The internet has begun to develop into a much more immersive and multi-dimensional space. Three dimensional spaces and sites of interaction have not just gripped our attention but have begun to weave or be woven into the fabric of our professional and social lives. The Immersive Internet - including social media, augmented reality, virtual worlds, online games, 3D internet and beyond - is still nascent, but is moving towards a future where communications technologies and virtual spaces offer immersive experiences persuasive enough to blur the lines between the virtual and the physical. It is this emerging Immersive Internet that is the focus of this book of short thought pieces - postcards from the metaverse - by some of the leading thinkers in the field. The book questions what a more immersive and intimate internet might mean for society and for each of us.

What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness. Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine's somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk's embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology. Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.

The smallest and most remote villages in the developing countries are affected by the rapid and seemingly irresistible trend towards globalization. The limitless availability of information however necessitates education to stand out as the key factor for human and national development. But which conditions must be met by societies for education systems to perform this function effectively? Which benefits in turn must education systems provide to ensure social cohesion? These general considerations are exemplified by an analysis of the social situation of Nigeria, where one third of the whole population did not receive an education and thus cannot participate in the opportunities of modern social structures. As an advocate of the social values of freedom, dignity and charity the church stated clearly that education belongs to the inalienable human rights. The study argues that only a holistic development of each and every citizen of Nigeria will lead to the development of Nigeria as a nation. It portrays the areas where lack of formal education has slowed down the implementation and acceptance of modern techniques and as a result has hampered development. It critically analyses the Nigerian educational system and concludes by suggesting strategies towards national development.

This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new information resulting from his research into African music, especially among the Venda. Venda music, he discovered is in its way no less complex in structure than European music. Literacy and the invention of nation may generate extended musical structures, but they express differences of degree, and not the difference in kind that is implied by the distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music. Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, 'folk' music in the sense that music cannot be transmitted of have meaning without associations between people.

If John Blacking's guess about the biological and social origins of music is correct, or even only partly correct, it would generate new ideas about the nature of musicality, the role of music in education and its general role in societies which (like the Venda in the context of their traditional economy) will have more leisure time as automation increases.

Interfaces are back, or perhaps they never left. The familiar Socratic conceit from the "Phaedrus," of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other, has returned to center stage in today's discussions of culture and media. Indeed Western thought has long construed media as a grand choice between two kinds of interfaces. Following the optimistic path, media seamlessly interface self and other in a transparent and immediate connection. But, following the pessimistic path, media are the obstacles to direct communion, disintegrating self and other into misunderstanding and contradiction. In other words, media interfaces are either clear or complicated, either beautiful or deceptive, either already known or endlessly interpretable.

Recognizing the limits of either path, Galloway charts an alternative course by considering the interface as an autonomous zone of aesthetic activity, guided by its own logic and its own ends: "the interface effect." Rather than praising user-friendly interfaces that work well, or castigating those that work poorly, this book considers the unworkable nature of all interfaces, from windows and doors to screens and keyboards. Considered allegorically, such thresholds do not so much tell the story of their own operations but beckon outward into the realm of social and political life, and in so doing ask a question to which the political interpretation of interfaces is the only coherent answer.

Grounded in philosophy and cultural theory and driven by close readings of video games, software, television, painting, and other images, Galloway seeks to explain the logic of digital culture through an analysis of its most emblematic and ubiquitous manifestation - the interface.

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien.

The Sacred is the Profane collects nine essays written over several years by William Arnal and Russell McCutcheon, specialists in two very different areas of the field (one, a scholar of Christian origins and the other working on the history of the modern study of religion). They share a convergent perspective: not simply that both the category and concept "religion" is a construct, something that we cannot assume to be "natural" or universal, but also that the ability to think and act "religiously" is, quite specifically, a modern, political category in its origins and effects, the mere by-product of modern secularism. These collected essays, substantially rewritten for this volume, advance current scholarly debates on secularism-debates which, the authors argue, insufficiently theorize the sacred/secular, church/state, and private/public binaries by presupposing religion (often under the guise of such terms as "religiosity," "faith," or "spirituality") to historically precede the nation-state. The essays return, again and again, to the question of what "religion"-word and concept-accomplishes, now, for those who employ it, whether at the popular, political, or scholarly level. The focus here for two writers from seemingly different fields is on the efficacy, costs, and the tactical work carried out by dividing the world between religious and political, church and state, sacred and profane. As the essays make clear, this is no simple matter. Part of the reason for the incoherence and at the same time the stubborn persistence of both the word and idea of "religion" is precisely its multi-faceted nature, its plurality, its amenability to multiple and often self-contradictory uses. Offering an argument that builds as they are read, these papers explore these uses, including the work done by positing a human orientation to "religion," the political investment in both the idea of religion and the academic study of religion, and the ways in which the field of religious studies works to shape, and stumbles against, its animating conception.

* Links immunity with social theory. * Considers the themes of self, biography and emotion, and how these are transmitted in immunity media and communications. * Gives emphasis to popular culture, affect, social context and personal experience narratives in exploring the dynamics of immunity in health. * Grounded in personal experience narratives so is richly nuanced by gender, biography and context.* Accessible digest of social and cultural theory on immunity, which is often quite abstract and philosophical. * Applies analysis to contemporary health threats, in particular pandemics and superbugs.

We live in a world of phenomena created by the human mind and by human experience, namely conflict, aggression, aggressiveness and violence. These phenomena are viewed as constructs of the mind, types of behaviour, particular experiences and emotional states, specific social interactions or even historical and political categories such as social movements, wars, angry social protests etc. The study explores the notions of aggression and violence and from an individual and a social perspective analyses their determinants in various environments in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. It is an attempt to join the global discussion on reaction conditions and key points that are connected with the risk of pathologization of the personality and its behaviour.

At the heart of the historical and social sciences lies the remarkable gray area of learning processes. "Learning" is usually perceived as individual childhood development at home and at school and has been written about extensively. However, little is known about learning processes outside primary and secondary socialization although insight into these learning processes appears indispensable for an understanding of social changes or the lack thereof. On the basis of historical and current case studies, philosophical reflections, and critical commentaries, Mergner (1940-1999) opened up this important area through his "theory of social limits to learning," designed to explain not only why people accept or reject structures of domination but also why people trying to emancipate themselves nonetheless form and accept new structures of domination. This anthology presents Mergner's seminal work to the non-German speaking world for the first time in order to give it the wider recognition it so clearly deserves.

The book is a study of the state of the Polish democracy and focuses on the years 2012 and 2013. It explores available documents and statistical data, offers a collection of experts' judgments, and analyses public opinion research. Ten domains of democracy are covered, some of them as fundamental as the rule of law, the political community or public administration. The study evaluates contemporary Polish democracy as consolidated and assesses it as reasonably effective, although a number of clear shortcomings call for improvements.

This book focuses on the return of the diasporic Greek second generation to Greece, primarily in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and their evolving, often ambivalent, senses of belonging and conceptualizations of "home." Drawing from a large-scale research project employing a multi-sited and multi-method comparative approach, Counter-Diaspora is a narrative ethnographic account of the lives and identities of second-generation Greek-Americans and Greek-Germans. Through an interdisciplinary gender and generational lens, the study examines lived migration experiences at three diasporic moments: growing up within the Greek diasporic setting in the United States and Germany; motivations for the counter-diasporic return; and experiences in the "homeland" of Greece. Research documents and analyzes a range of feelings and experiences associated with this "counter-diasporic" return to the ancestral homeland. Images and imaginations of the "homeland" are discussed and deconstructed, along with notions of "Greekness" mediated through diasporic encounters. Using extensive extracts from interviews, the authors explore the roles of, among other things, family solidarity, kinship, food, language, and religion, as well as the impact of "home-coming" visits on the decision to return to the ancestral "homeland." The book also contributes to a reconceptualization of diaspora and a problematization of the notion of "second generation."

What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness. Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine's somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk's embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology. Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.

To what extent is religion inherently textual? What might the term 'textual' mean in relation to religious faith and practice? These are the two key questions addressed by the eleven thought-provoking essays collected in this volume. Accounts of the content and structure of sacred texts are commonplace. The rather more adventurous aim of this book is to disclose (within the context of religion) the various ways in which meaning can be read of more or less obviously sacred writing and from discourses such as the body, the built and natural environment, drama and ritual.

We live in a time of turbulent change when many of the frameworks that have characterized our societies over the last few centuries - such as the international order of sovereign nation-states - are being called into question. In this new volume of essays and interviews, Habermas focuses his attention on these processes of change and provides some of the resources needed to understand them.

What kind of international order should we seek to create in our contemporary global age? How should we understand the political project of Europe and how can the democratic deficit of the EU be overcome? How should we understand the relation between democracy as popular sovereignty, which has become the defining principle of political legitimacy in the modern world, and the idea of basic human rights embodied in the rule of law?

Habermas brings his formidable powers of analysis and his distinctive theoretical perspective to bear on these and other key questions of the modern age. His analysis is shaped throughout by his commitment to informed public debate and his powerful advocacy of a postnational renewal of the project of constitutional democracy.

"Time of Transitions" will be essential reading for all students and scholars of sociology and politics, and it will be of interest to anyone concerned with the key social and political questions of our time.

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on 'de-familiarising' old habits and bringing poetic forms of 'close reading' to the clinic. Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking 'lyrical medicine' that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

"Sex and Pleasure in Western Culture" provides the first comprehensive overview of desire and pleasure in western sexual culture. It argues that both have always been seen as socially disruptive and morally dangerous and offers an entertaining account of the methods by which these attributes of sex were managed across the centuries from Classical Antiquity to the present day.

The book develops the hypothesis that, while expressed in very different social contexts, sexual pleasure has evoked very similar anxieties. The text draws on historical, cultural, sociological and contemporary sources and is easily accessible for both the general reader and students of gender and sexual culture. In addition to telling a story of its own, "Sex and Pleasure in Western Culture" examines lesser-known aspects of sexual history that invite further exploration by the interested reader. These range from sexual aestheticism in the 4th century AD and the sexual meaning of medieval church gargoyles, through to sexual training in the 1950s and 21st century sex holidays.

The book will provide a compelling read for both students of sexuality and lay readers who find the complexities of human sexuality a source of fascination.

This book addresses key issues regarding the nexus of work and family in society at the beginning of the 21st century. For many families, the "balancing act" brings rewards as well as concerns. Employers and governments struggle with whether and how to assist in achieving balance.
The work presents original research that addresses the challenges in meeting work and family obligations. Each chapter provides policy recommendations that many help achieve better work-family balance, changes in work-family attitudes, conditions leading to firms' adopting policies to support work-family balance, and studies of child outcomes in dual earner families.

This book will be a vital resource for researchers in the field of health communication, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19, as we begin confronting the reality of which countries can afford to declare an 'end to the pandemic', and which ones can't A unique feature of this book is that its center and focus is on persons living with HIV - It highlights their experiences and voices It examines the discourse of a "post-AIDS" culture using a range of methodological tools, and the medical-discursive shift from crisis and death to survival and living It includes contributions from a diverse group of international scholars, and interrogates and engages with the cultural, social, political, scientific, historical, global, and local consumptions of the term "post-AIDS" from the perspective of meaning-making on health, illness, and well-being This book will be an essential read for scholars and students of health communication, sociology of health and illness, medical humanities, political science, and medical anthropology, as well as for policy makers and activists

Contributions by Bart Beaty, T. Keith Edmunds, Eike Exner, Christopher J. Galdieri, Ivan Lima Gomes, Charles Hatfield, Franny Howes, John A. Lent, Amy Louise Maynard, Shari Sabeti, Rob Salkowitz, Kalervo A. Sinervo, Jeremy Stoll, Valerie Wieskamp, Adriana Estrada Wilson, and Benjamin Woo The Comics World: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Their Publics is the first collection to explicitly examine the production, circulation, and reception of comics from a social-scientific point of view. Designed to promote interdisciplinary dialogue about theory and methods in comics studies, this volume draws on approaches from fields as diverse as sociology, political science, history, folklore, communication studies, and business, among others, to study the social life of comics and graphic novels. Taking the concept of a ""comics world""-that is, the collection of people, roles, and institutions that ""produce"" comics as they are-as its organizing principle, the book asks readers to attend to the contexts that shape how comics move through societies and cultures. Each chapter explores a specific comics world or particular site where comics meet one of their publics, such as artists and creators; adaptors; critics and journalists; convention-goers; scanners; fans; and comics scholars themselves. Through their research, contributors demonstrate some of the ways that people participate in comics worlds and how the relationships created in these spaces can provide different perspectives on comics and comics studies. Moving beyond the page, The Comics World explores the complexity of the lived reality of the comics world: how comics and graphic novels matter to different people at different times, within a social space shared with others.

The term Utopia, coined by Thomas More in 1516, contains an inherent semantic ambiguity: it could be read as eu topos (good place) or ou topos (no place). The authors of this volume analyze this polysemous notion and its fascination for scholars across the centuries, who have developed a variety of visions and ways to explain the "realization" of utopian discourses. The experts in the fields of sociology, political science, economics, computer science, literature and linguistics offer extensive studies about how utopian scenarios are realized in different cultural contexts.

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we've been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

This book examines the phenomenon of physician-authors. Focusing on the books that contemporary doctors write--the stories that they tell--with contributors critically engaging their work. A selection of original chapters from leading scholars in medical and health humanities analyze the literary output of doctors, including Oliver Sacks, Danielle Ofri, Atul Gawande, Louise Aronson, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese. Discussing issues of moral meaning in the works of contemporary doctor-writers, from memoir to poetry, this collection reflects some of the diversity of medicine today. A key reference for all students and scholars of medical and health humanities, the book will be especially useful for those interested in the relationship between literature and practising medicine.

This book critically evaluates the complex relations between physical activity, health imperatives and cultural and social opportunities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The book explores the uncertainty of knowledge around physical activity behavior and its distinctive meanings in LMIC contexts, the factors influencing physical activity, and how populations across the world understand and live the concept of physical activity. It discusses the key challenges and opportunities for sustaining physical activity within geographically and culturally diverse contexts of LMICs; introduces the reader to contemporary global physical activity approaches, models and policies; and presents case studies from around the world, including Asia, Africa, South America, the Pacific and Europe. Overall, the text relates theory to practical examples to facilitate a better understanding of physical activity in context, emphasizes the need for targeted, context-specific and locally relevant interventions to create PA-enabling environments in LMICs, and highlights the role of a range of stakeholders, including policy makers and urban planners, sport and recreation services, mass media, educators and the civil society in shaping population physical activity levels. Taken together, this edited volume brings together the latest research on PA in LMICs from around the world, informs and directs future research and necessary policy change towards the sustainable integration of PA opportunities, and seeks to ultimately foster and promote population-based PA in LMIC settings. By presenting empirical data and policy recommendations, this text will appeal to scholars, researchers and practitioners with an interest in physical activity research, public health, health promotion, sociology of sport, and sports sciences in LMICs, as well as policy makers and experts working in health promotion, public health, sports and fitness, but also in the urban planning and infrastructure and governmental industries.

The pursuit of sustainable development and smart growth is a main challenge today in countries around the world. Social capital is an asset of their territorial communities. It is also a precondition for national and local policies that aim to better the economic base and quality of life for all. This change is socially diffused, economically sustainable over time, and smart in its content. A significant stock of social capital facilitates such results because it links into the process of development planning institutional decision makers and socioeconomic stakeholders who share trust, solidarity norms, and a community vision. In the last thirty years, social capital has become a forceful concept in the social sciences, the subject of many scholarly works and a topic of keen interest and debate in policy circles. Yet the main focus has been on defining and measuring social capital, with little attention given to its value in promoting development policies. Social Capital in Development Planning updates and advances the debate on social capital through the analysis of the application of the concept of social capital to programs for sustainable and smart socioeconomic development; empirical findings; and a new paradigm for development planning.