Founded in 1961, Studia Hibernica is devoted to the study of the Irish language and its literature, Irish history and archaeology, Irish folklore and place names, and related subjects. Its aim is to present the research of scholars in these fields of Irish studies and so to bring them within easy reach of each other and the wider public. It endeavours to provide in each issue a proportion of articles, such as surveys of periods or theme in history or literature, which will be of general interest. A long review section is a special feature of the journal and all new publications within its scope are there reviewed by competent authorities.

The Cultural Political Economy of the Construction Industry in Turkey analyses the growth of the popularity of the 'Justice and Development Party' (official acronym: AK Parti or AKP) of Turkey's president Erdogan, through the lens of the construction sector. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the question of hegemony and the electoral success of the AKP - despite frequent economic downturns and ferocious political conflicts including a coup d'etat attempt and rekindled armed struggles. In this book, Ismail Doga Karatepe critically examines the AKP's ability to satisfy the needs and wishes of different social classes and groups. By taking the construction sector as an example, the book analyses these in the context of the changes in the urban landscape of modern Turkey.

In the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple trees or purchased apples grown within a few hundred miles of their homes. Nowadays, in contrast, Americans buy mass-produced fruit in supermarkets, and roughly 70 percent of apples come from Washington State. So how did Washington become the leading producer of America's most popular fruit? In this enlightening book, Amanda L. Van Lanen offers a comprehensive response to this question by tracing the origins, evolution, and environmental consequences of the state's apple industry. Washington's success in producing apples was not a happy accident of nature, according to Van Lanen. Apples are not native to Washington, any more than potatoes are to Idaho or peaches to Georgia. In fact, Washington apple farmers were late to the game, lagging their eastern competitors. The author outlines the numerous challenges early Washington entrepreneurs faced in such areas as irrigation, transportation, and labor. Eventually, with crucial help from railroads, Washington farmers transformed themselves into "growers" by embracing new technologies and marketing strategies. By the 1920s, the state's growers managed not only to innovate the industry but to dominate it. Industrial agriculture has its fair share of problems involving the environment, consumers, and growers themselves. In the quest to create the perfect apple, early growers did not question the long-term environmental effects of chemical sprays. Since the late twentieth century, consumers have increasingly questioned the environmental safety of industrial apple production. Today, as this book reveals, the apple industry continues to evolve in response to shifting consumer demands and accelerating climate change. Yet, through it all, the Washington apple maintains its iconic status as Washington's most valuable agricultural crop.

European Perceptions of China and Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative is a collection of fourteen essays on the way China is perceived in Europe today. These perceptions - and they are multiple - are particularly important to the People's Republic of China as the country grapples with its increasingly prominent role on the international stage, and equally important to Europe as it attempts to come to terms with the technological, social and economic advances of the Belt and Road Initiative. The authors are, on the whole, senior academics specializing in such topics as International Relations and Security, Public Diplomacy, Media and Cultural Studies, and Philosophy and Religion from more than a dozen different European countries and are involved in various international projects focussed on Europe-China relations.

The political responsibility of artists in a globalized society is debated in this collection of articles by authors from Africa, Australia, South America, Europe, and Scandinavia. Bemoaning the competition for tourist dollars among the world's great cities and the commodification of cultural artifacts, these artists propose real and imagined places where art might resist capitalism, such as failed urban developments, among refugees, and in rural outposts.

In African Somaesthetics: Cultures, Feminisms, Politics, Catherine F. Botha brings together original research on the body in African cultures, specifically interrogating the possibilities of the contribution of a somaesthetic approach in the context of colonization, decolonization, and globalization in Africa. The innovative contributions that consider the somaesthetic dimensions of experience in the context of Africa (centred broadly around the themes of politics, feminisms, and cultures) reflect a diversity of perspectives and positions. The book is a first of its kind in gathering together novel and focused analyses of the body as conceived of from an African perspective.

'A fascinating, comprehensive study that forces us to think again about what law is, and why it matters ... For those who want to understand why human society has emerged as it has, this is essential reading' Rana Mitter, author of China's Good War The laws now enforced throughout the world are almost all modelled on systems developed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During two hundred years of colonial rule, Europeans exported their laws everywhere they could. But they weren't filling a void: in many places, they displaced traditions that were already ancient when Vasco Da Gama first arrived in India. Where, then, did it all begin? And what has law been and done over the course of human history? In The Rule of Laws, pioneering anthropologist Fernanda Pirie traces the development of the world's great legal systems - Chinese, Indian, Roman, and Islamic - and the innumerable smaller traditions they inspired.

Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture, Post-Millennial Gothic shows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations of Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'. Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of twenty-first century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.

Scottish Cashmere has been at the forefront of luxury textiles for over 200 years. Fans have ranged from Hollywood icon Grace Kelly to design royalty Chanel. Fashion writer Lynne McCrossan goes behind the scenes of one of the world's more exclusive industries to show you what really makes Scottish Cashmere so special. Contains colour photographs throughout. Includes such chapters as: The Glorious Goat The Legends: Pringle of Scotland William Lockie Johnstons of Elgin The Monochrome Theorem It's in the water: why Scottish cashmere is the best in the world The Artisans

Tourism shapes popular fantasies of adventure, structures urban and natural space, creates knowledge around difference, and demands an array of occupations servicing the insatiable needs of those who travel for leisure. Even as migrants and refugees have become targets of ire from far-right parties, international tourism has grown worldwide. This issue posits a radical approach to the study of tourism, highlighting how tourism as a paradigmatic modern encounter bleeds into diplomacy, militarism, and empire building. Contributors investigate, among other topics, how the United States has used tourism in Latin America as a tool of interventionist foreign policy, how Bethlehem's Manger Square has become a contested space between Palestinians and the Israeli state, how Spain's economy increasingly relies on northern European tourists, and how the US military's Cold War-era guidebooks attempted to convert soldiers stationed abroad into "ambassadors of goodwill." Contributors. Ryvka Barnard, Daniel Bender, Julio Capo Jr., Rustem Ertug Altinay, Steven Fabian, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Max Holleran, Rebecca J. Kinney, Scott Laderman, Katrina Phillips, Mark Rice, Jason Ruiz, Daniel Walkowitz, Kim Warren

What is the ocean's role in human and planetary history? How have writers, sailors, painters, scientists, historians, and philosophers from across time and space poetically envisioned the oceans and depicted human entanglements with the sea? In order to answer these questions, Soren Frank covers an impressive range of material in A Poetic History of the Oceans: Greek, Roman and Biblical texts, an Icelandic Saga, Shakespearean drama, Jens Munk's logbook, 19th century-writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Jonas Lie, and Joseph Conrad as well as their 20th and 21st century-heirs like J. G. Ballard, Jens Bjorneboe, and Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. A Poetic History of the Oceans promotes what Frank labels an amphibian comparative literature and mobilises recent theoretical concepts and methodological developments in Blue Humanities, Blue Ecology, and New Materialism to shed new light on well-known texts and introduce readers to important, but lesser-known Scandinavian literary engagements with the sea.

Tucked into the files of Iowa State University's Cooperative Extension Service is a small, innocuous looking pamphlet with the title Lenders: Working through the Farmer-Lender Crisis. Cooperative Extension Service intended this publication to improve bankers' empathy and communication skills, especially when facing farmers showing "Suicide Warning Signs." After all, they were working with individuals experiencing extreme economic distress, and each banker needed to learn to "be a good listener." What was important, too, was what was left unsaid. Iowa State published this pamphlet in April of 1986. Just four months earlier, farmer Dale Burr of Lone Tree, Iowa, had killed his wife, and then walked into the Hills Bank and Trust company and shot a banker to death in the lobby before taking shots at neighbors, killing one of them, and then killing himself. The unwritten subtext of this little pamphlet was "beware." If bankers failed to adapt to changing circumstances, the next desperate farmer might be shooting.This was Iowa in the 1980s. The state was at the epicenter of a nationwide agricultural collapse unmatched since the Great Depression. In When a Dream Dies, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg examines the lives of ordinary Iowa farmers during this period, as the Midwest experienced the worst of the crisis. While farms failed and banks foreclosed, rural and small-town Iowans watched and suffered, struggling to find effective ways to cope with the crisis. If families and communities were to endure, they would have to think about themselves, their farms, and their futures in new ways. For many Iowan families, this meant restructuring their lives or moving away from agriculture completely. This book helps to explain how this disaster changed children, families, communities, and the development of the nation's heartland in the late twentieth century. Agricultural crises are not just events that affect farms. When a Dream Dies explores the Farm Crisis of the 1980s from the perspective of the two-thirds of the state's agricultural population seriously affected by a farm debt crisis that rapidly spiraled out of their control. Riney-Kehrberg treats the Farm Crisis as a family event while examining the impact of the crisis on mental health and food insecurity and discussing the long-term implications of the crisis for the shape and function of agriculture.

Robert Kirkman (b. 1978) is probably best known as the creator of The Walking Dead. The comic book and its television adaptation have reinvented the zombie horror story, transforming it from cult curiosity and parody to mainstream popularity and critical acclaim. In some ways, this would be enough to justify this career-spanning collection of interviews. Yet Kirkman represents much more than this single comic book title. Kirkman's story is a fanboy's dream that begins with him financing his irreverent, independent comic book Battle Pope with credit cards. After writing major titles with Marvel comics (Spider-Man, Captain America, and X-Men), Kirkman rejected companies like DC and Marvel and publicly advocated for creator ownership as the future of the comics industry. As a partner at Image, Kirkman wrote not only The Walking Dead but also Invincible, a radical reinvention of the superhero genre. Robert Kirkman: Conversations gives insight to his journey and explores technique, creativity, collaboration, and the business of comics as a multimedia phenomenon. For instance, while continuing to write genre-based comics in titles like Outcast and Oblivion Song, Kirkman explains his writerly bias for complex characters over traditional plot development. As a fan-turned-creator, Kirkman reveals a creator's complex relationship with fans in a comic-con era that breaks down the consumer/producer dichotomy. And after rejecting company-ownership practices, Kirkman articulates a vision of the creator-ownership model and his goal of organic creativity at Skybound, his multimedia company. While Stan Lee was the most prominent comic book everyman of the previous era of comics production, Kirkman is the most prominent comic book everyman of this dynamic, evolving new era.

Pop art has traditionally been the most visible visual art within popular culture because its main transgression is easy to understand: the infiltration of the "low" into the "high". The same cannot be said of contemporary art of the 21st century, where the term "Gaga Aesthetics" characterizes the condition of popular culture being extensively imbricated in high culture, and vice-versa. Taking Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry" and Adorno's Aesthetic Theory as key touchstones, this book explores the dialectic of high and low that forms the foundation of Adornian aesthetics and the extent to which it still applied, and the extent to which it has radically shifted, thereby 'upending tradition'. In the tradition of philosophical aesthetics that Adorno began with Lukacs, this explores the ever-urgent notion that high culture has become deeply enmeshed with popular culture. This is "Gaga Aesthetics": aesthetics that no longer follows clear fields of activity, where "fine art" is but one area of critical activity. Indeed, Adorno's concepts of alienation and the tragic, which inform his reading of the modernist experiment, are now no longer confined to art. Rather, stirring examples can be found in phenomena such as fashion and music video. In addition to dealing with Lady Gaga herself, this book traverses examples ranging from Madonna's Madam X to Moschino and Vetements, to deliberate on the strategies of subversion in the culture industry.

Communication plays a critical role in enhancing social, cultural, and business relations. Research on media, language, and cultural studies is fundamental in a globalized world because it illuminates the experiences of various populations. There is a need to develop effective communication strategies that will be able to address both health and cultural issues globally. Dialectical Perspectives on Media, Health, and Culture in Modern Africa is a collection of innovative research on the impact of media and especially new media on health and culture. While highlighting topics including civic engagement, gender stereotypes, and interpersonal communication, this book is ideally designed for university students, multinational organizations, diplomats, expatriates, and academicians seeking current research on how media, health, and culture can be appropriated to overcome the challenges that plague the world today.