This book offers a comprehensive overview of electronic dance music (EDM) and club culture. To do so, it interlinks a broad range of disciplines, revealing their (at times vastly) differing standpoints on the same subject. Scholars from such diverse fields as cultural studies, economics, linguistics, media studies, musicology, philosophy, and sociology share their perspectives. In addition, the book features articles by practitioners who have been active on the EDM scene for many years and discuss issues like gender and diversity problems in general, and the effects of gentrification on club culture in Berlin. Although the book's main focus is on Berlin, one of the key centers of EDM and club culture, its findings can also be applied to other hotspots. Though primarily intended for researchers and students, the book will benefit all readers interested in obtaining an interdisciplinary overview of research on electronic dance music.

In Bureaucratic Manoeuvres, John Grundy examines profound transformations in the governance of unemployment in Canada. While policy makers previously approached unemployment as a social and economic problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policies, recent labour market policy reforms have placed much more emphasis on the supposedly deficient employability of the unemployed themselves, a troubling shift that deserves close, critical attention. Tracing a behind-the-scenes history of public employment services in Canada, Bureaucratic Manoeuvres shows just how difficult it has been for administrators and frontline staff to govern unemployment as a problem of individual employability. Drawing on untapped government records, it sheds much-needed light on internal bureaucratic struggles over the direction of labour market policy in Canada and makes a key contribution to Canadian political science, economics, public administration, and sociology.

In the early 1900s, Detroit's clubwomen successfully lobbied for issues like creating playgrounds for children, building public baths, raising the age for child workers, and reforming the school board and city charter. But when they won the vote in 1918, Detroit's clubwomen, both black and white, were eager to incite even greater change. In the 1920s, they fought to influence public policy at the municipal and state level, while contending with partisan politics, city politics, and the media, which often portrayed them as silly and incompetent. In this fascinating volume, author Jayne Morris-Crowther examines the unique civic engagement of these women who considered their commitment to the city of Detroit both a challenge and a promise. By the 1920s, there were eight African American clubs in the city (Willing Workers, Detroit Study Club, Lydian Association, In As Much Circle of Kings Daughters, Labor of Love Circle of Kings Daughters, West Side Art and Literary Club, Altar Society of the Second Baptist Church, and the Earnest Workers of the Second Baptist Church); in 1921, they joined together under the Detroit Association of Colored Women's Clubs. Nearly 15,000 mostly white clubwomen were represented by the Detroit Federation of Women's Clubs, which was formed in 1895 by the unification of the Detroit Review Club, Twentieth Century Club, Detroit Woman's Club, Woman's Historical Club, Clio Club, Wednesday History Club, Hypathia, and Zatema Club. Morris-Crowther begins by investigating the roots of the clubs in pre-suffrage Detroit and charts their growing power. She goes on to consider the women's work in three areas-Policies That Affect Women and Children, Protecting the Home against Enemies, and Home as Part of the Urban Environment-and considers the numerous challenges they faced in The Limits of Enfranchised Citizens. An appendix contains the 1926 Directory of the Detroit Federation of Women's Clubs. In the end, Morris-Crowther shows that Detroit's clubwomen pioneered new lobbying techniques like personal interviews, and used political education in savvy ways to bring politics to the community level. This volume will be interesting reading for enthusiasts of Detroit history and readers wanting to learn more about women and politics of the 1920s.

The Knights of Pythias fraternal organization was founded in 1865 by an Act of Congress. When African American men were denied membership, they created their own organization in Vicksburg, MS, in 1880. Its founder, Thomas Stringer, believed that fraternal organizations could provide the black community with business networks, economic safety nets, and political experience at a time when Jim Crow laws were being constructed all around them. In Birmingham, Alabama, these Pythians became the cornerstone of an African American business community that included the first black-owned and operated bank in the state. They provided burial, life, and disability insurance for members and became a source of civic pride and racial solidarity. When their right to exist was challenged, they took the case to the Supreme Court in 1912 and won. This strategy would be used decades later in Brown v. Board of Education.

In Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called "beingness." In developing a new legal subjectivity for animals, one oriented toward respecting animals for who they are rather than their proximity to idealized versions of humanness, Animals as Legal Beings seeks to bring critical animal theorizations and animal law closer together. Throughout, Deckha draws upon the feminist animal care tradition, as well as feminist theories of embodiment and relationality, postcolonial theory, and critical animal studies. Her argument is critical of the liberal legal view of animals and directed at a legal subjectivity for animals attentive to their embodied vulnerability, and desirous of an animal-friendly cultural shift in the core foundations of anthropocentric legal systems. Theoretically informed yet accessibly presented, Animals as Legal Beings makes a significant contribution to an array of interdisciplinary debates and is an innovative and astute argument for a meaningful more-than-human turn in law and policy.

Secret Societies in one form or another have existed throughout the history of human culture. But what is their appeal? What is it that makes so-called respectable people indulge in peculiar ceremonies, dressed in fanciful costumes uttering blood-curdling oaths of loyalty with the threat of death hanging over them should they reveal the inner workings of the cult? Are these organisations simply a way for like-minded followers to get together in a convivial atmosphere for purely social reasons or is there really a dark side to their activities. Are they really trying, as some have suggested, to control world affairs for their own nefarious ends? Are the secret societies' claims that they are in the possession of great knowledge or valuable secrets also true? Are they really trying to engineer history or keep hidden that which may bring about the fall of a religion or a country? In Secret Societies, Nick Harding describes some of the best known organisations along with some of their least known counterparts. He highlights the similarities that all these cults have - they all work to a similar pattern and that basic human psychology plays a far more important role in their continued existence and their enduring appeal than any hidden wisdom, knowledge or world-shattering secret.

The international media has traditionally reported on the triad secret societies in terms of a mythic Chinese Mafia, and accounts of their criminal activities have often been sensationalised.
Academic historians, sinologists and sociologists in the last twenty years have taken a different view of the development of such societies in South China and Southeast Asia. Some saw them as primitive revolutionaries who played an indirect, yet important, role in the 1911 revolution of China. Others tended to conceptualise Chinese triads in terms of brotherhood associations and mutual aid societies.
This collection assembles for the first time a highly interesting mixture of scholarly studies and field reports.

The world of Freemasonry exerts a powerful influence on the modern imagination. In an age when perceived notions of history are being increasingly questioned and re-examined it is perhaps inevitable that secretive societies such as the Freemasons find themselves at the centre of considerable speculation and conjecture. To some they represent a powerful and shadowy elite who have manipulated world history throughout the ages, whilst to others they are an altogether more mundane and benign fraternal organisation. Giles Morgan begins by exploring the obscure and uncertain origins of Freemasonry. It has been variously argued that it derives from the practices of medieval stonemasons, that it dates to events surrounding the construction of the Temple of Solomon and that it is connected to ancient Mystery Cults. One of the major and often disputed claims made for Freemasonry is that it is directly attributable to the Knights Templar, generating a wealth of best-selling publications such as 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' and more recently Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code', linking Freemasonry to a supposed secret order known as the Priory of Sion who are the guardians of the true nature of the Holy Grail. Freemasonry today is a worldwide phenomenon that accepts membership from a diverse ethnic and religious range of backgrounds. Entry to Freemasonry requires a belief in a Supreme Being although it insists it does not constitute a religion in itself. The rituals and practices of Freemasonry have been viewed as variously obscure, pointless, baffling, sinister and frightening. An intensely stratified and hierarchical structure underpins most Masonic orders whose activities are focussed within meeting points usually termed as Lodges. Giles Morgan examines its historical significance (George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were both Masons) and its position and role in contemporary society.

In 1999, a seemingly incongruous collection of protestors converged in Seattle to shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization. Union leaders, environmentalists dressed as endangered turtles, mainstream Christian clergy, violence-advocating anarchists, gay and lesbian activists, and many other diverse groups came together to protest what they saw as the unfair power of a nondemocratic elite. But how did such strange bedfellows come together? And can their unity continue? In 1972 another period of social upheaval sociologist Colin Campbell posited a "cultic milieu": An underground region where true seekers test hidden, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge. Ideas and allegiances within the milieu change as individuals move between loosely organized groups, but the larger milieu persists in opposition to the dominant culture. Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow find Campbell's theory especially useful in coming to grips with the varied oppositional groups of today. While the issues differ, current subcultures often behave in similar ways to deviant groups of the past. The Cultic Milieu brings together scholars looking at racial, religious and environmental oppositional groups as well as looking at the watchdog groups that oppose these groups in turn. While providing fascinating information on their own subjects, each essay contributes to a larger understanding of our present-day cultic milieu. For classes in the social sciences or religious studies, The Cultic Milieu offers a novel way to look at the interactions and ideas of those who fight against the powerful in our global age.

This is the first in-depth study of the secret society called CUP (Committee of Union and Progress), based on their own papers. It pays special attention to the Young Turks as an intellectual movement which continues to influence the thinking of Turkish intellectuals in the 1990s. It also provides important insights into diplomatic relations between the Ottoman Empire and the so-called Great Powers of Europe at the turn of the century.

Who were Tubalcain, Aholiab and Zabud and what is their significance for the Freemason? There is a general interest in the rituals of Freemasonry, generated in part by the apparently obscure references they contain. This is the only book that offers a guide to the stories used in Masonic ritual and their links to the Bible and Christianity. The new Mason is directed to a 'serious contemplation of the Volume of the Sacred Law' - but that is easier said than done without a grounding in the Scriptures, something that fewer and fewer people have. The historical and geographical setting of the Bible is explained here, making such contemplation easier for Mason and non-Mason alike. Mike Neville has systematically cross-referenced the most influential Chapters of the Bible to the ceremonies. It is his intention to get Freemasons to understand the ritual - not just to memorise and regurgitate - as well as to elucidate for the non-Mason. Sacred Secrets will aid the clergy, theologians and any other person interested in Freemasonry to see the links between ritual and scripture.

Digital Playgrounds explores the key developments, trends, debates, and controversies that have shaped children's commercial digital play spaces over the past two decades. It argues that children's online playgrounds, virtual worlds, and connected games are much more than mere sources of fun and diversion - they serve as the sites of complex negotiations of power between children, parents, developers, politicians, and other actors with a stake in determining what, how, and where children's play unfolds. Through an innovative, transdisciplinary framework combining science and technology studies, critical communication studies, and children's cultural studies, Digital Playgrounds focuses on the contents and contexts of actual technological artefacts as a necessary entry point for understanding the meanings and politics of children's digital play. The discussion draws on several research studies on a wide range of digital playgrounds designed and marketed to children aged six to twelve years, revealing how various problematic tendencies prevent most digital play spaces from effectively supporting children's culture, rights, and - ironically - play. Digital Playgrounds lays the groundwork for a critical reconsideration of how existing approaches might be used in the development of new regulation, as well as best practices for the industries involved in making children's digital play spaces. In so doing, it argues that children's online play spaces be reimagined as a crucial new form of public sphere in which children's rights and digital citizenship must be prioritized.

In 1999, a seemingly incongruous collection of protestors converged in Seattle to shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization. Union leaders, environmentalists dressed as endangered turtles, mainstream Christian clergy, violence-advocating anarchists, gay and lesbian activists, and many other diverse groups came together to protest what they saw as the unfair power of a nondemocratic elite. But how did such strange bedfellows come together? And can their unity continue? In 1972-another period of social upheaval-sociologist Colin Campbell posited a 'cultic milieu': An underground region where true seekers test hidden, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge. Ideas and allegiances within the milieu change as individuals move between loosely organized groups, but the larger milieu persists in opposition to the dominant culture. Jeffrey Kaplan and Helene Loow find Campbell's theory especially useful in coming to grips with the varied oppositional groups of today. While the issues differ, current subcultures often behave in similar ways to deviant groups of the past. The Cultic Milieu brings together scholars looking at racial, religious and environmental oppositional groups as well as looking at the watchdog groups that oppose these groups in turn. While providing fascinating information on their own subjects, each essay contributes to a larger understanding of our present-day cultic milieu. For classes in the social sciences or religious studies, The Cultic Milieu offers a novel way to look at the interactions and ideas of those who fight against the powerful in our global age.

After the dramatic events of the last few weeks, Greer Macdonald is trying to concentrate on her A levels. Stuck for a play to direct for her drama exam, she gets help from an unexpected quarter . . .

A priceless lost play, buried by time, is pushed under her door. It is Ben Jonson's The Isle of Dogs, a play considered so dangerous in Elizabethan times that every copy was burned . . . except one. As the students begin to rehearse, events become increasingly dark and strange, and they lead Greer back to where she never thought she would return - Longcross Hall.

There she discovers that not only is the Order of the Stag alive and well, but that a ghost from the past might be too . . .

Although on the face of it the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Ku Klux Klan seem to be very different organizations, they have more in common than one might imagine. In fact, the Bureau and the Klan share a long and complicated history.Beginning with their first confrontation in 1922, this book examines the similarities, covert collaborations and common goals of the FBI and the KKK. After briefly describing the history of each, it explores the development of their association and the specific ways in which each organization furthered the other's goals.The book traces eighty years of parallel development and the conservative attitudes that drew the FBI and the KKK together, especially in the area of civil rights. Political, societal and historical contributions to the atmosphere that encouraged this complicity are explored in detail. Statistics regarding Klan membership, racial violence and a suspicious lack of federal involvement lend support to the author's analysis of events. Special emphasis is placed on the leaders of each group, especially J. Edgar Hoover, who shaped the very foundation of the FBI. The final chapters cover more recent events, up-to and including those following the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The senses are made, not given. This revolutionary realization has come as of late to inform research across the social sciences and humanities, and is currently inspiring groundbreaking experimentation in the world of art and design, where the focus is now on mixing and manipulating the senses. The Sensory Studies Manifesto tracks these transformations and opens multiple lines of investigation into the diverse ways in which human beings sense and make sense of the world. This unique volume treats the human sensorium as a dynamic whole that is best approached from historical, anthropological, geographic, and sociological perspectives. In doing so, it has altered our understanding of sense perception by directing attention to the sociality of sensation and the cultural mediation of sense experience and expression. David Howes challenges the assumptions of mainstream Western psychology by foregrounding the agency, interactivity, creativity, and wisdom of the senses as shaped by culture. The Sensory Studies Manifesto sets the stage for a radical reorientation of research in the human sciences and artistic practice.

In the coming decade, we may see the advent of multinational federalism on an international scale. As great powers and international organizations become increasingly uncomfortable with the creation of new states, multinational federalism is now an important avenue to explore, and in recent decades, the experiences of Canada and Quebec have had a key influence on the approaches taken to manage national and community diversity around the world. Drawing on comparative scholarship and several key case studies (including Scotland and the United Kingdom, Catalonia and Spain, and the Quebec-Canada dynamic, along with relations between Indigenous peoples and various levels of government), The Legitimacy Clash takes a fresh look at the relationship between majorities and minorities while exploring theoretical advances in both federal studies and contemporary nationalisms. Alain-G. Gagnon critically examines the prospects and potential for a multinational federal state, specifically for nations seeking affirmation in a hostile context. The Legitimacy Clash reflects on the importance of legitimacy over legality in assessing the conflicts of claims.