What Politics? Youth and Political Engagement in Africa examines the diverse experiences of being young in today's Africa. It offers new perspectives to the roles and positions young people take to change their life conditions both within and beyond the formal political structures and institutions. The contributors represent several social science disciplines, and provide well-grounded qualitative analyses of young people's everyday engagements by critically examining dominant discourses of youth, politics and ideology. Despite focusing on Africa, the book is a collective effort to better understand what it is like to be young today, and what the making of tomorrow's yesterday means for them in personal and political terms. Contributors are: Ehaab Abdou, Abebaw Yirga Adamu, Henni Alava, Paivi Armila, Randi Ronning Balsvik, Jesper Bjarnesen, THora Bjoernsdottir, Jonina Einarsdottir, Tilo Gratz, Nanna Jordt Jorgensen, Marko Kananen, Sofia Laine, Naydene de Lange, Afifa Ltifi, Ivo Mhike, Claudia Mitchell, Relebohile Moletsane, Danai S. Mupotsa, Elina Oinas, Henri Onodera, Eija Ranta, Mounir Saidani, Mariko Sato, Loubna H. Skalli, Tiina Sotkasiira, Abdoulaye Sounaye, Leena Suurpaa, and Mulumebet Zenebe. What Politics? Youth and Political Engagement in Africa is now available in paperback for individual customers.

'Deep adaptation' refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for - and live with - a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. They do not assume that our current economic, social and political systems can be made resilient in the face of climate change but, instead, they demonstrate the caring and creative ways that people are responding to the most difficult realization with which humanity may ever have to come to terms. Edited by the originator of the concept of deep adaptation, Jem Bendell, and a leading climate activist and strategist, Rupert Read, this book is the essential introduction to the concept, practice and emerging global movement of Deep Adaptation to climate chaos.

A timely account of empathy, politics, and leadership, showing how greater understanding and connection can foster trust, community, and innovation

Empathy has become a cliché of contemporary politics, often espoused but rarely understood. Yet the capacity to understand other worldviews is neither easy nor comfortable. Seeing through others’ eyes requires strength, courage, integrity, and an ability to reason across the harshest political divides—and, in a time of heightened marginalization, disconnection, and polarization, empathy in our leaders and across society is vitally important.

Claire Yorke offers the first account of empathy in politics and leadership, drawing on examples from across the world. Including model leaders like Nelson Mandela and Jacinda Ardern, as well as figures on the right such as Donald Trump who mobilize different forms of empathy, Yorke asks what distinguishes empathetic leaders from the rest, and examines why empathy is essential for a more human-centred politics. Demonstrating empathy’s radical potential and disputing its connotations of weakness, this book shows how we can build a political ecosystem that fosters belonging and engagement—and cultivate the necessary dialogue to find common ground.

Internationally acclaimed theologian Graham Ward is well known for his thoughtful engagement with postmodernism. This volume, the fourth in The Church and Postmodern Culture series, offers an engaging look at the political nature of the postmodern world.
In the first section, "The World," Ward considers "the signs of the times" and the political nature of contemporary postmodernism. It is imperative, he suggests, that the church understand the world to be able to address it thoughtfully. In the second section, "The Church," he turns to practical application, examining what faithful discipleship looks like within this political context. Clergy and those interested in the emerging church will find this work particularly thought provoking.

The book tells the untold story of the Conservative Party's involvement in terms of stance and policy in the destruction of selective state education from 1945 up to the present day. Close consideration is paid to their attitudes and prejudices towards education, both in power and in opposition. Legh examines the Party's responses to the pressure for comprehensive schooling and egalitarianism from the Labour Party and the British left. In doing so, Legh defies current historiography to demonstrate that the Party were not passive actors in the advancement of comprehensive schooling. The lively narrative is moved along by the author's critical examination of the Education Ministers throughout this period: Florence Horsbrugh and David Eccles serving under Churchill and Eden and also Quintin Hogg and Geoffrey Lloyd under Macmillan, as well as Edward Boyle and Margaret Thatcher under Edward Heath. Legh's detailed research utilises a range of government documents, personal papers, parliamentary debates and newspapers to provide this crucial re-assessment of the Conservative Party and selective education, and in doing so questions over-simplistic generalisations about wholescale support for selective education policy. It reveals instead questioning, compromises and disagreements within the Party and its political and ideological allies. The result is a stimulating revival of existing scholarship which will be of interest to scholars of British education and politics.

By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of "Six Feet Under, " Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.
"Grave Matters" follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor.
Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin.
In the morbidly fascinating tradition of "Stiff, Grave Matters" details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns.
For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.

The technology of Artificial Intelligence is here, and moving fast, without ethical standards in place. A Blueprint for the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Technologies leans on classical western philosophy for its ethical grounding. Values such as conscience, rights, equity, and discrimination, establish a basis for regulatory standards. Multiple international agencies with governing interests are compared. The development of ethical standards is suggested through two new non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The first is to develop standards that evolve from practice, while the second acts as an ombudsman to settle abuse. Both NGOs are envisioned to cooperate with regulators. More than seeking a perfect solution, the book aims to balance the tension between conflicting interests, with the goal to keep this dangerously wonderful technology under global human control. For that to materialize, the technology needs to have a seat on the table of global ethics. The final chapter lists fourteen thinking points to achieve an ethics balance for new technologies.

In this selective overview of scholarship generated by The Hunger Games-the young adult dystopian fiction and film series which has won popular and critical acclaim-Zhange Ni showcases various investigations into the entanglement of religion and the arts in the new millennium. Ni introduces theories, methods, and the latest developments in the study of religion in relation to politics, audio/visual art, new media, material culture, and popular culture, whilst also reading The Hunger Games as a story that explores the variety, complexity, and ambiguity of enchantment. In popular texts such as this, religion and art-both broadly construed, that is, beyond conventional boundaries-converge in creating an enchantment that makes life more bearable and effects change in the world.