The Kremlin's ability to shape global affairs appeared decimated following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Coupled with the internal instability that gripped Russia in the 1990s, Moscow struggled to develop a coherent and effective foreign policy for almost a decade. But under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has steadily reemerged as one of the most significant countries in the world-and one that is increasingly willing to challenge the United States. In Budget Superpower, geopolitics journalist John P. Ruehl explores how Russia has achieved this feat, despite its relatively limited economic strength. The book is divided into eight chapters, each exploring a tool or approach of the Kremlin's and how and where it has used this method to maximize Russia's influence. Each chapter also analyzes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Russia's strategies, as well as cautious predictions for how they may evolve in the future. Russia's determination to confront the United States has become increasingly apparent over the last decade, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In addition to demonstrating how Russia has effectively undermined the American-led global order, Budget Superpower will help readers understand why Russia has committed to this policy in the face of increasing push back and globally destabilizing consequences.

In one of the most charming works to survive from classical antiquity, Xenophon's Symposium depicts an amiable evening of wine, entertainment, and conversation shared by Socrates, and a few of his associates, with certain Athenian gentlemen who are gathered to honor a young man for his recent victory in the Panathenaic games. The subtle playfulness which characterizes the animated discussions conceals a light-hearted, yet surprisingly philosophical inquiry regarding the rival claims of virtue, articulated and defended by the Socratics and gentlemen to establish the praiseworthiness and excellence of their competing ways of life. Gentlemanliness, taken as an admired political virtue, and philosophy, as pursuit of wisdom and self-sufficiency, emerge as contested ideas about what constitutes the path to human happiness, especially in response to the beautiful and its compelling arousal of erotic desire in the body and soul. Offering a comprehensive account and interpretation of the Symposium, this book follows the speeches and action of the dialogue through its many twists and turns, from beginning to end, with particular attention to the place of rhetoric in the argument of the work as a whole. Thus, Xenophon's Socratic Rhetoric examines foundational aspects of the philosophic life manifest in the words as well as deeds of Socrates in this dialogue--starting from an original reading of the opening scene as a harbinger of the competition in wisdom that occurs over the course of the symposium, and concluding with a provocative consideration of conjugal erotics as the continuation and completion of the Socratic logos about the role of love in guiding human beings toward virtue and happiness.

Climate Change Education: Reimagining the Future with Alternative Forms of Storytelling offers innovative approaches to teaching about climate change through storytelling forms that appeal to today's students-climate fiction and protest poetry, horror and documentary films, video games and social media. The stories are used as exemplars, from exploring space debris to urban design planning to fast fashion and provide entry points for investigating particular aspects of climate science, including the local and global impacts of a warming planet. Each chapter provides analysis and strategies for fostering climate (and space) literacy through knowledge, empathy, and agency. The contributors encourage educators to answer students' calls for comprehensive K-12 climate education by aligning pedagogy with real-world challenges to prepare students who understand the myriad injustices of the climate crisis and feel empowered to confront them. Contributors from around the world share their own stories and urge educators to join the growing, hopeful movement for action, classroom by classroom.

Dialogue and the New Cosmopolitanism: Conversations with Edward Demenchonok stands in opposition to the doctrine that might makes right and that the purpose of politics is to establish domination over others rather than justice and the good life for all. In the pursuit of the latter goal, the book stresses the importance of dialogue with participants who take seriously the views and interests of others and who seek to reach a fair solution. In this sense, the book supports the idea of cosmopolitanism, which-by contrast to empire-involves multi-lateral cooperation and thus the quest for a just cosmopolis. The international contributors to this volume, with their varied perspectives, are all committed to this same quest. Edited by Fred Dallmayr, the chapters take the form of conversations with Edward Demenchonok, a well-known practitioner of international and cross-cultural philosophy. The conversations are structured in parts that stress the philosophical, anthropological, cultural, and ethical dimensions of global dialogue. In our conflicted world, it is inspiring to find so many authors from different places agreeing on a shared vision.

This edited collection explores the malleability and influence of body image, focusing particularly on how media representation and popular culture's focus on the body exacerbates the crucial social influence these representations can have on audiences' perceptions of themselves and others. Contributors investigate the cultural context and lived experiences of individuals' relationships with their bodies, going beyond examination of the thin, ideal body type to explore the emerging representations and portrayals of a diverse set of body types across the media spectrum, paving the way for future research on this topic. Scholars of media studies, popular culture, and health communication will find this book particularly useful.

The rapid rise of emerging economies has produced deep-ranging changes in the global order during recent decades. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the bipolar confrontation of the Cold War seemed to be replaced by a universalized model of political liberalism and economic neo-liberalism. In recent years, however, rising nationalism and protectionism indicate the end of unfettered globalization, a looming crisis of liberal democracy, and a return to ideologies of 'systemic competition', especially vis-a-vis China.Against this background, this volume takes a fresh look at the evolution of governance models in Western and non-Western civilizations - Africa, India, China, and the Muslim world in particular. These models have been largely self-contained and without intensive interaction for a long time. In the wake of globalization, systems, ideologies, and political values have become part of global discourse, eventually turning into what Samuel Huntington called a 'clash of civilizations.'The chapters in this volume offer perspectives on the diversity of civilizations of governance as a base for a new multilateralism in the global context. The contributions explore relevant theoretical concepts of transnational governance, law, and multiple modernity. The empirical focus is on analyzing different governance systems in non-Western civilizations and Europe, including national states and transnational institutions, traditions, and networks.The volume assembles papers presented at the 2019 International Conference of the Institute of Public Policy at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China. The contributions and the introductory framework have been updated to reflect the unexpected and unprecedented challenges from the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic and social crises.

At least 200,000 people died from hunger or malnutrition-related diseases in Spain during the 1940s. This book provides a political explanation for the famine and brings together a broad range of academics based in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to achieve this. Topics include the political causes of the famine, the physical and social consequences, the ways Spaniards tried to survive, the regime's reluctance to accept international relief, the politics of cooking at a time of famine, and the memory of the famine. The volume challenges the silence and misrepresentation that still surround the famine. It reveals the reality of how people perished in Spain because the Francoist authorities instituted a policy of food self-sufficiency (or autarky): a system of price regulation which placed restrictions on transport as well as food sales. The contributors trace the massive decline in food production which followed, the hoarding which took place on an enormous scale and the vast and deeply iniquitous black market that subsequently flourished at a time when salaries plunged to 50% below their levels in 1936: all contributing factors in the large-scale atrocity explored fully here for the first time.

Politics of the Many draws inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley's celebrated call to arms: 'Ye are many - they are few!' This idea of the Many, as a general form of emancipatory subjectivity that cannot be erased for the sake of the One, is the philosophical and political assumption shared by contributors to this book. They raise questions of collective agency, and its crisis in contemporary capitalism, via new engagements with Marxist philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of social reproduction and value-form, and post-colonial critiques, and drawing on activist thought and strategies. This book interrogates both established and emergent formations of the Many (the people, classes, publics, crowds, masses, multitudes), tracing their genealogies, their recent failures and victories, and their potentials to change the world. The book proposes and explores an intense and provoking series of new or reinvented concepts, figures, and theoretical constellations, including dividuality, the centaur, unintentional vanguard, insomnia at work, always-on capitalism, multitude (from its 'voiding' to a '(non)emergence'), crowds, necropolitics, and the link between political subjectivity and value-form. The contributors to Politics of the Many are both acclaimed and emergent thinkers including Carina Brand, Rebecca Carson, Luhuna Carvalho, Lorenzo Chiesa, Jodi Dean, Dario Gentili, Benjamin Halligan, Marc James Leger, Paul Mazzocchi, Alexei Penzin, Stefano Pippa, Gerald Raunig, and Stevphen Shukaitis.

The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, or Battle of the Books as it was known in England, famously pitted the Ancients on the one side and the Moderns on the other. This book presents a new intellectual history of the dispute, in which authors explore its manifestations across Europe in the arts and sciences, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. By paying close attention to local institutional contexts for the Querelle, contributors yield a complex picture of the larger debate. In intellectual life, authors uncover how the debate affected the publication of antiquarian scholarship, and how it became part of discussions in London coffee houses and the periodical press. Authors also position the Low Countries as the true pivot for a modernistic realignment of intellectual method, with concomitant rather than centralised developments in England and France. The volume is particularly concerned with the realisation of the Querelle in the realm of artistic and technical practice. Marrying modern approaches with ancient sympathies was fraught with difficulties, as contributors attest in analyses on musical writing, painting and the 'querelle du coloris', architectural practice and medical rhetorics. Tracing the deeper cultural resonances of the dispute, authors conclude by revealing how it fostered a new tendency to cultural self-reflection throughout Europe. Together, these contributions demonstrate how the Querelle acted as a leading principle for the configuration of knowledge across the arts and sciences throughout the early modern period, and also emphasise the links between historical debates and our contemporary understanding of what it means to be 'modern'.

How are cultural identities, values and traditions challenged, appropriated and negotiated? What does 'being secure' mean? Is 'soft power' merely a continuation of imperialism? The Handbook of Cultural Security heightens our awareness of the interplay between 'culture' and 'society' in the age of globalization, and explores the emerging concept of cultural security. With chapters from leading experts providing case studies from across the world this timely and unique Handbook examines the relationship between society, culture, and security in a globalizing world. Providing a diverse examination of the topic, the contributors emphasise the role of 'non traditional' security and seek to define what 'being secure' means across a broad number of contexts. Chapters cover topics ranging from the politics of radical Islam, the global spread of gated communities, and cultures of security and surveillance to discussions of the concept soft power; the forms it takes, and the impacts of 'exporting' culture. This Handbook provides a platform for future debate in both academic and policy fields, and as such will be of interest for both students of public and social policy, international relations, and politics, as well as those engaged in shaping policy in these areas. Contributors include: A. Akerlund, A. Anderson, A. Anisman, A. Azra, B.K. Blitz, E. Brogi, C. Ceniza Choy, A. Clarke, E. Eken, P. Gielen, J.L. Graves Jr., J. Guetzkow, F. Hartig, C.B. Huat, F. Izadi, J. Lai, G. Lee, A. Manguvo, O. McIvor, T. Monahan, M. Nyanungo, J. Pamment, A. Pande, S. Pandey, P.L. Parcu, A. Richter, J. Ruan, H. Saghaye-Biria, E. Sevin, S.J. Son, G. Sun, C. Webster, M. Wieviorka, A. Wojciuk, Y. Watanabe

Prominent scholars across the political divide and academic disciplines analyse how the dominant political parties in Malaysia and Singapore, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the People's Action Party (PAP), have stayed in power. With a focus on developments in the last decade and the tenures of Prime Ministers Najib Tun Razak and Lee Hsien Loong, the authors offer a range of explanations for how these regimes have remained politically resilient.

We are moving toward a future in which digital practices are becoming more ubiquitous. Also, there is evidence to suggest that innovative digital practices are changing the face of 21st-century learning environments. Critical to 21st-century teaching and learning success is continued emphasis on learner preferences, shaped by innovative digital technology-driven learning environments alongside teacher awareness, knowledge, and preparedness to deliver high-impact instruction using active learning pedagogies. Thus, the purposeful and selective use of digital learning tools in higher education and the incorporation of appropriate active learning pedagogies are pivotal to enhancing and supporting meaningful student learning. The Handbook of Research on Innovative Digital Practices and Globalization in Higher Education explores innovative digital practices to enhance academic performance for digital learners and prepare qualified graduates who are competent to work in an increasingly global digital workplace. Global competence has become an essential part of higher education and professional development. As such, it is the responsibility of higher education institutions to prepare students with the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to compete in the digital and global market. Covering topics such as design thinking, international students, and digital teaching innovation, this major reference work is an essential resource for pre-service and in-service teachers, educational technologists, instructional designers, faculty, administrators, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This edited volume advances knowledge of food security and food sovereignty for students and researchers. The book analyses and interprets field data and interrogates relevant literature, which forms the basis for decisions on improving food security and sovereignty in Africa. It deepens an understanding of food fraud, and of multinational corporations' (MNCs) manipulations of food quality to the detriment of consumers. It provides information to advance new knowledge on the issue of international interdependency of unequal exchange, and the inactions of governments against the dumping and waste of food.

In his now classic Voices of Collective Remembering, James V. Wertsch (2002) examines the extent to which certain narrative themes are embedded in the way the collective past is understood and national communities are imagined. In this work, Wertsch coined the term schematic narrative templates to refer to basic plots, such as the triumph over alien forces or quest for freedom, that are recurrently used, setting a national theme for the past, present and future. Whereas specific narratives are about particular events, dates, settings and actors, schematic narrative templates refer to more abstract structures, grounded in the same basic plot, from which multiple specific accounts of the past can be generated. As dominant and naturalised narrative structures, schematic narrative templates are typically used without being noticed, and are thus extremely conservative, impervious to evidence and resistant to change. The concept of schematic narrative templates is much needed today, especially considering the rise of nationalism and extreme-right populism, political movements that tend to tap into national narratives naturalised and accepted by large swathes of society. The present volume comprises empirical and theoretical contributions to the concept of schematic narrative templates by scholars of different disciplines (Historiography, Psychology, Education and Political Science) and from the vantage point of different cultural and social practices of remembering (viz., school history teaching, political discourses, rituals, museums, the use of images, maps, etc.) in different countries. The volume's main goal is to provide a transdisciplinary debate around the concept of schematic narrative templates, focusing on how narratives change as well as perpetuate at times when nationalist discourses seem to be on the rise. This book will be relevant to anyone interested in history, history teaching, nationalism, collective memory and the wider social debate on how to critically reflect on the past.

The names change, but the game remains the same.

The pimp has reached nearly mythical status. We are fascinated by the question of how a guy from the ghetto with no startup capital and no credit -- nothing but the words out of his mouth -- comes not only to have a stable of sexy women who consider him "their man," but to drive a Rolls, sport diamonds, and wear custom suits and alligator shoes from Italy.

His secret is to follow the "unwritten rules of the game" -- a set of regulations handed down orally from older, wiser macks -- which give him superhuman powers of charm, psychological manipulation, and persuasion.

In "Pimpology," star of the documentaries "Pimps Up, Ho's Down" and American Pimp and Annual Players Ball Mack of the Year winner Ken Ivy pulls a square's coat on the unwritten rules that took him from the ghetto streets to the executive suites. Ken's lessons will serve any person in any interaction: Whether at work, in relationships, or among friends, somebody's got to be on top. To be the one with the upper hand, you've got to have good game, and good game starts with knowing the rules.

If you want the money, power, and respect you dream of, you can't just "pimp your ride," you need to pimp your whole life. And unless you've seen Ray Charles leading Stevie Wonder somewhere, you need Ken's guidelines to do it. They'll reach out and touch you like AT&T and bring good things to life like GE. Then you can be the boss with the hot sauce who gets it all like Monty Hall.