Academic and accepted orthodoxy maintains that Southeast Asia, and Asia generally, is evolving into a distinctive East Asian regional order. This book questions this claim and reveals instead uncertainty and incoherence at the heart of ASEAN, the region's foremost institution. The authors provide a systematic critique of ASEAN's evolution and institutional development, as well as a unified understanding of the international relations and political economy of ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific. It is the first study to provide a sceptical analysis of international relations orthodoxies regarding regionalization and institutionalism, and is based on wide-ranging and rigorous research. Students of international relations, the Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia, regional studies, international history and security and defence studies will find this book of great interest, as will scholars, policy makers and economic forecasters with an interest in long-term Asia-Pacific trends.

The learned editors of this new four-volume collection from Routledge argue that-at its core-postcolonialism makes two substantial claims, with corresponding research agendas and political implications. First, that the emergence and functioning of the modern world cannot be truly understood and explained as if it originated in Europe and was then 'exported' to the non-West; such Eurocentric accounts must be interrogated and challenged. Second, that since the humanities and social sciences developed in Europe, as an attempt to make sense of Western developments, the analytical tools and disciplinary formations by which we seek to explain and represent the world also need to be critically questioned, and where necessary, rethought. This timely new collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Political Science series enables users to comprehend the scope and ambition of these claims, and to make sense of the dizzying diversity of texts, generated across different continents and in different languages, and spanning numerous fields of intellectual and literary endeavour, that constitute the formative and central works of Postcolonial Politics. The four volumes that make up the collection are edited by the directors of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and unite the expertise of three distinguished scholars who have produced a unique 'mini library' that is as diverse as its subject matter. Postcolonial Politics brings together foundational and cutting-edge essays and journal articles, and it draws on sources from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as well as those in the Western world, including some newly translated pieces. Fully indexed and with new introductions to each volume, this collection will be welcomed by scholars, other researchers, and advanced students as an indispensable reference and pedagogic resource.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP 2014). The conference is a venue for multidisciplinary research contributing to the design, assessment and analysis of cooperative systems and their integration in organizations, public venues, and everyday life. COOP emerged from the European tradition of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Cognitive Ergonomics as practiced in France. These proceedings are a collection of 28 papers reflecting the variety of research activities in the field, as well as an increasing interest in investigating the use and design of ICT in all aspects of everyday life and society, and not merely in the workplace. The papers represent a variety of research topics, from healthcare to sustainable mobility to disaster response, in settings from all over the world. For the first time, the proceedings include papers presented in an Early-Career Researchers Track which was organized in order to give young researchers the opportunity to discuss their work with an international community. This collection of papers provides a picture of new developments and classic topics of research around cooperative systems, based on the principle that a deep knowledge of cooperative practices is a key to understanding technology impacts and producing quality designs. The articles presented will appeal to researchers and practitioners alike, as they combine an understanding of the nature of work with the possibilities offered by novel digital technologies.

After years of mounting controversy over the conciliar reform a book finally emerges to set the record straight about Vatican II and how it was used by progressives to change the course of Church history. This fast moving book shows what happened at the Council and how it opened the way for a new ecumenical movement not tied with the religion of the past. It shows how progressives hijacked the opening session and how they scrapped Pope John's plan for Vatican II, and how they used the liturgy as a tiller to navigate Peter's Bark onto a new and dangerous course. It also provides the gist of the long awaited Third Secret of Fatima, and reveals the "Deception of the Century" concerning Pope Paul VI and what he endured at the hands of Vatican bureaucrats. Riveting, Hard-hitting, and bound to captivate A must read for anyone concerned with the Church As we tread in the shadows of the great ecumenical Council it is expedient to understand our condition and this book will dispel any doubt and place everything in focus that we may recognize the times and approach them with courage, peace and light.

Over the last decade, a great amount of effort and resources have been invested in the development of Semantic Web Service (SWS) frameworks. Numerous description languages, frameworks, tools, and matchmaking and composition algorithms have been proposed. Nevertheless, when faced with a real-world problem, it is still very hard to decide which of these different approaches to use.

In this book, the editors present an overall overview and comparison of the main current evaluation initiatives for SWS. The presentation is divided into four parts, each referring to one of the evaluation initiatives. Part I covers the long-established first two tracks of the Semantic Service Selection (S3) Contest - the OWL-S matchmaker evaluation and the SAWSDL matchmaker evaluation. Part II introduces the new S3 Jena Geography Dataset (JGD) cross evaluation contest. Part III presents the Semantic Web Service Challenge. Lastly, Part IV reports on the semantic aspects of the Web Service Challenge. The introduction to each part provides an overview of the evaluation initiative and overall results for its latest evaluation workshops. The following chapters in each part, written by the participants, detail their approaches, solutions and lessons learned.This book is aimed at two different types of readers. Researchers on SWS technology receive an overview of existing approaches in SWS with a particular focus on evaluation approaches; potential users of SWS technologies receive a comprehensive summary of the respective strengths and weaknesses of current systems and thus guidance on factors that play a role in evaluation.

Extending Web Services Technologies addresses the rapidly growing impact of Multi-Agent Systems on web services tools and techniques. In particular, the book addresses the potential for MAS techniques to impact the difficult challenges that must be tackled for web services technology to realize its promises. The area of web services offers the multi-agent community exciting research possibilities, including similarities in system architectures, powerful tools, and a focus on issues such as trust and reliability. Likewise, techniques developed in the multi-agent research community promise to have a strong impact on this fast growing technology.

The contents contain contributions by leading international researchers and professionals from both the web services and Multi-Agent Systems community. Topics include semantic web services and associated standards, architectures integrating agents and services, transactions, authorization, and service composition.

Recantation and Domestic Violence empowers people and communities in improving their understanding of and skills in domestic violence cases that involve recantation. The book illustrates the precise interpersonal dynamics of recantation in criminal cases in which felony-level abuse has occurred. This book equips professionals in working more effectively with domestic violence victims, their abusers, family members and other supporters. Using the five-stage model, case examples, and audiotaped telephone conversations between abusers and their victims, it puts the reader directly in touch with what abusers say, how they say it, and how victims respond. The book will be applicable to practitioners and research audiences in fields such as criminal law, family law, child custody, violence prevention, therapeutic interventions, medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, sociology, and behavioral economics.

This book is devoted to the inhabitants of the Spanish-Portuguese borderlands during the early modern period. It seeks to challenge a predominant historiography focused on the study of borderlands societies, relying exclusively on the antagonistic topics of subversion and the construction of boundaries. It states that by focusing just on one concept or another there is a restrictive understanding tending to condition the agency of local communities by external narratives. Thus, if traditionally border people were reduced by some scholars to actors of a struggle against a supposedly imposed border; in a more modern perspective, their behaviors have been also framed in bottom-up processes of consolidation of spaces of sovereignty in a no less limiting vision. Faced with both approaches, the objective of this work is not to deny them but, first and foremost, to situate the experiences of border populations outside of logics that I understand as originally alien to themselves, and to highlight their own subjectivity. Finally, it also demonstrates that most of the practices developed by border people were fundamentally aimed at defending their local communities. It will be useful for both audiences interested in early modern Iberia or border studies from a bottom-up perspective.

Recantation and Domestic Violence empowers people and communities in improving their understanding of and skills in domestic violence cases that involve recantation. The book illustrates the precise interpersonal dynamics of recantation in criminal cases in which felony-level abuse has occurred. This book equips professionals in working more effectively with domestic violence victims, their abusers, family members and other supporters. Using the five-stage model, case examples, and audiotaped telephone conversations between abusers and their victims, it puts the reader directly in touch with what abusers say, how they say it, and how victims respond. The book will be applicable to practitioners and research audiences in fields such as criminal law, family law, child custody, violence prevention, therapeutic interventions, medicine, nursing, psychology, social work, sociology, and behavioral economics.