This book examines the origins of the US Navy’s 2007 Maritime Strategy, the formation of the US government’s “Pivot to Asia� strategy, and the most recent revisions to this strategy that focus more specifically on China. Besides examining the details of this strategy formulation, the book explores the internal and external repercussions on the US Navy of the Pivot to Asia. It discusses the “Fat Leonard� scandal, which involved bribery and corruption in contracts for the maintenance of the US fleets in the region, and considers the sharp decrease in training and readiness of the Pacific fleet to support the pivot, which in turn led to serious maritime collisions. It also assesses the impact of the pivot on other countries in the region, engaging in the debate as to whether the pivot was necessary in order to convince the countries of the region that the United States had not lost its staying power, or whether the pivot managed to make tensions in the Asia-Pacific worse even while allowing the strategic situation in the Middle East and Europe to worsen as a result of neglect.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is completing a decade. There have been varied responses to the Initiative from countries and regions besides the emergence of alternative initiatives and narratives. This sets the stage for evaluating the robustness of the Initiative, its implementation as well as its implications from the perspective of individual countries and regions across the globe. This book begins by examining China's domestic, economic, maritime and strategic interests as drivers for the Initiative. BRI has been analysed in country-specific, regional and continental contexts. It brings out the experiences and responses from South Asia, Eurasia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, Latin America, the Caribbean as well as from Europe and Africa. Further, BRI has been studied in the larger context of the US-China competition. The final section explores BRI in the context of the twin challenges of recent times, i.e., the pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict. The book concludes with an epilogue which outlines the broad trends related to BRI that have emerged from this study of ICWA. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Premchand on Literature and Life is a collection of Premchand's (1880-1936) fifty non-fiction prose pieces translated into English. The selected pieces in the collection compirse his editorials and articles which appeared in literary magazines and periodicals like Hans and Zamana, and cover a period from the early 1920s till 1936. In them, Premchand emerges as a literary critic and social commentator, holding forth on literature, his literary world, and the socio-cultural milieu of his ties. His keen observations and insightful critique are a call for evolving appropriate processes and agencies to encourage literary creativity and evaluation. In the selected prose pieces, Premchand's views are like a prism through which a nation's literary quotient can be assessed. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

From the perspective of critical cultural sociology, this book delves into the intertwining relations of cultural transformation and social evolution, illuminating contemporary Chinese culture's landscape and underlying logic since the 1980s. With a special focus on the tensions among politics, economy and culture itself, the book examines the transitions of Chinese culture from tradition to the modern age. It expounds the cultural differentiation and its effect in contemporary China. Within this framework, the author addresses some key issues and phenomena that figure in the cultural scene of modern China, ranging from the crisis of Chinese cultural identity in the context of globalization, the media culture and its impacts on everyday life, to the visual culture and social transformation. Offering a panoramic view of Chinese contemporary culture, literature, arts, and society, this title will serve as an essential read for scholars of China Studies, Cultural Studies, and Visual Culture as well as anyone interested in what's going on in Chinese contemporary culture.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been an obscure concept, and it remains difficult to distinguish what BRI is and isn't, making it difficult for many governments and global corporations to properly participate in it. This book presents the opinions and perspectives of many eminent researchers, professors and experts from various countries on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It contains 11 chapters which are written by distinguished researchers and practitioners from various parts of Asia. While these 11 chapters discuss the many characteristics of the BRI, including advantages and costs, they also convey the lessons that many other Southeast Asian countries have learned. Each chapter offers valueable lessons to the countries that have yet to participate in the initiatives. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This collection aims to attract attention to the admirable achievements of indigenous builders in Indonesia and to contribute to a broader sense of commitment to the endangered architectural heritage in the region. It presents the second part of the results of a research project on vernacular architecture in western Indonesia, sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The volume is intended to provide an introduction to all relevant vernacular architectural traditions and developments in western Indonesia.

This volume discusses the nuances of cultural phenomena in the transforming urban landscape of Indian cities. It focuses on the role of globalization, transitioning economic patterns, National Urban policies in changing their urban landscape. The volume argues how culture is an important determinant of the emergent urban patterns. It decodes and determines the human centered inter-linkages such as social, cultural, economic, and political and their reactions in the transformations in urban morphology to understand the spatial perspective and visualization of new emerging cultural phenomena. The book reflects on the contemporary global forces and currently operational national urban policies that have enforced new dynamics of consumption, lifestyles, and institutions. Further, it also examines the ways in which these forces come together to create new hybrid cultures which manifest in spatial practices. With detailed case studies of different cities, this book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of urban planning, cultural studies, urban sociology, urban geography, history, urban design, urban conservation, and policy studies. It will also be useful for professionals working in the field of smart cities in India and abroad, planning authorities, urban scientists, cultural tourists, artists, local cultural enthusiasts, and those interested in studying the urban conditions of Indian cities.

This monograph explores and investigates key issues facing Middle Eastern societies, including religion and sectarianism, history and collective memory, urban space and socioeconomic difference, policing and securitization, and gender relations. In the Middle East, television drama creators serve as public intellectuals who, with uncanny prescience, tell the world something. As this volume demonstrates, fictional television provides a crucial space for social and political debate in much of the region. Writing from a range disciplines—anthropology, communication, folklore, gender studies, history, and law— contributors include seasoned academics who have dedicated their careers to researching Middle Eastern media and emerging scholars who build on earlier work and introduce fresh perspectives. Together, they provide an invaluable overview of Middle Eastern serial television and their political impact, drawing examples from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Bringing together a diverse range of academic perspectives, this book will be of key interest to students and scholars in media and communication studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and popular culture studies.

Through in-depth socio-historical analysis of discourses and processes of quantification around school performance and student failure rates in Brazil, this volume highlights the prevalence of Eurocentric colonized thought that results in the persistence of exclusion bottlenecks, different trajectories according to gender, race and class, significant regional variations in the rates of failure and dropout, among other problems. Focussing on processes performed between 1918 and 2012, chapters offer rich analysis of historiographic sources including journals, newspapers, and administrative documentation to trace the development of initiatives intended to promote the democratization of Brazilian schooling. Examination of reforms including school classification, the graduated school model, admissions examinations, and automatic promotion reveal a school system which mirrors wider societal injustices and guarantees academic success for only a minority of students. Bringing a nuanced and elaborated historical perspective of the pragmatics of the selective classificatory logic in different institutional and epistemic qualities of the school organization of children and reasoning about abilities and achievement, it will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in curriculum and assessment, the sociology of education, and the history of education.

Penal Abolitionism and Transformative Justice in Brazil discusses how penal abolitionism provides fundamental theoretical bases and practical references for the construction of a transformative justice in Brazil, supporting the claim that justice is a socially constructed conception and that victims do not unanimously stand for punishment. The book explores how the active participation of the protagonists of a conflict in a face-to-face negotiation of symbolic reparation, can produce a sense of justice without the need to punish or impose suffering on anyone. Mapping the ways that restorative justice in Brazil has distanced itself from the potential of transformative justice, to the extent that it fails to politicize the conflict and give voice to victims, the book shows how it has resulted in becoming just a new version of penal alternatives with correctionalist content. Moving away from traditional criminal justice language and also from conservative approaches to restorative justice, the author argues that the communicative potential of the transformative kind of redress can be dissociated from the unproved assumption that legal punishment is essential or even likely to achieve justice or deterrence. The arguments are grounded in the Brazilian reality, where life is marked by deep social inequalities and a high level of police violence. By providing a review of the literature on restorative justice, transformative justice, and abolitionism, the book contextualizes the abolitionist debate in Brazil and its history in the 19th century. Penal Abolitionism and Transformative Justice in Brazil is important reading for students and scholars who study punishment and penal abolitionism, to think about what it is possible to do in societies so deeply marked by social injustice and a history of oppression.

Sassetti’s Indian Letters are among the most interesting penned during these years, offering a trove of cultural speculation and economic analysis. Sassetti was neither a principled critic of imperialism nor a principled advocate of liberalism, but a pragmatic theorist of free trade Sassetti was very much the archetypal Renaissance man

This path-breaking book uncovers the important, under-appreciated role of armed opposition groups turned political parties in shaping long-term patterns of politics after war. Based on an empirically grounded and theoretically informed retrospective on nearly thirty years of post-conflict democratic state-building efforts, it examines whether this practice has contributed to peace and finds that engaging post-rebel parties in electoral politics has proven to be a viable long-term strategy for bringing political stability, that disparate post-rebel parties from different political contexts invest heavily in electoral politics and that few post-rebel parties actively seek return to civil conflict as a solution after becoming a political party. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in democracy, governance, elections, political parties, post-conflict peacebuilding, and more broadly to international relations, comparative politics, and regional politics.

Focused on two networks, Al-Jazeera and BBC Arabic, this study provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of different media strategies employed in the coverage of Covid-19. The author draws primarily from Critical Discourse Analysis, supplemented by an analysis of corpora from both Al-Jazeera and BBC, comprising news items, documentaries and discussion shows. An array of key topics are examined for their language and lexis, including political leaders and governments, the public and victims of Covid-19. The two networks' coverage of these topics are closely compared and contrasted, with both employing strategies of exemplification, nominalisation, functionalisation, naming and labelling. The analysis shows that the two networks have displayed a solidarity discourse throughout the pandemic, emphasising the need to fight the disease. In addition, the networks have consistently stressed the gravity of the pandemic, urging adherence to local regulations. It is ultimately argued that examining the coverage of Covid-19 from a dialectical perspective will enable us to unravel the social, cultural, political, and ideological motives behind the production of pandemic media discourse. The book will appeal to students and researchers in linguistics, media and communications, and Middle Eastern studies, as well as to general readers interested in conflict and pandemic response.

He, Breen and Allison-Reumann combine qualitative and quantitative research to compare the successes and failures of attempts at Federalism in Asian countries. Federalism is an increasingly common approach to improving governance and resolving ethnic conflict in Asia. However, Asian federalism faces three thorny problems. First, the ethnic federalism paradigm dominates political and intellectual life, rendering political compromise difficult and creating an obstacle to establishing or improving federalism in Asia. Second, religious fundamentalism and secular refusal to accommodate religious demands pose an existential threat to federal politics. Third, a majoritarian democracy is itself a threat to federalism in Asia, and the peace and stability that it is meant to underpin. Through a truly comparative analysis, He, Breen and Allison-Reumann investigate the potential for a hybrid-ethnic approach, religious moderation and deliberative democracy to overcome these challenges. They analyse cases from across Asia – both successes and failures. These include countries encompassing the first generation of federalism in Asia - India, Malaysia and Pakistan - and challenges faced by the new, emerging and aspiring federal states, namely Nepal, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. They demonstrate how federalism can be achieved through compromise and a continual renegotiation of its underpinning values. A vital resource for scholars of political systems in Asia, and of federalism more broadly.

This book provides a comprehensive view of intergenerational mobility in the context of religious and caste dynamics in India.

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946). A notable politician, diplomat and educationist in colonial India, Sastri was a founding member of the National Liberal Federation and was one of the leading liberals — often dismissed as ‘a body of sycophants and self-seekers’ — of the post-1918 period of Indian pre-independence history. Through Sastri, the book shines a light on the contributions of liberals in Indian political history and challenges the convenient binaries in Indian historiography. Examining the role that liberals like Sastri played in bridging the gap between the officials and the nationalists, it traces the practice of liberal politics in the post-1918 period of Indian nationalist struggle and the broader contours of Indian liberalism. Accessible, comprehensive and scholarly, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian history, especially the nationalist movement, political thought, and South Asian studies.

This first-ever English translation of Nur Baba – a classic of modern Turkish literature written by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu – offers a unique window into Sufi lodges, social dilemmas, and intellectual life in early twentieth-century Istanbul. Inspired by Karaosmanoğlu’s personal experiences with Islamic mystical orders, it is a story of illicit romance and spiritual inquiry, depicting a colourful lodge of Sufi dervishes led by a charismatic, yet morally suspect, spiritual master named Nur Baba. The plot follows his attempts to seduce an attractive married woman from an elite family and recounts her dramatic experiences in the life of a Sufi community. The setting shuttles between the grand mansions of Istanbul’s elite families and a Sufi lodge where rich and poor intermingle. Exploring questions of gender, morality, and religious bias throughout, it captures the zeitgeist of early twentieth-century modernist thinkers who criticised Sufism for impeding social progress and debated the public roles of women in a rapidly modernising society. Alongside the editor’s meticulous translation, the volume includes a scholarly introduction, maps, and images, as well as explanatory footnotes that will aid both students and scholars alike. The novel will be of particular interest to those studying world literature, Sufi studies, and Ottoman-Turkish history.

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946). A notable politician, diplomat and educationist in colonial India, Sastri was a founding member of the National Liberal Federation and was one of the leading liberals — often dismissed as ‘a body of sycophants and self-seekers’ — of the post-1918 period of Indian pre-independence history. Through Sastri, the book shines a light on the contributions of liberals in Indian political history and challenges the convenient binaries in Indian historiography. Examining the role that liberals like Sastri played in bridging the gap between the officials and the nationalists, it traces the practice of liberal politics in the post-1918 period of Indian nationalist struggle and the broader contours of Indian liberalism. Accessible, comprehensive and scholarly, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian history, especially the nationalist movement, political thought, and South Asian studies.

This book traces the contribution of Punjabis born before the Partition of India in 1947 to Indian cinema. It examines the story of their contributions at three centres of Hindustani-language films: Bombay, Calcutta and Lahore. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book is an attempt to present the inside story of the Telangana movement that developed due to historical reasons. The movement, in this work, has brought forward the Telangana lower class's response to the established cultural hegemony of the Andhra linguistic elite and affluent agrarian communities who, in their perception, monopolized the political power and economic resources. The movement voices the democratic yearnings of service castes, artisans, Dalits and nomads who through their instant association with the movement expressed aspirations for their due share in political power and administrative structure. The leadership that has come from the regional elite has, however, articulated only the reasons of 'self-respect and regional autonomy'. This work brings out the two-fold character in the movement. It also gives insights into the possible need of remaking states in India in the interest of the inclusion of these social groups in political structures so that democracy might further percolate downwards. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context. Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, including media and communications, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, history and literature, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Korean popular culture and its historical underpinnings, changing roles and dynamic meanings in the present moment of the digital social media age. The book’s sections include: K-pop Music Popular Cinema Television Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation Digital Games and Esports Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food Nation Branding An accessible, comprehensive and thought-provoking work, providing historical and contemporary contexts, key issues and debates, this textbook will appeal to students of and providers of courses on popular culture, media studies and Korean culture and society more broadly.

This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context. Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, including media and communications, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, history and literature, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Korean popular culture and its historical underpinnings, changing roles and dynamic meanings in the present moment of the digital social media age. The book's sections include: K-pop Music Popular Cinema Television Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation Digital Games and Esports Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food Nation Branding An accessible, comprehensive and thought-provoking work, providing historical and contemporary contexts, key issues and debates, this textbook will appeal to students of and providers of courses on popular culture, media studies and Korean culture and society more broadly.

From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of 'Peace' provides original analysis of how communities have developed coping strategies and created foundations for new forms of political expression, interaction, and mobilization since the 1993 peace deal between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. Its premise is that an historical realism is essential in order to develop a route out of the post-Oslo impasse that incubated and expanded a massive asymmetric power contrast under the auspices of 'peace'. The book brings together experts from Palestine, Israel, and further afield, and from across the disciplines of law, economics, political science, and anthropology to map out and critically assess the impacts and responses to this 'peace' in different geographical and political settings. These innovative analyses also investigate processes that might enable a future to be built based on greater equality and an end to the oppression and violence that currently exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (and beyond).

Islamic finance has emerged to meet the financial needs of people who seek a different approach to conventional banking and finance. Due to its late inception, Islamic finance has often been regarded as an "infant industry" compared to its traditional counterparts. Even though the Islamic finance industry is still classified as nascent, it has shown rapid growth in the last decade or so. The primary objective of this book is to highlight the main issues and challenges the Islamic finance industry faces and to offer practical solutions. Firstly, the book classifies the main components of Islamic finance such as money and banking, capital markets, fintech, microfinance, insurance as well as morality and governance. Secondly, all of the chapters are combined according to their relationship and link with each other so as to provide readers with a unique and holistic overview of the subject. The chapters are written by well-renowned experts in the field. As well as offering readers theoretical information about each subject under discussion, it also advances practical solutions that can contribute to the development of each field. The book answers questions such as how money is created by banks; what the business model of Islamic banking should look like; whether Islamic microfinance institutions are sustainable; what the likely framework of takaful should be; what the potential role of fintech could be in reshaping the Islamic financial system, and where and whether morality fits in the financial system. The book will attract the attention of students, researchers, practitioners, regulators and policymakers.

Michael Jackson challenged the power structure of the American music industry and struck at the heart of blackface minstrelsy, America's first form of mass entertainment. The response was a derisive caricature that over time Jackson subverted through his art. In this expanded, all-new edition, Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask argues for the tangible relationship between Jackson and blackface minstrelsy. It reveals the dialogue at minstrelsy's core and, in its broader sense, tracks a centuries-long pattern of racial oppression and its resistance and how that has been played out in popular theatre. Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask explores Jackson's early talent and fame and the birth and escalation of 'Wacko Jacko'. In relation to all this, the book examines Jackson's dynamic art as it evolved, from his live performances and short films to the very surface of his own body. Scholarly and interdisciplinary, this work is suitable for readers across a diverse spectrum of academic fields, including African American studies, popular music studies and cultural theory, media and communication, gender studies and performance and theatre studies. Academic but accessible, this book will also be an engaging read for anyone interested in Michael Jackson and especially in his role as an icon of difference, in America's dynamics of race and his mass media image.