This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Drawing on a wide range of examples from literature, comics, film, television and digital media, Nerd Ecology is the first substantial ecocritical study of nerd culture's engagement with environmental issues. Exploring such works as Star Trek, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, The Hunger Games, and superhero comics such as Green Lantern and X-Men, Anthony Lioi maps out the development of nerd culture and its intersections with the most fundamental ecocritical themes. In this way Lioi finds in the narratives of unpopular culture - narratives in which marginalised individuals and communities unite to save the planet - the building blocks of a new environmental politics in tune with the concerns of contemporary ecocritical theory and practice.

This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator-through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting-and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead.

As timely as the latest tweet, this book tracks the digital revolution as a paradigm shift that is transforming popular culture in as yet unforeseen ways. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing-and will change-the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own. Sidebars featuring original and exclusive interviews with media personalities Tina Brown, Arianna Huffington, Martha Stewart, and others A timeline showing the history of the Internet, blogs, Twitter, and social media Cartoons depicting humorous aspects of Internet culture Snapshot views of blogs A bibliography and listings of selected blogsites

With our highly connected and interdependent world, the growing threat of infectious diseases and public health crisis has shed light on the requirement for global efforts to manage and combat highly pathogenic infectious diseases and other public health crisis on an unprecedented level. Such disease threats transcend borders. Reducing global threats posed by infectious disease outbreaks - whether naturally caused or resulting from a deliberate or accidental release - requires efforts that cross the disaster management pillars: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. This book addresses the issues of global health security along 4 themes: Emerging Threats; Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery; Exploring the Technology Landscape for Solutions; Leadership and Partnership. The authors of this volume highlight many of the challenges that confront our global security environment today. These range from politically induced disasters, to food insecurity, to zoonosis and terrorism. More optimistically, the authors also present some advances in technology that can help us combat these threats. Understanding the challenges that confront us and the tools we have to overcome them will allow us to face our future with confidence.

The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee.
Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old?
This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

In "Selling Air Power," Steve Call provides the first comprehensive study of the efforts of post-war air power advocates to harness popular culture in support of their agenda. In the 1940s and much of the 1950s, hardly a month went by without at least one blatantly pro-air power article appearing in general interest magazines. Public fascination with flight helped create and sustain exaggerated expectations for air power in the minds of both its official proponents and the American public. Articles in the "Saturday Evening Post," "Reader's Digest," and "Life" trumpeted the secure future assured by American air superiority. Military figures like Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Curtis E. LeMay, radio-television personalities such as Arthur Godfrey, cartoon figures like "Steve Canyon," and actors like Jimmy Stewart played key roles in the unfolding campaign. Movies like "Twelve O'Clock High ," "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," and "A Gathering of Eagles" projected onto the public imagination vivid images confirming what was coming to be the accepted wisdom: that America's safety against the Soviet threat could best be guaranteed by air power, coupled with nuclear capability. But as the Cold War continued and the specter of the mushroom cloud grew more prominent in American minds, another, more sinister interpretation began to take hold. Call chronicles the shift away from the heroic, patriotic posture of the years just after World War II, toward the threatening, even bizarre imagery of books and movies like "Catch-22," "On the Beach," and "Dr. Strangelove." Call's careful analysis goes beyond the public relations campaigns to probe the intellectual climate that shaped them and gave them power. "Selling Air Power" adds a critical layer of understanding to studies in military and aviation history, as well as American popular culture.

Empowering Marginal Communities with Information Networking provides valuable insights into the successes and challenges faced by development project implementers around the world. It includes methodologies, technological constraints, implementation challenges, and sustainability issues of different projects, focusing on the empowerment of marginal communities. ""Empowering Marginal Communities with Information Networking"" supports rural technology and information systems in order to strengthen grass-roots institutions by blending indigenous knowledge and modern technology. This book includes success stories, drawbacks, and facts and figures in the social transformation processes of globalization.

This book, connecting the fields of social anthropology and missiology, presents a body of colonial ethnographic writing applied to highland societies in the southern portion of the Mainland Southeast Asian massif. The writers under scrutiny are Catholic priests from the Societe des Missions Etrangeres de Paris. Their texts from the Upper-Tonkin vicariate, in today's northern Vietnam, are paid special attention, notably through its major contributor, F.M. Savina. The author locates this ethnographic heritage against its historical, political and intellectual background. A comparison is conducted with French missionaries-cum-ethnographers who worked among the 'natives' in New France (Canada) in the 17th century, yielding the unexpected conclusion that practically nothing from this early period of experimentation was remembered.

In Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection: Designation, Discrimination, and Brutalization, Thomas W. Simon examines a new framework for considering ethnic conflicts. In contrast to the more traditional theories of justice, Simon's theory of injustice shifts focus away from group identity toward group harms, effectively making many problems, such as how to define minorities in international law, dramatically more manageable. Simon argues that instead of promoting legislative devices like proportional representation for minorities, it is more fruitful to seek adjudicative solutions to racial and ethnic-related conflicts. For example, resources could be shifted to quasi-judicial human-rights treaty bodies that have adopted an injustice approach. This injustice approach provides the foundation for Kosovo's case for remedial secession, and helps to sort out the competing entitlement claims of Malays in different countries. Indeed, the priority of Thomas W. Simon's Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection is to ensure the tales of designation and discrimination told at the beginning of the work do not become the stories of brutalization told at the end. In short, the challenge tackled in this text is to assure that reason reigns over hate.

This book provides a fascinating, up-to-date overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes of Tanzania. In Culture and Customs of Tanzania, author Kefa M. Otiso presents an approachable basic overview of the country's key characteristics, covering topics such as Tanzania's land, peoples, languages, education system, resources, occupations, economy, government, and history. This recent addition to Greenwood's Culture and Customs of Africa series also contains chapters that portray the culture and social customs of Tanzania, such as the country's religion and worldview; literature, film, and media; art, architecture, and housing; cuisine and traditional dress; gender roles, marriage, family structures, and lifestyle; and music, dance, and drama. Describes historical events from the late 1800s to the present day Provides several maps depicting Tanzania's location in Africa, major physical features, administrative units, urban areas, ethnic groups, and population distribution Contains an interdisciplinary bibliography of sources in the areas of geography, history, anthropology, and popular culture Includes a glossary of key terms, places, cities, ethnic groups, and personalities

Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.

Years before he was Secretary of State and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Henry Kissinger wrote "A World Restored" to understand and explain one of history's most important and dramatic periods-a time when Europe went from political chaos to a balanced peace that lasted for almost a hundred years.

After the fall of Napoleon, European diplomats gathered in a festive Vienna with the task of restoring stability following the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. The central figures at the Congress of Vienna were the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Viscount Castlereagh and the Foreign Minister of Austria Klemens Wenzel von Mettern Metternich. Castlereagh was primarily concerned with maintaining balanced powers, while Metternich based his diplomacy on the idea of legitimacy-that is, establishing and working with governments that citizens accept without force. The peace they brokered lasted until the outbreak of World War I.

Through trenchant analysis of the history and forces that create stability, "A World Restored" gives insight into how to create long-lasting geopolitical peace-lessons that Kissinger saw as applicable to the period immediately following World War II, when he was writing this book.

But the lessons don't stop there. Like all good insights, the book's wisdom transcends any single political period. Kissinger's understanding of coalitions and balance of power can be applied to personal and professional situations, such as dealing with a tyrannical boss or coworker or formulating business or organizational tactics.

Regardless of his ideology, Henry Kissinger has had an important impact on modern politics and few would dispute his brilliance as a strategist. For anyone interested in Western history, the tactics of diplomacy, or political strategy, this volume will provide deep understanding of a pivotal time.

Winner of the 2013 John Hope Franklin Book Prize presented by the American Studies Association A necessary read that demonstrates the ways in which certain people are devalued without attention to social contexts Social Death tackles one of the core paradoxes of social justice struggles and scholarship-that the battle to end oppression shares the moral grammar that structures exploitation and sanctions state violence. Lisa Marie Cacho forcefully argues that the demands for personhood for those who, in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on capitalist and heteropatriarchal measures of worth. With poignant case studies, Cacho illustrates that our very understanding of personhood is premised upon the unchallenged devaluation of criminalized populations of color. Hence, the reliance of rights-based politics on notions of who is and is not a deserving member of society inadvertently replicates the logic that creates and normalizes states of social and literal death. Her understanding of inalienable rights and personhood provides us the much-needed comparative analytical and ethical tools to understand the racialized and nationalized tensions between racial groups. Driven by a radical, relentless critique, Social Death challenges us to imagine a heretofore "unthinkable" politics and ethics that do not rest on neoliberal arguments about worth, but rather emerge from the insurgent experiences of those negated persons who do not live by the norms that determine the productive, patriotic, law abiding, and family-oriented subject.

Focusing on the influence of Maoist ideology and masculinist power on the representations of women in revolutionary opera films made during the Cultural Revolution, this book considers the gendered hierarchy between masculinity and femininity in relation to the historic and cultural context in which they were made. Using feminist methodology and epistemology to locate women's social identity, this book explores the sociological connections between the masculinisation of women and masculinist domination in the context of the Cultural Revolution. Through film analysis, the author examines whether women, rather than 'liberated', were in fact re-gendered and oppressed by masculinist power. By critically evaluating gender hierarchy during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the book provides hitherto neglected insights into gender within its social and cultural context. This an interdisciplinary book which should appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, Asian studies, China studies, cultural studies and film studies.

This collection of essays explores the development of electronic sound recording in Japanese cinema, radio, and popular music to illuminate the interrelationship of aesthetics, technology, and cultural modernity in prewar Japan. Putting the cinema at the center of a 'culture of the sound image', it restores complexity to a media transition that is often described simply as slow and reluctant. In that vibrant sound culture, the talkie was introduced on the radio before it could be heard in the cinema, and pop music adaptations substituted for musicals even as cinema musicians and live narrators resisted the introduction of recorded sound. Taken together, the essays show that the development of sound technology shaped the economic structure of the film industry and its labour practices, the intermedial relation between cinema, radio, and popular music, as well as the architecture of cinemas and the visual style of individual Japanese films and filmmakers.

Throughout its history Nicaragua has been plagued by corruption, social and racial inequality, civil unrest, and foreign interference. Yet despite being the second poorest nation in South America, Nicaragua maintains a rich and vibrant culture that reflects its strong Catholic devotion, diverse indigenous roots, and overwhelming zest for life. Culture and Customs of Nicaragua introduces students and general readers to Nicaragua's unique blend of religious and traditional holidays, so numerous that the country is said to be in a constant state of celebration; its growing film industry; its many styles of dance, the popular "street theatre" open to all bystanders; important contributions to Spanish literature, local cuisines, architecture, social norms, and more. Readers learn what it is like to live in one of Latin America's most disillusioned countries but also discover the passionate culture that defines and sustains the Nicaraguan people.

The organisation of higher education across the world is one of several factors that conspire to create the assumption that our own map of the intellectual disciplines is, broadly speaking, valid cross-culturally. Disciplines in the Making challenges this in relation to eight main areas of human endeavour, namely philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion and science. Lloyd focuses on historical and cross-cultural data that throw light on the different ways in which these disciplines were constituted and defined in different periods and civilisations, especially in ancient Greece and China, and how the relationships between them were understood, particularly when one or other discipline claimed hegemonic status (as happened, at different times, with philosophy, history, religion and science). He also explores the role of elites, whether positive (when they foster the professionalisation of a discipline) or negative (when they restrict recruitment to the profession, when they insist on adherence to established norms, concepts and practices and thereby inhibit further innovation). The issues are relevant to current educational policy in relation to the ever-increasing specialisation we see, especially in the sciences, and to the difficulties encountered in making the most of the opportunities for inter- or trans-disciplinary research.

At a time when Iran is represented in the French media as a rogue state obsessed with its nuclear programme, and whilst France is portrayed in the Iranian media as a decadent and imperialist country, this book examines the ways in which these representations and stereotypes are shared, nuanced, or overcome beyond the sphere of the fourth estate. Here, Laetitia Nanquette examines the functions, processes and mechanisms of stereotyping and imagining the 'Other' that have pervaded the literary traditions of France and Iran when writing about each other. Orientalism versus Occidentalism explores the extent to which orientalism and occidentalism have each influenced and are in turn perpetuated in the texts of both French and Iranian authors. And conversely, it also looks at the consequences of attempts by authors to distance themselves from these two discourses. After both using and questioning the dichotomy of orientalism and occidentalism, Nanquette details how France and Iran represent each other in the contemporary period through their narrative literature in prose, by listing and classifying all the ways in which they do so. She examines the image of the Other in the works of writers such as Goli Taraqi, Bernard Ollivier and Marjane Satrapi. In order to explore this, Nanquette draws upon a broad range of literary genres such as the historical novel, travel writing and autobiography. This exploration of the literary traditions of the relationship between France and Iran is used to shed light on the cultural history of Franco-Iranian relations and on contemporary socio-political realities. With themes that feed into popular debates about the nature of orientalism and occidentalism, and how the two interact, this book will be vital for researchers of Middle Eastern literature and its relationship with writings from the West, as well as those working on the cultures of the Middle East.

In this book Henry A. Giroux passionately argues that education and critical pedagogy are needed now more than ever to combat injustices in our society caused by fake news, toxic masculinity, racism, consumerism and white nationalism. At the heart of the book is the idea that pedagogy has the power to create narratives of desire, values, identity, and agency at time when these narratives are being manipulated to promote right wing populism and emerging global fascist politics. The book expands on the notion of the plague as not only a medical crisis but also a crisis of politics, ethics, education, and democracy itself. The chapters cover a range topics beginning with historical perspectives on fascism and moving on to issues of social atomization, depoliticization, neoliberal pedagogy, the scourge of staggering inequality, populism, and pandemic pedagogy. The book concludes with a call for educators to make education central to politics, develop a discourse of critique and possibility, reclaim the vision of a radical democracy, and embrace their role as powerful agents of change.

This title provides a succinct, readable, and comprehensive treatment of how the Obama administration reacted to what was arguably the most difficult foreign policy challenge of its eight years in office: the Arab Spring. As a prelude to examining how the United States reacted to the first wave of the Arab Spring in the 21st century, this book begins with an examination of how the U.S. reacted to revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries and a summary of how foreign policy is made. Each revolution in the Arab Spring (in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen) and the Obama administration's action-or inaction-in response is carefully analyzed. The U.S.' role is compared to that of regional powers, such as Turkey, Israel, and Iran. The impact of U.S. abdication in the face of pivotal events in the region is the subject of the book's conclusion. While other treatments have addressed how the Arab Spring revolutions have affected the individual countries where these revolutions took place, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, and President Barack Obama's overall foreign policy, this is the only work that provides a comprehensive examination of both the Arab Spring revolutions themselves and the reaction of the U.S. government to those revolutions. Stands as the only academic book that specifically considers U.S. foreign policy with regard to the Arab Spring Presents the Arab Spring as a pivotal event, the U.S. reaction as a watershed, and an understanding of this interplay as vital to understanding international politics in our time Traces the often roundabout paths to the creation of U.S. policy during the Arab Spring and examines the effects of those policies Serves as an essential text for academics studying the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, the progress of revolution, and politics in the developing world; policymakers wishing to understand how the Obama administration dealt with the most complex crisis of its eight years; and interested readers

This book is a captivating and authoritative introduction to Brazil-its history, the evolution of its society and culture, and the staggering variety of peoples and landscapes within its borders. Brazil: A Global Studies Handbook provides an easy-to-access, multifaceted introduction to the world's fifth largest nation-a staggeringly diverse region, socially and geographically, that remains relatively unknown even as it becomes increasingly important on the world stage. Brazil offers an expert chronological narrative summary of over five centuries of South America's largest country-from the days of early Portuguese exploration to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's reelection. In addition, it provides a richly informative section of alphabetically organized entries covering important Brazilian people, places, and events. For readers both new to Brazil or researching specific aspects of its unique history, complex politics, heavyweight economy, and vibrant culture, this is the volume with which to begin. Includes maps of the early division of South America, modern Brazil's regions and states, and comparative views of Brazil's size to that of Europe as well as photographs of slave conditions, early transportation of coffee, famous leaders, indigenous peoples, the Amazon rainforest, and more Provides a glossary of terms from Brazil's history to contemporary times, defining terms such as estado novo, bureaucratic authoritarianism, Tropicalismo, and Capoeira

"Southeast Asian Affairs, first published in 1974, continues today to be required reading for not only scholars but the general public interested in in-depth analysis of critical cultural, economic and political issues in Southeast Asia. In this annual review of the region, renowned academics provide comprehensive and stimulating commentary that furthers understanding of not only the region's dynamism but also of its tensions and conflicts. It is a must read."-Suchit Bunbongkarn, Emeritus Professor, Chulalongkorn University. "Now in its forty- third edition, Southeast Asian Affairs offers an indispensable guide to this fascinating region. Lively, analytical, authoritative, and accessible, there is nothing comparable in quality or range to this series. It is a must read for academics, government officials, the business community, the media, and anybody with an interest in contemporary Southeast Asia. Drawing on its unparalleled network of researchers and commentators, ISEAS is to be congratulated for producing this major contribution to our understanding of this diverse and fast-changing region, to a consistently high standard and in a timely manner."-Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian Economies, Australian National University.