Exploring the creative dimensions of memory and remembering, Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering tackle some of the key questions facing the emergent field of memory studies, including the nature of the relationship between memory and experience and between individual and collective memory. The most crucial relationship examined is one which has previously been largely ignored: the relationship between memory and imagination. The book argues for the importance of bringing imagination into the purview of memory studies and introduces the key concept of the mnemonic imagination as a tool for demonstrating the mutual interaction of memory and imagination in our everyday practices and processes of making sense of experience. Showing how the mnemonic imagination works in various aspects of personal life and popular culture, the authors address diverse topics such as the commercial exploitation of nostalgia and the remembering of traumatic and painful pasts.

Humor is pervasive in contemporary culture, and is generally celebrated as a public good. Yet there are times when it is felt to produce intolerance, misunderstanding or even hatred. This book brings together, for the first time, contributions that consider the ethics as well as the aesthetics of humor. The book focuses on the abuses and limits of humor, some of which excite considerable social tension and controversy. "Beyond a Joke" is an exciting intervention, full of challenging questions and issues.

Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this essential text provides a comprehensive introduction to Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltics and Ukraine. Broad but nuanced, it offers a reader-friendly overview of the globally and regionally significant changes and challenges the region faces. Divided into two parts, the book first presents thematic chapters on key issues, including nationalism and challenges to democratic institutions and practices, the contentious politics of memory, debates over demography and migration in a region with a shrinking population, and Russian efforts to retain regional influence through hard and soft power. The case-study chapters that follow highlight key political developments after communism as well as providing a strong foundation for readers on regional history and the political and economic experiences of the communist years. Each covers the foundational topics of political history, political competition, economic development, social problems, relationships with European institutions, and threats to good governance. For students and specialists alike, this book will be an invaluable resource on this dynamic region of Europe.

Now in a fully revised edition, this essential text provides a comprehensive introduction to Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Ukraine. Clear and comprehensive, it offers an authoritative and up-to-date analysis of the transformations and realities of these countries and the problems and potential they bring to the region and to the world stage. Divided into two parts, the book presents a set of comparative country case studies as well as thematic chapters on key issues, including the future of the EU and the benefits of EU integration, the economic transition and its social ramifications, the politics of memory, the persistent problems of ethnicity and nationalism, the challenges of sustainable democratic governance, the rise of populism and illiberal political movements,the continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the rising influence of China and Russia in the region, and the reach and effects of financial crimes and corruption. Leading scholars provide the historical context for the current situation of each country in the region. They explain how communism ended and how democratic politics has emerged or is struggling to emerge in its wake, how individual countries have transformed their economies, how their populations have been affected by rapid and wrenching change, and how foreign policy making has evolved. New to this edition are chapters on the influence of Russia, demography and migration, and women in political life. For students and specialists alike, this book will be an invaluable resource on the democratizing states of Europe.

Tourism based on natural environments is a huge international industry and this industry needs access to land with scenery, native plants and wildlife. In turn, land managers need money to maintain their land and its natural resources. This book looks at the economic, social and environmental consequences of nature-based tourism. It discusses the importance of links and partnerships, as well as the conflicts, between commercial tourism interests and land management agencies. Born from the Fenner conference on Nature Tourism and the Environment, held in Canberra, Australia, 2001, the book includes selected proceedings which have been refereed and substantially revised.

An exploration of some of the key theoretical challenges and conceptual issues facing the emergent field of memory studies, from the relationship between experience and memory to the commercial exploitation of nostalgia, using the key concept of the mnemonic imagination.

Humour is pervasive in contemporary culture, and is generally celebrated as a public good. Yet there are times when it is felt to produce intolerance, misunderstanding or even hatred. This book brings together, for the first time, contributions that consider the ethics as well as the aesthetics of humour. The book focuses on the abuses and limits of humour, some of which excite considerable social tension and controversy. Beyond a Joke is an exciting intervention, full of challenging questions and issues.

Chronicling the shift from Romantic to modern configurations of sound and voice, Victorian Soundscapes attends to the gothic intersections of nineteenth-century literature, technology, psychology, and acoustics. This book recaptures the sense of aural discovery that Victorian philosophers, psychologists, and inventors shared with the period's novelists and poets.

Tourism based on natural environments is a huge international industry and this industry needs access to land with scenery, native plants and wildlife. In turn, land managers need money to maintain their land and its natural resources. This book looks at the economic, social and environmental consequences of nature-based tourism. It discusses the importance of links and partnerships, as well as the conflicts, between commercial tourism interests and land management agencies. Born from the Fenner conference on Nature Tourism and the Environment, held in Canberra, Australia, 2001, the book includes selected proceedings which have been refereed and substantially revised.

After suffering years of war, Bosnia is now the target of international efforts to reconstruct and democratize a culturally divided society. The global community's strategy has focused on reforming political institutions, influencing the behavior of elite populations, and cultivating nongovernmental organizations. But expensive efforts to promote a stable peace and a multiethnic democracy can be successful only if they resonate among ordinary people. Otherwise, such projects will produce fragile institutions and alienated citizens who will be susceptible to extremists eager to send them back into war.

Paula M. Pickering challenges the conventional wisdom that common people are merely passive recipients of peacebuilding projects. Instead, in Peacebuilding in the Balkans, she shows how ordinary people, particularly minorities in Bosnia, understand elite rhetoric and actively shape reconstruction. Pickering's years of fieldwork direct observation, interviews, and analysis of many surveys has yielded a precise understanding of how ordinary citizens react to and influence peacebuilding programs in their neighborhoods, workplaces, municipal agencies, and other real-life social settings.

The evidence suggests that international efforts to rebuild an inclusive Bosnia will be futile unless they pay sufficient attention to citizens' varying ties to ethnic groups, indigenous forms of civic activity, and the development of nondiscriminatory employment and responsive political institutions. Pickering's insights from reconstruction in the Balkans have important implications for peacebuilding elsewhere in Eurasia."