Using societal patterns of exploitation that are evidenced in agrarian societies from the Bronze Age to modern-day corporate globalization, Re-Reading the Prophets offers a new approach to understanding the hidden contexts behind prophetic complaints against economic injustice in eighth-century Judah.

What have English terms such as 'civil society', 'democracy', 'development' or 'nationalism' come to mean in an Indian context and how have their meanings and uses changed over time? Why are they the subjects of so much debate - in their everyday uses as well as amongst scholars? How did a concept such as 'Hinduism' come to be framed, and what does it mean now? What is 'caste'? Does it have quite the same meaning now as in the past? Why is the idea of 'faction' so significant in modern India? Why has the idea of 'empowerment' come to be used so extensively? These are the sorts of questions that are addressed in this book. Keywords for Modern India is modelled after the classic exploration of English culture and society through the study of keywords - words that are 'strong, important and persuasive' - by Raymond Williams. The book, like Williams' Keywords, is not a dictionary or an encyclopaedia. Williams said that his was 'an inquiry into a vocabulary', and Keywords for Modern India presents just such an inquiry into the vocabulary deployed in writing in and about India in the English language - which has long been and is becoming ever more a critically important language in India's culture and society. Exploring the changing uses and contested meanings of common but significant words is a powerful and illuminating way of understanding contemporary India, for scholars and for students, and for general readers.

This collection opens the geospatiality of "Asia" into an environmental framework called "Oceania" and pushes this complex regional multiplicity towards modes of trans-local solidarity, planetary consciousness, multi-sited decentering, and world belonging. At the transdisciplinary core of this "worlding" process lies the multiple spatial and temporal dynamics of an environmental eco-poetics, articulated via thinking and creating both with and beyond the Pacific and Asia imaginary.

This study argues that, in early medieval South India, it was in the literary arena that religious ideals and values were publicly contested. While Tamil-speaking South India is today celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, non-Hindu religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the religious history of the region. Among the least understood of such non-Hindu contributions is that of the Buddhists, who are little understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. However, the two exant Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete - a sixth-century poetic narrative known as the Manimekalai and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and postics, the Viracoliyam - reveal a wealth of information about their textual communities and their vision of Buddhist life in a diverse and competitive religious milieu. By focusing on these texts, Monius sheds light on their role of literature and literary culture in the information, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.

Experiences of battle and hardship in early 20th century China
The siege of the foreign legations in Peking in 1900 is a familiar moment in history principally because it joined in common adversity the ministers, citizens and military men of several nations in a defence within exotic surroundings against the Boxers and Imperial Chinese Army. The United States, Japan, Russia, Italy, The Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Germany and Spain were all involved. The first attempt to relieve the besieged failed and the multi-national garrison was left to its own devices for several weeks. This account of the siege from within, by an American civilian, provides the reader with an invaluable insight into one of the most unusual episodes of modern military history. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket.

This eclectic collection contains 16 articles on a variety of topics within Qumran Studies from a conference held in memory of the late Professor Alan Crown. Essays cover the impact of the Qumran discoveries on the study of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to the study of the scrolls themselves and the community organizations presupposed in them, focusing as well on topics as diverse as sexuality, scribal practice and the attitude to the Temple in the scrolls.

The volume offers a timely (re-)appraisal of Seleukid cultural dynamics. While the engagement of Seleukid kings with local populations and the issue of "Hellenization" are still debated, a movement away from the Greco-centric approach to the study of the sources has gained pace. Increasingly textual sources are read alongside archaeological and numismatic evidence, and relevant near-eastern records are consulted. Our study of Seleukid kingship adheres to two game-changing principles: 1. We are not interested in judging the Seleukids as "strong" or "weak" whether in their interactions with other Hellenistic kingdoms or with the populations they ruled. 2. While appreciating the value of the social imaginaries approach (Stavrianopoulou, 2013), we argue that the use of ethnic identity in antiquity remains problematic. Through a pluralistic approach, in line with the complex cultural considerations that informed Seleukid royal agendas, we examine the concept of kingship and its gender aspects; tensions between centre and periphery; the level of "acculturation" intended and achieved under the Seleukids; the Seleukid-Ptolemaic interrelations. As rulers of a multi-cultural empire, the Seleukids were deeply aware of cultural politics.

Gandhi's involvement in Middle Eastern politics is largely forgotten yet it goes to the heart of his teaching and ambition - to lead a united freedom movement against British colonial power.
Gandhi became involved in the politics of the Middle East as a result of his concern over the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate following the First World War. He subsequently - at the invitation of the Jewish Agency - sought to reconcile Jews and Arabs in a secret deal at the time of the Mandate of Palestine. However, Jewish and British interference coupled with the Arab Revolt and the rise of the Muslim League in India thwarted Gandhi's efforts in the region. Like so many who would follow, Gandhi was unable to solve the problems of the Middle East, but this book for the first time reveals his previously obscure attempt to do so.
Gandhi's experience in the Middle East was in marked contrast to his other successes around the world and is crucial for a full understanding of his life and teachings. Gandhi in the Middle East offers many new and revealing insights into the goals and limits of an international statesman at a critical period of imperial history.

Take a journey through the Middle East, examining the dynamics that made it a lightning rod for political controversy, religious dissension, and violence between 1968 and 1988.

Born in Egypt and educated there and in Beirut, Lebanon, author Bassil A. Mardelli has a unique perspective on the issues that continue to affect the region. He explores the region, from the deserts of Sinai to the highlands of the Golan, before moving on to Lebanon, which is in the eye of the storm. Drawing upon his own experiences, Mardelli establishes his Lebanese views. Learn about the complex conditions of the Middle East prior to Lebanon's destruction, including the Six Day War's demoralization of the Arab cause. Mardelli also shares his view that the main underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by violent extremists from multiple sides.

To understand the Middle East and the challenges it faces, it is essential to learn about this relatively small but vital country. Without knowledge, the steady quest for power will continue, and the results will be horrific.

This volume approaches China's Belt and Road Initiative as a process of culturalization, one that started with the Silk Road and continued over the millennium. In mainstream literature, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been portrayed as the geo-economic vision and geo-political ambition of China's current leaders, intended to shape the future of the world. However, this volume argues that although geo-politics and geo-economy may play their part, the BRI more importantly creates a venue for the meeting of cultures by promoting people-to-people interaction and exchange. This volume explores the journey from the Silk-Road to Belt-Road by analyzing topics ranging from history to religion, from language to culture, and from environment to health. As such, scholars, academics, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business will find an alternative approach to the Belt and Road Initiative.

Continuing the narrative from Volume One of: From Bharata to India, this second volume spans the years from the Muslim conquests down to the present era.

The Volume begins by contrasting the stifling theocracy of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity), and of Islam, to the pristine ideation of compassion, love and universal wellbeing inherent in the Vedic world. The forced conversion of "pagan" peoples and their places of worship was consequently institutionalized by intolerance, savagery, barbarism, cruelty, and unparalleled brutality.

This cultural and religious Invasion shook the very foundations of the Vedic patrimony as the native Hindus adapted Alien lifestyles where Vedic values were repackaged as European and/ or Islamic. Consequently, the modern Indians began to despise what had once been their own legacy, the Cradle of civilization, and embraced imported modes of behavior. The transformed, native polity, supported by foreign vested interests, exploited their own country even more than the alien invaders.

As the Western world frees itself from the shackles of Middle Age conformism and depravity, this second volume concludes that the eternal values of Vedic Bharata are to inspire the nascent Civilization of tomorrow. Eastern introspection will replace, then, the Western tradition of a 'wholly other' divinity.

The percentage of women aged 15-49 in Egypt who have undergone the procedure of female circumcision, or genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) stands at 91%, according to the latest research carried out by UNICEF. Female circumcision has become a global political minefield with 'Western' interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. Maria Frederika Malmstrom employs an ethnographic approach to this controversial issue, with the aim of understanding how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, and the central role which female circumcision plays in this process. Viewing the concept of 'agency' as critical to the examination of social and cultural trends in the region, Malmstrom explores the lived experiences and social meanings of circumcision and femininity as narrated by women from Cairo. It is through the examination of the voices of these women that she offers an analysis of gender identity in Egypt and its impact on women's sexuality.

The history of Singapore has been widely conflated with the history of its economic success. From its heyday as a nexus of trade during the imperial era to the modern city state that boasts high living standards for most of its citizens, the history of Singapore is commonly viewed through the lens of the ruling elite. Published in two volumes in 1998 and 2000, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs The Singapore Story epitomizes this top-down definitive narrative of the nation's past. The history of post-war Singapore has largely been reduced to a series of decisions made by the nation's leaders. Few existing studies explore the role and experiences of the ordinary person in Singapore's post-war history. There are none that do this through ethnography, oral history, and collective biography. In a critical study that has no parallel among existing works on Singapore history, this book dispenses with the homogenous historical experience that is commonly presumed in the writing of Singapore's national past after 1945 and explores how the enforcement of a uniform language policy by the Singapore government for cultural and economic purposes has created underappreciated social and economic divides among the Chinese of Singapore both between and within families. It also demonstrates how mapping distinct economic, linguistic, and cultural cleavages within Singaporean Chinese society can add new and critical dimensions to understanding the nation's past and present. Chief among these, the author argues, are the processes behind the creation and entrenchment of class structures in the city state, such as the increasing value of English as a form of opportunity-generating capital.

The purpose of this book is to illustrate that reading is a subjective process which results in multivalent interpretations. This is the case whether one looks at a text in its historical contexts (the diachronic approach) or its literary contexts (the synchronic approach). Three representative biblical texts are chosen: from the Law (Genesis 2-3), the Writings (Isaiah 23) and the Prophets (Amos 5), and each is read first by way of historical analysis and then by literary analysis. Each text provides a number of variant interpretations and raises the question, is any one interpretation superior? What criteria do we use to measure this? Or is there value in the complementary nature of many approaches and many results?

Quyen Van Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the "godfather of Vietnamese jazz." Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh's own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh's life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam's war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Doi Moi period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain jazz acceptance as a mainstream musical art form, Minh founded Minh Jazz Club. With the release of his debut album of original compositions in 2000, Minh shaped the nascent genre of Vietnamese jazz. Minh's endeavors kickstarted the momentum, from his performing jazz in public, teaching jazz both formally and informally, and contributing to the shaping of an original Vietnamese voice to stand out among the many styles in the jazz world. Most importantly, Minh generated a public space for musicians to play and for the Vietnamese to listen. His work eventually helped to gain jazz the credibility necessary at the national conservatoire to offer instruction in a professional music education program.