The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network is an exploration of the vast intellectual networks which developed around the fifteenth century humanist Pontano. It includes the densely knit network which emerged in Naples, the Accademia Pontaniana, as well as the loosely knit networks which developed between the members of this academy and other humanists and academies outside of Naples. Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi points to the links between the Accademia Pontaniana and other sodalities in Southern Italy, and to the lineage between fifteenth century informal academies and sixteenth century institutional Academies. In this study recent sociological theory is applied to understand Renaissance academies and the vertical and horizontal links between them.

Catholicism is generally over-institutionalized and over-centralized in comparison to other religions. However, it finds itself in an increasingly interrelated and globalized world and is therefore immersed in a great plurality of social realities. The Changing Faces of Catholicism assembles an international cast of contributors to explore the consequent decline of powerful Catholic organisations as well as to address the responses and resistance efforts that specific countries have taken to counteract the secularization crisis in both Europe and the Americas. It reveals some of the strategies of the Catholic Church as a whole, and of the Vatican centre in particular, to address problems of the global era through the dissemination of spiritually progressive writing, World Youth Days, and the transformation of Catholic education to become a forum for intercultural and interreligious dialogue. The volume also reflects on the adaptation of Catholic institutions and missions as sponsored by religious communities and monastic orders.

In The Politics of Public Debt Daniel Bin analyzes how fiscal and monetary policies and the administration of public debt related to class, labor, and democracy during the period of neoliberal financialization in Brazil. Sustained by state action, the politico-economic context allowed the establishment of a macroeconomic framework that favored finance capital. It was characterized by the expropriation of workers' incomes through a system involving public debt and taxation, capable of deepening labor exploitation. Decisions about public debt and related policies are analyzed in terms of their implications for economic democracy. The book raises the hypothesis that the 2016 coup within the Brazilian capitalist state sought to overthrow the political forces that were no longer able to administer this model.

The Globalization of Rural Plays in the Twenty-First Century excavates the neglected ideological substratum of peasant folk plays. By focusing on northeastern Romania and southwest Ukraine-two of the most ruralized regions in Europe-this work reveals the complex landscape of peasant plays and the essential role they perform in shaping local culture, economy, and social life. The rapid demise of these practices and the creation of preservation programs is analyzed in the context of the corrosive effects of global capitalism and the processes of globalization, urbanization, mass-mediatization, and heritagization. Just like peasants in search of better resources, rural plays "migrate" from their villages of origin into the urban, modern, and more dynamic world, where they become more visible and are both appreciated and exploited as forms of transnational, intangible cultural heritage.

There is a widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be. We hear constant laments that we live too fast, that time is scarce, and that the pace of everyday life is spiraling out of our control. The iconic image that abounds is that of the frenetic, technologically tethered, iPhone/iPad-addicted citizen. Yet weren't modern machines supposed to save, and thereby free up, time? The purpose of this book is to bring a much-needed sociological perspective to bear on speed: it examines how speed and acceleration came to signify the zeitgeist, and explores the political implications of this. Among the major questions addressed are: when did acceleration become the primary rationale for technological innovation and the key measure of social progress? Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all aspects of life, or are some groups able to mobilise speed as a resource while others are marginalised and excluded? Does the growing centrality of technological mediations (of both information and communication) produce slower as well as faster times, waiting as well as 'busyness', stasis as well as mobility? To what extent is the contemporary imperative of speed as much a cultural artefact as a material one? To make sense of everyday life in the twenty-first century, we must begin by interrogating the social dynamics of speed. This book shows how time is a collective accomplishment, and that temporality is experienced very differently by diverse groups of people, especially between the affluent and those who service them.

In Mytho-poetics at Work Rengenier Rittersma offers an account of the posthumous fame of the Count of Egmont (1522-1568), whose public decapitation triggered the Dutch revolt. Drawing from numerous European sources - pamphlets, chronicles, and literature - this monograph tries to unravel why and how the alleged freedom fighter became an icon in European thought. It demonstrates that Egmont unfurled an evocative power over several centuries and cultural regions, as his name could be deliberately instrumentalized by different groups of people in order to corroborate their own confessional and political programs. In addition, this book offers the very first systematic study of the phenomenon of mytho-genesis and provides a conceptual model that can be applied to analogous historical myths.

Political discourse on immigration in the United States has largely focused on what is most visible, including border walls and detention centers, while the invisible information systems that undergird immigration enforcement have garnered less attention. Tracking the evolution of various surveillance-related systems since the 1980s, Borderland Circuitry investigates how the deployment of this information infrastructure has shaped immigration enforcement practices. Ana Muniz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muniz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands. Diving deep into a select group of information systems, Borderland Circuitry reveals how those with legal and political power deploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization.