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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies
Through various international case studies presented by both practitioners and scholars, Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene explores how an environmental justice approach is necessary for reflections on inequality in the Anthropocene and for forging societal transitions toward a more just and sustainable future. Environmental justice is a central component of sustainability politics during the Anthropocene - the current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Every aspect of sustainability politics requires a close analysis of equity implications, including problematizing the notion that humans as a collective are equally responsible for ushering in this new epoch. Environmental justice provides us with the tools to critically investigate the drivers and characteristics of this era and the debates over the inequitable outcomes of the Anthropocene for historically marginalized peoples. The contributors to this volume focus on a critical approach to power and issues of environmental injustice across time, space, and context, drawing from twelve national contexts: Austria, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, Nicaragua, Hungary, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Tanzania, and the United States. Beyond highlighting injustices, the volume highlights forward-facing efforts at building just transitions, with a goal of identifying practical steps to connect theory and movement and envision an environmentally and ecologically just future. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners focused on conservation, environmental politics and governance, environmental and earth sciences, environmental sociology, environment and planning, environmental justice, and global sustainability and governance. It will also be of interest to social and environmental justice advocates and activists.
Europe's Utopias of Peace explores attempts to create a lasting European peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the two world wars. The book charts the 250 year cycle of violent European conflicts followed by new utopian formulations for peace. The utopian illusion was that future was predictable and rules could prescribe behaviour in conflicts to come. Bo Strath examines the reiterative bicentenary cycle since 1815, where each new postwar period built on a design for a project for European unification. He sets out the key historical events and the continuous struggle with nationalism, linking them to legal, political and economic thought. Biographical sketches of the most prominent thinkers and actors provide the human element to this narrative. Europe's Utopias of Peace presents a new perspective on the ideological, legal, economic and intellectual conditions that shaped Europe since the 19th century and presents this in a global context. It challenges the conventional narrative on Europe's past as a progressive enlightenment heritage, highlighting the ambiguities of the legacies that pervade the institutional structures of contemporary Europe. Its long-term historical perspective will be invaluable for students of contemporary Europe or modern European history.
When it comes to any current scientific debate, there are more than two sides to every story. Controversies in Science and Technology, Volume 4 analyzes controversial topics in science and technology-infrastructure, ecosystem management, food security, and plastics and health-from multiple points of view. The editors have compiled thought-provoking essays from a variety of experts from academia and beyond, creating a volume that addresses many of the issues surrounding these scientific debates. Part I of the volume discusses infrastructure, and the real meaning behind the term in today's society. Essays address the central issues that motivate current discussion about infrastructure, including writing on the vulnerability to disasters. Part II, titled "Food Policy," will focus on the challenges of feeding an ever-growing world and the costs of not doing so. Part III features essays on chemicals and environmental health, and works to define "safety" as it relates to today's scientific community. The book's final section examines ecosystem management. In the end, Kleinman, Cloud-Hansen, and Handelsman provide a multifaceted volume that will be appropriate for anyone hoping to understand arguments surrounding several of today's most important scientific controversies
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex & Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.
The EU has taken a leading role in calling for a round of new trade negotiations in the WTO to deal with the issues of globalisation. Proposals in the EU call for expansion into new areas such as global investment, competition, and environmental rules in addition to liberalisation negotiations on agriculture and services. Issues such as global governance, capital mobility, and labour standards are also explored. Brigid Gavin questions if the EU's call for path-breaking global negotiations is too ambitious and whether or not it will fail to achieve the required response from its trading partners. The book demonstrates how the EU has evolved constitutionally beyond the internal market into a highly developed system of multi-level governance. Non-state actors such as NGOs, labour unions and private industry groups have been increasingly engaged in the discussion, decision-making and implementation of policy. The volume therefore contains important lessons for the WTO. Exploring path-breaking reforms for increased parliamentary control of globalisation in the WTO, and providing a concrete model for implementation, this volume will be invaluable to academics, policymakers and NGOs in the areas of European studies, institutional relations and international business.
The impact of globalisation on social development is a critical issue for both developed and developing countries. In Globalisation and Social Development, leading experts investigate this from the perspective of European, and more specifically, Southeast Asian economies including Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The contributors provide a well documented, multi-disciplinary analysis of the relationship between globalisation and social development in regions which, in the last two decades, have relied heavily on an outward looking development strategy and on attracting FDI, and which have been severely hit by the Asian crisis. In order to substantiate their analysis, the contributors include case studies of company relocation to Southeast Asia. The effects of globalisation on compliance with core labour standards in the Asia Pacific are also explored. Examining the complex link between globalisation and social development in Europe and Southeast Asia, Globalisation and Social Development will be welcomed by economists and social researchers with a specific interest in globalisation and Southeast Asian economies. Lecturers and scholars of international economics, international business and Asian business will also find the book to be of great interest.
The digital divide is an global phenomenon that negatively affects groups around the world. International Exploration of Technology Equity and the Digital Divide: Critical, Historical and Social Perspectives explores and presents research that centers on the historical, political, sociological, and economic factors that engender global inequities. Acquiring such insights and knowledge is an important step towards rectifying socially ingrained inequities and a necessary step in working towards global justice in meaningful ways. This book aids those researching, teaching, and studying in the area of digital equity or in the broader contexts of social and global justice. Moreover, this reference provides valuable insights for professionals and researchers interested in examining issues of technology equity from various critical social theories.
This title provides a reading of the popular fiction of London historicized in its political and cultural contexts. From the early years of the nineteenth century, cultural pessimists imagined in fiction the political forces that might bring about the destruction of London. Periods of popular protest or radicalism generated novels that considered the methods insurgents might use to terrorise the metropolis. There has been a tendency to dismiss such writings as the lurid imaginings of pulp novelists but this book re-evaluates the contribution of popular fiction to the construction of the terrorist threat. It analyses the high-points for the production of such works, and locates them in their cultural and historical context. From the 1840s, when a fear of Chartist insurgency was paramount in the minds of authors, it moves through the anarchist thrillers of the 1890s, considers writers' fears about Bolshevik revolution in the East End of the 1920s and 1930s, explores fears of Fascism in the inter-war years, and assesses the concerns with underground counter-culture that feature in the thriller literature of the 1970s. It concludes with a re-evaluation of the metropolitan background to the figure of the Islamist terrorist.
Japan has succeeded in many industries through its renowned production system. Competitive advantage, however, in the new economy is shifting from production to demand-based capabilities. One such new industry is pharmaceuticals, where Japan has been a resounding failure, both from public policy and corporate strategy perspectives. This book provides a detailed examination of how Japan has socially constructed its pharmaceutical industry, the economic and political bases of this construction and the consequences for corporate innovation and performance.Perhaps the starkest indication of this failure of Japanese public policy is the emergence of a new drug lag in that nation. Almost 90 percent of recent important new drugs are unavailable in Japan, despite their widespread diffusion throughout the rest of the world. Analysis of this drug lag confirms that it is not due to government discrimination against Western firms, but rather is only one of many consequences of failed Japanese industrial policies. The author presents an analysis of the nature, causes and consequences of the new drug lag in Japan. He contrasts the problem with the one experienced in the US and looks at the powerful role played by domestic politics in shaping the pharmaceutical industry. The last chapters look at the various remedies available. Academics, experts in government and industry, researchers and students of industrial policy, economics, public health and trade policy will find the examination of this important industry both informative and enlightening.
This Book attempts to deduce regulatory standards that can close the gaps between the Promises made and the Outcomes secured by the United Nations in relation to its use of force. It explores two broad questions in this regard: why the contemporary legal framework relevant to the regulation of force during Armed Conflict cannot close the gaps between the said Promises and Outcomes and how the 'Unified Use of Force Rule' formulated herein, achieves this. This is the first book to coherently analyse the moral as well as legal aspects relevant to UN use of force. UN peace operations are rapidly changing. Deployed peacekeepers are now required to use force in pursuance of numerous objectives such as self-defence, protecting civilians, and carrying out targeted offensive operations. As a result, questions about when, where, and how to use force have now become central to peacekeeping. While UN peace operations have managed to avoid catastrophes of the magnitude of Rwanda and Srebrenica for over two decades, crucial gaps still exist between what the UN promises on the use of force front, and what it achieves. Current conflict zones such as the Central African Republic, Eastern Congo, and Mali stand testament to this. This book searches for answers to these issues and identifies how an innovative mix of the relevant legal and moral rules can produce regulatory standards that can allow the UN to keep their promises. The discussion covers analytical ground that must be traversed 'behind the scenes' of UN deployment, well before the first troops set foot on a battlefield. The analysis ultimately produces a 'Unified Use of Force Rule', that can either be completely or partially used as a model set of Rules of Engagement by UN forces. This book will be immensely beneficial to law students, researchers, academics and practitioners in the fields of international relations, international law, peacekeeping, and human rights.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.
The book presents and analyzes some of the most important issues related to the body seen as a rich and complex anthropological and semiotic object, capable of playing a decisive role in the meaning making processes of cultural and social life. The analysis presented in this book opens a whole set of new venues for the study of body performances and representations, and shows how the embodiment of social and cultural life shape our world. In all of its relationships and in itself, our body works in a sort of corposphere, which is, in turn, part of the semiosphere, defined by Lotman as a continuum occupied by different types of semiotic formations. It is from/in/by the body that all semiosis begins and ends; it is in its presence and absence, in its being and in its presentation amidst the lived situational life where we might discover and shape the senses of the world. Many different academic fields will find in this book deep insights about how the body is at the center of cultural and social processes.
World leaders have not been able to find solutions to the growing problem of global insecurity associated with failed and failing states in many regions. Governance and Security As A Unitary Concept is the first compilation of contemporary commentaries - from twenty contributing authors on six continents - to examine governance and security together rather than as complementary yet separate entities. This is the potency of its design. Governance in modern human affairs determines action or gridlock, wealth or penury, peace or conflict, health or illness, progress or arrested development. Security does not mean just physical security but also human, environmental, economic, resource and cultural security. The construct of the book is an innovative approach to governance and security as a unitary concept. The strength and virtue of the book is the diversity and overlapping perspectives of the authors, looking in, from within. Tom Rippon and Graham Kemp, editors Published by Agio Publishing House in collaboration with Avalon Institute Inc.
Globalisation of the world economy portends a wide range of benefits to citizens of all countries. However, this ground-breaking book finds that the impacts of trade liberalisation and globalisation appear to have a negative impact on agricultural sustainability in developing countries.This book explores the proposition that globalisation and trade liberalisation is an international win-win game and finds that there is substantial evidence to suggest that there could be a range of agricultural problems and negative impacts on rural communities and the environment in poorer countries. The authors use cutting-edge research from Brazil, Bolivia, Burkino Faso, Indonesia, The Philippines and Thailand to suggest that special attention needs to be paid to local issues in poor countries in the face of globalisation. Sustainable Agriculture and Environment will prove invaluable to scholars and policymakers in the areas of environmental and ecological economics.
Untapped collects twelve previously unpublished essays that analyze the rise of craft beer from social and cultural perspectives. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe there has been exponential growth in the number of small independent breweries over the past thirty years - a reversal of the corporate consolidation and narrowing of consumer choice that characterized much of the twentieth century. While there are legal and policy components involved in this shift, the contributors to Untapped ask broader questions. How does the growth of craft beer connect to trends like the farm-to-table movement, gentrification, the rise of the "creative class," and changing attitudes toward both cities and farms? How do craft beers conjure history, place, and authenticity? At perhaps the most fundamental level, how does the rise of craft beer call into being new communities that may challenge or reinscribe hierarchies based on gender, class, and race?
The East Asian crisis has sparked debate regarding the future of emerging markets and the globalization of world capital markets. This book, with contributions by leading economists and political scientists, provides an up-to-date assessment of the causes and consequences of the crisis and the policy lessons drawn from it. In contrast to much of the existing literature, the volume presents the view that the crisis and its aftermath were not simply the result of purely economic and financial phenomena but also the reflection of some fundamental institutional, historical and political forces. The collection begins with a comparative and historical analysis of the crisis, placing it in the context of other financial and debt crises. This is followed by a discussion of the domestic, political and economic factors behind the events, delineating the differences and similarities among affected countries. The contributors also examine how global political forces influenced the unfolding crisis in various countries. Using the latest data, top experts present the current economic situation in East Asia, the contagion effects in the rest of the world, and the role played by international institutions such as the IMF. Finally, the volume provides a roundtable debate on the policy alternatives confronting emerging markets and the world monetary system in the aftermath of the crisis. Students, professional economists in academia and the private sector, scholars and students in finance, Asian studies specialists, and political scientists will all find this collection insightful and informative.
This book offers answers to essential questions about the border between the United States and Mexico and connected issues that are accessible to readers interested in immigration, border security, and U.S.-Mexico relations. Comprising seven chapters, The U.S.-Mexico Border: A Reference Handbook surveys the complex topic for students and readers. Chapter 1 discusses the political, social, and economic contexts in which the border came to exist. Chapter 2 discusses problems, controversies, and proposed solutions. Chapter 3 consists of original essays contributed by outside scholars, complementing the perspective and expertise of the author. Chapter 4 profiles major organizations and people who, as stakeholders in border politics, drive the agenda on the issue. Chapter 5 presents data and documents on the topic, giving readers the ability to analyze the facts. Chapter 6 provides additional resources that the reader may wish to consult, such as books, journal articles, and films. Chapter 7 provides a detailed chronology of important events, and the book closes with a useful glossary of key terms used throughout the book and a comprehensive subject index. Helps the reader to better understand the complicated U.S.-Mexico border region Allows different perspectives to be heard from many individuals who are concerned with border issues, from immigration advocates to residents of border towns Aids the general reader who wants to learn more about the history and current events concerning the U.S.-Mexico border in an easy-to-understand fashion Provides an objective perspective in the immigration debate
After the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called 'last empire', in 1991, the countries of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan - and of the Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia - became independent nations. These countries, previously production centres under the socialist planning system of the Soviet Union, have made enormous economic adjustments in order to develop - or attempt to develop - along capitalist lines. As this study will show, however, inequality in Central Asia and the Caucasus is widening, as the Soviet systems of healthcare and state provisions disappear. Rejecting the Cold War-era East/West paradigm often used to analyse the development of these nations, this study analyses development along the North-South lines which characterise the migration patterns and poverty levels of much of the rest of the developed world. This opens up new avenues of research, and helps us understand why it is, for instance, that this region is better characterised as a 'new South' - as skilled workers flood out of the territories and into Russia and Western Europe. Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus draws together detailed analyses of the development of migration economics as the region's oil wealth further enhances its strategic and economic importance to Russia, the US, the Middle East and to the EU.
This book addresses a seemingly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, nationalism from Scotland to the Ukraine remains a resilient political dynamic, fostering secessionist movements below the level of the state. On the other, the competence and capacity of states, and indeed the coherence of nationalism as an ideology, are increasingly challenged by patterns of globalisation in commerce, cultural communication and constitutional authority beyond the state. It is the aim of this book to shed light on the relationship between these two processes, addressing why the political currency of nationalism remains strong even when the salience of its objective - independent and autonomous statehood - becomes ever more attenuated. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach both within law and beyond, with contributions from international law, constitutional law, constitutional theory, history, political science and sociology. The challenge for our time is considerable. Global networks grow ever more sophisticated while territorial borders, such as those in Eastern and Central Europe, become seemingly more unstable. It is hoped that this book, by bringing together areas of scholarship which have not communicated with one another as much as they might, will help develop an ongoing dialogue across disciplines with which better to understand these challenging, and potentially destabilising, developments.
In Deportation in the Americas: Histories of Exclusion and Resistance, editors Kenyon Zimmer and Cristina Salinas have compiled seven essays, adapted from the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series, that deeply consider deportation policy in the Americas and its global effects. These thoughtful pieces significantly contribute to a growing historiography on deportation within immigration studies-a field that usually focuses on arriving immigrants and their adaptation. All contributors have expanded their analysis to include transnational and global histories, while recognizing that immigration policy is firmly developed within the structure of the nation-state. Thus, the authors do not abandon national peculiarity regarding immigration policy, but as Emily Pope-Obeda observes, "from its very inception, immigration restriction was developed with one eye looking outward." Contributors note that deportation policy can signal friendship or cracks within the relationships between nations. Rather than solely focusing on immigration policy in the abstract, the authors remain cognizant of the very real effects domestic immigration policies have on deportees and push readers to think about how the mobility and lives of individuals come to be controlled by the state, as well as the ways in which immigrants and their allies have resisted and challenged deportation. From the development of the concept of an "anchor baby" to continued policing of those who are foreign-born, Deportation in the Americas is an essential resource for understanding this critical and timely topic.
Embodied encounters with death affect humans deeply, with the power to crush, transform and strengthen individuals and relationships. Understanding that these encounters often have a musical accompaniment, this edited collection offers a range of critical, analytic, discursive and personal reflections on how music provides both a container and a medium for experiencing, processing and integrating embodied encounters with death. The collection showcases new and original interdisciplinary case studies written by authors from several different countries across Australia, France, The Netherlands, Poland and the UK. Taking an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive approach, this carefully curated collection elaborates embodied encounters with death through music across a variety of praxes and disciplines such as death & grief, queer studies, disability, philosophy, and more. Providing a mix of personal perspectives and insights on the impact of music and death alongside more conventional academic studies, the chapters reveal how music and human nature are intimately, and bodily, entwined. Framed by opening and closing chapters written by the team of three editors, this core text in the field provides a unique overview of the implications and ramifications of the embodiment of death through music and the musicalisation of death through the body, and signposts possibilities for further research. |
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