This book examines the public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Asia-Oceania region and their implications for democratic backsliding in the period January 2020 to mid-2021. The contributions discuss three key questions: How did political institutions in Asia-Oceania create incentives for effective public health responses to the COVID-19 outbreak? How did state capacities enhance governments’ ability to implement public health responses? How have governance responses affected the democratic quality of political institutions and processes? Together, the analyses reveal the extent to which institutions prompted an effective public health response and highlights that a high-capacity state was not a necessary condition for containing the spread of COVID-19 during the early phase of the pandemic. By combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, the volume also shows that the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of democratic institutions has been uneven across Asia-Oceania. Guided by a comprehensive theoretical framework, this will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students of political science, policy studies, public health and Asian studies.

Never before in human history have vegetarianism and a plant-based economy been so closely associated with sustainability and the promise of tackling climate change. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in India, which is home to the largest number of vegetarians globally and where vegetarianism is intrinsic to Hinduism. India is often considered a global model for vegetarianism. However, in this book, which is the outcome of eight months of fieldwork conducted among vegetarian and non-vegetarian producers, traders, regulators and consumers, I show that the reality in India is quite different, with large sections of communities being meat-eaters. In 2011, vegetarian/veg/green and nonvegetarian/ non-veg/brown labels on all packaged foods/drinks were introduced in India. Paradoxically, this grand scheme was implemented at a time when meat and non-vegetarian food production, trade and consumption were booming. The overarching argument of the book is that a systematic study of the complex and changing relationship between vegetarian and non-vegetarian understandings and practices illuminates broader transformations and challenges that relate to markets, the state, religion, politics and identities in India and beyond. The book’s empirical focus is on the changing relationship between vegetarian/ non-vegetarian as understood, practised and contested in middle-class India, while remaining attentive to the vegetarian/non-vegetarian modernities that are at the forefront of global sustainability debates. Through the application of this approach, the book provides a novel theory of human values and markets in a global middle-class perspective.

This book focuses on how we should treat philosophy’s theoretical representations. It argues in favor of an instrumentalist attitude towards pivotal cases of theoretical representation in philosophy that are commonly regarded under a realist attitude. Philosophy is awash with theoretical representations, which raises the question of how we should regard them. This book argues that representations in philosophy should not be regarded under a realist attitude by default as individually disclosing the nature of what they represent. Ori Simchen introduces the reader to the general theme of representations in philosophy and our attitudes towards them via case studies: numbers, modality, and belief. He offers a framework for deciding when a realist attitude towards a theoretical representation is warranted and concludes that the representations deployed in the case studies fail the proposed test. The next part of the book illustrates the attractiveness of attitudinal instrumentalism towards representations in semantics, in the philosophy of mind, and within the problematics of rule-following. Philosophical Representation will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophical logic, and philosophical methodology.

Exploring, clarifying and moving beyond the distinction between 'community' and 'society' for which he is best known, this book rediscovers the work of Ferdinand Toennies, providing fresh insights into his thought, which are often overlooked for want of a grasp of his background in philosophy. With attention to the fact that Toennies always wrote from a sociological perspective, it considers the importance of the breadth of his writing on a range of subjects, including politics, philosophy, economics and ethics, these being the foundations of social policy - a field with which Toennies was concerned as a scholar who sought not only to understand the world, but to change it for the better. The first book to provide an accessible overview of Toennies' work that places his thought in context, explores his key concepts and demonstrates his continuing relevance in sociology - a discipline he helped to establish - Reintroducing Ferdinand Toennies will appeal to scholars and students with interests in social theory, the history of sociology, and the sociology of Ferdinand Toennies.

This book calls for new attention to non-traditional forms of emancipatory tactics and welcomes to the fold all manner of ‘everyday’ expressions of anti-authoritarianism. Capitalism has taken the mask off. Elites feel less obliged to pursue strategies of popular legitimization. The traditional institutions of representative democracies are thus hollowing out and stand before us corrupted and broken. In this milieu, the prospects for a democratic entering of the state are seen as increasingly fantastical, and the Left is advised instead to adopt a more tactical posture. These expressions can run the gamut, from the more obviously theatrical antics of ‘The Yes Men’ to those of ‘black bloc,’ and other direct-action militant groups, already well-known from their interventions in the cities of Berkeley and Charlottesville. This volume addresses this problem via the concept of tactics. The point is less to prescribe an ideal range of tactics but rather to consider a broader range of resistances—from the struggles of indigenous peoples to those who seek refuge from gender or citizenship-based discrimination to those who seek to defend “black lives” from militarized policing. Tactics and Emancipation in the Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism will be a beneficial read for students and scholars of Critical Political Science, International Relations, and International Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of New Political Science.

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness brings into conversation research from multiple disciplines, offering readers a comprehensive guide to current forgiveness research. Its 42 chapters, newly commissioned from an internationally acclaimed group of scholars, are divided into five parts: Religious Traditions Historic Treatments The Nature of Forgiveness Normative Issues Empirical Findings While the principal aim of the handbook is to provide a guide to the philosophical literature on forgiveness that, ideally, will inform the psychological sciences in developing more philosophically accurate measures and psychological treatments of forgiveness, the volume will be of interest to students and researchers with a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, psychology, theology, religious studies, classics, history, politics, law, and education.

* Written by an interdisciplinary group of specialists from the arts, humanities and sciences at Oxford University * Suitable for a wide non-academic readership, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in mathematics, science and philosophy.

Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Foucault on madness The Cartesian exclusion Derrida and Foucault The text and the body Post-hierarchial politics Conclusion Bibliography

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who's-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics - examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

This book explores and proposes original definitions of central terms in political sociology and social theory, including political culture, imaginary, ideology, and utopia, in a manner that renders the individual definitions consistent with one another as part of a single and general conceptual framework for understanding social action. Through a Weberian distinction between means, ends, and values, together with the thought of Alfred Schütz and phenomenological sociology more generally, it sheds light on the ways in which the book’s key concepts make sense of social action, advancing the view that, rather than some promised land or aspiration, utopia is a project of broad and far-reaching collective action realized in its own enactment. As such, the book will appeal to scholars of social theory, political sociology, and political theory.

This edited volume offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical role of radical journalism, its present iterations, and plans for the future of a journalism that is committed to liberatory movements and politics. At a time of profound crisis and stagnation for mainstream journalism, radical journalism seems to be riding a wave. New outlets, including those – like Jacobin – with a global reach, have sprung up, presenting a new generation of unapologetically progressive publications with an emancipatory agenda. Understanding the role and place of radical journalism becomes even more urgent given the current political climate in a (post) pandemic world with heightened inequalities and intensified pauperisation. Drawing on contributions from leading academics, this collection considers: • How new outlets fit in the genealogy of (radical) journalism and what their flourishing can tell us about the present and future of emancipatory politics and the role of the radical journalist; • What these new forms and publications mean for mainstream journalism and its persisting problems of financial sustainability and professional journalistic labour; • Important challenges presented by, for example, the resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism and the mainstreaming of the far right; • Essential questions of what radical journalism looks like today, what forms it takes or should take, and what its future might be. Radical Journalism is recommended reading for advanced students and journalists working at the intersection of journalism, politics, and sociology.

This book offers a comparative, theory-grounded study of Maghrebi political parties since the Arab uprisings, specifically focused on Tunisia and Morocco in the first decade after the 2011 watershed elections. Based on primary sources, including in-depth interviews and updated party statutes and bylaws, the author introduces four case studies of key Islamist and anti-Islamist parties, exploring their organisational standing, internal working, and legitimating assets. By dwelling into a topic long neglected, the author provides insight into the "hybrid" nature of political parties in the Maghreb, oscillating between juxtaposed traditional and modern discourses and ambivalent sources of political authority. As such, it is hybridisation that shapes parties’ organisational choices and development and accounts for differences within parties. In the wake of political liberalisation, the author argues that political parties have become increasingly distant from society, distrusted by a large part of the citizenry. Ultimately, the Tunisian and Moroccan cases invite reflection on similar phenomena taking place within the Middle East and North Africa region, and even outside of it. Bridging disparate disciplines, including comparative politics, area studies, and contemporary Middle Eastern history, the book will be of interest to a broad range of graduate-level students and academics.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the surge of populism, the climate crisis and many other destabilizing factors in our time, all point at the expectation of trustworthy knowledge and reliable organization devoted to knowledge production and dissemination. However, universities remain enmeshed in economic liberalization and ensuing cultural struggles where their funding, governance and practices reflect market imprints – even academic ideals such as originality, or social ideals such as relevance have been transformed into measurable units and thereby risk losing their historical sway. This predicament is the focus of this book. The book explores the rise of neo-liberalization in academic system in a highly unlikely place: Sweden, a country with a strong social democratic tradition and a long history of state regulation of higher education. As an advanced welfare state with a powerful labour movement and a large public sector, market ideals and practices have been carefully curtailed historically. This notwithstanding, a neoliberal university model has evolved there, reshaping notions of academic identities, institutional directions and notions of quality. This edited collection will be of value to researchers, academics and students with an interest in organizational studies, governance, management, higher education, sociology and politics.

Forsaking the Fall argues that the doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin need not be understood as integral components of orthodox Christianity. Innovative and provocative, it will be of interest to scholars of theology and philosophy, specifically analytic theologians and philosophers of religion.

This book examines the violation of property rights in the two World Wars and in the interwar period centering on three keywords: sequestration, confiscation and restitution. Political conflicts, regime change, revolutions and wars make not only people but also their property vulnerable. Plunder and confiscation were common ways of dealing with the enemy - either internal or external - in many conflicts, conquests and occupations during the Old Regime, and resurfaced as crucial political weapons in both the First and the Second World Wars, with disruptive effects. In the two World Wars and the interwar period, sequestration and confiscation grew in scale and scope, reaching an unprecedented magnitude because of three driving forces that were frequently intertwined: nationalism, socialism and antisemitism. Confiscation was a political weapon that furthered different aims. It helped to make the expulsion of enemy subjects irreversible. It was an instrument to exclude from the civic body those who did not belong - the 'internal enemies' - and to prevent undesirable people from acquiring citizenship. It also deprived “enemy aliens” of economic means during the conflict. Bringing together new historical research on Serbia, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria, the chapters address state violence, law and human rights, as well as the entanglement between citizenship, nationality and property. It will be of great interest to those who study minorities, borders, migration, social and economic history as well as European History. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Review of History.

This book examines the politics of making and unmaking refugees at various scales by probing the contradictions between the principles of international statecraft, which focus on the national/state level approach in regulating global forced displacement, and the forces that defy this state-based approach. It explores the ways by which the current global refugee categorizes and excludes millions of people who need protection. The investigations in this book move beyond the state scale to draw attention to the finer scales of displacement and forced mobility in the various, complex spaces of migration and asylum. By bringing refugees stories to the forefront, the chapters in this volume highlight diasporic activism and applaud the corresponding ingenuity and tenacity. This book also builds upon debates on the critical geopolitical understandings of states, displacement and bordering to advance theoretical understandings of refugee regimes as a critical geopolitical issue. With this collection, the contributors invite a more sustained conversation that draws attention to and focusses on the current global refugee crisis and the violence of exclusion of that same regime. This highly engaging and informative volume will be of interest to policymakers, academics and students concerned with global migration, refugee governance and crises. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

This book explores the range of meanings attributed to the terms ‘judicial activism’ and ‘populism’ in contemporary times and examines the potential interplay between these two phenomena. Drawing upon various political examples, it discusses the implication of populist movements for democratic institutions, policies, and processes. The chapters in this volume examine the impact of populism on judicial decision-making in various socio-cultural contexts. The contributing authors explore the implications of populist beliefs, including those which promote anti-democratic perspectives, on the integrity, independence, and the role of the judiciary in a democratic society. This volume offers unique international perspectives on the concern that populist initiatives may be and continue to be a threat to democratic foundational values and principles. Judicial Activism in an Age of Populism will be a beneficial read for students of Politics, Sociology, Public Administration and Management, and Law and Society. It was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

Dreams and fantasies of immorality date back to the first human being who was expelled from the Garden of Eden and fell into time, as Augustine recounts. Falling into time, into mortality, living with the consciousness of death and the decline of the body, bear a terrifying—and yet for some pacifying—burden that comes with the weight of being human. Today, with the advancement of technology, accompanied by the emergence of trends such as posthumanism and transhumanism, the idea of overcoming death is presented as no longer a mere fantasy, but a legitimate discursive stance. While death is often seen as the Muse of philosophy, what would it mean (philosophically and psychically) to live in a world where death is no longer necessary? After Life: Recent Philosophy and Death is a collection of 11 essays addressing the place of death and its denial from a philosophical, psychoanalytic and literary perspectives. This collection offers contemporary and fresh insights on these timely questions. It was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

What happens when two intelligent American college students with different attitudes about guns launch into a careful exploration of the ethics of gun policy? What might a European exchange student add to the mix? All three characters in this book are fictional, the creation of author David DeGrazia’s imagination. But their vigorous, respectful conversations over six meetings—well-informed by the latest empirical data and the best available philosophical arguments—shed needed light on the reality of guns in the U.S. today. These dialogues introduce students, professional academics, and others to the American experience with gun violence and gun policy, articulating ethical arguments supporting and opposing substantial gun control, and specific possibilities for reform. They also demonstrate how those who initially disagree about the place of guns in American society can communicate constructively and agree on many ideas. Dialogue 1 distinguishes the legal rights to private gun ownership from the ethics of gun policy and illustrates how the U.S. is an outlier with respect to gun violence, gun ownership, and gun politics. Dialogue 2 explores the overall social consequences of high rates of gun ownership and minimal regulation and enforcement. Then, turning to moral rights, Dialogue 3 probes the subtle relationships among a right to self-defense, its possible foundation(s), and alleged gun rights. Dialogue 4 turns to appeals to various liberties as possible bases for gun rights. Next, Dialogue 5 examines the possibility that various other moral rights—such as a right to a reasonably safe environment—can illuminate gun policy ethics. Finally, Dialogue 6 concludes with a fairly detailed exploration of the shape of morally defensible gun policy in the United States. Key features: Dialogue format provides an engaging and accessible exchange throughout the book Depth of the ethical analysis refutes those who believe the issues pertaining to guns are simple Up-to-date references and examples make the book more current than the competition.

• Thoroughly integrates the treatment of semantics and pragmatics, providing a more accessible, realistic, coherent and contemporary account of linguistic meaning than can be achieved by treating the two topics separately • Betty Birner’s lively and student-friendly writing style engages even students new to the study of linguistics with this fascinating subject • Includes chapters on topical and cutting-edge subjects such as meaning, machines and artificial intelligence.

'Really made me think about how I think' - Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West Tough times don't last. Tough people do. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncer tainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resil ient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. 'The hottest thinker in the world' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Perfect short introduction to critical thinking for those completely new to the topic Clearly explains how to spot poor arguments and faulty reasons and to build strong arguments of your own Lots of examples and applied cases such as conspiracy theories, advertising, political rhetoric and rhetoric New chapter on emotion and argument with extensive updates and refreshes to exercises and further reading

This book expands upon a range of economic insights within the overall context of critical theory, particularly with respect to the question of socioeconomic inequalities, and presents an explanation of how critical theory provides a number of interesting perspectives for economists. Economic agents, deliberately imprisoned in their instrumental rationality as a means to survive under competitive relationships, are microscopic constituents of systemic forces which exist beyond their will. Despite the subjective rationality of such agents in terms of formally-logical consistency and transitivity, aggregate market distributional mechanisms also display non-rational patterns. The crucial aspect of the dynamics of this system consists of the paralysing effect of the high level of socioeconomic inequality, which is driven by a permanent struggle for self-preservation under competitive rules; it is a reminiscence of natural, uncivilised relationships that constituted the reproduction process of the whole. These reified agents thus become instruments of their socially constructed powers on the one hand, and objects of their existential conditionality on the other. Hence, the dialectical approach adopted by the author aims to uncover the way in which structurally-genetic market forces govern individual behaviour, as well as how individual behaviour shapes these structurally-genetic forces, which, together, form the transcending principles of unequal distribution. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the political economy, philosophy and the methodology of the social sciences, especially those concerned with inequality issues. This book includes a preface written by Professor Martin Jay.

This Handbook analyzes elections in the Middle East and North Africa and seeks to overcome normative assumptions about the linkage between democracy and elections. Structured around five main themes, contributors provide chapters detailing how their case studies illustrate specific themes within individual country settings. Authors disentangle the various aspects informing elections as a process in the Middle East by taking into account the different contexts where the electoral contest occurs and placing these into a broader comparative context. The findings from this Handbook connect with global electoral developments, empirically demonstrating that there is very little that is “exceptional” about the Middle East and North Africa when it comes to electoral contests. Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

This edited volume offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical role of radical journalism, its present iterations, and plans for the future of a journalism that is committed to liberatory movements and politics. At a time of profound crisis and stagnation for mainstream journalism, radical journalism seems to be riding a wave. New outlets, including those – like Jacobin – with a global reach, have sprung up, presenting a new generation of unapologetically progressive publications with an emancipatory agenda. Understanding the role and place of radical journalism becomes even more urgent given the current political climate in a (post) pandemic world with heightened inequalities and intensified pauperisation. Drawing on contributions from leading academics, this collection considers: • How new outlets fit in the genealogy of (radical) journalism and what their flourishing can tell us about the present and future of emancipatory politics and the role of the radical journalist; • What these new forms and publications mean for mainstream journalism and its persisting problems of financial sustainability and professional journalistic labour; • Important challenges presented by, for example, the resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism and the mainstreaming of the far right; • Essential questions of what radical journalism looks like today, what forms it takes or should take, and what its future might be. Radical Journalism is recommended reading for advanced students and journalists working at the intersection of journalism, politics, and sociology.