The two-volume Oxford Companion to American Politics is the first reference work to provide detailed, in-depth coverage of all aspects of American Politics. Top scholars of American Politics have written entries that surpass all previous reference material on the subject and provide scholars and students with ready access to sophisticated, comprehensive material. Long entries form the core of the book, covering such topics as climate change, terrorism, welfare policies, nuclear proliferation, voting behavior, and think tanks. Each of these entries include high-level scrutiny of the literature, history and future of the topic. The Companion also includes a number of entries from the 2001 Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, revised as necessary to bring coverage of such topics as foreign aid, and nuclear weapons up to date. In the current context of political gridlock, international tension, economic underperformance and social division, students of American politics need to focus on more than the inner workings of their own political institutions, important as that focus is. They also need to approach their work with as wide an understanding of our contemporary international and domestic economic, social and cultural conditions as it is possible for them quickly and easily to acquire. The Oxford Companion to American Politics has been designed precisely to meet the full range of those needs.

Is Africa the dark continent or the bright continent? Is this Africa’s century? How many inventions have been made in Africa? Is the nature of innovation in Africa different from elsewhere? Do you know the difference between tef and TEF; or a SolarTurtle, a Turtle car from Ghana and a satellite-tagged loggerhead turtle? How many African countries have produced their own cars? Why is the MPesa mobile money system so important? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in this remarkable book – the first of its kind. Over 800 inventions and innovations by more than 600 innovators from 50 African countries are discussed, and a variety of issues related to innovation are debated. From mompreneurs to moguls, waste pickers to fintech wizards, locust whisperers to rocket scientists, robocops to internet-enabled balloons, surfing therapy to gin flavoured with elephant dung, shweshwe cloth to microsatellites, you will be astounded by the creativity of the continent’s techpreneurs. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of Africa.

Charts the Union's development from its conception through to the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty and its continuing activities. Includes an A-Z section of concise definitions and explanations of organizations, acronyms and terms.

The most extensive collection of information available on the European Union.
The third edition of this definitive reference work has been thoroughly revised and updated to provide the latest information on the EU. It charts the Union's development from its conception through to the creation of the single market in 1992, to the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty and its continuing activities. Contents include:
An A-Z section of concise definitions and explanations of organizations, acronyms and terms, plus short articles on the member states.
A series of introductory articles providing a broader view of the policies and activities of the EU.
Statistical data for the entire EU on trade, employment and industrial production.
An extensive directory of key names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail and internet addresses for all major European Union institutions and official bodies.
Details of MEPs, their political groups and national parties, members of major committees, Directorates-General and other commission bodies.

This reference provides detailed facts and figures on the bodies that encourage international peace and security, and greater cooperation in economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian areas. Details are provided on the history and legislative framework of international organizations, helping to provide the necessary background information to aid your understanding of international cooperation. The Europa Directory International Organizations contains a thorough and informative introductory essay on the developing role of international organizations and the challenges facing the international community in the 21 century. This source also contains texts of significant international charters, treaties, and documents; biographical information on the leading officials of international organizations; an extensive list of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions; a Calendar of Observances; and a comprehensive index.

One of the longest and seemingly most intractable civil wars in Latin America was brought to an end by the signing of the Peace Accords between the Guatemalan government and the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) in December 1996. The essays in this volume evaluate progress made in the implementation of the peace agreements and signal some of the key challenges for future political and institutional reform. The volume opens with a chapter by Gustavo Porras, the government's main negotiator in the peace process. The first section then examines the issue of demilitarization. This is followed by aspects of indigenous rights in the peace process, including conceptual frameworks for rights advancement, the harmonization of state law and customary law, and the challenges of nation-state and citizenship construction. The next section examines issues of truth, justice, and reconciliation, and assesses prospects for the Truth Commission. The volume closes with an analysis of different aspects of political reform in Guatemala and includes comments made on the chapters and developed in the debate which took place at the conference on which it is based. The contributors are Marta Altolaguirre*, Marta Elena Casa?s*, Demetrio Cojt?*, Edgar Guti?rrez*, Frank La Rue, Roger Plant, Gustavo Porras*, Alfonso Portillo*, Jennifer Schirmer, Rachel Sieder, David Stoll, Rosalina Tuyuc*, Anna Vinegrad, Richard Wilson (* chapters in Spanish).

During the Great War, voluntary medical assistance to British Forces was organised by the British Red Cross and the Order of St John. As the conflict escalated there was a shortage of medical assistance and ancillary services. The solution came with the creation of the General Service Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) which enabled those with little or no medical training to undertake more routine jobs - cooks, laundry maids, wardmaids, dispensers, drivers etc. This book is a reprint of the final, and largest, British Red Cross list giving information of over 18,000 women and men who were involved. It provides individual detail (name, rank, unit, destination) together with lists of Headquarters Staff, Commissioners and Representatives, and also a Roll of Honour

James McHugh offers the first comprehensive examination of the concepts and practices related to smell in pre-modern India. Drawing on a wide range of textual sources, from poetry to medical texts, he shows the deeply significant religious and cultural role of smell in India throughout the first millennium CE. McHugh describes sophisticated arts of perfumery, developed in temples, monasteries, and courts, which resulted in worldwide ocean trade. He shows that various religious discourses on the purpose of life emphasized the pleasures of the senses, including olfactory experience, as a valid end in themselves. Fragrances and stenches were analogous to certain values, aesthetic or ethical, and in a system where karmic results often had a sensory impact-where evil literally stank-the ethical and aesthetic became difficult to distinguish. Sandalwood and Carrion explores smell in pre-modern India from many perspectives, covering such topics as philosophical accounts of smell perception, odors in literature, the history of perfumery in India, the significance of sandalwood in Buddhism, and the divine offering of perfume to the gods.

Music is one of the most distinctive cultural characteristics of Latin American countries. But, while many people in the United States and Europe are familiar with musical genres such as salsa, merengue, and reggaeton, the musical manifestations that young people listen to in most Latin American countries are much more varied than these commercially successful ones that have entered the American and European markets. Not only that, the young people themselves often have little in common with the stereotypical image of them that exists in the American imagination.
Bridging this divide between perception and reality, Music and Youth Culture in Latin America brings together contributors from throughout Latin America and the US to examine the ways in which music is used to advance identity claims in several Latin American countries and among Latinos in the US. From young Latin American musicians who want to participate in the vibrant jazz scene of New York without losing their cultural roots, to Peruvian rockers who sing in their native language (Quechua) for the same reasons, to the young Cubans who use music to construct a post-communist social identification, this volume sheds new light on the complex ways in which music provides people from different countries and social sectors with both enjoyment and tools for understanding who they are in terms of nationality, region, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and migration status. Drawing on a vast array of fields including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, sociology, and history, Music and Youth Culture in Latin America is an illuminating read for anyone interested in Latin American music, culture, and society."

What was the role of mousike, the realm of the Muses, in Greek life? More wide-ranging in its implications than the English 'music', mousike lay at the heart of Greek culture, and was often indeed synonymous with culture. In its commonest form, it represented for the Greeks a seamless complex of music, poetic word, and physical movement, encompassing a vast array of performances - from small-scale entertainment in the private home to elaborate performances involving the entire community. Yet the history of the field, particularly in anglophone scholarship, has been hitherto narrowly conceived, and the broader cultural significance of mousike largely ignored. Focusing mainly on classical Athens these new and specially commissioned essays analyse the theory and practice of musical performance in a variety of social contexts and demonstrate the centrality of mousike to the values and ideology of the polis. The so-called 'new musical revolution' in late fifth-century Athens receives serious treatment in this volume for the first time. A major theme of the book is the musical and mousike dimension of Greek religion, rarely analysed in its own right. The ethical and philosophical aspects of Athenian mousike are another central concern, with the figure of the dancing philosopher as an emblem of music's role in intellectual life. The book as a whole provides an integrated cultural analysis of central aspects of Greek mousike, which will be of interest to classical scholars, to cultural historians, and to anyone concerned with understanding the power of music as a cultural phenomenon.

From its earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception, and the promise of a journey. PARALLEL TRACKS is the first book to explore and explain this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history. This highly original work reveals the profound impact that the railroad and the cinema have had on Western society and modern urban industrial culture. It will be eagerly received by those involved in film studies, American studies, feminist theory and the cultural study of modernity. It will also have appeal to general readers interested in silent films or in the history of the railroad.

The Weimar period, which extended from 1919 to 1933, was a time of political violence, economic crisis, generational and gender tension, and cultural experiment and change in Germany. Despite these major issues, the Republic is often treated only as a preface to the study of the rise of Fascism. This text seeks to restore the balance, exploring the Weimar period in its own right. Amongst the topics discussed are: Weimar as the avant-garde artistic centre of Europe in the 1920s when many cultural figures were politically engaged on both sides of the political spectrum; Weimar as a German state racked by conflict over questions of morality versus ideas of greater sexual freedom for women, homosexual rights, abortion and birth control; the struggle to win the hearts and minds of German youth, a struggle won decisively by the right-wing; and Weimar as the first German state in which women played a significant political role. -- .

Every weekday, the wildly popular Tom Joyner Morning Show reaches more than eight million radio listeners. The show offers broadly progressive political talk, adult-oriented soul music, humor, advice, and celebrity gossip for largely older, largely working-class black audience. But it's not just an old-school show: it's an activist political forum and a key site reflecting on popular aesthetics. It focuses on issues affecting African Americans today, from the denigration of hard-working single mothers, to employment discrimination and sexual abuse, to the racism and violence endemic to the U.S. criminal justice system, to international tragedies. In Black Radio/Black Resistance, author Micaela di Leonardo dives deep into the Tom Joyner Morning Show's 25 year history inside larger U.S. broadcast history. From its rise in the Clinton era and its responses to key events-9/11, Hurricane Katrina, President Obama's elections and presidency, police murders of unarmed black Americans and the rise of Black Lives Matter, and Donald Trump's ascendancy-it has broadcast the varied, defiant, and darkly comic voices of its anchors, guests, and audience members. di Leonardo also investigates the new synergistic set of cross-medium ties and political connections that have affected print, broadcast, and online reporting and commentary in antiracist directions. This new multiracial progressive public sphere has extraordinary potential for shaping America's future. Thus Black Radio/Black Resistance does far more than simply shed light on a major counterpublic institution unjustly ignored for reasons of color, class, generation, and medium. It demonstrates an alternative understanding of the shifting black public sphere in the digital age. Like the show itself, Black Radio/Black Resistance is politically progressive, music-drenched, and blisteringly funny.

The Age of New Waves examines the origins of the concept of the "new wave" in 1950s France and the proliferation of new waves in world cinema over the past three decades. The book suggests that youth, cities, and the construction of a global market have been the catalysts for the cinematic new waves of the past half century. It begins by describing the enthusiastic engagement between French nouvelle vague filmmakers and a globalizing American cinema and culture during the modernization of France after World War II. It then charts the growing and ultimately explosive disenchantment with the aftermath of that massive social, economic, and spatial transformation in the late 1960s. Subsequent chapters focus on films and visual culture from Taiwan and contemporary mainland China during the 1980s and 1990s, and they link the recent propagation of new waves on the international film festival circuit to the "economic miracles" and consumer revolutions accompanying the process of globalization. While it travels from France to East Asia, the book follows the transnational movement of a particular model of cinema organized around mise en scene-or the interaction of bodies, objects, and spaces within the frame-rather than montage or narrative. The "master shot" style of directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Tsai Ming-Liang, and Jia Zhangke has reinvented a crucial but overlooked tendency in new wave film, and this cinema of mise en scene has become a key aesthetic strategy for representing the changing relationships between people and the material world during the rise of a global market. The final chapter considers the interaction between two of the most global phenomena in recent film history-the transnational art cinema and Hollywood-and it searches for traces of an American New Wave.

Beyond Interdisciplinarity examines the broadening meaning of core concept across academic disciplines and other forms of knowledge. In this book, Associate Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity and internationally recognized scholar Julie Thompson Klein depicts the heterogeneity and boundary work of inter- and trans-disciplinarity in a conceptual framework based on an ecology of spatializing practices in transaction spaces, including trading zones and communities of practice. The book includes both "crossdisciplinary" work (encompassing multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary forms) as well as "cross-sector" work (spanning disciplines, fields, professions, government and industry, and communities). The first section of the book defines and explains boundary work, discourses of interdisciplinarity, and the nature of interdisciplinary fields. In the second section, Klein examines dynamics of working across disciplines, including communication, collaboration, and learning with concrete examples and lessons from research projects and programs that transcend traditional fields. The closing chapter examines reasons for failure and success then presents gateways to literature and other resources. Throughout the book, Klein emphasizes the roles of contextualization and historical change while factoring in the shifting relationship of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, ascendancy of transdisciplinarity, and intersections with other constructs including Mode 2 knowledge production, convergence, team science, and postdisciplinarity. The conceptual framework she provides also includes the role of boundary objects, agents, and organizations in brokering differences and creating for platforms for change. Klein further explains why translation, interlanguage, and a communication boundary space are vital to achieving intersubjectivity and collective identity. They foster not only pragmatics of negotiation and integration but also reflexivity, transactivity, and co-production of knowledge with stakeholders beyond the academy. Rhetorics of holism and synthesis compete with instrumentalities of problem solving and transgressive critiques. However, typical warrants today include complexity, contextualization, collaboration, and socially-robust knowledge. Crossing boundaries remains complex, but this book guides readers through the density of pertinent literature while expanding understandings of crossdisciplinary and cross-sector work.

Soon after 9/11, wild rumors began to spread: that Arab-Americans were celebrating publicly, that some people had been warned, that politicians knew all along.
The Global Grapevine reveals how--through our everyday thoughts and conversations, and the rumors we spread--we grapple with the new global world. Drawn from diverse sources, the book illuminates urban legends like the claim that a certain t-shirt with a Chinese pictogram brands the wearer as a prostitute, conspiracy theories such as the "9/11 Truth Movement," or stories of tourists infected with AIDS by locals. These rumors, the authors argue, reflect our anxieties and fears about contact with foreign cultures--how we believe foreign competition to be poisoning the domestic economy and foreign immigration to be eroding American values. Focusing on the threat posed by terrorism, the impact of immigration, the risks involved in international trade, and the dangers faced by naive tourism, the book provides a broad survey of the most widely circulated rumors and examines what these tales reveal about contemporary society.

Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests.'Graeme Turner's writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.' - Meaghan Morris'Making it National could be to the 1990s what Richard White's Inventing Australia was to the 1980s.' - Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University

The Museum Environment is in two parts; Part I: intended for conservators and museum curators and describes the principles and techniques of controlling the environment so that the potentially damaging effects of light, humidity and air pollution on museum exhibits may be minimised. Part II: the author brings together and summarises information and data, hitherto widely scattered in the literature of diverse fields, which is essential to workers in conservation research.
Since the timely publication of the first two editions of this book in hardback, interest in preventive conservation has continued to grow strongly making publication of this paperback edition all the more welcome. Those whose responsibility it is to care for the valuable and beautiful objects in the world's collections have become increasingly aware that it is better to prevent their deterioration, by ensuring that they are housed and displayed in the best possible environmental conditions, than to wait until restoration and repair are necessary. The changes for the second edition have been mainly concentrated in the sections on electronic hygrometry, new fluorescent lamps, buffered cases, air conditioning systems, data logging, and control within historic buildings. A new appendix, giving a summary of museum specificiations for conservation, provides a useful, quick reference.
* New paperback edition of successful text
* Now at lower price
* Essential reading for conservators and museum curators and scientists

Up until the end of World War II, academe in central Europe showed little interest in American culture. However, this rapidly changed as American culture became an increasingly inescapable part of everyday life in the postwar period. Drawing on a series of transatlantic encounters in the years following 1945, George Blaustein chronicles how issues like race, gender, and empire, as they relate to the United States, became areas of intense interest among members of the European academy. A major part of Blaustein's book revolves around the exchange of ideas that took place at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, founded in 1947. Through the period of occupation, the seminar hosted a who's-who of American and European intellectual life: figures like F. O. Matthiessen, Margaret Mead, Alfred Kazin, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Alain Locke, and John Hope Franklin. In four concise chapters, Nightmare Envy and Other Stories explores how the ruin of postwar Europe led writers and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to understand America in new ways. Nightmare Envy and Other Stories will interest scholars in the fields of American Studies, postwar intellectual history, and cultural diplomacy.

'An alluvial goldfield of social theorists - nuggets lying around all over the place.'Bob ConnellWho's who in the social theory zoo? This book introduces some of the leading social theorists in short, lively entries by leading Australian scholars. Social Theory covers thinkers from Althusser to Williams, by locals from Alexander to Yeatman.For beginner and enthusiast alike, it gives a sense of the state of the art in classical and modern social theory. Social Theory is an indispensable reference for undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and anyone else interested in the ideas behind social and political theory and cultural studies today.

In Landscape of the Now, author Kent De Spain takes readers on a deep journey into the underlying processes and structures of postmodern movement improvisation. Based on a series of interviews with master teachers who have developed unique approaches that are taught around the world - Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Lisa Nelson, Deborah Hay, Nancy Stark Smith, Barbara Dilley, Anna Halprin, and Ruth Zaporah - this book offers the rare opportunity to find some clarity in what is often a complex and confusing experience. After more than 20 years of research, De Spain has created an extensive list of questions that explore issues that arise for the improviser in practice and performance as well as resources that influence movements and choices. Answers to these questions are placed side by side to create dialog and depth of understanding, and to see the range of possible approaches experienced improvisers might explore. In its nineteen chapters, Landscape of the Now delves into issues like the influence of an audience on an improviser's choices or how performers "track" and use their experience of the moment. The book also looks at the role of cognitive skills, memory, space, emotion, and the senses. One chapter offers a rare opportunity for an honest discussion of the role of various forms of spirituality in what is seen as a secular dance form. Whether read from cover to cover or pulled apart and explored a subject at a time, Landscape of the Now offers the reader a kind of map into the mysterious realm of human creativity, and the wisdom and experience of artists who have spent a lifetime exploring it.

This encyclopedic collection of more than 200 of the most decisive and important battles throughout world history gets a fresh interpretation by a noted military historian. The mythic and doomed stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae; the siege of Carthage in 149-146 BCE, which ended with Rome destroying the city and enslaving the entire remaining Carthaginian population; the Battle of Hastings in 1066, arguably the most important battle ever on English soil; the Battle of Trenton that saved the American Revolutionary cause and established the military reputation of General Washington; the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945, that destroyed one quarter of the city. All of these conflicts—and hundreds more—played a crucial role in defining the direction of history and the evolution of human society. This text provides high school-level readers with detailed descriptions of the battlefield actions that have played the greatest parts in shaping military history and human existence. Special attention is paid to the greater historical context and significance of each battle, especially in relation to other events.

An annual collection of studies on individuals who have made major contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Each paper describes the geographer's education, life, work, their influence and spread of academic ideas. A bibliography of their works and chronology is also incorporated. The work includes a listed general index, and cumulative index of geographers in the volumes published to date.