Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963) tells the story of an aristocratic Sicilian family adjusting to the realities of political and commercial modernity after the unification Italy during the Risorgimento. The film, starring Claudia Cardinale, Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon, met with success upon its initial release, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes and having a successful theatrical run in Europe. Despite this, however, it did not do well with English-speaking audiences, and eventually even fell out of favour with Italian audiences, who took issue with the way Risorgimento history was represented. David Weir's study of the film seeks to understand the film's paradoxical place in Italian film history. He argues that Visconti's use of artifice, narrative and history, all aspects that came to be criticised, were in fact, essential to his cinematic art, and can all be understood as strengths of the film. Providing a scene-by-scene analysis of the film, as well as illuminating its relationship to the Lampedusa novel from which it was adapted, Weir suggests that Visconti's film goes beyond mere adaptation, using the form of the novel for cinematic purposes and making The Leopard a cinematic novel in its own right. He goes on to situate the film within Visconti's career, questioning whether the uneven reception of the film reflects the paradox of Visconti's social status as a Marxist aristocrat and his position as an auteur director whose films borrowed heavily from the decadent tradition, while at the same time professing allegiance to the Italian Communist Party.

The Romantic myth of Bohemia originated in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new conditions faced by artists and writers when the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of the Age of Revolution. Without the patron system, the artist was free to move around, to seek an audience wherever fortune beckoned. This marketing model likening the artist's vagabond career to the "gypsy" life helps to explain part of the bohemian myth, but not all of it. Most bohemians have scant interest in commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all, confining their movements to down-market urban neighbourhoods where the rent is cheap and the morals are loose. This Very Short Introduction traces the myth of Bohemia through its various fictional manifestations, from Henry Murger's novel Scenes of Bohemian Life (1851) and Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème (1896) to Aki Kaurismäki's film La vie de Bohème (1992), and Jonathan Larson's musical Rent (1996). It goes on to examine the history of different bohemian communities, including those in the Latin Quarter of Paris, the Schwabing section of Munich, and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. David Weir also considers the politics of Bohemia and traces the careers of the artists Gustave Courbet and Pablo Picasso and the great chanteuses Yvette Guilbert, Fréhel, and Edith Piaf in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, where a rich tradition of popular culture indebted to Bohemia also developed. Weir concludes with a discussion of the legacy of Bohemia today as something outworn and dying, an exhausted tradition that somehow continues.

First published in 1988, The Bhopal Syndrome documents one of world's worst industrial disaster: The Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984. The tragedy exposed a variety of issues plaguing rapid development such as the negligence of corporations and government, prioritizing of commercial benefits over human lives, inadequate post-disaster rehabilitation and compensation, and frightening levels of environmental pollution. The author argues that the Bhopal gas tragedy is being replicated across the globe at various intensities facilitating a dangerous normalisation. He asserts that workers and consumers should fight for their 'right to know' about working conditions, chemicals used in pesticides, the harm caused by producing such chemicals, how these chemicals end up on our food as well as the manner in which the chemicals interact in our body. Climate crisis and undeterred industrial development still haunt our reality making this book an essential read for any concerned citizen and for students of disaster management, industrial disasters, climate change, environment, toxicology and workers' rights.

First published in 2000, Risk Management is a two volume set, comprised of the most significant and influential articles by the leading authorities in the studies of risk management. The volumes includes a full-length introduction from the editor, an internationally recognized expert, and provides an authoritative guide to the selection of essays chosen, and to the wider field itself. The collections of essays are both international and interdisciplinary in scope and provide an entry point for investigating the myriad of study within the discipline.

Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932) was released at a critical moment in cinema history, just after the advent of synchronized sound technology and just before the full implementation of the production code. By the time of its release, Lubitsch had already directed more than 50 films, but it was unlike anything he had done before. Aside from being his first non-musical talking picture, the film introduced a level of sophistication and visual subtlety that established the benchmark for classic Hollywood cinema for years to come. In his study of the film, David Weir explores its significance within Lubitsch's career, but also its larger cultural significance within the history of cinema, and the social context of its release during the Great Depression. Paying careful attention to the film itself, Weir discusses its source material, its mise-en-scene and art deco production design, and its inventive use of post-synchronized sound. Drawing on original archival research, Weir traces Trouble in Paradise's reception history, including its critical reception, and the effect of the Motion Picture Production Code, which led to the film being denied approval for re-release in 1935.

Decades of stagnating demand for beer and the emergence of global brewing conglomerates had seen many of Britain's longstanding breweries disappear and a decline in the diversity of beer styles on offer. However, following similar developments in the USA and Australia, the emergence of new craft breweries in the UK, producing small batch beers in an ever-increasing range of styles has re-vitalised the industry. Supporting employment both within brewing and hospitality while contributing to the cultural and economic fabric of society, the emergence of this craft beer revolution deserves greater scholarly attention than it has received to date. Researching Craft Beer enhances theoretical and practical understandings of craft beer both within the UK and beyond. This edited collection is interdisciplinary in nature and will appeal to a wide range of scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts of craft beer. Chapters authored from a range of business, sociology and law perspectives examine the production, sale, values, serving and cultural significance of craft beer. The volume offers insights for aspiring and present owners of breweries, those looking to open a craft beer bar as well as other beer researchers the volume offers a prescient assessment of historic, present, and likely future developments within the sector.

This book reflects on the contemporary use of ethnography across both social and natural sciences, focusing in particular on organizational ethnography, autoethnography, and the role of storytelling. The chapters interrogate and reframe longstanding ethnographic discussions, including those concerning reflexivity and positionality, while exploring evolving themes such as the experiential use of technologies. The open and honest accounts presented in the volume explore the perennial anxieties, doubts and uncertainties of ethnography. Rather than seek ways to mitigate these 'inconvenient' but inevitable aspects of academic research, the book instead finds significant value to these experiences. Taking the position that collections of ethnographic work are better presented as transdisciplinary bricolage rather than as discipline-specific series, each chapter in the collection begins with a reflection on the existing impact and character of ethnographic research within the author's native discipline. The book will appeal to all academic researchers with an interest in qualitative methods, as well as to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.

This volume provides fresh insights and management understanding of the changing role of policing against the backdrop of massive cuts in public expenditure experienced and the changing landscape of policing. The challenges of funding, training, online-crimes and cultural transformation are now felt globally. The need to learn and adapt from suitable models of police service delivery have never been greater. The book offers critical insights into the theory and practice of strategic and operational management of police services and the related professional and policy aspects. One of the highlight of this volume is to bring together scholarship using experts- academics, practitioners and professionals in the field, to each of the chosen topics. The chapters are based in the practical experiences of the authors and are written in a way that is accessible and suitable for a range of audiences. We are confident that this book will cater to a wider audience to inform policy and practice, both in the UK and internationally. Sir Peter Fahy QPM, Chief Constable, Greater Manchester Police Policing across the world is facing an increasing complexity of demand and public expectation creating new challenges for leadership and management. The contributors to this work are among the leading thinkers in policing and present important new insights into both the past and the way forward. It will be welcomed by all those convinced that radical new approaches are required across the public services. Bill Skelly, Deputy Chief Constable, Devon and Cornwall Police, UK At times it feels that the focus on leadership in the police service is all about what went wrong; the negative influences of a tightly-knit culture; and the almost inevitable rise of the technocrat. It is refreshing to read a book that seeks new insights into the positive influences of police leadership and offers the prospect of a more emotionally aware and spiritually rich approach as to how those insights may be practically employed for the benefit of all in the police family and the communities we serve.

When it comes to James Joyce's landmark work, Ulysses , the influence of three literary giants, Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante, cannot be overlooked. Examining Joyce in terms of Homeric narrative, Dantesque structure, and Shakespearean plot, Weir rediscovers Joyce's novel through the lens of his renowned predecessors.

This book is the first of its kind to reflect on what it means to actually perform critical management studies (CMS): how consultants, researchers, teachers and managers negotiate the tensions they experience in their everyday practice. Critical management studies seeks to expose the hidden workings of power, as well as to identify and reform the mundane and frequently unnoticed practices that privilege some groups and individuals at the expense of others, creating injustices in organizations and in the society at large. The authors show how CMS draws on a variety of approaches to translate its insights into practice. Combining rich theoretical and empirical contributions with reflections on CMS practice in various forms, this unique book is essential reading for critical researchers, educators and graduate students in business and management fields.

The historical trajectory of decadent culture runs from ancient Rome, to nineteenth-century Paris, Victorian London, fin de siecle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The first of these, the decline of Rome, provides the pattern for both aesthetic and social decadence, a pattern that artists and writers in the nineteenth century imitated, emulated, parodied, and otherwise manipulated for aesthetic gain. What begins as the moral condemnation of modernity in mid-nineteenth century France on the part of decadent authors such as Charles Baudelaire ends up as the perverse celebration of the pessimism that imperial decline, whether real or imagined, involves. This delight in decline informs the so-called breviary, or even bible, of decadence from Joris-Karl Huysmans's A Rebours, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Aubrey Beardsley's drawings, Gustav Klimt's paintings, and numerous other works. In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores these conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence - the excess of artifice - and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences, especially as decadence enters the realm of popular culture today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The sharp increase in oil revenues since 2002 has left the Arab Gulf States with billions of petro-dollars. But how will these countries fare in the post-oil era? The rulers of these states are taking serious measures to ensure the survival of their economies, and indeed their regimes, in a world with scarce mineral resources.

This book explores the extent to which these countries have been and will be able to prepare for the future by transforming themselves into serious international destinations for tourism, finance, healthcare, and education. It also considers the implications of failure for the future survival of their regimes.

Topics covered include sovereign funds, Islamic finance, new technologies, higher education, and the role of women.

A timely study into this vibrant and important region, this book will provide food for thought for academics, policy makers, and general readers.

Nabil Sultan is a senior lecturer at the Liverpool Hope University.

David Weir is a professor at Liverpool Hope University.

Zeinab Karake-Shalhoub is director of research at the Dubai International Financial Centre in the United Arab Emirates.

This volume provides fresh insights and management understanding of the changing role of policing against the backdrop of massive cuts in public expenditure experienced and the changing landscape of policing. The challenges of funding, training, online-crimes and cultural transformation are now felt globally. The need to learn and adapt from suitable models of police service delivery have never been greater. The book offers critical insights into the theory and practice of strategic and operational management of police services and the related professional and policy aspects. One of the highlight of this volume is to bring together scholarship using experts- academics, practitioners and professionals in the field, to each of the chosen topics. The chapters are based in the practical experiences of the authors and are written in a way that is accessible and suitable for a range of audiences. We are confident that this book will cater to a wider audience to inform policy and practice, both in the UK and internationally. Sir Peter Fahy QPM, Chief Constable, Greater Manchester Police Policing across the world is facing an increasing complexity of demand and public expectation creating new challenges for leadership and management. The contributors to this work are among the leading thinkers in policing and present important new insights into both the past and the way forward. It will be welcomed by all those convinced that radical new approaches are required across the public services. Bill Skelly, Deputy Chief Constable, Devon and Cornwall Police, UK At times it feels that the focus on leadership in the police service is all about what went wrong; the negative influences of a tightly-knit culture; and the almost inevitable rise of the technocrat. It is refreshing to read a book that seeks new insights into the positive influences of police leadership and offers the prospect of a more emotionally aware and spiritually rich approach as to how those insights may be practically employed for the benefit of all in the police family and the communities we serve.

Setting out to celebrate, document and discuss the work and role of an international tapestry workshop, Dovecot Studios, since its foundation in Edinburgh in 1912, this ground-breaking publication uniquely explores the artistic value, nature and identity of modern tapestry through images, essays and the commentaries of weavers, artists and patrons. Dovecot Studios has constantly evolved since it was established before the Great War. Initial Arts and Crafts ideals developed into a more proactive engagement with modernism from the 1950s, when designs came from leading British artists such as Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Cecil Beaton and John Piper. In the 1960s international ambition partnered a quest for experimentation, as characterised by collaborations with artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Robert Motherwell and Louise Nevelson. Throughout Dovecot's long history many Scottish artists have worked with the tapestry studio, and their intuitive sense of design and colour has often been richly matched by the imagination of the artist weavers. Experiment and partnership with innovative artists and makers have been, and actively remain, key to Dovecot's unique position within the fields of craft and contemporary art. Discussing Dovecot's history along with its contemporary work, and exploring the range of textiles produced by the Studio - which include wall hangings, chair-cover designs, carpets, textile mobiles and formal robes - The Art of Modern Tapestry offers the definitive account of one of the world's most innovative centres of textile-art production.

The meaning of decadence varies with context, depending on what (or who) is understood to have declined, decayed, or degenerated. These negative meanings are familiar from history (the decline and fall of Rome), sociology (the decay of communities), morality (the degeneration of values), and more, including such popular conceptions of decadence as excess and corruption. At the same time, all of this negative decadence has found positive cultural expression, principally in literature, through the work of such celebrated nineteenth-century decadents as Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and many others. This volume takes the study of decadence beyond these canonical literary works to explore the phenomenon in broader historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. In thirty-five chapters by esteemed scholars from a range of disciplines, the Oxford Handbook of Decadence addresses different critical periods, such as classical antiquity, various ages of empire, the interwar era in the twentieth century, and contemporary times, as well as key places-France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Germany, the Nordic nations, Russia and Ukraine, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan-and such genres as the novel, the short story, drama, the essay, prose poetry, and film. The volume also considers decadence more broadly as a culture not limited to literature by tracing its manifestations in such material forms as book design, fashion, interior decoration, and architecture, as well as through the experiential register of the senses: decadent vision, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all reflected, respectively, in painting, music, perfume, cuisine, and feeling. Finally, the chapters explore the theoretical resonance of decadence in such fields as theology, science, ecology, politics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. By illuminating the various ways decadence can be construed, the Handbook offers an in-depth and original exploration into the paradox of decadence: a culture that draws its creative energy from the idea of decline.

"If anything is more corrupting than power, it is power exercised in secret. Angus Mackenzie's magnificently researched, lucidly written study of the CIA's outrageous threats to freedom in America over the years is a summons to vigilance to protect our democratic institutions."--Daniel Schorr

"The late Angus Mackenzie has left an appropriate legacy in Secrets: The CIA's War at Home, a fitting capstone to his long career of exposing government secrecy and manipulation of public information. Secrets is a detailed, fascinating and chilling account of the agency's program of disinformation and concealment of public information against its own citizens."--Ben H. Bagdikian, author of "The Media Monopoly

"Scrupulously reported, fleshed out with a fascinating cast of characters, skillfully illuminating a subject the news media seldom looked into and never got straight, Angus Mackenzie's last and best work richly deserves a posthumous Pulitzer--for nonfiction, history, or both."--Jon Swan, former senior editor, "Columbia Journalism Review

"This courageous, uncompromising book belongs on the bookshelf of every serious student of journalism and the First Amendment."--Tom Goldstein, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University

Anarchism is generally understood as a failed ideology, a political philosophy that once may have had many followers but today attracts only cranks and eccentrics. This book argues that the decline of political anarchism is only half the story; the other half is a tale of widespread cultural success. David Weir develops this thesis in several ways. He begins by considering the place of culture in the political thought of the classical anarchist thinkers William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. He then shows how the perceived "anarchy" of nineteenth-century society induced writers such as Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to turn away from politics and seek unity in the idea of a common culture. Yet as other late-nineteenth-century writers and artists began to sympathize with anarchism, the prospect of a common culture became increasingly remote. In Weir's view, the affinity for anarchism that developed among members of the artistic avant-garde lies behind much of fin de siècle culture. Indeed, the emergence of modernism itself can be understood as the aesthetic realization of anarchist politics. In support of this contention, Weir shows that anarchism is the key aesthetic principle informing the work of a broad range of modernist figures, from Henrik Ibsen and James Joyce to dadaist Hugo Ball and surrealist Luis Buñuel. Weir concludes by reevaluating the phenomenon of postmodernism as only the most recent case of the migration of politics into aesthetics, and by suggesting that anarchism is still very much with us as a cultural condition.

The cultural phenomenon known as "decadence" has often been viewed as an ephemeral artistic vogue that fluorished briefly in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. This study makes the case for decadence as a literary movement in its own right, based on a set of aesthetic principles that formed a transitional link between romanticism and modernism. Understood in this developmental context, decadence represents the aesthetic substratum of a wide range of fin-de-siecle literary schools, including naturalism, realism, Parnassianism, aestheticism, and symbolism. As an impulse toward modernism, it prefigures the thematic, structural, and stylistic concerns of later literature. David Weir demonstrates his thesis by analyzing a number of French, English, Italian, and American novels, each associated with some specific decadent literary tendency. The book concludes by arguing that the decadent sensibility persists in popular culture and contemporary theory, with multiculturalism and postmodernism representing its most current manifestations.