Exploring the manifold relationships between religion and public administration, this topical book conceptualises and theorises the diverse influence of religions on the functioning of public administrative systems across the globe. International and comparative in approach, this book analyses the social and public dimensions to religion and its interplay with public administration as a field of social scientific inquiry and an area of professional activity. Taking methodological agnosticism as its sociological perspective to the study of the religious experience, chapters focus on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to examine diverse religious compositions across both secularised and non-secularised societies and political regimes. The book uses a distinctive theoretical lens to analyse the influence of religions on organisational fit, public service motivation, individual and organisational behaviours and values, bureaucratic discretion, government funding, the delivery of public services, and the dynamics of social cohesion overall. It provides a fresh perspective on religion as a source of legitimacy and basis of accountability, responsibility, and delegation of power in public administration, institutional quality, and ethics. Students and scholars interested in the religious dimensions to public administration, policy, governance and management will find use in this book’s theoretical analyses. Its empirical findings will also be valuable to policymakers working in public administration and leaders of faith organisations engaged in public services.

Threatened with Internment for the duration of World War II, two young German geologists, Henno Martin and Hermann Korn, sought refuge in the Namib Desert and lived a Robinson Crusoe existence for two and a half years.

How they mastered their situation, what they did, thought and observed are the subject of The Sheltering Desert.

In it lies the vastness of the landscape, the clear skies, nature's silence in the joy or suffering of her creatures, and the stillness in which the reader, too, may take refuge from the wrongs of civilization.

Since Garrett Hardin published 'The Tragedy of the Commons' in 1968, critics have argued that population growth and capitalism contribute to overuse of natural resources and degradation of the global environment. They propose coercive, state-centric solutions. This book offers an alternative view. Employing insights from new institutional economics, the authors argue that property rights, competitive markets, polycentric political institutions, and social institutions such as trust, patience and individualism enable society to conserve natural resources and mitigate harms to the global environment. The authors support their argument by considering several types of commons: forests, fisheries, minerals, and the global environment. The central lesson of these empirical studies is that following a simple set of rules - definition and enforcement of property rights in response to local conditions, creating and maintaining democracy at the local level, and establishing markets to allocate resources - improves ecological and environmental sustainability. This book will appeal to scholars of natural resources, economics, political science and public policy as well as policymakers who are interested in environmental governance and the ways markets contribute to sustainability.

This comprehensive bibliographic guide to the books, monographs, articles and editions, translations, reviews, and dissertations on this important Renaissance writer provides the much-needed, annotated research source for scholarship and criticism published between 1935 and 1985. Research published after 1985 and available in annotated or abstracted form through computer searches is cited in an appendix. Annotations cover bibliographies, biographies, general and specific criticism, and new primary materials. It is an important and significant book, sure to provide scholars with a guide through the Florentine secretary's writings for the next several decades. Peter Bondanella Professor of Italian Studies, Indiana University Those studying Niccolo Machiavelli have long endured the unavailability of a single, complete, interdisciplinary bibliographic guide to the vast number of books, articles, and reviews on the Renaissance writer and thinker who profoundly influenced the development of modern thought. This monumental bibliography provides the much-needed and comprehensive annotated research source for scholarship and criticism published on the Florentine between 1935 and 1985. To make this reference as current and complete as possible, an unannotated appendix cites research published after 1985 that is available in annotated or abstracted form through computer searches. Niccolo Machiavelli surpasses both Norsa's extensive but unannotated bibliography covering the years 1740-1935 and Fido's more recent survey which omits many articles and overlooks important studies in the social sciences especially in the last thirty years. Using a systematic, uniform, and easily accessible format, the volume, which covers more than 50 years of Machiavelli criticism, presents complete descriptions of the works with all bibliographic data. The descriptive summaries encompass the entire range of modern critical and scholarly study in all languages, including bibliographies, biographies, general and specific criticism, and new primary materials such as manuscripts. Included in this wealth of materials are books, monographs, articles, editions, translations, reviews, and dissertations. Arranged chronologically by year and alphabetically within each year the bibliography's user-friendly format includes reviews immediately following the documentation for the book or article in question. Keyed to the annotations, four separate indices (author, title, subject/name, and Machiavelli's works) enhance access to the large and varied amount of work on Machiavelli. The volume will implement the research efforts of both Machiavelli scholars and those in related general and specific fields.

Founded in 1900, the National Civic Federation (NCF), a broad-based, nongovernmental social and policy reform organization, emerged throughout the Progressive Era as one of the nation's most powerful policy research and lobbying groups. Amidst the strong demand by rank-and-file Americans for economic and social reform, the NCF proposed that the government begin to assume a more prominent role in managing the nation's economy and providing for the needs of the country's weakest and most vulnerable citizens. The organization constructed broad-based coalitions of business leaders, labor leaders, social scientists, and politicians with diverse backgrounds to fashion model legislation and promote public policy aimed at meeting the demands created by modern capitalism.

Cyphers' work challenges the longstanding assumption that organizations like the NCF existed simply to build a relationship between big business and the government for the sole benefit of big business. He argues that the NCF sought the preservation of the fundamental tenets of American liberalism and the redefinition of this liberalism for a modern polity whose life was shaped by industrial and commercial capitalism. It saw the individual states, rather than the federal government, as the ideal mechanism to promote uniform economic and social reform. Cyphers also charts the origins of civic cooperation and the creation of voluntary associations as alternatives to the statist remedies to modern economic and social problems that were championed by America's early 20th-century socialist movement.

After 1989, capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political economic system. What effects has this 'capitalist realism' had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control? FOREWORD BY ZOE FISHER, INTRODUCTION BY ALEX NIVEN AND AFTERWORD BY TARIQ GODDARD.

Africa Reimagined is a passionately argued appeal for a rediscovery of our African identity. Going beyond the problems of a single country, Hlumelo Biko calls for a reorientation of values, on a continental scale, to suit the needs and priorities of Africans. Building on the premise that slavery, colonialism, imperialism and apartheid fundamentally unbalanced the values and indeed the very self-concept of Africans, he offers realistic steps to return to a more balanced Afro-centric identity.

Historically, African values were shaped by a sense of abundance, in material and mental terms, and by strong ties of community. The intrusion of religious, economic and legal systems imposed by conquerors, traders and missionaries upset this balance, and the African identity was subsumed by the values of the newcomers. Biko shows how a reimagining of Africa can restore the sense of abundance and possibility, and what a rebirth of the continent on Pan-African lines might look like. This is not about the churn of the news cycle or party politics – although he identifies the political party as one of the most pernicious legacies of colonialism. Instead, drawing on latest research, he offers a practical, pragmatic vision anchored in the here and now.

By looking beyond identities and values imposed from outside, and transcending the divisions and frontiers imposed under colonialism, it should be possible for Africans to develop fully their skills, values and ingenuity, to build institutions that reflect African values, and to create wealth for the benefit of the continent as a whole.

A critical legal scholar uses feminist and environmental theory to sketch alternate futures for Appalachia. Environmental law has failed spectacularly to protect Appalachia from the ravages of liberal capitalism, and from extractive industries in particular. Remaking Appalachia chronicles such failures, but also puts forth hopeful paths for truly radical change. Remaking Appalachia begins with an account of how, over a century ago, laws governing environmental and related issues proved fruitless against the rising power of coal and other industries. Key legal regimes were, in fact, explicitly developed to support favored industrial growth. Aided by law, industry succeeded in maximizing profits not just through profound exploitation of Appalachia's environment but also through subordination along lines of class, gender, and race. After chronicling such failures and those of liberal development strategies in the region, Stump explores true system change beyond law "reform." Ecofeminism and ecosocialism undergird this discussion, which involves bottom-up approaches to transcending capitalism that are coordinated from local to global scales.

Now in paperback: David French warns of the potential dangers to the country--and the world--if we don't summon the courage to reconcile our political differences. Two decades into the 21st Century, the U.S. is less united than at any time in our history since the Civil War. We are more diverse in our beliefs and culture than ever before. But red and blue states, secular and religious groups, liberal and conservative idealists, and Republican and Democratic representatives all have one thing in common: each believes their distinct cultures and liberties are being threatened by an escalating violent opposition. This polarized tribalism, espoused by the loudest, angriest fringe extremists on both the left and the right, dismisses dialogue as appeasement; if left unchecked, it could very well lead to secession. An engaging mix of cutting edge research and fair-minded analysis, Divided We Fall is an unblinking look at the true dimensions and dangers of this widening ideological gap, and what could happen if we don't take steps toward bridging it. French reveals chilling, plausible scenarios of how the United States could fracture into regions that will not only weaken the country but destabilize the world. But our future is not written in stone. By implementing James Madison's vision of pluralism--that all people have the right to form communities representing their personal values--we can prevent oppressive factions from seizing absolute power and instead maintain everyone's beliefs and identities across all fifty states. Reestablishing national unity will require the bravery to commit ourselves to embracing qualities of kindness, decency, and grace towards those we disagree with ideologically. French calls on all of us to demonstrate true tolerance so we can heal the American divide. If we want to remain united, we must learn to stand together again.

"One of the Best Books of the 21st Century." --The Guardian "No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that's marked this new millennium." --Bill McKibben "An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways." --The New Yorker A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of radicals at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them--and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argued that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of 2016 in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of eighteen or so books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including the books Men Explain Things to Me and Hope in the Dark, both also with Haymarket; a trilogy of atlases of American cities; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper's and a regular contributor to the Guardian.

The much-anticipated definitive account of China's Great Famine

An estimated thirty-six million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as "the three years of natural disaster."

As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent twenty years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father. Finding no natural causes, Yang attributes responsibility for the deaths to China's totalitarian system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.

"Tombstone" is a testament to inhumanity and occasional heroism that pits collective memory against the historical amnesia imposed by those in power. Stunning in scale and arresting in its detailed account of the staggering human cost of this tragedy, "Tombstone" is written both as a memorial to the lives lost--an enduring tombstone in memory of the dead--and in hopeful anticipation of the final demise of the totalitarian system. Ian Johnson, writing in "The New York Review of Books," called the Chinese edition of "Tombstone ""groundbreaking . . . One of the most important books to come out of China in recent years."

This Student Guide will help you to: * Identify key content for the exams with our concise coverage of topics * Avoid common pitfalls with clear definitions and exam tips throughout * Reinforce your learning with bullet-list summaries at the end of each section * Make links between topics with synoptic links highlighted throughout * Test your knowledge with rapid-fire knowledge check questions and answers * Find out what examiners are looking for with our Questions & Answers section, for the core political ideas, plus Anarchism, Feminism and Nationalism

After the 2008 financial crisis, the cultural and psychological imprint that was left appears to be almost as deep as the one that followed the Great Depression. Its legacy includes new radical politics on both the left and the right, epidemics of opioid abuse, suicides, low birthrates, and widespread resentment that is racial, gendered, and otherwise by those who felt especially left behind. Most importantly it saw the rise and global spread of populism. Given that so many politicians of such different stripes can be populist, some argue the term is useless, but with so-called populists on the left and right experiencing a resurgence in the 21st century, the term is once again in the spotlight. There is a need for research on this increase in populist politics, the consequences for democracy, and what, if anything, should be done about this movement. Analyzing Current and Future Global Trends in Populism discusses the global rise of populism and anti-elitism through a look at the history of the term, an exploration of modern populism, and the important events and figures in the movement. This book will measure the levels of populism across citizens and political actors, explore populism's positive consequences, study the rise of populism in national politics, and discuss the future of populism in the 21st century as a major societal movement. This book is ideally intended for professionals and researchers working in the fields of politics, social science, business, and computer science and management, executives in different types of work communities and environments, practitioners, government officials, policymakers, academicians, students, and anyone else interested in populism, the greatest new political and societal movement of the 21st century.

American culture is changing, a sentiment echoed in phrases such as “the new normal,” and “in these uncertain times,” that regularly introduce all forms of public discourse now, signally a national sense of vulnerability and transformation. Cultural shifts generally involve multiple catalysts, but in this collection the contributors focus on the role changing discourse norms play in cancel culture, corporatism, the counter-sexual revolution, racialism, and a radically divided political climate. Three central themes arise in the arguments. First, that contemporary discourse norms emphasize outcomes rather than shared understanding, which support institutional and political goals but contribute to the contemporary political divide, and the notion that we are engaged in a zero-sum game. These discourse norms give rise to a form of Adorno’s administered world, such that we order society according to dominant opinions, which generally means those well acclimated to institutional and corporate culture. Finally, as Arendt feared, the personal has become political, meaning that the toxic public discourse invades private discourse, reducing personal autonomy and leaving us perpetually under the scrutiny of institutional authority.