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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > General
This book examines the relationship between the Russian Communist Party and the Russian working class between 1920-24, immediately after the civil war and during the first years of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Based on extensive original research, which casts much new light on this period, both from the perspective of the rank and file as well as the leadership, the book discusses working-class collective action in 1920, workers' responses to the 1921 crisis, including the Kronstadt revolt, and the successes of the non-party workers' movement in the elections of 1921. It shows how during and after the 1921 crisis the working class was politically expropriated by the Bolshevik party, and how democratic forms such as soviets and factory committees were deprived of decision-making power. Simon Pirani examines how during this period the Soviet ruling class began to take shape, preferring in 1922-23 mass mobilization campaigns in which workers remained politically passive, rather than the participatory mass democracy which had flourished in 1917. The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24 shows how, whilst some people argued that the principles of 1917 had been betrayed, others accepted a social contract under which workers were assured of improvements in living standards in exchange for increased labour discipline and productivity, and a surrender of political power, with political power becoming concentrated in the party, and, increasingly, in the party elite.
Go beyond traditional approaches to therapy, research, and teaching Psychotherapy works toward change, but has traditionally focused solely on the individual. Today it is understood that discrimination and other adverse social conditions adversely affect the mental health of minority groups. Activism and LGBT Psychology takes note of the influence of social factors and offers examples of how mental health professionals can use their professional skills to empower the LGBT community. Respected leaders in the field of psychotherapy describe theoretical, clinical, community interventions, and personal approaches to changing attitudes toward LGBT people and within LGBT communities. Prejudice against a minority has an undeniable impact on mental health treatment. Recognizing and understanding this dynamic, Activism and LGBT Psychology reveals strategies to lessen societal discrimination, work for positive change, and reinforce LGBT-affirmative mental health practices. This valuable guide shows how to integrate the mental health professional's unique skills into activism for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. Topics in Activism and LGBT Psychology include: integrating activism into clinical practice theoretical alternatives for clinical practice mental health issues as the consequences of social injustice strategies for using liberation psychology in psychotherapy with LGBT clients practical strategies to bring an integrated clinical approach which encourages client empowerment and self-definition how research can be social activism providing training and support to make educational professionals agents of change personal accounts of integrating professional work with an activist role and more! Activism and LGBT Psychology is a positive, insightful guide for change that is valuable for community psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, educators, students, and professionals in the mental health field.
Globalization, European integration, and social change have devaluated traditional social democratic policy instruments. This book compares and explores how social democratic governments have had to adapt and whether they have successfully managed to uphold old social democratic goals and values in the light of these challenges. This volume examines the policy measures of social democratic parties in government in a comparative framework. The authors focus on traditional social democratic goals and tools, in particular, fiscal, employment, and social policy, in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. They identify three policy patterns in social democratic governments: traditional, modernized, and liberalized social democracy and provide a comparative account of the explanatory power of the national context for policy adopted by social democratic parties. Finally, the extent to which social democratic parties have been able to use the European Union as a political space for social democratic governance and policy-making is examined. Social Democracy in Power will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, comparative politics, European studies and public policy.
The Collins Cambridge Lower Secondary Global Perspectives series offers a skills-building approach to the Cambridge curriculum framework (1129) from 2022. The resources support students to develop skills in analysis, collaboration, communication, evaluation, reflection and research, exploring global issues through rich international sources. We are working with Cambridge Assessment International Education towards endorsement of this title for the Cambridge Lower Secondary Global Perspectives curriculum framework (1129) from 2022. This book provides full coverage of the Stage 7 Cambridge Lower Secondary Global Perspectives curriculum framework. Focused on improving skills: each chapter centres on two skill strands, building these skills through a carefully structured sequence of active learning towards a collaborative final task. Empower students to engage with a range of contemporary issues and perspectives. In Stage 7 these relate to the syllabus topics, 'Change in culture and communities', 'Education for all', 'Health and wellbeing', 'Globalisation', 'Values and beliefs', 'Employment' and 'Environment, pollution and conservation'. Help students to assess their progress and understand how to improve: the final chapter asks students to apply the skills they have learned across Stage 7, by carrying out a group project in their local community and reflecting in writing on what they have learned. Encourage reflection through structured Reflection points in each lesson and a self-assessment Check your progress feature at the end of each chapter. The clear lesson-by-lesson approach allows teachers to easily use the resources in the classroom and build them into their own schemes of work. The Collins resources can be used as preparation for the Challenges, if schools wish, as each chapter in the Student's Book links to the skills and topic focus of a Stage 7 Challenge.
Like any goal-oriented procedure, experiment is subject to many kinds of failures. These failures have a variety of features, depending on the particulars of their sources. For the experimenter these pitfalls should be avoided and their effects minimized. For the historian-philosopher of science and the science educator, on the other hand, they are instructive starting points for reflecting on science in general and scientific method and practice in particular. Often more is learned from failure than from confirmation and successful application. The identification of error, its source, its context, and its treatment shed light on both practices and epistemic claims. This book shows that it is fruitful to bring to light forgotten and lost failures, subject them to analysis and learn from their moral. The study of failures, errors, pitfalls and mistakes helps us understand the way knowledge is pursued and indeed generated. The book presents both historical accounts and philosophical analyses of failures in experimental practice. It covers topics such as "error as an object of study," "learning from error," "concepts and dead ends," "instrumental artifacts," and "surprise and puzzlement." This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science as well as to practicing scientists and science educators.
The fast-developing relationship between China and Europe has become one of the most important in international affairs. China-Europe Relations takes an innovative and insightful look at this phenomenon, examining: the state of Chinese studies in Europe and European studies in China the decision-making behind the EU's China policy, and what the Chinese perceptions and assessments are of Europe that shape China's Europe policy the recent rapid growth of bilateral commercial and technological relations the global context of the bilateral Sino-European relationship, in particular the interaction of China, the EU, and the United States prospects for the future evolution of these relationships. The most systematic and comprehensive study on the subject to date, written by a stellar team of international contributors from China, Europe and the US, China-Europe Relations will appeal to students, academics and policy makers alike who are interested in international relations, comparative foreign policy and Chinese and European politics.
Structured into sub-sector by sub-sector analyses, this book provides a clear and accessible examination of industrial development, without over-generalizing or being weighed down by historical details. Written by an authority in the area of development economics it explores the companies and the individuals that have pushed Japan's economy forwards. Kohama situates the 'miraculous growth' of the Japanese economy in the 1960s in the trade liberalization policy of 1960 and the income doubling plan that commenced in 1961, yet also analyzes the pre-war structures that were in place to facilitate such a 'miracle.' Combining policy analysis with empirical industry-specific analysis, he argues that private dynamism was the real driver of change, rather than policy alone. Reviewing the macroeconomic development of the economy but focusing on the development of the industrial sub-sectors that dominated Japan's industrial scene at various stages of development and structural changes that happened in the process of industrial development, this book is ideal reading for graduate students taking courses on economic development.
The fast-developing relationship between China and Europe has become one of the most important in international affairs. China-Europe Relations takes an innovative and insightful look at this phenomenon, examining: the state of Chinese studies in Europe and European Studies in China, the decision-making behind the EU's China policy, and what the Chinese perceptions and assessments are of Europe that shape China's Europe policy, the recent rapid growth of bilateral commercial and technological relations the global context of the bilateral Sino-European relationship, in particular the interaction of China, the EU, and the United States prospects for the future evolution of these relationships.The most systematic and comprehensive study on the subject to date, written by a stellar team of international contributors from China, Europe and the US, China-Europe Relations will appeal to students, academics and policy makers alike who are interested in international relations, comparative foreign policy and Chinese and European politics.
This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our perception of both popular faith in Russian and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that 'double-belief' is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period.
Featuring contributions from leading scholars of Iranian studies and / or comparative literature, this edited comprehensive and critical edited collection provides detailed scholarly analysis of Hedayat's life and work using a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches. Hedayat is the author of The Blind Owl, the most famous Persian novel both in Iran and in Europe and America. Many of his short stories are in a critical realist style and are regarded as among some of the best written in twentieth century Iran. But his most original contribution was the use of modernist, more often surrealist, techniques in Persian fiction. Thus, he was not only a great writer, but also the founder of modernism in Persian fiction. Yet both Hedayat's life and his death came to symbolize much more than leading writers would normally claim. He still towers over modern Persian fiction and will remain a highly controversial figure so long as the clash of the modern and the traditional, the Persian and the European, and the religious and the secular, has not led to a synthesis and a consensus.
Kazakhstan is emerging as the most dynamic economic and political actor in Central Asia. It is the second largest country of the former Soviet Union, after the Russian Federation, and has rich natural resources, particularly oil, which is being exploited through massive US investment. Kazakhstan has an impressive record of economic growth under the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbaev, and has ambitions to project itself as a modern, wealthy civic state, with a developed market economy. At the same time, Kazakhstan is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the region, with very substantial non-Kazakh and non-Muslim minorities. Its political regime has used elements of political clientelism and neo-traditional practices to bolster its rule. Drawing from extensive ethnographic research, interviews, and archival materials this book traces the development of national identity and statehood in Kazakhstan, focusing in particular on the attempts to build a national state. It argues that Russification and Sovietization were not simply 'top-down' processes, that they provide considerable scope for local initiatives, and that Soviet ethnically-based affirmative action policies have had a lasting impact on ethnic elite formation and the rise of a distinct brand of national consciousness.
This book provides an innovative examination of the European Union, as it departs from its path of integration. Indeed so far has it departed that it could be described as having entered a new reality. The original reality was that captured in the evocative phrase in its founding agreement, the Treaty of Rome, that it should be an ever-closer union of peoples. Largely that was the path followed until the 1990s, but by the early twenty-first century there have been signs that it is turning into an ordinary international organization in which there is little overriding sense of purpose. This book discusses the indications of this development and explains why it happened only a decade or so after a peak of popular enthusiasm in the early 1990s. The question was whether the EU would become less important for the member states, as seemed to be the case for the British, or whether the German pattern, in which the EU remained important, would prevail. This book concludes that the former is more likely in part because of problems with the policies of the European Union and its conduct, but more specifically because of the current prevailing political culture in Western Europe. Paul Taylor warns that the current problems are underestimated and that there is the risk of casually throwing away the considerable achievements of the integration process. The End of European Integration will be of interest to all those with an interest in European integration, whether for or against. It will also interest students of European studies, European politics, and politics and international relations in general.
Providing a broad ranging and unique comparative study of the development of English, Persian and Arabic literature, this book looks at their interrelations with specific reference to modernity, nationalism and social value. It gives a strong theoretical underpinning to the development of Middle Eastern literature in the modern period.
China's recent growth has called attention to the power-transition theory, which contends that the danger of a major war is the greatest when a rising dissatisfied challenger threatens to overtake a declining satisfied hegemon. Steve Chan questions this prevailing view by analyzing the extent of ongoing power shifts among the leading powers, exploring the portents for their future growth, and seeking indicators of their relative commitment to the existing international order. To better understand the strategic motivations of ascending and declining states, insights are drawn from prospect theory and past episodes of peaceful and violent transition (such as the end of the Cold War and the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars). He concludes that China is unlikely to instigate a confrontation with the US, and that whilst military conflict over the Taiwan Strait is possible, this is more likely to be due to China's inability to prevent US involvement than its willingness to provoke the US. This book places China in a comparative and historical context, in which inquiry is informed by the experiences of other major powers and pertinent theories in international relations, such as those on extended deterrence, preventive war, and democratic peace. Its comparative and theoretical orientation and its contrarian perspective will be of great interest not only to students and scholars of international relations and Chinese politics, but also to policy makers and professionals.
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, the pen gives woman agency - she moves out from under the shroud of victim hood and becomes one who can write about her lives. The volume also has some carefully chosen photographs, gleaned from personal collections, so far a neglected area of use in academic study. These provide an important visual context to the many worlds that the women inhabited.
This edited volume sets out to explore the paradox that the European Union (EU) produces policies with strategic qualities, but lacks the institutions and concepts to engage in strategic reasoning and action proper. The book has a two-fold agenda, exploring current EU external policies that are, or seem to be, linked to strategic priorities, and also studying the concept of strategy in the particular context of EU decision- and policymaking. The volume first examines the character of the Union as a strategic actor at this stage of its development. It then explores the ability of the Union to act and otherwise influence both its periphery and the wider world, focusing in particular on how it is perceived by other actors. The final section comprises personal assessments by a group of contributors regarding the character of the union as a strategic actor in the present and future. When these are pieced together, a picture emerges of a European strategy in the making, albeit one that so far is modest and partial. This book will be of interest to students of European Security, European Politics and IR.
On July 1st, 2007, Hong Kong celebrated the 10th anniversary of its return to the People's Republic of China, but the past decade has been a bumpy ride for both the Hong Kong people and the central leaders in China. In fact, in 2003 Beijing had already succumbed to public pressure within the fairly short period of its rule by abruptly replacing its handpicked first Chief Executive with a British-groomed civil servant. This book examines the origin and evolution of Hong Kong's political system, analyses the current contradictions in the system, and discusses how the system might develop in future. It focuses in particular on the office of Chief Executive in the context of Hong Kong's transformation from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region in China. The dualistic structure of the Chief Executive's office embodies a dilemma between two competing imperatives - Communist China's imperative to retain a colonial political system where executive power is concentrated at the top; alongside the need to accommodate new, increasing demands for democratic representation within the territory. The Political Future of Hong Kong demonstrates how the British legacy left its imprint on Hong Kong's political system. It analyses the strategies adopted by the Sovereign state as it attempted to cope with demands for representative government in the post-handover years, and the strains placed on Hong Kong's political institutions by the uneasy relationship between central government and local forces of liberal autonomy. Kit Poon examines the possibility of the introduction of universal suffrage for the selection of the Chief Executive, and considers how Hong Kong can secure ademocratic future in the context of broader Beijing-Hong Kong relations.
Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism explores contemporary UK national and local newspapers at a significant and pivotal moment in their development when some pundits are busily, if mistakenly, announcing their demise. The book offers a detailed examination of features which previous studies have tended to neglect, such as editorial formats (News, Op Ed pages, readers' letters, cartoons, obituaries, advice columns, features and opinion columns), aspects of newspaper design (page layout, photographs, supplements, online editions, headlines, the emergence of the compact and Berliner editions), newspaper contents (sport, sex and Page 3, royalty, crime, moral panics and politics) as well as the content of newspapers which is not generated by in house journalists (advertising, TV listings, horoscopes, agency copy and public relations materials). This innovative and accessibly written collection provides journalism and media students with an invaluable study of newspapers in the digital age.
In Zero Comments, internationally renowned media theorist and 'net critic' Geert Lovink upgrades worn out concepts about the Internet and interrogates the latest hype surrounding blogs and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, following the influential Dark Fiber and My First Recession, Lovink develops a 'general theory of blogging.' Unlike most critiques of blogging, Lovink is not focusing here on the dynamics between bloggers and the mainstream news media, but rather unpacking the ways that blogs exhibit a 'nihilist impulse' to empty out established meaning structures. Blogs, Lovink argues, are bringing about the decay of traditional broadcast media, and they are driven by an in-crowd dynamic in which social ranking is a primary concern. The lowest rung of the new Internet hierarchy are those blogs and sites that receive no user feedback or 'zero comments'. Lovink explores other important changes to Internet culture, as well, including the silent globalization of the Net in which the West is no longer the main influence behind new media culture, as countries like India, China and Brazil expand their influence. Zero Comments also looks forward to speculate on the Net impact of organized networks, free cooperation and distributed aesthetics.
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.
Comparative in structure and covering an extensive number of
transition countries in its survey, this comprehensive book
overviews the development of the banking systems in Central and
Eastern European since the communist era until the present
time. Taking in a range of countries including Hungary, Poland, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Russia, Ukraine,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Barisitz - an economist with the
Central Bank of Austra - analyzes the evolution of legal
foundations, banking supervision, banks' major sources of assets,
liabilities, earnings and related changes, banking crises,
restructuring, rehabilitation programs, the role of foreign-owned
banks and FDI. A significant publication, it is fascinating reading for all
those studying and working in the areas of transition economy,
macro and monetary economy and economic history
This is an introduction to the best available scholarship within Irish politics, featuring the most influential and significant articles which have been published on Irish politics during the past twenty years. Each article is accompanied by a new commentary by another leading scholar which addresses the impact and contribution of the article and discusses how its themes remain crucial today. The book covers all the most important topics within Irish politics including political culture and traditions, political institutions and parties and the peace process. The combination of the best original scholarship and contemporary commentaries on the core political issues makes Irish Political Studies Reader an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of Irish politics.
Japanese Economic Development presents three distinct approaches
to understanding how and why Japan made the transition from a
relatively low-income country mainly focused on agriculture to a
high-income nation centered on manufacturing and services.
In offering an eclectic account of Japan's economic development,
this book appeals to students in a broad group of disciplines
including economics, political science, sociology, geography and
history. The book makes a case for 'over determination' in economic behavior. Because individual, firm level, and governmental behavior is simultaneously determined by the interaction of markets, norms, and structures, change over time is rarely if ever limited to the economy operating in isolation from social norms and structures.
This is the first work available in English which addresses
Zhuangzi's thought as a whole. It presents an interpretation of the
Zhuangzi, a book in thirty-three chapters that is the most
important collection of Daoist texts in early China. The author introduces a complex reading that shows the unity of
Zhuangzi's thought, in particular in his views of action, language,
and ethics. By addressing methodological questions that arise in
reading Zhuangzi, a hermeneutics is developed which makes
understanding Zhuangzi's religious thought possible. A theoretical contribution to comparative philosophy and the cross-cultural study of religious traditions, the book serves as an introduction to Daoism for graduate students in religion, philosophy, and East Asian Studies.
With Saudi Arabia being of immense importance both politically and economically in the Middle East, this book provides a much needed, broad ranging survey of the development of the Saudi economy from the 1960s to the present day. Written by a highly reputable author, the book includes an analysis of how political and social factors have shaped policy, and how the Saudi state is coping with the dynamics of a rapidly changing economic and political situation. |
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