Democracy is venerated in US political culture, in part because it is our democracy. As a result, we assume that the government and institutions of the United States represent the true and right form of democracy, needed by all. This volume challenges this commonplace belief by putting US politics in the context of the Americas more broadly. Seeking to cultivate conversations among and between the hemispheres, this collection examines local political rhetorics across the Americas. The contributors—scholars of communication from both North and South America—recognize democratic ideals as irreducible to a single national perspective and reflect on the ways social minorities in the Western Hemisphere engage in unique political discourses. The essays consider current rhetorics in the United States on American exceptionalism, immigration, citizenship, and land rights alongside current cultural and political events in Latin America, such as corruption in Guatemala, women’s activism in Ciudad Juárez, representation in Venezuela, and media bias in Brazil. Through a survey of these rhetorics, this volume provides a broad analysis of democracy. It highlights institutional and cultural differences in the Americas and presents a hemispheric democracy that is both more pluralistic and more agonistic than what is believed about the system in the United States. In addition to the editors, the contributors include José Cortez, Linsay M. Cramer, Pamela Flores, Alberto González, Amy N. Heuman, Christa J. Olson, Carlos Piovezani, Clara Eugenia Rojas Blanco, Abraham Romney, René Agustín de los Santos, and Alejandra Vitale.

Contributors from diverse disciplinary, ideological, and theoretical perspectives examine the multiple aspects and dimensions of globalization in this impressive collection. By employing a variety of methodological approaches, the authors provide insights into the role of numerous agents in furthering the process and project or present and future globalization(s), as manifested in economic, political and cultural domains.

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.

Libraries and Key Performance Indicators: A Framework for Practitioners explores ways by which libraries across all sectors can demonstrate their value and impact to stakeholders through quality assurance and performance measurement platforms, including library assessment, evaluation methodologies, surveys, and annual reporting. Whilst several different performance measurement tools are considered, the book's main focus is on one tool in particular: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are increasingly being used to measure the performance of library and information services, however, linking KPIs to quality outcomes, such as impact and value can prove very difficult. This book discusses, in detail, the concept of KPIs in the broader context of library assessment and performance measurement. Through reviewing some of the applied theory around using KPIs, along with harvesting examples of current best practices in KPI usage from a variety of different libraries, the book demystifies library KPIs, providing a toolkit for any library to be used in setting meaningful KPIs against targets, charters, service standards, and quality outcomes.

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,

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.

- The first book that collects an international range of accomplished practitioners and academics together to share their innovative photography practices - Written in a clear and accessible style, ideal for students and practitioners - Uses tangible examples and relatable practices that can inspire or be extrapolated into the reader's own practice - Visually rich with 150 full colour images demonstrating a diverse set of practices.

This book is about how every age invented the idea of Europe in the mirror of its own identity: Europe is as much an idea as it is a reality, but it is also a contested idea and it was in adversity that European identity was constructed as a dichotomy of Self and Other. The book analyses the origins and development of the idea of Europe as a social construction from the earliest times to the present. Its challenging thesis is that the European idea has lent itself to a politics of division and exclusion, which has been disguised by superficial notions of unity.

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.

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.

- volume editor and chapter contributors have large professional networks and many are providing leadership and management training for which this book will be required - strong transactional analysis angle

This is the first book available on the market that shows people how to create more advanced data visualizations in the Excel software tool. It provides step-by-step instructions and downloadable Excel files, that readers can use to expand how they use Excel and communicate their data to their audiences.

Upon its first publication, Loving with a Vengeance was a groundbreaking study of women readers and their relationship to mass-market romance fiction. Feminist scholar and cultural critic Tania Modleski has revisited her widely read book, bringing to this new edition a review of the issues that have, in the intervening years, shaped and reshaped questions of women's reading. With her trademark acuity and understanding of the power both of the mass-produced object, film, television, or popular literature, and the complex workings of reading and reception, she offers here a framework for thinking about one of popular culture's central issues. This edition includes a new introduction, a new chapter, and changes throughout the existing text.

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Hubert Evans' fascinating memior recounts his time in India and the people and events which shaped the history of the subcontinent. A must read for anyone interested in the history of India and the inner workings of the Raj.

This study of political relations in the Middle East analyzes the reasons behind the instability of the region.

The traditional assumption today about race is that it is not political; that it has no political content and is a matter of individual beliefs and attitudes. In Race and the Politics of the Exception, Utz McKnight argues that race is in fact political and defines how it functions as a politics in the United States. McKnight organizes his book into three sections, beginning with a theoretical section about racial politics in the United States. Using theorists such as Benjamin, Agamben, and Schmitt, McKnight discusses how the idea of racial communities went from being constituted through the idea of racial sovereignty and a politics of the exception that defined blacks as the internal enemy, to being constitutionally defined through the institutions of racial equal opportunity. In the second section, McKnight further develops his critical race theory by exploring in more detail the social use of race today. The election of President Obama has brought the politics of racial equality to a critical point. In spite of a very powerful set of political tools to define it as a thing of the past, race matters. In the final section, McKnight engages with important African American fiction from each of the three major periods of racial politics in the US. Earlier descriptions of political theory are used throughout these analyses to refine the argument for a new critical politics of race. Scholars of political theory, identity politics, African American studies, and American Studies will find this work ground-breaking and relevant.

A reconstruction of the proceedings of the "Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the problems of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945 to 1946". This study places the inquiry within the wider context of Anglo-American relations in the Middle East.

This new study revisits the work of the late Ernst Haas, assessing his relevance for contemporary European integration and its disparities. With his seminal book, The Uniting of Europe Haas laid the foundations for one of the most prominent paradigms of European integration - neofunctionalism. He engaged in inductive reasoning to theorize the dynamics of the European integration process that led from the Treaty of Paris in 1951 to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The Treaty of Rome set the constitutional framework for a Common Market. Today, a second Treaty of Rome may lay the foundation for a European Constitution that embeds the Common Market in a European polity. Unfortunately, Haas will not be able to witness this path-breaking step in the development of a European political community, which he so aptly theorized almost five decades ago. This is all the more regrettable since students of European integration are more than ever challenged to tackle a major empirical puzzle: After 50 years of European integration, the member states managed to adopt a single currency and to develop common policies and institutions on justice and home affairs. The integration of foreign policy and defence, by contrast, is still lagging behind. This text delivers sharp insights into these issues. This book, previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international relations, the European Union, European politics and Public Policy.

This book seeks to give a coherent account of Gandhi's basic ideas, demonstrating the importance of Hindu thought and the centrality of his concept of Truth.

This book is devoted to the study and analysis of the prospects for democracy among the Muslim ethnicities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), both those that have acquired full independence and those remaining within the Russian Federation. The nineteen Western academics and scholars from the Muslim countries and regions of the CIS who contribute to this volume view the establishment of democratic institutions in this region in the context of a wide and complex range of influences, above all the Russian/Soviet political legacy; native ethnic political culture and tradition; the Islamic faith; and the growing polarity between Western civilization and the Muslim world.

This book is a grammar of Mangghuer, a Mongolic language spoken by approximately 25,000 people in China's northwestern Qinghai Province. Mangghuer is virtually unknown outside China, and no grammar of Mangghuer has ever been published in any language. The book's primary importance is thus as a systematic grammatical description of a little-known language. The book also makes a significant contribution to comparative Mongolic studies. In addition to the synchronic description of Mangghuer, extensive comparison with other Mongolic languages is included, demonstrating the genetic relationship of Mangghuer within that family. In the course of describing Mangghuer linguistic structures, the book also examines issues of interest to linguistic typologists.