the history and politics of image-making and manipulation, the current explosion in amateur photography, tagging and sharing via social networking, and citizen journalism. The book engages with key contemporary theoretical issues about memory and mobility, authorship and authenticity, immediacy and preservation, and the increased visibility of ordinary social life. Drawing upon a range of sources and original empirical research, Ubiquitous Photography provides a comprehensive introduction to critical academic debate and concrete developments in the field of digital photography. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in media and society, visual culture, and digital technology.

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Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?

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Shortly before his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida expressed two paradoxical convictions: he was certain that he would be forgotten the very day he died, yet at the same time certain that something of his work would survive in the cultural memory. This text by Peter Sloterdijk - one of the major figures of contemporary philosophy - makes a contribution of its own to the preservation and continuation of Derrida's unique and powerful work. In this brief but illuminating text, Sloterdijk offers a series of recontextualizations of Derrida's work by exploring the connections between Derrida and seven major thinkers, including Hegel, Freud and Thomas Mann. The leitmotif of this exploration is the role that Egypt and the Egyptian pyramid plays in the philosophical imagination of the West, from the exodus of Moses and the Jews to the conceptualization of the pyramid as the archetype of the cumbersome objects that cannot be taken along by the spirit on its return to itself. 'Egyptian' is the term for all constructs that can be subjected to deconstruction - except for the pyramind, that most Egyptian of edifices, which stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that is built to look as it would after its own collapse.

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François Jullien, the leading philosopher and specialist in Chinese thought, has always aimed at building on inter-cultural relations between China and the West. In this new book he focuses on the following questions: Do universal values exist? Is dialogue between cultures possible? To answer these questions, he retraces the history of the concept of the universal from its invention as an aspect of Roman citizenship, through its neutralization in the Christian idea of salvation, to its present day manifestations. This raises the question of whether the search for the universal is a uniquely Western preoccupation: do other cultures, like China, even have a notion of the universal, and if so, how does it differ from ours? Having considered the meaning of the concept in the East and West, Jullien argues that, if communication between cultures is to be meaningful, facile assumptions of universal values and complacent relativism need to be examined. It follows, therefore, that dialogue between cultures should not begin with issues of identity and difference, but rather by considering divergence and profusion. By no longer simply assuming universality, we allow for greater self-reflection. This wide-ranging and engaging study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of philosophy and of Chinese culture and society. It will also appeal to a wider readership interested in contemporary thought and the challenges of communication between East and West.

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In this latest addition to the War & Conflict Through the Ages series, Brian Sandberg offers a truly global examination of the intersections between war, culture, and society in the early modern period. He traces the innovative military technologies and practices that emerged around 1500, exploring the different forms of warfare including dynastic war, religious warfare, raiding warfare, and peasant revolt that shaped conflicts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He explains how significant social, economic, and political developments transformed warfare on land and at sea at a time of global imperialism and growing mercantilism, forcing states and military systems to respond to rapidly changing situations. Engaging and insightful, War and Conflict in the Early Modern World will appeal to scholars and students of world history, the early modern period, and those interested in the broader relationship between war and society.

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Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this fully updated edition of her important and widely acclaimed intervention on the topic, Ruth Lister introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the contemporary world. The book opens with a lucid discussion of current debates around the definition and measurement of poverty in industrialized societies, before embarking on a multifaceted exploration of its varied interpretations. Drawing on thinking in the field of international development and real-life accounts, the book emphasizes key aspects of poverty such as powerlessness, lack of voice, insecurity, loss of dignity and respect. Ruth Lister embraces the relational, cultural, symbolic as well as material dimensions of poverty, and makes important links between poverty and other concepts such as capabilities, agency, human rights and citizenship. She concludes by making the case for reframing the politics of poverty as a claim for redistribution and recognition. The result is a rich and insightful analysis, which deepens and broadens our understanding of poverty today. It will be essential reading for all students in the social sciences, as well as researchers, activists and policymakers.

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The politics of literature is not the same as the politics of writers and their commitments, nor does it concern the way writers represent social structures or political struggles. The expression 'politics of literature' assumes that there is a specific connection between politics as a form of collective practice and literature as a historically determined regime of the art of writing. It implies that literature intervenes in the parceling out of space and time, place and identity, speech and noise, the visible and the invisible, that is the arena of the political. This book seeks to show how the literary revolution shatters the perceptible order that underpinned traditional hierarchies, but also why literary equality foils any bid to place literature in the service of politics or in its place. It tests its hypotheses on certain writers: Flaubert, Tolstoy, Hugo, Mallarmé, Brecht and Borges, to name a few. It also shows the consequences of this for psychoanalytical intepretation, historical narration and philosophical conceptualization.

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How can suffering and injustice be reconciled with the idea that God is good, that he loves humans and is merciful to them? Job's question runs through the history of the three monotheistic religions. Time and again, philosophers, theologians, poets, prophets and laypersons have questioned their image of God in the light of a reality full of hardship. Some see suffering as proof of God's existence, others as a demonstration that there can be no God, while others still respond by rebelling against Him. In this remarkable book Navid Kermani - a distinguished Islamic scholar of Iranian origin - sees this revolt against God as the central motif of one of the great but neglected works of literature: The Book of Suffering by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Faridoddin Attar. Through the prism of Attar's text Kermani tells the story of a religious faith that knows God but is angry with Him: a counter-theology that runs through many religions and connects Judaism, Islam and modernity. With astonishing range and stylistic brilliance Kermani brings Attar to life as one of us, enabling the great Persian poet to speak directly to us today despite the time that separates us.

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