Cruise tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors worldwide. This book is the first of its kind to provide in-depth insights into the emergence of mega-cruise tourism in destinations on the Arabian Peninsula and its impacts on local communities, their spaces, cultures, identities and tourist experiences. It offers a micro-sociological analysis, calling for holistic, participatory, mindful approaches and to rethink current exploitative tourism planning and development. It assumes a high political, social and economic importance within globalization. It draws on a long-term field study in an under-researched region in Asia that developed large-scale tourism recently to diversify the economy. The book provides insights on the destination development from a state of continuous growth to a sudden fall in tourism activities due to a sudden shock, caused by the global health pandemic and its resilience. It explores the sociocultural, economic and spatial challenges faced in international tourism development and its power relations analysed from different perspectives and within time. It analyses time-space compression, overtourism, urban tourism, nature-based tourism, enclavization, social capital, imaginaries, Cultural Ecosystem Services, slow tourism as well as just tourism. The book provides an innovative contribution to the planning and development of tourism destinations, communities and their spaces in which tourism operates in a fast pace. It will be of interest to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of tourism and hospitality management, geography, sociology, anthropology, urban planning and environmental sciences. Moreover, the book will be useful for practitioners and policymakers around the globe, as well as all those interested in the fast emergence and the impacts of mega-cruise tourism.

India and the South-East Asia are typical case studies of interest for students of development economics. These countries have served as role models for most of the emerging economies. Sustainable Development in India and South-East Asia attempts to explore and analyse the nature of economic relationship between India and the South-East Asia. It assesses the prospects for this relationship to grow and flourish. Finally, it makes suggestions to strengthen and carry forward this relationship. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book focuses on India's foreign policy towards Sri Lanka before the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA) in July 1987 and India's military intervention after the ISLA. The post-intervention developments brought strategic changes in India's Sri Lanka policy. However, after leadership change in both the countries, India confined its policy to moral support and decided to abstain from direct intervention or involvement in Sri Lanka's domestic politics. After the demise of the LTTE and its leadership in 2009, India played a constructive role in rebuilding infrastructure in Sri Lanka. The book also focuses on the developments of the relationships between India and Sri Lanka in the post-IPKF period and the bilateral developments in the Post - LTTE periods. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book examines interfaith dialogue in Europe and how interreligious encounters are framed, expressed and practiced. Throughout Europe religious identities have increasingly become significant categories within debates on migration, cohesion, diversity and belonging. By focusing on the spatialities, materialities and practices of interfaith dialogues and encounters, the volume sheds light on the heterogeneous domains where the visibility and inclusion of religious and cultural differences are currently negotiated and contested. The chapters draw on social science perspectives and include a range of empirical case studies from a variety of European settings. The contributions a) shed light on the subjectivities, relations and modes of behaviour produced, negotiated and contested in and through locally embedded interfaith encounters and dialogue-oriented practices, b) observe the power dynamics that shape those practices and encounters and c) discuss their implications for the place(s) of religion in the public sphere. Overall the book contributes to a better understanding of how cultural, religious and political identities are reconfigured across Europe.

In Seeing Like a Commons, Joshua P. Lockyer demonstrates how a growing group of people have, over the last 80 years, deliberately built the Celo Community, a communal settlement on 1,200 acres of commonly owned land in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Joshua P. Lockyer highlights the potential for intentional communities like Celo to raise awareness of global interconnectivity and structural inequalities, enabling people and communities to become better stewards and citizens of both local landscapes and global commons.

Comprising 11 countries and hundreds of languages from one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world, the chapters in this collection explore a wide range of translation issues. The subject of this volume is set in the contrasted landscapes of mainland peninsulas and maritime archipelagos in Southeast Asia, which, whilst remaining a largely minor area in Asian studies, harbors a wealth of textual heritage that opens to inquiries and new readings. From the post-Angkor Cambodia, the post-colonial Viantiane, to the ultra-modern Singapore metropolis, translation figures problematically in the modernization of indigenous literatures, criss-crossing chronologically and spatially through different literary landscapes. The peninsular geo-body gives rise to the politics of singularity as seen in the case of the predominant monolingual culture in Thailand, whereas the archipelagic geography such as the thousand islands of Indonesia allows for peculiar types of communication. Translation can also be metaphorized poetically to configure the transference in different scenarios such as the cases of self-translation in Philippine protest poetry and untranslatability in Vietnamese diasporic writings. The collection also includes intra-regional comparative views on historical and religious terms. This book will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students of translation studies, sociolinguistics, and Southeast Asian studies.

This book focuses on education and power in Southeast Asia and analyses the ways in which education has been instrumentalized by state, non-state, and private actors across this diverse region.

Relying on many years of fieldwork and on his involvement with several national level policy making bodies, this book presents a cultural interpretation of how public life and state interventions in India should be viewed. While commending statistical interventions in governmental decision making, it detects a marked deficiency in the understanding of how cultural factors impress upon and condition economic life. Towards this end, Dipankar Gupta interrogates anti-poverty drives, labour relations, election studies and, in this process, provides a novel and helpful guide towards resolving the vexing relationship between the domains of the public and the private. In all of this, the sociological antenna is constantly at work, beeping helpful signals on how one might untangle knotty issues in public life. More than anything else, this book urges policy makers to be self-consciously intersubjective in their approach and this is where sociology can make its mark. The Appendix provides a medley of situations where cultural sensitivity and the discipline of sociology prove their worth in figuring out fresh ways to resolve outstanding problems in our country. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

In the time of agrarian crisis and movement, Remembering India’s Villages centralises the rural India—examining its stubborn past and dynamic present. Departing from the myth of little republics, it sees villages in cinema, development discourses, and debates among the founders of modern India like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and Ambedkar. Empirical research, multidisciplinary perspective, and cross-cultural insights are useful aids in this book toward understanding the reality of the rural that comprises structural anomalies and social possibilities. The book remembers India’s villages under the trope of reconstitution rather than disappearance. The book adds to the renewed interest in village studies, rural sociology, development studies, and intellectual history. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) and Said Nursi’s (1877–1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the "what, who and how" of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analyses, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion.

This book examines Indonesia’s strategies and policies to influence regional cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, focusing especially on Indonesia’s efforts to be the maritime fulcrum in the Indo-Pacific during President Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi) administration from 2014 until the present. Highlighting the importance of Indonesia as the largest country in Southeast Asia and as a founder member of ASEAN, the book, based on extensive original research, provides key insights into Indonesia’s maritime policy decision-making since 2014. It discusses the domestic political context in which foreign policy decisions are made, provides an explanation for Indonesia’s efforts to project its vision of Indo-Pacific cooperation at the ASEAN level and beyond, and demonstrates how Indonesia strives to maintain a delicate balance in its interactions with major powers in the region, including the United States, China, and Japan.

Rather than a media history of the region or a history of southern media, Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South formulates a critical methodology for studying the continuous reinventions of regional space across media platforms. This innovative collection demonstrates that structures of media undergird American regionalism through the representation of a given geography's peoples, places, and ideologies. It also outlines how the region answers back to the national media by circulating ever-shifting ideas of place via new platforms that allow for self-representation outside previously sanctioned media forms. Remediating Region recognizes that all media was once new media. In examining how changes in information and media modify concepts of region, it both articulates the virtual realities of the twenty-first-century U.S. South and historicizes the impact of "new" media on a region that has long been mediated. Eleven essays examine media moments ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, among them Frederick Douglass's utilization of early photography, video game representations of a late capitalist landscape, rural queer communities' engagement with social media platforms, and contemporary technologies focused on revitalizing Indigenous cultural practices. Interdisciplinary in scope and execution, Remediating Region argues that on an increasingly networked planet, concerns over the mediated region continue to inform how audiences and participants understand their entree into a global world through local space.

The European Landscape is under stress of changing land use and a changing attitude of its users. Globalization, the disappearance of the iron curtain and the recent EU enlargement to 25 countries have changed the economic and environmental dimensions of Europe. Europe is changing its face from a western and eastern part to one European Union and to fast connections between its centres of activity. The rural and cultural heritage of Europe has to be adapted to cope with this change. However, its landscape is worth to be conserved as well, because it represents the European history in the same way as castles and churches. It even more represents the history of the common people, because it has been the tradition of the rural population that made these landscapes. It cannot be prevented that Europe is changing and it is good that Europe adapts to the new dimensions of the world. We, in Europe, have to define what we think is important and what must be conserved, what can be adapted to be used for new functions and what can be abolished because it has no value. These decisions will determine the new dimensions of the European landscapes. The Frontis Workshop on the New Dimensions of the European Landscape was held on 10-12 June 2002. Wageningen University and Research Centre organized this workshop aiming to develop visions on the landscape in Europe, its development and design in the future and to strengthen the international network in landscape planning.

This volume is a systematic and comprehensive introduction to one of the most read texts in South Asia, the Bhagavad-gita. The Bhagavad-gita is at its core a religious text, a philosophical treatise and a literary work, which has occupied an authoritative position within Hinduism for the past millennium. This book brings together themes central to the study of the Gita, as it is popularly known - such as the Bhagavad-gita's structure, the history of its exegesis, its acceptance by different traditions within Hinduism and its national and global relevance. It highlights the richness of the Gita's interpretations, examines its great interpretive flexibility and at the same time offers a conceptual structure based on a traditional commentarial tradition. With contributions from major scholars across the world, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of religious studies, especially Hinduism, Indian philosophy, Asian philosophy, Indian history, literature and South Asian studies.

This volume investigates 11 contemporary environmental justice narratives from Kerala, the south-western state in India. Introducing a detailed review of environmental literature in Malayalam, the selected eco-narratives are presented through two key literary genres: life narratives and novels, conveying the socio-environmental pressures, problems, and anxieties of modern, globalising Kerala. This text also entails primary investigations of ‘toxic fictions’ and ‘extractivist fictions,’ including Malayalam novels that narrate the disastrous consequences of the permeation of toxic pollutants in human and ecosystemic bodies, and novels that chronicle the impact of exploitative mining activities on the environment. All eco-narratives analysed in the book exhibit the familiar pattern of the Global South environmental narratives, namely, a close imbrication of the ecological and social spheres. Reading Contemporary Environmental Justice argues that these selected eco-texts offer inspiring scenarios where the subaltern people show thantedam, or courage, to claim thante idam, one’s own space in society and on the Earth. This volume will be essential for those looking to expand their understanding of environmental justice and the harmful effects of development and modernisation.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of explanations as given in both natural and social sciences. It discusses models of explanation adopted in natural and social sciences. The author also elaborates upon naturalistic and anti-naturalistic views and other types of explanations such as functional, purposive, etc in social science. The volume elaborates upon themes like bridge principle; functional explanation; purposive explanation; teleological explanation; prediction; methodological individualism; methodological collectivism; illocutionary redescription; principle of action; and dispositional explanations, to understand whether the explanations given in the realm of social sciences are the same or different from the explanations that are given in the field of natural sciences. This introductory book is a must read for students and scholars of philosophy of science, logic, science and technology studies, social sciences, and philosophy in general.

This book examines partnerships between commercial banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs). It demonstrates that when set up properly, these partnerships have the potential to develop and enhance the financial inclusion agenda, and further support sustainable development. MFIs provide access to finance predominantly for those who are poor but economically active, and therefore their expansion is imperative for inclusive economic development. However, MFIs are faced with enormous challenges. The book discusses how partnering with a commercial bank can meet these challenges and the process of interaction contributing to the enhancement of institutional robustness of MFIs. Through two distinct case studies, in Cambodia and Australia, the book discusses the motivations, objectives and operational dynamics of a partnership, as well as the challenges, success factors, and potential benefits, from the increase in outreach and sustainability, to the transference of knowledge and potential for capacity building. Similarly, the partnering banks benefit in line with the intended objectives-commercial or social besides help embedding social consciousness and improving staff engagement. Concluding with elucidating the characteristics of a partnership model that can succeed across different global contexts, the book will interest a range of researchers and students across development economics, banking, finance, and sustainable development.

Understanding Authenticity in Chinese Cultural Heritage explores the construction of "authenticity" and its consequences in relation to Chinese cultural heritage - those objects, texts, and intangible practices concerned with China's past. Including contributions from scholars around the world reflecting on a range of different materials and time periods, Understanding Authenticity emphasizes the situatedness and fluidity of authenticity concepts. Attitudes towards authenticity change over time and place, and vary between communities and object types, among stakeholders in China as they do elsewhere. The book examines how "authenticity" relates to four major aspects of cultural heritage in China - Art and Material Culture; Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation; Living and Intangible Heritage; and Texts and Manuscripts - with individual contributions engaging in a critical and interdisciplinary conversation that weaves together heritage management, art history, archaeology, architecture, tourism, law, history, and literature. Moving beyond conceptual issues, the book also considers the practical ramifications for work in cultural heritage management, museums, and academic research. Understanding Authenticity in Chinese Cultural Heritage provides an opportunity for reflection on the contingencies of authenticity debates - not only in relation to China, but also anywhere around the world. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in a variety of fields, including heritage studies, Asian studies, art history, museum studies, history and archaeology.

With more and more global economic wealth and power resting with fewer and fewer people, and given the acute land inequalities in the rural areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, how valid are the dominant theories about the nature of rural livelihoods? How can the intricacies of the economic and social transformations that are unfolding in the rural areas of developing countries best be understood? The authors of Equitable Rural Socioeconomic Change address these questions as they explore the interrelated themes of land inequality, climate dynamics, and technological innovation across varied rural landscapes, primarily in South Africa, but also in Rwanda, and Brazil.

How are different concepts of nature and time embedded into human practices of landscape and environmental management? And how can temporalities that entwine past, present and future help us deal with challenges on the ground? In a time of uncertainty and climate change, how much can we hold onto ideals of nature rooted in a pristine and stable past? The Scandinavian and Australian perspectives in this book throw fresh light on these questions and explore new possibilities and challenges in uncertain and changing landscapes of the future. This book presents examples from farmers, gardens and Indigenous communities, among others, and shows that many people and communities are already actively engaging with environmental change and uncertainty. The book is structured around four themes; environmental futures, mobile natures, indigenous and colonial legacies, heritage and management. Part I includes important contributions towards contemporary environmental management debates, yet the chapters in this section also show how the legacy of older landscapes forms part of the active production of future ones. Part II examines the challenges of living with mobile natures, as it is acknowledged that environments, natures and people do not stand still. An important dimension of the heritage and contemporary politics of Australia, Sweden and Norway is the presence of indigenous peoples. As is clear in part III, the legacies of the colonial past both haunt and energise contemporary land management decisions. Finally, part IV demonstrates how the history and heritage of landscapes, including human activities in those landscapes, are entwined with contemporary environmental management. The rich empirical content of the chapters exposes the diversity of meanings, practices, and ways of being in nature that can be derived from cultural environmental research in different disciplines. The everyday engagements between people, nature and temporalities provide important creative resources with which to meet future challenges.

This book is the second volume in a new series on 'Great Minds in Regional Science,' which seeks to present a contemporary view on the scientific relevance of the work done by great thinkers in regional science. This volume presents, among others, Adam Smith, Johann Heinrich von Thunen, and Alan Wilson. Each chapter combines factual biographical information about the 'Great Mind,' a description of their major contributions, and a discussion of the broader context of their work, as well as an assessment of its current relevance, scientific recognition, and policy impact. The book attempts to fill a gap in our knowledge and to respond to the growing interest in the formation and development of the field of regional science and its key influential figures.

Conventional warfare-clashes between large military forces-defined twentieth-century power. But today, facing a dominant American military, principal adversaries Russia, China and Iran, have adopted a new style of competition. Cyber attacks, covert action, proxy conflicts, information and disinformation campaigns, espionage and economic coercion-these are the tools of irregular or asymmetric warfare, which will increasingly reshape international politics. In Three Dangerous Men, defence expert Seth G. Jones profiles pioneers of irregular warfare in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran who adapted American techniques and made huge gains without waging traditional warfare. Drawing on interviews with dozens of US military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, such as CIA directors Michael Hayden and David Petraeus, the author demonstrates why the US abandoned its own irregular capabilities and is thus steadily losing ground to its global adversaries. Jones argues the US must significantly alter how it thinks about-and engages in-competition before it is too late.

Islam in India: History, Politics and Society is based on the historical and contemporary relevance of the religion and its related culture(s) in India. Besides being a major religious doctrine, Islam has been the main political ideology for many dynasties in India such as Delhi Sultanate (1206-1451); the Illbaris Turks (also known as Mamluk 1206-90); Khiljis (1290-1320); Tughlaqs (1320-1414); Sayyids (1414-51), Afghans and the Mughal Empire. Islam played a pivotal role in shaping the polity and society during the period of each dynasty. This book argues that Islam in India ought to be seen not only as a political and religious ideology of the dynasties, but also as a significant force that shaped the cultural fabric of the country. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

In this book the experiential history of the Soviet-style social transformation projects between 1945 and 1980 is discussed through the example of rural Hungary. The book interprets state socialism as a (modernization) project. Existing socialism was a form of dictatorship in which authorities sought to transform the mentalities of their subjects from the individual level to the global scale. This project depended on socio-economic homogenization; one important method of asserting state power was the transformation of property rights (land redistribution, collectivization). Communist modernization discriminated against the inhabitants of rural areas, who were the primary victims of collectivization and the discriminatory effects of the rules implemented by policymakers. The resulting radical changes in peasant lifestyles would become a source of social pathologies. However, not the authorities but contemporary scholars considered the social costs of these actions. The book aims at Weberian disenchantment and contributes to the deconstruction of the common image of Hungarian socialism, "the happiest barrack". The intended audience includes readers at the graduate level in the fields of history, political science, and anthropology, general readers interested in the history of communism. It is hoped that the research questions inspire new research for exploring convergent and divergent elements in social transformation in former communist countries.

Originally published in 1991, this book includes a detailed case study of Kenya’s co-operative movement – one of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. Co-operatives have been given a major role in rural development strategies in both socialist and capitalist states. However in both context the results they have achieved have fallen short of expectations. The book focuses on specific elements of the institutional setting within which agricultural marketing co-operatives operate. Factors like land tenure, market regulations, co-operative legislation and direct development support are discussed and shown to have had dire effects on the managerial behaviour and social impact of the co-operative sector.