Providing an indispensable resource for students, educators, businessmen, and officials investigating the transformative experience of modern China, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the culture, institutions, traditions, and international relations that have shaped today's China. In Modern China, author Xiaobing Li offers a resource far beyond a conventional encyclopedia, providing not only comprehensive coverage of Chinese civilization and traditions, but also addressing the values, issues, and critical views of China. As a result, readers will better understand the transformative experience of the most populous country in the world, and will grasp the complexity of the progress and problems behind the rise of China to a world superpower in less than 30 years. Written by an author who lived in China for three decades, this encyclopedia addresses 16 key topics regarding China, such as its geography, government, social classes and ethnicities, gender-based identities, arts, media, and food, each followed by roughly 250 short entries related to each topic. All the entries are placed within a broad sociopolitical and socioeconomic contextual framework. The format and writing consistency through the book reflects a Chinese perspective, and allows students to compare Chinese with Western and American views. Covers contemporary Chinese politics, economy, geography, law, education, culture, and history, providing readers with a breadth of insights into modern China and its people Addresses a variety of current issues such as pollution, corruption, human trafficking, human rights, civil liberties, and the one-child policy Contains accessible information ideal for high school and college-level students, grade school teachers, and any readers interested in the general topics of Asia and China

The urban rebellions that rocked Miami in 1980, and other large cities in the United States during the 1960s, can be looked at as contributory components of the Black freedom movement. This new study argues that they are, on one level, a tactical response to contemporary forms of White domination and, on another level, an act in which key core values of the African American experience are sustained. The book provides an overview of racial violence in America, from the slaveocracy of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the urban rebellions of the late 20th century. It shows that in Black-White intergroup relations, Whites have used violence and the threat of violence to repress and intimidate Blacks. Blacks have used violence as a way of resisting White domination. The form that violence has taken has been shaped by prevailing societal conditions.

Importantly, the book concentrates on the essence of Black-White intergroup relations. In doing so, the thematic and cultural propensities that pattern the reality of those relations are clearer. Foremost is the practice of White domination and the Black response of resistance, which seeks to end that domination and encourage freedom and justice. The book ends by going beyond current thinking and looks to African American core values as key referents to examine Black violence.

How does one of the world's greatest powers preserve its status and influence when international conditions are unfavourable and its resources do not match its commitments? This was Britain's burden in the 1970s and 1980s when the international order was transformed. Much became unsettled and Britain had to adapt policy to suit new needs and opportunities. Michael J. Turner elucidates the efforts that were made to maximise Britain's role on those matters and in those parts of the world that were of special importance to British strategy, prosperity and security. He examines key decisions and their consequences and places British policy-making in an international context, suggesting that British leaders were more successful in preserving power and prestige on the world stage than has sometimes been appreciated.

An accessible collection of essays about one of the most dramatic moment in France's modern history: the "event" of 1968. Often seen purely as a student revolution, the events of 1968 in fact impacted on almost every aspect of French society - theatre, film, gender relations, sexuality, race and immigration, farmers, workers. This volume of essays, written by young researchers and established scholars from France, Britain and the United States is the only book in English to explore the full diversity of this extraordinary upheaval. It takes us out of Paris to the regions of France, out of the student Latin Quarter into the factories, and shows how the events of 1968 continued to reverberate throughout the next decade, and how their legacy is still highly contested in France today.

"Ambiguous Memory" examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views.

Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.

An in-depth and comprehensive account of the complex history of Japanese modernism from the mid-19th century "opening to the West" until the 21st century globalized world of "postmodernism." Its concept of modernism encompasses not just the aesthetic avant-garde but a wide spectrum of social, political and cultural phenomena.

Burning the veil draws upon sources from newly-opened archives, exploring the 'emancipation' of Muslim women from the veil, seclusion and perceived male oppression during the Algerian War of decolonisation. The claimed French liberation was contradicted by the violence inflicted on women through rape, torture and destruction of villages. This book examines the roots of this contradiction in the theory of 'revolutionary warfare', and the attempt to defeat the National Liberation Front by penetrating the Muslim family, seen as a bastion of resistance. Striking parallels with contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq, French 'emancipation' produced a backlash that led to deterioration in the social and political position of Muslim women. This analysis of how and why attempts to Westernise Muslim women ended in catastrophe has contemporary relevance and will be important to students and academics engaged in the study of French and colonial history, feminism and contemporary Islam. -- .

Western civilization has thrived more than any other civilization in the past or present - it has been much more successful in economic, military and political terms, in science and technology, in the arts, and in enhancing its citizens' health, wealth, longevity and even, probably, their happiness. A large degree of success can be traced to six principal ideas - Christianity, optimism, science, economic growth, liberalism and individualism. In 1900, most Westerners felt tremendous pride and confidence in their civilization. They knew what it stood for, and they believed in it. Today that sense has gone. And that is largely because the six ideas which underpinned Western confidence have suffered a century of sustained attack. The ideas no longer inspire or unite the West, nor do they give individuals the confidence essential for unconscious coordinated action. A drift towards collective suicide is evident; it is deeply impregnated in our history since 1914. It can be traced to the declining confidence in each of the attributes that used to inspire the West and the world. However, a careful examination of the six factors shows that they have great resilience. Much of today's hostility to the ideas is based on fashionable but flaky concepts, such as Freud's view of human nature, which scientific evidence rebuts. In theory, a more sophisticated synthesis of the six ideas could provide a way for the West to recover its nerve and integrity. But in practice? This fascinating book seeks to find the answer.

In this unique and informative new volume, Beate Hamizrachi offers a fascinating examination of the emergence of the Israeli-controlled Security Belt and the rise of Lebanese Major Saad Haddad in South Lebanon. The detailed descriptions of events and people, often based on the author's personal experience, in the Lebanese kaleidoscope will give scholars, students, decision-makers, and journalists a better understanding of the ongoing internal struggle and the external pressures in Lebanon.

From interpretations of the Holocaust to fascist thought and anti-fascists' responses, and the problems of memorializing this difficult past, this essay collection tackles topics which are rarely studied in conjunction. As well as historical analyses of fascist and anti-fascist thinking, Stone analyses the challenges involved in writing history in general and Holocaust historiography in particular. Following an introductory essay on 'history and its discontents', the wide-ranging chapters deal with individual thinkers of very different sorts, such as Hannah Arendt, Rolf Gardiner, Jules Monnerot and Saul Friedlander, movements such as interwar rural revivalism, the contested translation of Mein Kampf, emigre anti-fascists' writings, and the relationship between memory and history, especially with respect to atrocities like genocide. This unique collection of essays on a wide variety of topics contributes to understanding the roots and consequences of mid-twentieth-century Europe's great catastrophe.

This recently discovered study by Allen W. Dulles, brother of John Foster and Eleanor Dulles, OSS director in Switzerland during the Second World War and later director of the CIA, was written in the winter of 1947/48 when the acceptance of the Marshall Plan was still in doubt. At this point Dulles, who had been prominently involved in the planning of this recovery programme, produced this well-argued manuscript forcefully putting the case for acceptance. This book offers not only fascinating insights into the dramatic atmosphere of the early postwar period, but may also serve as an inspiration to policy-makers at a time when, 45 years later, there is much discussion of recovery programmes for Eastern Europe and the Marshall Plan is often evoked as a possible model.

This book intervenes in debates over the significance of Diana, Princess of Wales, by offering a critical account of her status as a media icon from 1981 to the present. It outlines the historical development of representations of Diana, analyzing the ways in which she has been understood via discourses of gender, sexuality, race, economic class, the royal, national identity, and the human. The book goes on to assess the issues at stake in debates over the "meaning" of Diana, such as the gender politics of cultural icon-making and deconstruction, and conflicting notions of cultural value.

In this book, the author describes that the relationship based shareholding was the hidden key factor to explain Japan's miraculous economic success after WWII. The stock market which valued the low profitability Japanese companies highly enabled them to provide 'better and cheaper' manufactured goods in the export markets, leading resource poor Japan to a leading exporter and economic and financial superpower. The book also casts critical eyes to the weakness of the traditional Japanese financial system as a catch-up model, in comparison with the open US system.

In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.

With the specter of prosecution after his term is over and the possibility of disbarment in Arkansas hanging over President Clinton, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the events that have followed it show no sign of abating. The question has become what to do, and how to think, about those eight months. Did the President lie or was it plausible that he had truthfully testified to no sexual relationship? Was the job search for Monica just help for a friend or a sinister means of obtaining silence? Even if all the charges were true, did impeachment follow or was censure enough? And what are the lasting repercussions on the office of the Presidency?

Aftermath: The Clinton Impeachment and the Presidency in the Age of Political Spectacle takes a multi-disciplinary approach to analyze the Clinton impeachment from political perspectives across the spectrum. The authors attempt to tease out the meanings of the scandal from the vantage point of law, religion, public opinion, and politics, both public and personal. Further, the impeachment itself is situated broadly within the contemporary American liberal state and mined for the contradictory possibilities for reconciliation it reveals in our culture.

Contributors: David T. Canon, John Cooper, Drucilla Cornell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Robert W. Gordon, Lawrence Joseph, Leonard V. Kaplan, David Kennedy, Kenneth R. Mayer, Beverly I. Moran, Father Richard John Neuhaus, David Novak, Linda Denise Oakley, Elizabeth Rapaport, Lawrence Rosen, Eric Rothstein, Aviam Soifer, Lawrence M. Solan, Cass R. Sunstein, Stephen Toulmin, Leon Trakman, Frank Tuerkheimer, Mark V. Tushnet, Andrew D. Weiner, Robin L. West.

In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the victors were unable to agree on Germany's fate, and the separation of the country-the result of the nascent Cold War-emerged as a de facto, if provisional, settlement. Yet East and West Germany would exist apart for half a century, making the "German question" a central foreign policy issue-and given the war-torn history between the two countries, this was felt no more keenly than in France. Drawing on the most recent historiography and previously untapped archival sources, this volume shows how France's approach to the German question was, for the duration of the Cold War, both more constructive and consequential than has been previously acknowledged.

This volume compares one of the largest instances of 'ethnic cleansing' - the German expellees from the East (Vertriebene) - with the most important case of decolonization migration - the French repatriates of Algeria (pieds-noirs).

The political, social, and economic problems of southern Africa cannot be resolved until nations of this critical region effect educational reform. But this process requires more than change in the educational system; it involves the thrust for social transformation in national institutions. This unique study addresses key issues relative to both educational reform and social change in southern Africa. Topics discussed include the need for educational reform; approaches to educational reform; and the results of such reform on the individual and society. A bibliography and an index complete the text.

Violent politcs in Northern Ireland has lasted thirty years and cost four thousand lives and billions of pounds. Many such conflicts afflict the world. This book describes the search for causes and solutions. It identifies the key factors driving violent politics and the range of counter-strategies. It analyzes the course of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the results of the counter-measures used. The conclusions are disturbing. The recommendations are controversial, but difficult to escape.

Politics is one method of solving conflicts. War is another. Violent politcs - lying in the zone between peace and war - is a third, used increasingly to trump conventional politics. Michael Addison, soldier and scholar, explores the history and myths of terrorism; he describes the search for causes and solutions; he identifies the key factors driving violent politics and the range of counter strategies. In particular, he challenges conventional thinking on thirty-three years of conflict in Northern Ireland, through battle, tribal warfare, stalemate then peace process. With thousands dead, tens of thousands injured or maimed and bilions spent, Violent Politicsasks: Could the people of Northern Ireland have been better served? Should the Peace Process fail, what next?

This book is the first study of the power of the Russian Parliament in the policy process from 1994-2001, within the context of executive-legislative relations. It challenges the widely held view that between 1994 and 2001 Russia had a presidential system with a strong, authoritarian leader who ruled by decree and a weak parliament which did not have much power.

Theoretically expansive yet historically well-grounded, ""Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity"" offers a powerful lens through which to view this city's latest self-reinvention. Presenting a trans-disciplinary approach to understanding one of the world's most iconic cities, the book relates to recent trends in post-Cold-War cultural history, memory studies, visual culture, and border studies. Through a focus on the moving boundaries of Berlin, Janet Ward reshapes the parameters of urban enquiry and sheds new light on debates surrounding the city's division and rebuilding, post-1989 and post-9/11 globalization, the new Europe, urban preservation and 'memory sites'. This book is, in short, a bold reassessment of the modern and postmodern urban condition.

The 1970s were difficult years for the United States, a time when long-held convictions were challenged and the nation experienced a collective identity crisis. Women and minorities called into question the belief that freedom and equality are the birthright of all Americans. The civil rights movements of the 1970s argued that American history is full of racism and violence against women and people of color. Watergate and related scandals of the Nixon administration damaged the country's faith in politicians and the political system. The Arab oil boycott, the energy crisis, the environmental movement, and years of stagflation raised doubts about the future of the nation's economy, and in the jungles of Vietnam, many Americans began to doubt their ability to protect the world from Communism.

An encyclopedic overview of the era, this book includes entries on the prominent people and significant events, issues and controversies of the decade, and entries on the film, music, and culture of the period. A chronology provides a time line for the events of the 1970s.

This text analyses the political and ethnical tensions that characterize Nigeria, which derive both from colonial and contemporary conflicts. It points out three major factors why Nigeria has not yet collapsed like many other African states: ethnic power sharing amongst the political elite, the military with its national outlook, and oil wealth.

This up-to-date collection analyzes Romania's experiences of the transition form the harsh realities of the Ceausescu dictatorship to the uncertainties of the efforts to consolidate democracy and introduce a market economy. This volume focuses on Romania's progress in coming to terms with the legacy of its communist past, the realities of pluralism, the introduction of a market economy, and the challenge of European integration.