Reflecting on the "clash of civilizations" as its point of departure, this book is based on a series of sixteen of the author's interconnected, thematically focused lectures and calls for new perspectives to resist imperialistic homogeneity. Situated within a neo-humanist context, the book applies interactive cognition from an Asian perspective within which China can be perceived as an essential "other," making it highly relevant in the quest for global solutions to the many grave issues facing mankind today. The author critiques American, European, and Chinese points of view; highlighting the significance of difference and the necessity of dialogue; before ultimately, rethinking the nature of world literature and putting forward interactive cognition as a means of "reconciliation" between cultures. Chinese culture, as a frame of reference endowed with traditions of "harmony without homogeneity", may help to alleviate global cultural confrontation and even reconstruct the understanding of human civilization. The book will be essential reading for scholars and students of Comparative Literature, Chinese Studies, and all those who are interested in cross-cultural communication and Chinese culture in general.

Hunter claims that, since the Romantics, culture has been identified with the promise of a complete development of human capacities and, typically, the "rise of English" has been viewed in terms of the (true or distorted) fulfilment of this promise in the education system. His book presents a critique of this view of culture and literary education. English, he argues, inherits its "humanizing" powers not from culture but from techniques of moral supervision built into the apparatus of popular education. He also suggests that the attributes shaped by English are not parts of a full set promised by culture; rather, they are a specialized variant of those specified by governments when they took as their object the "moral and physical" condition of the population. Ian Hunter has published a number of articles in a variety of learned journals.

Reflecting on the "clash of civilizations" as its point of departure, this book is based on a series of sixteen of the author's interconnected, thematically focused lectures and calls for new perspectives to resist imperialistic homogeneity. Situated within a neo-humanist context, the book applies interactive cognition from an Asian perspective within which China can be perceived as an essential "other," making it highly relevant in the quest for global solutions to the many grave issues facing mankind today. The author critiques American, European, and Chinese points of view; highlighting the significance of difference and the necessity of dialogue; before ultimately, rethinking the nature of world literature and putting forward interactive cognition as a means of "reconciliation" between cultures. Chinese culture, as a frame of reference endowed with traditions of "harmony without homogeneity", may help to alleviate global cultural confrontation and even reconstruct the understanding of human civilization. The book will be essential reading for scholars and students of Comparative Literature, Chinese Studies, and all those who are interested in cross-cultural communication and Chinese culture in general.

BRITISH TRASH CINEMA is the first overview of the wilder shores of British exploitation and cult paracinema from the 1950s onwards. From obscure horror, science fiction and sexploitation, to art-house camp, Hammer's prehistoric fantasies and the worst British films ever made, author I.Q. Hunter draws on rare archival material and new primary research to take us through the weird
and wonderful world of British trash cinema.
Beginning by outlining the definitions of trash films and their place in British film history, Hunter explores topics including: Hammer's overlooked fantasy films, the emergence of the sexploitation film in the 1950s and 60s, the sex industry in the 1970s, Ken Russell's high camp Gothic and erotic adaptations since the 1980s, gross-out comedies, revenge films, and contemporary straight-to-DVD horror and erotica.

In the business world, especially in manufacturing or quality management, the term Six Sigma usually refers to a set of tools and methodologies developed by Motorola to improve processes by eliminating defects. So why should the HR professional care what Six Sigma is or how it can be applied in the HR function? According to the specialists at Orion Partners, there are ten key reasons: to create excellence in process delivery; to reduce defects; to increase efficiency; to create a quality focused mindset; to benefit from best practice; to bring clarity to the processes of HR; to use a structured scientific approach; to speak the same language and improve communication; to gain control over your processes; and to strengthen your business case. Mircea Albeanu and Ian Hunter explain some of the basic concepts to show how applying Six Sigma tools and methodologies can be used to manage the practical challenges of improving HR operations to meet your organization's expectations at a lower cost and with greater efficiency. To help illustrate some of the key messages examples are drawn from Orion Partners' work using Six Sigma tools with international organizations over the last seven years. This concise guide is ideal for project and programme managers involved in business transformation, and for HR managers as well as Six Sigma specialists seeking to understand its applications within human resources. About The Gower HR Transformation Series: The Human Resources function faces a continuing challenge to its role and purpose, in many organizations it has suffered from serious under-representation at strategic, board level. Yet, faced with the challenges of globalism, the need to innovate, manage knowledge, attract and retain the very best employees, organizations need an HR function that can lead from the front. The process of transforming the function is complex and rarely linear. It includes the practical challenges of improving HR opera

Christian Thomasius (1655 1728) was a tireless campaigner against the political enforcement of religion in the early modern confessional state. In a whole series of combative disputations - against heresy and witchraft prosecutions, and in favour of religious toleration - Thomasius battled to lay the intellectual groundwork for the separation of church and state and the juridical basis for pluralistic societies. In this first book-length study in English of Thomasius' political thought, Ian Hunter departs from the usual view of Thomasius as a natural law moral philosopher. In addition to investigating his anti-scholastic cultural politics, Hunter discusses Thomasius' work in public and church law, particularly his disputations arguing for the toleration of heretics, providing a revealing comparison with Locke's arguments on the same topic. If Locke sought to base toleration in the subjective rights protecting Christian citizens against an intolerant state, Thomasius grounded it in the state's duty to impose toleration as an obligation on intolerant citizens.

Rival Enlightenments is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideia, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This landmark study argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself illustrate the continuing struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike.

In the business world, especially in manufacturing or quality management, the term Six Sigma usually refers to a set of tools and methodologies developed by Motorola to improve processes by eliminating defects. So why should the HR professional care what Six Sigma is or how it can be applied in the HR function? According to the specialists at Orion Partners, there are ten key reasons: * to create excellence in process delivery; * to reduce defects; * to increase efficiency; * to create a quality focused mindset; * to benefit from best practice; * to bring clarity to the processes of HR; * to use a structured scientific approach; * to speak the same language and improve communication; * to gain control over your processes; * and to strengthen your business case. Mircea Albeanu and Ian Hunter explain some of the basic concepts to show how applying Six Sigma tools and methodologies can be used to manage the practical challenges of improving HR operations to meet your organization's expectations at a lower cost and with greater efficiency. To help illustrate some of the key messages examples are drawn from Orion Partners' work using Six Sigma tools with international organizations over the last seven years. This concise guide is ideal for project and programme managers involved in business transformation, and for HR managers as well as Six Sigma specialists seeking to understand its applications within human resources. About The Gower HR Transformation Series: The Human Resources function faces a continuing challenge to its role and purpose, in many organizations it has suffered from serious under-representation at strategic, board level. Yet, faced with the challenges of globalism, the need to innovate, manage knowledge, attract and retain the very best employees, organizations need an HR function that can lead from the front. The process of transforming the function is complex and rarely linear. It includes the practical challenges of improving HR operations to meet customer expectations at lower cost and with greater efficiency. The Gower HR Transformation Series will help; it uses a blend of conceptual frameworks, practical advice and global case study examples to cover each of the main elements of the HR transformation process. The books in the series follow a standard format to make them easy to read and reference. Together, the titles create a definitive guide from one of the leading specialist HR transformation consultancies; an organization that has been involved in HR transformation for clients as diverse as Bombardier Transportation, Marks & Spencer, Barnardo's, Oxfam, Schroders, UnitedHealth Group, Nestle, BP, HM Prison Service, Transport for London and Vodafone.

For many years now, both private and public sector organizations have been dealing with the challenge of how best to improve corporate performance. HR has not escaped this scrutiny. The very same businesses that have spent recent years cost cutting, restructuring and streamlining, are putting the pressure on the HR 'overhead' to prove that it is not just a cost centre but a function that provides added value through alignment to business needs and aspirations. The traditional, transaction-based HR service must, however, still be delivered. Understanding how to combine a renewed strategic focus with effective delivery of transactional and administrative services is the key to HR's next generation of service delivery models. The authors' work with HR functions includes an established set of service design criteria and an approach that differentiates between a successful implementation and what can be a costly backward step that only serves to alienate the business. They show how any prospective HR transformation should consider five fundamental issues in the service design phase to align the HR approach to the business strategy. These issues are critical to ensuring a fit for purpose HR function that can measure and demonstrate the value it adds. About The Gower HR Transformation Series: The Human Resources function faces a continuing challenge to its role and purpose, in many organizations it has suffered from serious under-representation at strategic, board level. Yet, faced with the challenges of globalism, the need to innovate, manage knowledge, attract and retain the very best employees, organizations need an HR function that can lead from the front. The process of transforming the function is complex and rarely linear. It involves designing a function that can manage its generalist and specialist roles with equal skills. The Gower HR Transformation Series will help; it uses a blend of conceptual frameworks, practical advice and global case study examples to cover each of the main elements of the HR transformation process. The books in the series follow a standard format to make them easy to read and reference. Together, the titles create a definitive guide from one of the leading specialist HR transformation consultancies; an organization that has been involved in HR transformation for clients as diverse as Bombardier Transportation, Marks & Spencer, Barnardo's, Oxfam, Schroders, UnitedHealth Group, Nestle, BP, HM Prison Service, Transport for London and Vodafone.

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook. The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.

For many years now, both private and public sector organizations have been dealing with the challenge of how best to improve corporate performance. HR has not escaped this scrutiny. The very same businesses that have spent recent years cost cutting, restructuring and streamlining, are putting the pressure on the HR 'overhead' to prove that it is not just a cost centre but a function that provides added value through alignment to business needs and aspirations. The traditional, transaction-based HR service must, however, still be delivered. Understanding how to combine a renewed strategic focus with effective delivery of transactional and administrative services is the key to HR's next generation of service delivery models. The authors' work with HR functions includes an established set of service design criteria and an approach that differentiates between a successful implementation and what can be a costly backward step that only serves to alienate the business. They show how any prospective HR transformation should consider five fundamental issues in the service design phase to align the HR approach to the business strategy. These issues are critical to ensuring a fit for purpose HR function that can measure and demonstrate the value it adds. About The Gower HR Transformation Series: The Human Resources function faces a continuing challenge to its role and purpose, in many organizations it has suffered from serious under-representation at strategic, board level. Yet, faced with the challenges of globalism, the need to innovate, manage knowledge, attract and retain the very best employees, organizations need an HR function that can lead from the front. The process of transforming the function is complex and rarely linear. It involves designing a function that can manage its generalist and specialist roles with equal skills. The Gower HR Transformation Series will help; it uses a blend of conceptual frameworks, practical advice and global case study examples to

Educationalists have long worked to democratise our school system and purge traces of its religious origins. Rethinking the School shows that these efforts have been in vain. The bureaucratic organisation of schooling is here to stay, and Christian moral discipline is an integral part of the school as we know it.Hunter argues that both liberal and Marxian theory ignore the historical reality of the school. He does not see the school as the failed attempt to realise principles of social equality, complete personal development and intellectual enlightenment. Rather, he sees the modern school as an improvised apparatus for the training of good citizens and the guidance of souls.Rethinking the School is one of the first major applications of Foucault's genealogical method to the school system, and will be widely debated by educationalists, policy-makers and those interested in the interaction of government and subjectivity.'This is a serious piece of scholarship which breaks with much orthodoxy in educational theory and research. It brings new insights to old dilemmas and as such is a major contribution to a field which has in some respects lost its nerve. This is a book that must be read.' - Professor Richard Smith, Australian Journal of Education'Hunter. offers a detailed and fascinating account of the popular school. in a manner which reinvigorates modern debates regarding the relations between government and education. He makes us look and see differently, the hallmark of a powerful and original thinker.' - Professor Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies

In the same intellectual league as Grotius, Hobbes and Locke, but today less well known, Samuel Pufendorf was an early modern master of political, juridical, historical and theological thought. Trained in an erudite humanism, he brought his copious command of ancient and modern literature to bear on precisely honed arguments designed to engage directly with contemporary political and religious problems. Through his fundamental reconstruction of the discipline of natural law, Pufendorf offered a new rationale for the sovereign territorial state, providing it with non-religious foundations in order to fit it for governance of multi-religious societies and to protect his own Protestant faith. He also drew on his humanist learning to write important political histories, a significant lay theology, and vivid polemics against his many opponents. This volume makes the full scope of his thought and writing accessible to English readers for the first time.

In the same intellectual league as Grotius, Hobbes and Locke, but today less well known, Samuel Pufendorf was an early modern master of political, juridical, historical and theological thought. Trained in an erudite humanism, he brought his copious command of ancient and modern literature to bear on precisely honed arguments designed to engage directly with contemporary political and religious problems. Through his fundamental reconstruction of the discipline of natural law, Pufendorf offered a new rationale for the sovereign territorial state, providing it with non-religious foundations in order to fit it for governance of multi-religious societies and to protect his own Protestant faith. He also drew on his humanist learning to write important political histories, a significant lay theology, and vivid polemics against his many opponents. This volume makes the full scope of his thought and writing accessible to English readers for the first time.

This Orion Partners' report addresses the main considerations for an organization investigating a large-scale transference of HR transactional activity to an outsource provider. The report also provides an overview of the market for HR outsourcing services in Europe. There are sections profiling each of the main outsourcing providers in the UK and continental Europe and case studies drawn from both the public and private sector. Human Resources Outsourcing agreements, which typically run for seven years or more, have a critical influence on any organization's ability to deliver its long-term strategy. The Orion Partners' report is a valuable contribution to identifying the right model, locating the right partner and realising the value of one of the most important elements in the current strategic investment for large organizations. It also provides helpful advice on how to manage the impact of outsourcing on the retained HR team.

Christian Thomasius (1655 1728) was a tireless campaigner against the political enforcement of religion in the early modern confessional state. In a whole series of combative disputations - against heresy and witchcraft prosecutions, and in favour of religious toleration - Thomasius battled to lay the intellectual groundwork for the separation of church and state and the juridical basis for pluralistic societies. In this 2007 text, Ian Hunter departs from the usual view of Thomasius as a natural law moral philosopher. In addition to investigating his anti-scholastic cultural politics, Hunter discusses Thomasius' work in public and church law, particularly his disputations arguing for the toleration of heretics, providing a revealing comparison with Locke's arguments on the same topic. If Locke sought to base toleration in the subjective rights protecting Christian citizens against an intolerant state, Thomasius grounded it in the state's duty to impose toleration as an obligation on intolerant citizens.

In this groundbreaking collection of essays the history of philosophy appears in a fresh light, not as reason's progressive discovery of its universal conditions, but as a series of unreconciled disputes over the proper way to conduct oneself as a philosopher. By shifting focus from the philosopher as proxy for the universal subject of reason to the philosopher as a special persona arising from rival forms of self-cultivation, philosophy is approached in terms of the social office and intellectual deportment of the philosopher, as a personage with a definite moral physiognomy and institutional setting. In so doing, this collection of essays by leading figures in the fields of both philosophy and the history of ideas provides access to key early modern disputes over what it meant to be a philosopher, and to the institutional and larger political and religious contexts in which such disputes took place.

Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical self-consciousness of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike.

Ian Hunter's Diary of a Rock `n' Roll Star, first published in 1974, is a fascinating diary of Mott the Hoople's 1972 US tour. It has received a litany of plaudits and been described as what "may well be the best rock book ever" and "an enduring crystallization of the rock musician's lot, and a quietly glorious period piece" from Q and The Guardian. A brutally honest chronicle of touring life in the Seventies, and a classic of the rock writing genre, Diary of a Rock `n' Roll Star remains the gold standard for rock writing. This new edition includes new content from Hunter. Ian Hunter is the lead singer in Mott the Hoople and a successful solo artist in his own right. He continues to record and perform across the world after more than fifty years in rock'n'roll.

Since the Romantics culture has been identified with the promise of a complete development of human capacities and, typically, the 'rise of English' has been viewed in terms of the (true or distorted) fulfilment of this promise in the education system. This book presents a sustained and historically informed challenge to that view.

Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. The essays collected in this volume range across this exciting and contested field. These 13 new essays acknowledge Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety of historical contexts and circumstances.

This book highlights the changes and challenges to the role of the HR Business Partner, overviewing the emerging service delivery models for the HR function (in particular the development of shared services and outsourcing options) and what this means for the HR Business Partner (HRBP) in the modern enterprise. The purpose of this book is to provide a conceptual framework and practical advice, based on real life case studies and recent research, into how HR Business Partners best add value to the organization. The authors have extensive experience of working in the area of HR restructuring (having been HR Directors in blue chip organizations and senior advisers in leading consultancies) and have consistently come up against confusion and contradiction about what is the new role of the HR Manager/Business Partner in supporting business managers in the delivery of strategic and tactical objectives. Theory and conceptual models are used to underpin this book but it has been written as a pragmatic, hands-on guide that will help its readers think through how best they might fulfil the role of the HRBP. The book contains checklists, case study examples and self-assessment tools. It is supported by supplementary material (updates, further case studies, templates and tools) which are available via the authors' website.

Legal Research: A Practitioner's Handbook provides practical advice on every aspect of effective legal research: problem analysis, selecting and finding the best sources; and presenting results effectively. This third edition has been thoroughly updated, taking into account the increasing popularity of commercial databases aimed at UK law practitioners; the overhaul of a number of government and other official sites (national and international); and significant changes to directions by UK courts relating to the conduct and presentation of legal research. New material on the use of social media in legal research, business information and making use of a law firm's internal precedents has also been added. Part A covers problem identification and analysis, followed by advice on how to select the best sources and formats (paper or electronic) for research. Part B deals with the information most frequently sought by practitioners, listing sources with analytical comments and, for a selection of the most complex, 'how to use' instructions developed to a standard template. Jurisdictional coverage includes England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the European Union, with the addition of information on key sources in European human rights and international law. Part C details sources on how to make the presentation of the results of legal research more effective. These three parts are supplemented by Part D, which describes in non-technical language how a practitioner might get the best value for money when buying information, whether print or online, from commercial law publishers. Extensive appendices provide indexes to abbreviations for Acts, journals and law reports; a glossary of technical terms used in legal research; a summary of the practice directions, statements and decisions of the UK courts relating to legal research; a table of guidance on how to devise more effective searches on the four most popular commercial databases; and a popular names index for legislation and cases relating to the UK and the EU