The very word "autobiography" immediately suggests vanity and boasting of impressive achievements. Nothing could be further from the intentions of the author in this case. I take a fairly jaundiced view of my life and its shortcomings but hope that with the detachment of old age (I am 83) it may be possible to see past events as near to real as one can hope to achieve and as far as a fairly sombre temprament allows. I try to fit myself into the context of the time and place as seen by an old man and not in the full flood of emotion felt at the time. I am not suggesting my experiences are unique although in one sense they are. We only have one life and so can only know our own experiences and feelings albeit assuming that others have closely similar experiences and feelings. This after all is the basis of poetry or literature. I hope therefore that the reader will perhaps be able to share some of my feelings in a perhaps unusual but in no way extra-ordinary life.

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aThompson . . . has put together a book of essays that seeks to aconfronta this news conservatism and lay bare its inner workings. The collection brings together commentators on contemporary American politics. . . . The group has an unabashedly progressive bent and their stated objective is to bury the new conservatism even as they enviously praise its successes.a
--"Popmatters"

aA useful resource that will enable the careful reader to understand the similarities and differences among these multiple ideologies.a--"Choice"

aArguing that American conservatism today is not only a rejoinder to liberalism but a reflection of at least some of its values, Confronting the New Conservatism subjects the neo-conservative and Christian conservative movements to thoughtful scrutiny and original scholarly analysis. While animated by progressive politics, this collection offers students and citizens alike a deeper look at the intellectual and ideological foundations of the American right in ways that will encourage understanding as well as a more effective liberal response.a
--Benjamin R. Barber, author of "Jihad vs. McWorld"

aThompson has assembled an exciting collection of essays written by a high quality group of scholars. The essays are sharp and academically rigorous, but also highly engaging and readable."
--Judith Grant, author of "Fundamental Feminism"

William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George F. Will, and Dick Cheney. These are today's neoconservatives--confident, clear-cut, and a political force to be reckoned with. But how should we define this new conservatism? What is new about it?In this volume, some of today's top political scholars take on the charge of explaining, defining, and confronting the new conservatism of the last twenty-five years. The authors examine the ideas, policies and roots of this ideological movement showing that contemporary neoconservatism has been able to blend many of the aspects of social conservatism--such as religious populism and nationalism--with economic liberalism and the rhetoric of equality of opportunity and individualism. With their emphasis on dismantling the welfare state and a rhetorical return to economic laissez faire and individual rights, neoconservatives have been able to harness populist sentiment in terms of both economics and cultural issues. And with their belief in moral and cultural "simplicity," their turn away from science, their conviction in American superiority on the global stage, and their embrace of "anti-government" rhetoric, they have effectively changed the nature of the American political landscape.

The contributors to Confronting the New Conservatism offer a trenchant analysis and substantive critique of the neoconservative ethos, arguing that it is an ideology that needs to be better understood if change is to be had.

Contributors: Stanley Aronowitz, Chip Berlet, Stephen Eric Bronner, Lawrence Davidson, Greg Grandin, Philip Green, Diana M. Judd, Thomas M. Keck, Charles Noble, R. Claire Snyder, Michael J. Thompson, and Nicholas Xenos.

Change in life is inevitable and often unpredictable. But transitions from one stage of life to another have certain identifiable, predictable patterns that can profoundly affect your life and career. Those transitions-the times when your foundations move-are often clear only in hindsight.

With knowledge and foresight, however, you can see the roadmap in advance of the journey; you can recognize the signs that tell you where you are. You can consciously enable yourself to make a smooth, stable, yet enlivening transition into the next phase of your adult life.

In "When Your Foundations Move: The Three Crucial Transitions in Life and Career," author and consultant C. Michael Thompson draws upon established tenets of psychology and adult development to create a guide for recognizing and understanding the patterns of these transitions. Using case studies from his many years as an executive coach and career counselor, Thompson addresses the potential pitfalls and solutions for successfully navigating the three critical transitions common to today's adults, and for building a solid new foundation for your life, work, and relationships. Instead of seeing them only as challenges, Thompson shows how you can use these periods of transition to enhance the success, significance, and satisfaction of the rest of your life and career.

Over the last 50 years, Nepal has been considered an experiential model in determining the effectiveness and success of global human development strategies, both in theory and in practice. As such, it provides a rich array of in-depth case studies in both development success and failure. This edited collection examines these in order to propose a novel perspective on how human development occurs and how it can be aided and sustained. Aid, Technology and Development: The lessons from Nepal champions plural rationality from both a theoretical and practical perspective in order to challenge and critique the status quo in human development understanding, while simultaneously presenting a concrete framework with which to aid citizen and governmental organisations in the galvanization of human development. Including contributions by leading international social scientists and development practitioners throughout Nepal, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the field of foreign aid and development studies.

Theatre has always been subject to a wide range of social, political, moral, and doctrinal controls, with authorities and social groups imposing constraints on scripts, venues, staging, acting, and reception. Focusing on a range of countries and political regimes, this book examines the many forms that theatre censorship has taken in the 20th century and continues to take in the 21st, arguing that it remains a live issue in the contemporary world. The book re-examines assumptions about prohibition and state control, and offers a more complex reading of theatre censorship as a continuum ranging from the unconscious self-censorship built into social structures and discursive practices, through bureaucratic regulation or unofficial influence, up to detention and physical violence. An international team of contributors offers an illuminating set of case studies informed by both new archival research and the first-hand experience of playwrights and directors, covering theatre censorship in areas such as Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, East Germany, Nepal, Zimbabwe, the USA, Ireland, and Britain. Focusing on right-wing dictatorships, post-colonial regimes, communist systems and Western democracies, the essays analyze methods and discourses of censorship, identify the multiple agents involved, examine the responses of theatremakers, and show how each example reveals important features of its political and cultural contexts. Expanding understanding of the nature and effects of censorship, this volume affirms the power of theatre to challenge authorized discourses and makes a timely contribution to debates about freedom of expression through performance.

Why do people want what they want? Why does one person see the world as a place to control, while another feels controlled by the world? A useful theory of culture, the authors contend, should start with these questions, and the answers, given different historical conditions, should apply equally well to people of all times, places, and walks of li

In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community.

This is an international business study of Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asia. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, the book examines business practices within a political, cultural, economic and religious context. It highlights those cultural and historical ties of the region which are shared because of a common religion. In analysing business environments, economics and government practices across the region, the book provides a deeper understanding of the influence of cultural values on work practices in Southeast Asia. The author first offers an overview of the history of the region and the nature and guiding principles of Theravada Buddhism. The next sections of the book present the history and the business and economic environment of the four countries in Southeast Asia, along with some relevant case studies of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar/Burma and Thailand. The book analyses business strategies and practices, management and marketing issues as well as the characteristics of companies. The last part considers the political environment of the four countries and hints at future trends and developments. The book offers a framework for working in the region, and provides valuable insights into this unique business environment, which is significantly different from the Western context. Filling a gap in existing literature, this book provides an accessible study of actual business practices in Southeast Asia.

Conformity is a common coping strategy for dealing with stresses in political situations, as well a strategy for dealing with the lack of agreed foundations. This work introduces the conceptual frameworks of coping and conformity to provide a new analysis of the ethical and political demands of international life. The volume argues that coping through conformity is the only means available for dealing with uncertainty and the absence of shared foundations, and while conformity may be a largely practical issue it also reflects a consensus on values. Dyer draws on recent critical theoretical perspectives as well as engaging with dominant 'liberal' assumptions in the global context providing a critical study of the impact of norms and values in world politics. The book also addresses wider issues of freedom and necessity, individualism and communitarianism and cosmopolitanism, agency and structure, and the legitimacy of governance and institutions. The theoretical arguments are illuminated within the ecological context and such recent concerns as climate and energy security are examined as forceful illustrations of current political challenges as well as a potential source of insights into the alternatives. Providing a fresh theoretical perspective on world politics, this work will be of great interest to all scholars of global politics, international relations and globalization studies.

This book is intended to help analytical chemists feel comfortable with more commonly used statistical operations and help them make effective use of the results. Emphasis is put upon computer-based methods that are applied in relation to measurement and the quality of the resulting data. The book is intended for analytical chemists working in industry but is also appropriate for students taking first degrees or an MSc in analytical chemistry.The authors have divided this book into quite short sections, each dealing with a single topic. The sections are as far as possible selfcontained, but are extensively cross-referenced. The book can therefore be used either systematically by reading the sections sequentially, or as a quick reference by going directly to the topic of interest. Every statistical method and application covered has at least one example where the results are analysed in detail. This enables readers to emulate this analysis on their own examples. All of the datasets used in examples are available for download, so that readers can compare their own output with that of the book and thus verify that they are entering data correctly into the statistical package that they happen to use.

This book is intended to help analytical chemists feel comfortable with more commonly used statistical operations and help them make effective use of the results. Emphasis is put upon computer-based methods that are applied in relation to measurement and the quality of the resulting data. The book is intended for analytical chemists working in industry but is also appropriate for students taking first degrees or an MSc in analytical chemistry.The authors have divided this book into quite short sections, each dealing with a single topic. The sections are as far as possible selfcontained, but are extensively cross-referenced. The book can therefore be used either systematically by reading the sections sequentially, or as a quick reference by going directly to the topic of interest. Every statistical method and application covered has at least one example where the results are analysed in detail. This enables readers to emulate this analysis on their own examples. All of the datasets used in examples are available for download, so that readers can compare their own output with that of the book and thus verify that they are entering data correctly into the statistical package that they happen to use.

Conformity is a common coping strategy for dealing with stresses in political situations, as well a strategy for dealing with the lack of agreed foundations. This work introduces the conceptual frameworks of coping and conformity to provide a new analysis of the ethical and political demands of international life.

The volume argues that coping through conformity is the only means available for dealing with uncertainty and the absence of shared foundations, and while conformity may be a largely practical issue it also reflects a consensus on values. Dyer draws on recent critical theoretical perspectives as well as engaging with dominant ?liberal? assumptions in the global context providing a critical study of the impact of norms and values in world politics.

The book also addresses wider issues of freedom and necessity, individualism and communitarianism and cosmopolitanism, agency and structure, and the legitimacy of governance and institutions. The theoretical arguments are illuminated within the ecological context and such recent concerns as climate and energy security are examined as forceful illustrations of current political challenges as well as a potential source of insights into the alternatives.

Providing a fresh theoretical perspective on world politics, this work will be of great interest to all scholars of global politics, international relations and globalization studies.

This is an international business study of Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asia. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, the book examines business practices within a political, cultural, economic and religious context. It highlights those cultural and historical ties of the region which are shared because of a common religion. In analysing business environments, economics and government practices across the region, the book provides a deeper understanding of the influence of cultural values on work practices in Southeast Asia. The author first offers an overview of the history of the region and the nature and guiding principles of Theravada Buddhism. The next sections of the book present the history and the business and economic environment of the four countries in Southeast Asia, along with some relevant case studies of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar/Burma and Thailand. The book analyses business strategies and practices, management and marketing issues as well as the characteristics of companies. The last part considers the political environment of the four countries and hints at future trends and developments. The book offers a framework for working in the region, and provides valuable insights into this unique business environment, which is significantly different from the Western context. Filling a gap in existing literature, this book provides an accessible study of actual business practices in Southeast Asia.

The new edition of this comprehensive course in Spanish-English translation offers advanced students of Spanish a challenging yet practical approach to the acquisition of translation skills, with clear explanations of the theoretical issues involved.

A variety of translation issues are addressed, including:

• cultural differences
• register and dialect
• grammatical differences
• genre.

With a sharper focus, clearer definitions and an increased emphasis on up-to-date ?real world? translation tasks, this second edition features a wealth of relevant illustrative material taken from a wide range of sources, both Latin American and Spanish, including:

• technical, scientific and legal texts
• journalistic and informative texts
• literary and dramatic texts.

Each chapter includes suggestions for classroom discussion and a set of practical exercises designed to explore issues and consolidate skills. Model translations, notes and suggestions for teaching and assessment are provided in a Teachers? Handbook available as a pdf upon request from [email protected].

Thinking Spanish Translation is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Spanish and translation studies. The book will also appeal to a wide range of language students and tutors through the general discussion of the principles and purposes of translation.

First published in 1998, this book describes the surviving medieval remains there and the far more numerous manor houses and castles owned by the bishops, as well as their London houses. Apart from royal residences these are far the largest group of medieval domestic buildings of a single type that we have. The author describes how these buildings relate to the way of life of the bishops in relation to their duties and their income and how in particular the dramatic social changes of the later middle ages influenced their form. The work of the great bishop castle-builders of the 12th century is discussed, as are the general history of the medieval house with its early influence from the Continent, the changes in style of hall and chamber (still controversial) and its climax in the great courtyard houses of Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York. The book includes over a hundred plans, sections and photographs of the surviving parts of bishops' residences, with a survey of 1647 of the Archbishop's palace at Canterbury before demolition.

This is the first major European political science book to discuss the growing interdisciplinary field of 'cultural theory', proposing a coherent and viable alternative to mainstream political science. The authors argue that three elements - social relations, cultural bias and behavioural strategy - illuminate political questions at a level of analysis on any scale: from the household to the state; the international regime to the political party.

eBook available with sample pages: 020319764X

In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community.

Jose Maria Rodriguez Mendez is a noted playwright, an acerbic cultural critic, and a political dissident under Franco. In "Performing Spanishness," the first English-language examination of Mendez's life and work, Michael Thompson sets the playwright's lifelong struggle against censorship in the context of Spain's shifting national identity. Mendez's work presents "Spanishness" not as a static trait, but as an ongoing performance; "Performing Spanishness "is an indispensable resource to those interested in theater, Spain, and the relationship between art and activism.