Social pathologies are social processes that hinder how individuals exercise their autonomy and freedom. In this book, Gustavo Pereira offers an account of such phenomena by defining them as a cognitive failure that affects the practical imagination, thus negatively interfering with our practical life. This failure of the imagination is the consequence of the imposition of a type of practical rationality on a practical context alien to it, caused by a non-conscious transformation of the individuals' set of beliefs and values. The research undertaken provides an innovative explanation in terms of microfoundations based on the mechanism of "availability heuristic", by which the diminished exercise of the imagination turns the intuitively available or prevailing rationality into the one that regulates behaviour in inappropriate contexts. Additionally, this incorrect regulation results in a progressive distortion of the shared sense of the affected practical contexts, which becomes institutionalized. Consumerism, bureaucratism, moralism, juridification, some forms of corruption and the particular Latin American case of "malinchism" can be interpreted as social pathologies insofar as they imply such distortion. This way of conceptualizing social pathologies integrates the traditional sociological macro-explanation manifested through the negative consequences of the processes of social rationalization with a micro-explanation articulated around the findings of cognitive psychology such as availability heuristic. Understanding social pathologies as a cognitive failure allows us to identify the introduction of normative friction as the main way to counteract their effects. One of the potential effects of normative friction, as a specific form of cognitive dissonance, is the intense exercise of the imagination, thus operating as a condition of possibility for the exercise of autonomy and reflection. Democratic ethical life, understood as a shared democratic culture, as well as social institutions and narratives, are the privileged social spaces and means to trigger reflective processes that can counteract social pathologies through a reflective reappropriation of the meaning of the shared practical context. An extraordinary contribution by a Critical Theorist to the return of the concept of imagination today. It takes up the challenge once taken by Kant to think about imagination as the pivotal activity not only of knowledge and experience, but above all, for action. The author claims that imagination makes criticism possible (pathologies) and it allows us to envision alternative views into the path for social transformation. Without imagination nothing is possible. Maria Pia Lara, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico

This book presents a series of studies that demonstrate the value of interactions between knowledge management with the arts and humanities. The carefully compiled chapters show, on the one hand, how traditional methods from the arts and humanities - e.g. theatrical improvisation, clay modelling, theory of aesthetics - can be used to enhance knowledge creation and evolution. On the other, the chapters discuss knowledge management models and practices such as virtual knowledge space (BA) design, social networking and knowledge sharing, data mining and knowledge discovery tools. The book also demonstrates how these practices can yield valuable benefits in terms of organizing and analyzing big arts and humanities data in a digital environment.

Lawrence Driscoll's fresh examination of the meaning of drugs from the Victorians to the present asks us to listen to historical and current voices whose positions on drugs are at variance with our "truths." Driscoll draws on the work of figures as diverse as William Burroughs, Sigmund Freud, Conan Doyle, and Anna Kavan to shed light on different or silenced ways of talking about drugs and to offer us a historical counter-memory. The result of his work is to unsettle and disturb the familiar parameters that frame our discussion of drugs, revealing that others are available: positions which expose our own constructions as surprisingly limited.

This book offers a biography of the most glamorous and powerful NATO Supreme Commander of the Cold War, General Lauris Norstad, as both a "nuclear" general and an "international" general. His primary goal was to keep the Alliance together as he accommodated British and French nuclear ambitions while forestalling the same in West Germany. He also was at the center of the political/military maneuverings over Berlin and the Soviet attempt to blackmail the West into recognizing East Germany, all of which culminated in the building of the infamous "Wall."

The current situation in Argentina is unprecedented. In compliance with prescribed timings and procedures, the crimes committed by the state in recent history are being prosecuted and penalized. This book traces the path of the trials for crimes against humanity in Argentina, from the Trial of the Juntas that began during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín to current developments under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, analysing the ideas of memory, truth and justice. In the volume, judges, lawyers, historians, journalists and witnesses from the era of terror give a lucid and critical reconstruction of the last thirty years. The contributors also point to other states where crimes against humanity are still being committed on a daily basis, despite being notionally proscribed. This book is translated from Spanish, originally appearing under the title Juicios por crímenes de lesa humanidad en Argentina (2011).

When 51 nations gathered in 1945 to witness the birth of the United Nations, international business groups urged governments to ratify the UN Charter without delay. During the following 55 years, UN and business leaders dismissed each other when they were not engaging in a war of words. This book examines why the global order of the 21st century demands a new partnership between the UN and business. If the UN fails to engage the business community, it is likely to become irrelevant. If global corporations y refuse to support the UN, they will face a closing world with disastrous consequences for the prosperity of all. The UN and business are bound to work together, and indeed they are.

Lambda literary award finalist, Same-Sex Love in India presents a stunning array of writings on same-sex love from over 2000 years of Indian literature. Translated from more than a dozen languages and drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and modern fictional traditions, these writings testify to the presence of same-sex love in various forms since ancient times, without overt persecution. This collection defies both stereotypes of Indian culture and Foucault's definition of homosexuality as a 19th-century invention, uncovering instead complex discourses of Indian homosexuality, rich metaphorical traditions to represent it, and the use of names and terms as early as medieval times to distinguish same-sex from cross-sex love. An eminent group of scholars have translated these writings for the first time or have re-translated well-known texts to correctly make evident previously underplayed homoerotic content. Selections range from religious books, legal and erotic treatises, story cycles, medieval histories and biographies, modern novels, short stories, letters, memoirs, plays and poems. From the Rigveda to Vikram Seth, this anthology will become a staple in courses on gender and queer studies, Asian studies, and world literature.

A good social history of Europe has yet to be written though, given the developments over the last few decades, this seems more urgent than ever before. This volume presents an important step forward in that it brings together eight internationally known social historians from Europe and Israel, each of whom offer an overview of some key themes in European history during the last two centuries. While dealing with the great changes of this period, the authors reveal the commonalities that link European societies together but also important differences at a national level.

This collection brings together essays by established commentators on Larkin's work and by younger critics: from England, Northern Ireland, the USA, Canada, Belgium and Hungary. Individual essays examine Larkin's novels and poetry in the light of psychoanalytical, postmodern, postcolonial and Bakhtinian theories. This collection shows that Larkin's work continues to yield fresh and sometimes surprising readings.

A diverse range of area specialists are brought together here in the first volume which embraces such a geographically diverse treatment of the subregional system. The Central European Free Trade Area, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation scheme, ECOWAS in West Africa, MERCOSUR, the Association of Caribbean States, Chilean strategies, the "Greater China" project, ASEAN, and the East Asian Economic Caucus are all explored in order to mount a case for a "new International Political Economy" perspective in the understanding of subregional cooperation.

The Mongolic Languages represents the first comprehensive treatment of the Mongolic language family in English.

The Mongolic languages form a linguistically well defined but geographically widely dispersed family of more than a dozen separate languages, distributed from East and North Asia (Mongolia, Manchuria and Southern Siberia) to Central and West Asia (Northern Tibet, Gansu, Sinkiang, Northern Afghanistan and the Caspian Region).

Written by a team of international specialists, this in-depth volume is divided into twenty chapters. The first three chapters focus on reconstructed and historical forms of Mongolic. These are followed by fourteen chapters each containing synchronic and diachronic descriptions of a modern Mongolic language or dialect group, including Khalkha, Buryat, Dagur, Ordos, Kalmuck and Moghol. The final three chapters deal with areal and taxonomic issues.

This unique resource is the ideal companion for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics. It will also be of interest to researchers or anyone with an interest in Mongolian Studies or Central Eurasian history and cultural studies.

Ranging from the early modern period to the present day, this edited collection uses biography as a window into the history of the Arab-Islamic Middle East. The contributors reinterpret the lives of the famous such as George Antonius and Doria Shafiq and rediscover the lives of individuals previously consigned to the margins of history, including the notorious individuals of 17th-century Syria and the 20th-century Palestinian activist Kulthum Auda. The book also draws on the biographical tradition of Arab historical writing, including biographical dictionaries, for an understanding of the region’s social and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope and theoretically informed, this volume brings to light individual lives which are essential to an understanding of Middle Eastern history.

Against the background of often esoteric literature in semiotics, this book offers a fresh and rigorous new interpretation of how to approach the study of communication, signs and meaning. Grounded in a deductive theory of interacting systems, Piotr Sadowski's book provides an accessible account of the hierarchy of communication. Divided into two parts, this book argues in the first section that a deductive semiotic theory generates communication situations of increasing complexity, from contiguous communication to indirect, referential forms based on indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs. Within this system, Sadowski explains how key concepts of the semiotic model such as information, parainformation and metainformation can account for degrees of cognitive complexity of communication processes, including the perception and interpretation of signs on literal and figurative levels. After this clear, step-by-step exposition of the theory of interacting systems, Systemic Semiotics then explores various applications of this theory, providing new insights into problems subsumed under communication studies, cultural theory, literary and film studies, and psychology.

By the end of World War II, Americans' relationship with nature had changed dramatically. New consumption patterns drove an industrial economy that damaged the earth in new ways, and the atomic age heightened awareness of the earth' s fragility. Environmental historian Steven Stoll identifies 1945 as the birth of American environmentalism-- the point when conservation and nature advocacy fused with activism to form a political movement. In this thematically organized collection of primary sources, Stoll traces the development of the environmental movement and identifies its central issues and ideologies, including the politics of preservation, population growth, biological interdependence, ecodefense, climate change, ethical consumption, and environmental justice. Stoll' s insightful introduction provides students with a solid overview of environmentalism' s origins and contextualizes the topics raised by the documents. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography offer additional pedagogical support.

This volume will mark a new trend in dealing with women's varied experiences of life: individual introductions situate the narrator in a context - and then her voice takes over, with no intervention from the editors (except to provide footnotes wherever necessary). The personal narrative - be it an autobiography, a letter or a diary - has come to be recognised as an acceptable data source in history and social science. Literary critics and students of literature too find considerable use in reading the personal writings of poets, fiction and crime writers. In this book, readings of personal narratives help in painting various images of lives that we can only know at second hand. The melange includes memoirs, published articles, 'portraits from memory', a collection of essays , and an oral interview. In all, the self was the focus. The writings of Sailabala, Li Gotami, and Shakuntala go beyond a recounting of their lives and deal with spiritual and travel experiences. Three of the essays are excerpts from published autobiographies - Sarala Devi Chaudhurani's Jeevaner Jharapata (Life's Fallen Leaves), Kalpana Dutt's Reminiscences and Sailabala Das's A Look Before and After. Vidyagauri Nilkanth's writings are essays and a selection of amazingly candid letters exchanged with her husband. Anasuya Sarabahi's is an interview in Gujarati with niece Gira and Monica's a selection from an unpublished memoir. Li Gotami, whose original name was Rutty Petit, travelled to Manasarovar, and a few of the magazine articles on this amazing journey have been reproduced here. Whichever form a woman chooses, writing about her self, is emancipatory; she may be a person who has so far received little attention from the family or the world. Or she may be one who is a well-known public figure - yet little is known about her childhood. So she writes about many selves - life is not about one coherent self but rather one of many lives and experiences. In other words,

Democracy, Authoritarianism and Education reviews the most recently published empirical research findings on these subjects as well as results from a survey of the attitudes of 10,000 college and university students in 44 counteries towards authority, democracy, nationalism, militarism, internationalism, and educational policy choices. One interesting finding is that (cross-nationally) higher authoritarianism levels translate into lower scores on democratic attitudes and internationalism, higher nationalism and militarism scores, and support for more conservative and provincial (and monocultural) educational policy options.

This collection traces how pastoralists have coped with the challenges of change in a part of the world with a long-tradition of livestock keeping. Their precarious position - balanced between a market system where only the fittest may survive, and their attempt to remain a human resource for the future development of the natural pastures and livestock industry - is carefully and critically examined by the contributors. The pastoralists' unique skills at managing livestock in a variable and challenging environment, and their ability to supply commodities much in demand mean that an understanding of their societal position is essential for anyone interested in transition in the former Soviet Union.

This is the first study of the relevance and applicability of international relations theory to the contemporary global push for the spread of liberal democracy. Contributors discuss the theory and practice of the push for the internationalization of liberal democracy and outline an alternative research program for future work.

Many symbols carry an elemental power that transcends boundaries and holds significance for other cultures. This new and updated edition is a comprehensive and beautiful book that discusses and illustrates thousands of these symbols and assesses their position in language, art, literature, mythology, magic, religion and psychology. In the second half of the book, how we dream and how we interpret dreams is analysed as a way of accessing our subconscious fears, desires and preoccupations. The erudite text provides a wealth of cultural background to primal metaphors that are part of mankind's universal language. The book is both a journey of discovery into the importance of symbolism and dreaming and a vast visual resource of signs and symbols.

A major gap still exists between the income levels and economic structures of the accession states and the existing members of the EU. This book examines the ability of the central and south east European economies to withstand the competitive pressures on entry to the EU. These economies are still experiencing major structural problems inherited from communism.

Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia charts the origins and development of organicist ideologies in Indonesia from the early 20th century to the present. In doing so, it provides a background to the theories and ideology that informed organicist thought, traces key themes in Indonesian history, examines the Soeharto regime and his 'New Order' in detail, and looks at contemporary Indonesia to question the possibility of past ideologies making a resurgence in the country. Beginning with an exploration of the origins of the theory of the organic state in Europe, this book explores how this influenced many young Indonesian scholars and 'secular' nationalists. It also looks in detail at the case of Japan, and identifies the parallels between the process by which Japanese and Indonesian nationalist scholars drew on European romantic organicist ideas to forge 'anti-Western' national identities and ideologies. The book then turns to Indonesia's tumultuous history from the revolution to 1965, the rise of Soeharto, and how his regime used organicist ideology, together with law and terror, to shape the political landscape consolidate control. In turn, it shows how the social and economic changes wrought by the government's policies, such as the rise of a cosmopolitan middle class and a rapidly growing urban proletariat led to the failure of the corporatist political infrastructure and the eventual collapse of the New Order in 1998. Finally, the epilogue surveys the post Soeharto years to 2014, and how growing disquiet about the inability of the government to contain religious intolerance, violence and corruption, has led to an increased readiness to re-embrace not only more authoritarian styles of rule but also ideological formulas from the past. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Southeast Asia, politics and political theory, as well as by those interested in authoritarian regimes, democracy and human rights.

While conventional warfare has an established body of legal precedence, the legality of drone strikes by the United States in Pakistan and elsewhere remains ambiguous. This book explores the legal and political issues surrounding the use of drones in Pakistan. Drawing from international treaty law, customary international law, and statistical data on the impact of the strikes, Sikander Ahmed Shah asks whether drone strikes by the United States in Pakistan are in compliance with international humanitarian law. The book questions how international law views the giving of consent between States for military action, and explores what this means for the interaction between sovereignty and consent. The book goes on to look at the socio-political realities of drone strikes in Pakistan, scrutinizing the impact of drone strikes on both Pakistani politics and US-Pakistan relationships. Topics include the Pakistan army-government relationship, the evolution of international institutions as a result of drone strikes, and the geopolitical dynamics affecting the region. As a detailed and critical examination of the legal and political challenges presented by drone strikes, this book will be essential to scholars and students of the law of armed conflict, security studies, political science and international relations.

Focusing on the art and literary form of manga, this volume examines the intercultural exchanges that have shaped manga during the twentieth century and how manga's culturalization is related to its globalization. Through contributions from leading scholars in the fields of comics and Japanese culture, it describes "manga culture" in two ways: as a fundamentally hybrid culture comprised of both subcultures and transcultures, and as an aesthetic culture which has eluded modernist notions of art, originality, and authorship. The latter is demonstrated in a special focus on the best-selling manga franchise, NARUTO.

This book seeks to raise the profile of economic perspectives on crime and criminal justice. It includes exemplars and original contributions, welded into a coherent whole by commentaries on each chapter and annotated further readings. It includes sections concerning the economic analysis of crime and punishment crime and the labor market and modeling the system-wide costs of criminal justice policies.