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.
This edition includes a new introduction, a new chapter, and changes throughout the existing text.

Incorporating original fieldwork carried out over a period of more than ten years, combined with innovative theoretical argument, Globalization, Culture and Society in Laos presents one of the first sociological investigations into modern Laos. Boike Rehbein gives a fascinating overview of contemporary Lao culture and society, whilst linking local and national phenomena to tendencies of globalization and the history of the region. The book introduces a new theoretical approach based on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, applying this sociology to the interpretation of Lao history. It also examines various aspects of Lao culture and society, including economics, politics, language, higher education, music, and religion. Rehbein concludes by attempting to synthesize these cultural elements with the impact of globalization to give a synopsis of contemporary Lao society. Written by an expert in Lao history and culture, familiar with the language and the people, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Laos, Southeast Asia, social theory and globalization.

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

Structure and Function of the Arabic Verb is a corpus-based study that unveils the morpho-syntax and the semantics of the Arabic verb. Approaches to verbal grammatical categories - the constituents of verbal systems - often rely on either semantic-pragmatic or syntactic analyses. This research bridges the gap between these two distinct approaches through a detailed analysis of Taxis, Aspect, Tense and Modality in Standard Arabic. This is accomplished by showing, firstly, some basic theoretical concerns shared by both schools of thought, and, secondly, the extent to which semantic structures and invariant meanings mirror syntactic representations. Maher Bahloul's findings also indicate that the basic constituents of the verbal system in Arabic, namely the Perfect and the Imperfect, are systematically differentiated through their invariant semantic features in a markedness relation. Finally, this study suggests that the syntactic derivation of verbal and nominal clauses are sensitive to whether or not verbal categories are specified for their feature values, providing therefore a principled explanation to a long-standing debate. This reader friendly book will appeal to both specialists and students of Arabic linguistics, language and syntax.

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.

This volume is an inter-disciplinary endeavour which brings together recent research on aspects of urban life and structure by architectural and textual historians and archaeologists, engendering exciting new perspectives on urban life in the pre-modern Islamic world. Its objective is to move beyond the long-standing debate on whether an 'Islamic city' existed in the pre-modern era and focus instead upon the ways in which religion may (or may not) have influenced the physical structure of cities and the daily lives of their inhabitants. It approaches this topic from three different but inter-related perspectives: the genesis of 'Islamic cities' in fact and fiction; the impact of Muslim rulers upon urban planning and development; and the degree to which a religious ethos affected the provision of public services.

Chronologically and geographically wide-ranging, the volume examines thought-provoking case studies from seventh-century Syria to seventeenth-century Mughal India by established and new scholars in the field, in addition to chapters on urban sites in Spain, Morocco, Egypt and Central Asia.

Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World will be of considerable interest to academics and students working on the archaeology, history and urbanism of the Middle East as well as those with more general interests in urban archaeology and urbanism.

The idea of 'national identity' is an ambiguous one for Hong Kong. Returned to the national embrace of China on 1 July 1997 after 150 years as a British colony, the concept of national identity and what it means to "belong to a nation" is a matter of great tension and contestation in Hong Kong. Written by three academic specialists on Hong Kong cultural identity, social history, and mass media, this book explores the processes through which the people of Hong Kong are "learning to belong to a nation" by examining their relationship with the Chinese nation and state in the recent past, present, and future. It considers the complex meanings of and debates over national identity in Hong Kong over the past fifty years and especially during the last decade following Hong Kong's return to China. It also places these arguments within a larger, global perspective, to ask what Hong Kong can teach us about national identity and its potential transformations. Multidisciplinary in its approach, Hong Kong and China explores national identity in terms of theory, mass media, survey date, ethnography and history, and will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, cultural studies, and nationalism.

In Buddhist thought and practice, death has always been a central concept. This book provides a careful and thorough analysis of the rituals and social customs surrounding death in the Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka.

Rita Langer describes the rituals of death and rebirth and investigates their ancient origins, analyzing social issues of the relationship between monks and lay people in this context. This aspect is of particular interest as death rituals are the only life cycle ritual in which Theravada Buddhist monks are actively involved. Drawing on early Vedic sutras and Pali texts as well as archaeological and epigraphical material, Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth establishes that Sri Lankan rituals are deeply rooted in their pre-Buddhist, Vedic precursors. Whilst beliefs and doctrines have undergone considerable changes over the centuries, it becomes evident that the underlying practices have largely remained stable.

The first comprehensive study of death rituals in Theravada Buddhist practice, this is an important contribution to the fields of Buddhist studies, indology, anthropology and religious studies.

Examining the role of dramatized narratives in Russian television, this book stresses the ways in which the Russian government under Putin use primetime television to express a new understanding of what it means to be Russian, answering key questions of national identity for modern Russians in dealing with their recent history: 'What really happened to us?' and, accordingly, 'Why?'

The book covers important issues in Russian television today, including:

• the reworking of new 'national' on-screen heroes
• its relationship with classic literature
• the revisionist portrayal of a romantic portrait of life in the Soviet era
• the role of thematic elements such as love, fidelity, humour and irony
• the particularly pressing problem of crime and its representation on screen as Mafia or police adventure, and its political usage by the Putin administration.

This book provides a detailed account ofthe critical issues in contemporary Russian television, relating them to broader social and political developments in Russian society.

China's rise as a major trading power has prompted debate about the nature of that country's involvement in the liberal international economic order. China's Foreign Trade Policy sheds light on this complex question by examining the changing domestic forces shaping China's foreign trade relations. Specifically, this book explores the evolving trade policymaking process in China by looking at: China's WTO accession negotiation China's bilateral trade disputes The development of China's antidumping regime China's emerging trade disputes in the WTO. In addition, Ka Zeng examines how lobbying patterns in China are becoming more open and pluralistic, with bureaucratic agencies, sectoral interests, regional interests, and even transnational actors increasingly able to influence the process and outcome of China's trade negotiations. Using case studies of China's trade disputes with its major trading partners, as well as China's participation in the dispute settlement process of the World Trade Organization, to present an in-depth analysis of China's trade relations, this book will appeal to students and scholars of international political economy, Chinese politics and foreign policy, and more generally Asian studies.

Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe examines Taiwan's economic diplomacy towards post-communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. The media, and occasionally academia, have often suggested that Taipei resorts to costly aid, trade and investment diplomacy to facilitate its foreign relations, whilst China engages in equally costly counter-economic diplomacy to keep Taiwan isolated. Czeslaw Tubilewicz argues conversely that Beijing's diplomacy in post-communist Europe has demonstrated China's reluctance to employ economic instruments against states violating the 'one-China' principle when cheaper (diplomatic) alternatives are available. Taipei, for its part, has demonstrated that promises of economic assistance are sufficient to induce target states' short term compliance, whilst in the medium to long term Taiwanese economic assistance, conditional upon meeting political criteria, has proved inconsequential due to Taipei's refusal to follow up aid commitments.

This book examines the efficacy and limitations of Taipei's frugal economic diplomacy in furthering its broader diplomatic objectives, looking at both Taipei's failure to establish a lasting diplomatic presence in post-communist Europe, but also its success in securing 'substantive' relations with a number of major post-communist states, and thus opening transition economies for its exports and investments. The first in-depth study into Taiwan's economic diplomacy toward post-communist Europe, this book will appeal to readers interested in Taiwan and China studies, diplomacy, Asian studies and international relations.

Describing one of the most important practices of hathayoga (khecarimudra), the Khecarividya of Adinatha is presented here to an English-speaking readership for the first time. The author, James Mallinson, draws on thirty Sanskrit works, as well as original fieldwork amongst yogins in India who use the practice, to demonstrate how earlier tantric yogic techniques developed and mutated into the practices of hathayoga. Accompanied by an introduction and an extensively annotated translation, the work sheds light on the development of hathayoga and its practices.

This book investigates the forced migration of the Delawares in the United States and the Yaquis in Mexico, focusing primarily on the impact removal from tribal lands had on the (ethnic) identity of these two indigenous societies. It analyzes Native responses to colonial and state policies to determine the practical options that each group had in dealing with the states in which they lived. Haake convincingly argues that both nation-states aimed at the destruction of the Native American societies within their borders. This exemplary comparative, transnational study clearly demonstrates that the legacy of these attitudes and policies are readily apparent in both countries today. This book should appeal to a wide variety of academic disciplines in which diversity and minority political representation assume significance.

Challenging the view of Islamic extremists and critics of Islam, this book explores the very topical issue of Islam's compatibility with democracy. It examines:

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• principles of Islam's political theory and the notion of democracy therein
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• the notion of democracy in medieval and modern Muslim thought
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• Islam and human rights
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• the contribution of Islamic legal ideas to European legal philosophy and law.

The book addresses the pressing need for a systematic show of an Islamic politics of human rights and democracy grounded in the Qur'an. The West wonders about Islam and human rights, and its own ability to incorporate Muslim minority communities. Many Muslims also seek to find within Islam support source for democratic governance and human rights.

In popular debates about reproductive and sexual rights, formal religions, especially Islam, are seen as barriers providing institutional and ideological resistance to women's realization of reproductive and social autonomy. This book challenges this simplified view of Islam. Based on original fieldwork in Eastern Indonesia, the book explores the complex factors that affect how young Indonesian women form their sexual subjectivities, discusses the cultural and historical conditions under which single Muslim women repress or express their sexuality, and examines how the cultural context, including other factors besides Islam, simultaneously influence the ways in which young single women approach courtship, and issues of sexuality and reproductive health. It demonstrates that Islam is neither alone in trying to control female sexuality, nor entirely successful in doing so.

This is the first examination of how China is currently dealing with environmental problems and challenges, and of its successes, failures and dilemmas. This new book gives special attention to the development of 'environmental governance' in contemporary China, especially on the urban industrial and infrastructure sectors, showing how the rapid economic growth that has transformed China in recent years has major implications for the environment, as well as future economic development. Leading international scholars explore a range of key issues, including: economic growth and the environment the environmental policy process the legal framework for environmental protection the role of environmental NGOs energy policy water issues biotechnology and GMOs the international dimension. This book shows how environmental policy, politics and governance are core issues posed by China's accelerated economic development. At the same time it analyzes, illustrates and argues that major steps are under way in taking up these challenges. In doing so the book provides an in-depth, balanced and comprehensive assessment of contemporary environmental reforms in China. This book was previously published as a special issue of Environmental Governance.

This book examines the Russian explorers and officials in the nineteenth and early twentieth century who came into contact with Iran as a part of the Great Game. It demonstrates the development of Russia's own form of Orientalism, a phenomenon that has previously been thought to be exclusive to the West.

This book explores the complex relationship between the novel and identity in modern Arab culture against a backdrop of contemporary Egypt. It uses the example of the Egyptian novel to interrogate the root causes - religious, social, political, and psychological - of the lingering identity crisis that has afflicted Arab culture for at least two centuries.

The unresolved territorial dispute between Japan and Russia over the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories remains the largest obstacle to concluding a peace treaty and fully normalising bilateral relations between the two nations. This book traces the evolution of transnational relations between subnational public authorities in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, examining the interrelationship between these ties and the Russo-Japanese territorial dispute.

The book investigates why the development of Hokkaido-Sakhalin relations has failed to create, at the subnational level, an environment conducive to resolving (kankyo seibi) the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories dispute. Brad Williams suggests that kankyo seibi has not worked primarily because Russia's troubled transition to a liberal democratic market economy has manifested itself in ways that have ultimately increased the South Kuril Islands' intrinsic and instrumental value for the Sakhalin public and regional elite. This in turn has limited the impact from the twin transnational processes of cultural and economic exchange in alleviating opposition to the transferral of these disputed islands to Japan.

Drawing upon a wealth of primary and secondary sources from both countries, this book utilises levels of analysis and an analytical framework that incorporates national and subnational, as well as governmental and non-governmental forces to discuss a relatively unexplored aspect of Russo-Japanese relations. As such, Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute will appeal to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and post-communist states.

Private enterprises have contributed significantly to China's recent economic growth and will play a key role in achieving China's goal of building a comprehensively well-society. But how can private enterprises help China mitigate its macroeconomic problems such as unemployment, income inequality, financial disintermediation, and an unhealthy economic cycle? And what are the main obstacles to private enterprise development? Private Enterprises and China's Economic Development answers these questions by identifying the range of cultural, political and financial challenges confronting China's private enterprises, and assessing their performance and potential. Contributors also analyse the experiences and lessons of other countries, and propose strategies and policies to help China promote private enterprise development.

Using the most up to date research on private enterprises, including detailed econometric analysis and national representative data, authors including economists, policy-makers and academics from the USA, China, Singapore and Canada comprehensively address the most important aspects of China's private enterprise development. As such this book will appeal to students, scholars and policy-makers alike with an interested in the Chinese economy, economic growth, comparative economics and transitional economics.

Genetic engineering is changing the terrain of development studies. Technologies with unprecedented potential - the capacity to move genes across species - have created widely politicized phenomena: 'Frankenfoods', 'GMOs', and 'The Terminator'. En masse, the public has reacted with equanimity or appreciation to genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, beginning with insulin, but transgenics in food and agriculture have raised a globally contentious politics.

This book begins with the needs of the poor - for income, nutrition, environmental integrity - and evaluates the theory and evidence for contributions from transgenic crops. Social scientists with expertise in regional studies, economics, sociology, agriculture and political science join biologists to bring specialized knowledge on genuinely new questions created by the genomics revolution; questions of:

• ecological integrity
• biodiversity
• international trade
• the costs and effectiveness of biosafety protocols.

The authors collectively conclude that predictions of disaster for the poor from transgenic technology are uninformed by empirical results, rest on misunderstandings of biotechnology or the poor or both, or get the science wrong. Yet the triumphalism of pro-transgenic forces, however, must be tempered by serious unanswered questions: much is unknown, but the transgenic genie is out of the bottle.

In this much-needed book, an emergent empirical literature allows scholars in disciplines ranging from micro-biology to economics and political science to assess the potential effects of transgenic organisms on poverty through multiple dynamics of property, yields, prices, biodiversity, environmental integrity and nutrition.

Weber's claim that Buddhism is an otherworldly religion is only partially true. Early sources indicate that the Buddha was sometimes diverted from supramundane interests to dwell on a variety of politically-related matters. The significance of Asoka Maurya as a paradigm for later traditions of Buddhist kingship is also well-attested. However, there has been little scholarly effort to integrate findings on the extent to which Buddhism interacted with the political order in the classical and modern states of Theravada Asia into a wider, comparative study.
This volume brings together the brightest minds in the study of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Their contributions create a more coherent account of the relations between Buddhism and political order in the late pre-modern and modern period by questioning the contested relationship between monastic and secular power. In doing so, they expand the very nature of what is known as the 'Theravada'.

Buddhism, Power and Political Order offers new insights for scholars of Buddhism, and it will stimulate new debates.

The transnational and diasporic dimensions of early Chinese migrant politics opened in the late nineteenth century when Chinese radical groups bent on overthrowing the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) vied with one another to win Chinese overseas to their modernizing projects, and immigrants who had suffered discrimination welcomed their proposals. The radicals' concentration on Chinese communities abroad as outposts of Chinese politics and culture strengthened the stereotype of Chinese as clannish, unassimilable, xenophobic, and deeply introverted.

This book argues that such a view has its roots less in historical truth than in political and ideological prejudice and obscures a rich vein of internationalist practice in Chinese migrant or diasporic history, which the study aims to restore to visibility. In some cases, internationalist alliances sprang from the spontaneous perception by Chinese and other non-Chinese migrants or local workers of shared problems and common solutions in everyday lifeand work. At other times, they emerged from under the umbrella of transnationalism, when Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist activists overseas received support for their campaigns from local internationalists; or the alliances were the product of nurturing by Chinese or non-Chinese political organizers, including anarchists, communists, and members of internationalist cultural movements like Esperantism.

Based on sources in a dozen languages, and telling hitherto largely unknown or forgotten stories of Chinese migrant experiences in Russia, Germany, Cuba, Spain and Australia, this study will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, labour studies and ethnic/migration studiesalike.

This book examines the rise of India to the status of a world power capable of dealing with the full spectrum of international and regional issues in a critical part of the world. It traces the evolution of Indian diplomacy in the hands of key Indian practitioners comparing Nehru, the founder of Indian diplomacy with his successors, the Nehruvians up to 1998, and finally, Vajpayee, the leader of the BJP (1998-2004). Its main purposes are to explain the strategic and ideological context in which Indian diplomacy was framed, the character of India's foreign policy problems, the nature and sources of its dilemmas and the paradigm shift that was orchestrated by the BJP government to reposition India in the international system and to bring it into the global strategic and economic mainstream. It shows how the approach laid down by Nehru and followed by his successors (an approach that included nuclear self-restraint, the search for friendly relations with Pakistan and China, seeking the high ground in moral and diplomatic spheres, and giving a lead to the non-aligned Third World) has been replaced by a new, more self-confident and assertive approach based on India's growing economic strength and demonstrating a more strategic and pro-Western orientation. Overall, this book provides a meticulous account of many steps post-Nehruvian India has taken to make it a rising world influence and a mature, independent power.