This is the fifth volume in the Oxford Regional Environments series. The series is devoted to major regions of the world, each presenting a detailed and up-to-date body of scientific knowledge concerning a particular region. Fennoscandia is composed of Finland ('Fennia' in Latin) and the Scandinavian peninsula (Norway and Sweden). A team of experts presents the physical geographical factors which affect and control life in this northern area. The contributors concentrate on topics which are characteristic of the region, scientifically sound, and not necessarily familiar to an international audience, such as land uplift, large drumlin fields and eskers, mires, snow, the timberline, fjords, archipelagos, lakes, scattered frost features, and the biodiversity of conservation.

In 1958, Suzanne and Ezra Vogel embedded themselves in a Tokyo suburban community, interviewing six middle-class families regularly for a year. Their research led to Japan's New Middle Class, a classic work on the sociology of Japan. Now, Suzanne Hall Vogel's compelling sequel traces the evolution of Japanese society over the ensuing decades through the lives of three of these ordinary yet remarkable women and their daughters and granddaughters. Vogel contends that the role of the professional housewife constrained Japanese middle-class women in the postwar era-and yet it empowered them as well. Precisely because of fixed gender roles, with women focusing on the home and children while men focused on work, Japanese housewives had remarkable authority and autonomy within their designated realm. Wives and mothers now have more options than their mothers and grandmothers did, but they find themselves unprepared to cope with this new era of choice. These gripping biographies poignantly illustrate the strengths and the vulnerabilities of professional housewives and of families facing social change and economic uncertainty in contemporary Japan.

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.

This book interrogates the identity politics involved in framing Colombian diasporas, examining the ways that creative writers, directors, performers and artists negotiate collective and personal experiences that shape their identities through their art and cultural productions. New consideration of the diversity of Afro-Latin American and Indigenous communities within the overarching categorization of "Colombianness" or Colombianidad have led to increased focus on the representation of Colombia and Colombian diasporic communities. By focusing on different cultural productions—novels, memoirs, films, plays and visual arts—this book analyzes the performance of Colombianidad by communities throughout the diaspora. Topics include Afro-Colombian, US Latinx, Caribbean and queer identity, marginalization of racialized bodies within Colombia and the Colombian diaspora, and the politics of identity representation. Colombian Diasporic Identities: Representations in Literature, Film, Theater and Art examines how a consciously Colombian diasporic existence travels and is altered across geographic locales. Colombian Diasporic Identities will be key reading for scholars and students in US Latinx studies, and Latin American diasporic studies, together with ethnic studies, gender studies, queer studies and literature.

China’s emergence as an aid donor in Africa has caught global attention, with China’s activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context. This book, which focuses on China’s education aid - government scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc. – reveals a much more complicated picture. It outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders China’s soft power projection, how much of China’s aid is bound up with an education-for-economic-growth outlook, mirroring China’s own recent experiences of economic development, and how China’s aid, prioritized to reflect the commercial sector’s interests, is out of step with most international development aid, which is dominated by education agendas and the campaigns of international organizations and traditional donors, which leaves China easily exposed to the charge of neo-colonialism. It emphasizes the international development cooperation architecture as an open system by which both traditional donors and Southern countries transform.

The Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment provides an in-depth and accessible analysis and theorization of environmental issues in the region. It will help readers make connections between Latin American and other regions' perspectives, experiences, and environmental concerns. Latin America has seen an acceleration of environmental degradation due to the expansion of resource extraction and urban areas. This Handbook addresses Latin America not only as object of study, but also as a region with a long and profound history of critical thinking on these themes. Furthermore, the Handbook departs from the environment as a social issue inextricably linked to politics, economy and culture. It will be an invaluable resource for those wanting not only to understand the issues, but also to engage with ideas about environmental politics and social-ecological transformation. The handbook covers a broad range organized in three areas: physical geography, ecology and crucial environmental problems of the region, key theoretical and methodological issues used to understand Latin America's ecosocial contexts, and institutional and grassroots practices related to more just and sustainable worlds. The Handbook will set a research agenda for the near future and provide comprehensive research on most subregions relative to environmental transformations, challenges, struggles and political processes. It stands as a fresh and much needed state of the art introduction for researchers, scholars, post-graduates and academic audiences on Latin American contributions to theorization, empirical research and environmental practices.

1) This is one of the first systematic historical account of Medical Advice about Breastfeeding in Colonial Calcutta. 2) It has rich archival sources like rare medical handbooks and periodicals, governmental proceedings, child welfare exhibition and conference reports, personal papers, memoirs, illustrations and advertisements. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of social history and colonial history across UK.

This book—an English translation of a key Tamiḻ book of literary and cultural criticism—looks at the construction of Tamiḻ scholarship through the colonial approach to Tamiḻ literature as evidenced in the first translations into English. The Tamiḻ original Atik�ramum tamiḻp pulamaiyum: Tamiḻiliruntu mutal �ṅkila moḻipeyarppukaḷ by N Govindarajan is a critique of the early attempts at the translations of Tamiḻ literary texts by East India Company officials, specifically by N E Kindersley. Kindersley, who was working as the Collector of South Arcot district in the late eighteenth century, was the first colonial officer to translate the Tamiḻ classic Tirukkuṟaḷ and the story of King Naḷa into English and to bring to the reading public in English the vibrant oral narrative tradition in Tamiḻ. F W Ellis in the nineteenth century brought in another dimension through his translation of the same classic. The book, thus, focuses on the attempts to translate the Tamiḻ literary works by the Company’s officials who emerged as the pioneering English Dravidianists and the impact of translations on the Tamiḻ reading community. Theoretically grounded, the book makes use of contemporary perspectives to examine colonial interventions and the operation of power relations in the literary and socio-cultural spheres. It combines both critical readings of past translations and intensive research work on Tamiḻ scholarship to locate the practice of literary works in South Asia and its colonial history, which then enables a conversation between Indian literary cultures. In this book, the author has not only explored all key scholarly sources as well as the commentaries that were used by the colonial officials, chiefly Kindersley, but also gives us an insightful critique of the Tamiḻ works. The highlight of the discussion of Dravidian Orientalism in this book is the intralinguistic opposition of the “mainstream� Tamiḻ literature in “correct/poetical� Tamiḻ and the folk literature in “vacana� Tamiḻ. This framework allows the translators to critically engage with the work. Annotated and with an Introduction and a Glossary, this translated work is a valuable addition to our reading of colonial South India. The book will be of interest to researchers of Tamiḻ Studies, Orientalism and Indology, translation studies, oral literature, linguistics, South Asian Studies, Dravidian Studies and colonial history.

This book investigates the penal culture in France and Germany – how it is shaped in politics, media, and public opinion. Although compared with the US or the UK, France and Germany seem to place a strong emphasis on the ideal of rehabilitation that would block excessive punishment and other outcomes of punitive developments in society, there is a steady increase in punitiveness over time for which the term “strained restraint� is proposed. The book shows that the idea of penal moderation is deeply rooted in public opinion, politics, and the media and that it is renegotiated every day in a dynamic interplay between these spheres. Punishment and society research has traditionally focused on the US and the UK. In comparative research, both are considered extreme in punitive developments with high rates of imprisonment and large groups of the population under penal control. The other extreme in comparative research would be Scandinavia with the famous Nordic Exceptionalism marked by low prison population rates. Germany and France are often considered to be “the same� when compared with each other, and “the other� with reference to both of these extremes. However, this book shows that France and Germany are far from being the same when it comes to state organization (centralistic vs. federal), criminal justice and the criminal law, political traditions, and the media. Also, research from both countries has looked at whether developments such as the “punitive turn� have occurred in Germany and France. Research focused on the domestic situation concludes that punitiveness is on the rise, and that both countries are indeed experiencing their own punitive turn. How do we reconcile these contradictory findings? Why do these two seem to follow the path of penal moderation in the overall outcome of punishment in society when we look at comparative research? And how is it that from a domestic perspective, punitive attitudes and desires are leading to more punitiveness? By focusing on the meso level, with a comparative perspective on the two countries and a dynamic analytical approach, this book reconciles the fluidity of individual attitudes and opinions with the relative stability of societal discourse. The authors posit that penal moderation comes at a price: overall and in an internationally comparative perspective, there is penal moderation, but a closer look at the domestic situation and development reveals that it is nonetheless challenged by a slowly rising tide of punitiveness. Going beyond the main tenets of punishment and society research with a dynamic analysis of two large societies in Europe, this book is ideal reading for scholars and students of penology, criminal justice, and European studies.

After it became clear that the UN Security Council would not set up a peacekeeping force to fulfill the role envisaged for it in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty--supervising the implementation of the treaty and preventing any violation of its terms--the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) was established in its place. This book provides a detailed description of the structure and function of the MFO in order to evaluate its chances for success. In addition, the author has included various documents regarding the MFO's legal basis and organization. The MFO is the first modern multinational peacekeeping force that is independent of any organization; in the future it may serve as a prototype for multinational peacekeeping forces in conflicts and areas in which the UN is unwilling or unable to become involved.

Offering an alternative discourse on modernization and development viewed specifically from the East Asia perspective, this book focuses its analysis on the Korean experience of modernization and development. It considers the broad range of societal transformations which have occurred over the past half century, utilizing the vernacular language of Korea extracted from everyday life to interpret, characterize, globalize and pedagogically broaden the understanding and the human meaning behind these complex social changes.

Representative democracy remains the best available form of government - and the one preferred by most EU citizens, but satisfaction with how it plays out varies greatly across the continent. Among the perceived weaknesses are high levels of political corruption, low resilience to disinformation, and out-of-touch governing elites. Yet there is some hope that direct channels for citizens to express their concerns and preferences, fact-based deliberation in representative bodies and robust mechanisms to hold governments to account can help save European democracy from the onslaught of populism. This volume draws together proposals into a framework reflecting the four cumulative criteria used by modern political theorists to assess the health of a democracy: inclusion, choice, deliberation and impact. Its expert contributors offer pragmatic ideas to strengthen representative democracy at both the national and EU level. This is the third and final book produced in the framework of the Towards a Citizens' Union project co-funded by the EU's Erasmus+ Programme. It is the product of collaboration with 20 renowned think tanks from the European Policy Institutes Network (EPIN).

This book examines cinematic practices in Bollywood as narratives that assist in shaping the imagination of the age, especially in contemporary India. It examines historical films released in India since the new millennium and analyses cinema as a reflection of the changing socio-political and economic conditions at any given period. The chapters in Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India: Cinematic Representations and Nationalist Agendas in Hindi Cinemas also illuminate different perspectives on how cinematic historical representations follow political patterns and market compulsions, giving precedence to a certain past over the other, creating a narrative suited for the dominant narrative of the present. From Mughal-e-Azam to Padmaavat, and Bajirao Mastani to Raazi, the chapters show how creating history out of myths validate hegemonic identities in a rapidly evolving Indian society. The volume will be of interest to scholars of film and media studies, literature and culture studies, and South Asian studies.

Politics and Government in South Africa introduces readers to all aspects of government and politics in South Africa, from local, to provincial, national, and on to international considerations. The perfect guide for students and general readers, this textbook explains how South Africa's key institutions are governed and interact with each other, and how important issues such as economics, gender, race, and class shape relations between citizens and government. Grounded in history and leading theories and debates, the book also brings in alternative perspectives from artists, writers, and popular culture, to demonstrate the diverse ways in which issues of politics and social justice are engaged with within South Africa. Written with the needs of students at the forefront, each chapter includes: Review and discussion questions Key terms and further resources Fun facts in a Did you know? section Supplementary sources and quotations in a The Past as Present section Interactive and engaging, Politics and Government in South Africa invites readers to consider what they would do in tackling issues such as land distribution, peacekeeping, South Africa's role in the African Union, and military engagement abroad. It is an essential read for undergraduate students studying Political Science, International Relations, and African Studies, and for anyone looking to develop a deeper understanding of South Africa.

This is the true story of a standout artist in the field of pop and sentimental song; a star entertainer who rose to fame in Cape Town, South Africa. The world reflected in this book has several genealogical strands reaching back to other histories – to the nineteenth century theatre, to the rise of racism in South Africa, and the ways people were forced to negotiate the contradictions of being human against impossible odds. We encounter a biographer with a subject which is close to him, and which he has meticulously researched over a course of time. The book offers insights into the musical world of the phonograph, of the global popular culture after the Second World War and how this was absorbed into Cape Town’s popular culture.

1. It is a comprehensive book outlining the theories of Injustice in South Asian context. 2. It has contributions from globally well-known scholars like Sundar Sarukkai. Gopal Guru, Partha Chatterjee, Gurpreet Mahajan. 3. The book will be of interest to departments of South Asian Studies and Political Theory across UK and USA.

The book provides an extensive analysis of extremism, extremist narratives and counter-narratives and their role in consolidating exclusive religious, cultural and social identities in Pakistan. Focusing on the construction and institutionalization of extremist tendencies, the book studies the process of the adoption of the narrow interpretation of religion and society, which subsequently was equated with national identity. It looks at the efforts of counter-extremism narratives, which tend to focus on violent extremism while overlooking non-violent manifestations. The author highlights that the main issue with counter-narratives is the difficulty in presenting extremism and its narratives as a threat since they have been normalized with the state being part of facilitating and building them. A valuable and much-required contribution to the existing literature on extremism and narrative building in Pakistan, this book would help students, academics and policymakers in identifying the limitations of counter-narratives in Pakistan, while providing them with a detailed overview of extremism and extremist narratives. It will also be of interest to researchers studying Security Studies and Asian Politics, especially in the context of South Asia.

1. It is a comprehensive book outlining the theories of Injustice in South Asian context. 2. It has contributions from globally well-known scholars like Sundar Sarukkai. Gopal Guru, Partha Chatterjee, Gurpreet Mahajan. 3. The book will be of interest to departments of South Asian Studies and Political Theory across UK and USA.

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home became a global phenomenon, yet before 2020, it was a relatively understudied practice. But in informal settlements, the definition of "home" and "employment" is completely intertwined, which is why there is so much to learn from them. For over half a century, mainstream theoretical approaches to urban informality, dominated by development economics, often fail to see this economic and spatial phenomenon jointly. Labor studies tend to be space-blind and spatial studies often disregard informal employment. Profoundly interdisciplinary, this work connects scholarship in development, public policy, labor studies, and feminist economics, with that in urban studies, planning, housing, architecture, and visual studies. The book walks the reader behind the closed doors of working homes that make the fabric, both social and economic, of most cities. It applies a visual methodology to reveal their "space-use intensity" and quantify the extent to which houses in informal settlements fill their inner pores with economic activity and community services. The research also revisits urban formalization policies in Latin America and Africa, to uncover a fallacious politics of recognition. It ultimately argues for a recognition continuum: an approach to urban informality that is more practical and fairer. The book is of interest to development economists, urban scholars, public policy specialists, time-use researchers, and architects working on housing, employment generation, urban livelihoods, gender studies, and related topics.

This book is an introduction to Patanjali's Yoga as a system of theory and practice of psychology. It explains and interprets the concepts and procedures in the language and idiom of the currently prevailing Euro-American approaches to psychology. The book describes the context of inquiry focusing on the currently popular image of Yoga as a form of calisthenics and a system of concepts and practices of psychology. It provides a worldview of Yoga originated in ancient Vedas and Upanishads and explains the Vedic 'myth' of the genesis of the world showing how it differs from the Christian and Dravidian views. The book explains the concepts of the Samkhya system used by Patanjali as their basic framework. Interpreted in the light of modern psychology, it highlights the significance of the Yogic thesis about excess of suffering over happiness in life. The book also explains two important aspects of Yoga i.e., afflictions (klesas) and Kriya Yoga and provides a detailed account of the transformation of consciousness. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, and Yoga Psychology. It will also be of great interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, mental health professionals, clinical psychologists, and yoga enthusiasts.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the evolution of imperialism in Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, France, and the Great Britain. It delves into the background of colonialization and focuses on the nature of the motives of necessity, utility, religious, and exploratory and the modus operandi of the establishment of the colonies which required substantial amount of capital. The volume discusses a wide range of themes including the role of Spain as a Muslim colony; rise and fall of Spain as an imperial power; Portuguese discoveries and colonialization; conquests of Dutch companies of East India and West Indies; the French company of the Indies; British colonies in Americas, Africa and Australasia and English East India Company to showcase a holistic history of European competition for trade through wars in North America, South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. This book will be of interest to general readers interested in history of colonization, imperialism, Third World studies, post-colonial studies, international relations, defense and strategic studies, South Asian history, and European history.

Recent scholarship has framed early Confucians as just war theorists with relatively permissive criteria for the just use of violence. Lead Them with Virtue: A Confucian Alternative to War makes the case that such interpretations conflict with what Mencius and Xunzi were trying to do. Kurtis Hagen argues that they both strove to prevent war by contrasting the situations of their day with idealized versions of the semi-mythic activities of sage-kings, which represent appropriate use of the military. These stories imply support for the offensive use of the military only when actual war-with its characteristic horrors-would not ensue. Following this logic, military interventions are just only in circumstances that do not actually occur. Confucians advocate, instead, a long-term strategy of ameliorating unjust circumstances by leveraging the credibility and influence that stems from consistently practicing genuinely benevolent governance. Passages that imply pacifistic readings of these texts are routinely dismissed by scholars as too naive to be taken seriously. Hagen argues that the relatively pacifistic position implied by these passages is not in fact naive, but is rather reasonable, and indeed should be supported, at least by contemporary Confucians.

This book analyzes the influence of memory on social conflict as well as the role of ethnicity in state formation and governance in Nigeria. It examines the nexus between the Nigerian civil war and the conflict in the oil rich Niger Delta against the background of memory and ethnicization of the state. Ultimately, both social conflicts, though separated by decades, profit from shared memories in a largely ethnicized state structure. Nigeria emerges as a centrifugal state characterized by bias in resource distribution and concentration of power in the center. These forces create the perception of marginalization and sponsor enduring memory of a biased state not helped by failure of the state to ensure closure of the civil war. The book argues that the non-systematic closure of the civil war has generated memory lapse which has given rise to social conflicts and dissension in the socio-geographical region of the erstwhile Biafra republic. These conflicts in the contemporary history of Nigeria include the persistent Niger Delta oil conflict and recurrent struggle for the realization of a sovereign state of Biafra. In effect, these conflicts are products of structural bias and distributional injustice; and both can be related to the social memory lag of the civil war and weak Nigerian state. The book traces how memory is produced and disseminated within social groups in Southeastern Nigeria, which is the theater of both the civil war and youth-driven oil conflict in the Niger Delta. While these conflicts have without doubt benefitted from memory lapse of the past, they have equally drawn momentum from ethnicity which has significantly and negatively affected the role of the state.

Analyzing the role of creative industries, this book explores regional development within the economic cycle. Using the Greek region of Epirus as an in-depth case study, the authors identify the main opportunities for the region's development as well as the necessary conditions and constraints to achieve future economic growth. The last decade has seen creative industries receive growing attention from researchers, leading to an increasing body of analysis, studies and statistics. Despite this, they remain to be poorly understood and thus underestimated by many societies and policy makers, including those in the Greek economy. Creative Industries in Greece provides a close study of this sector and disseminates its best practices to examine its strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.

This handbook explores the significance of Indo-Pacific in world politics. It shows how the re-emergence of the Indo-Pacific in international relations has fundamentally changed the approach to politics, economics, and security. The volume: * Explores the themes related to trade, politics and security for better understanding of the Indo-Pacific and the repercussions of the regions' emergence; * Studies different security and political issues in the region: military competition, maritime governance, strategic alliances and rivalries, and international conflicts; * Analyzes various socio-economic dimensions of the Indo-Pacific like political systems, cultural and religious contexts, and trade and financial systems; * Examines the strategies of various states and their approaches towards Indo-Pacific like the USA, Japan, India, and China; * Covers the role of middle powers and small states in detail. Interdisciplinary in approach and with essays from authors from around the world, the volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers in the field of international relations, politics, and Asian studies.