The dithyramb, a choral song associated mostly with the god Dionysos, is the longest-surviving form of collective performance in Greek culture, lasting in its shifting shapes from the seventh century BC into late antiquity. Yet it has always stood in the shadow of its more glamorous relations - tragedy, comedy, and the satyr-play. This volume, with contributions from international experts in the field, is the first to look at dithyramb in its entirety, understanding it as an important social and cultural phenomenon of Greek antiquity.
Dithyramb in Context explores the idea that the dithyramb is much more than a complex poetic form: the history of the dithyramb is a history of changing performance cultures which form part of a continuous social process. How the dithyramb functions as a marker, as well as a carrier, of social change throughout Greek antiquity is expressed in themes as various as performance and ritual, poetics and intertextuality, music and dance, and history and politics. Drawing together literary critics, historians of religion, archaeologists, epigraphers, and historians, this volume applies a wide historical and geographical framework, scrutinizing the poetry and, for the first time, giving due weight to the evidence of epigraphy and the visual arts.

Age-old scholarly dogma holds that the death of serious theatre went hand-in-hand with the 'death' of the city-state and that the fourth century BC ushered in an era of theatrical mediocrity offering shallow entertainment to a depoliticised citizenry. The traditional view of fourth-century culture is encouraged and sustained by the absence of dramatic texts in anything more than fragments. Until recently, little attention was paid to an enormous array of non-literary evidence attesting, not only the sustained vibrancy of theatrical culture, but a huge expansion of theatre throughout (and even beyond) the Greek world. Epigraphic, historiographic, iconographic and archaeological evidence indicates that the fourth century BC was an age of exponential growth in theatre. It saw: the construction of permanent stone theatres across and beyond the Mediterranean world; the addition of theatrical events to existing festivals; the creation of entirely new contexts for drama; and vast investment, both public and private, in all areas of what was rapidly becoming a major 'industry'. This is the first book to explore all the evidence for fourth century ancient theatre: its architecture, drama, dissemination, staging, reception, politics, social impact, finance and memorialisation.

This important new book is the first general overview of the macroeconomic nature and recent history of the Singapore economy.After discussing general features of modern Singapore's economy, government and development strategy, the authors analyse its macroeconomic history over the past three decades, as well as reviewing current macroeconomic theory regarding small, open economies. Singapore's monetary system, trade patterns, balance of payments and the nature of its exchange rate mechanism and policy are all described and analysed in the subsequent chapters which also look at its growth and cyclical experiences and provide a review of the ways economists have attempted to model the economy. The Singapore Economy integrates much previous research scattered in many sources as well as containing an extensive bibliography of references about the economy and the statistical sources used. It will be suitable for students of macroeconomics and economic development in Asia, and the general reader interested in the nature, structure and recent growth of the Singapore economy.

What was the role of mousike, the realm of the Muses, in Greek life? More wide-ranging in its implications than the English 'music', mousike lay at the heart of Greek culture, and was often indeed synonymous with culture. In its commonest form, it represented for the Greeks a seamless complex of music, poetic word, and physical movement, encompassing a vast array of performances - from small-scale entertainment in the private home to elaborate performances involving the entire community. Yet the history of the field, particularly in anglophone scholarship, has been hitherto narrowly conceived, and the broader cultural significance of mousike largely ignored. Focusing mainly on classical Athens these new and specially commissioned essays analyse the theory and practice of musical performance in a variety of social contexts and demonstrate the centrality of mousike to the values and ideology of the polis. The so-called 'new musical revolution' in late fifth-century Athens receives serious treatment in this volume for the first time. A major theme of the book is the musical and mousike dimension of Greek religion, rarely analysed in its own right. The ethical and philosophical aspects of Athenian mousike are another central concern, with the figure of the dancing philosopher as an emblem of music's role in intellectual life. The book as a whole provides an integrated cultural analysis of central aspects of Greek mousike, which will be of interest to classical scholars, to cultural historians, and to anyone concerned with understanding the power of music as a cultural phenomenon.

Performance, Reception, Iconography assembles twenty-three papers from an international group of scholars who engage with, and develop, the seminal work of Oliver Taplin. Oliver Taplin has for over three decades been at the forefront of innovation in the study of Greek literature, and of the Greek theatre, tragic and comic, in particular. The studies in this volume centre on three key areas - the performance of Greek literature, the interactions between literature and the visual realm of iconography, and the reception and appropriation of Greek literature, and of Greek culture more widely, in subsequent historical periods.

In this book Gavin Peebles and Peter Wilson offer an historical overview of the rapid growth and development of the Singapore economy, detailing the institutions and policies which have made this growth possible. They examine the current state of the economy and its future in terms of prospective growth and structural change. The authors discuss the conflicting views on the role of government and the public sector in the economy, and analyse the quality and sustainability of growth. They explore the structural changes which have occurred due to high rates of savings and investment, a large balance of payments surplus and monetary, financial and fiscal conditions. Important in this analysis is the extent to which Singaporeans themselves have benefited in terms of welfare. The authors also identify the key roles played by trade policy, and financial and exchange rate institutions in creating and sustaining growth. In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, they assess the current health of the economy and the implementation of reforms to achieve the government's vision of a 'New Singapore'. Based on the authors' own combined experiences of living in Singapore for over 20 years, this broadbased and analytical book sheds light on Singapore's status in the world economy. The integration of economic, social and political perspectives will ensure the book's broad appeal amongst scholars, students and researchers interested in growth and economic development in Singapore and South-east Asia.

This important new book is the first general overview of the macroeconomic nature and recent history of the Singapore economy.After discussing general features of modern Singapore's economy, government and development strategy, the authors analyse its macroeconomic history over the past three decades, as well as reviewing current macroeconomic theory regarding small, open economies. Singapore's monetary system, trade patterns, balance of payments and the nature of its exchange rate mechanism and policy are all described and analysed in the subsequent chapters which also look at its growth and cyclical experiences and provide a review of the ways economists have attempted to model the economy. The Singapore Economy integrates much previous research scattered in many sources as well as containing an extensive bibliography of references about the economy and the statistical sources used. It will be suitable for students of macroeconomics and economic development in Asia, and the general reader interested in the nature, structure and recent growth of the Singapore economy.

We rarely speak or even write in the complete sentences that are often held to be the ideal form of linguistic communication. Language is, in fact, full of gaps, because speakers and writers operate in contexts which allow bits of language to be understood rather than expressed. This book systematically analyses this inherent gappiness of language, known as ellipsis, and provides an account of the different contexts, both linguistic and situational, which affect its use. Peter Wilson draws on a wide variety of examples of spoken and written English, and both literary and non-literary to present a comprehensive classification of elliptical language that ranges from the conversational fragment and the advertisement to the dialogue of Shakespeare and imagist poetry. Mind the Gap shows how ellipsis is a feature of major structural and stylistic importance to our understanding of spoken and written language, and will be of interest to undergraduate students of linguistics, literature, communication and the interrelations between them..

In Saudi Arabia today a classic confrontation between Islamic fundamentalism and modernism has brought the Saudi banking system virtually to a state of paralysis. The debate is between those upholding the traditional Islamic prohibition against charging interest on loans and those who wish to see a modern banking system capable of generating credit to support economic development. Drawing on personal experience, interviews, and unpublished primary sources, Peter Wilson tells a dramatic story of powerful personalities, clashing cultures, and often mysterious institutions with a journalists’ eye for the telling anecdote as well as for the statistical evidence.

This is a collection of essays, by leading international scholars, on the history of the Greek theatre, and on the wider context of festival culture in which theatrical activity took place in the Greek world. The emphasis is on the documentary material - inscriptions, archaeological remains and monuments - which provides so much of our 'hard' evidence for the activities of the theatre. Much of the important material discussed here is unknown except to specialists, and these studies offer access to its interpretation to a wider audience. They cover a wide range of time and place, from the earliest days of the Greek theatre to the Roman period, with special emphasis on the neglected Hellenistic period, which is especially rich in documentary evidence.

Poor people in developing countries could make excellent suppliers, employees and customers but are often ignored by major businesses. This omission leads to increased risk, higher costs and lower sales. Meanwhile, businesses are asked by governments and poverty activists to do more for economic development, but their exhortations are rarely based on a proper business case. Make Poverty Business bridges the gap by constructing a rigorous profit-making argument for multinational corporations to do more business with the poor. It takes economic development out of the corporate social responsibility ghetto and places it firmly in the core business interests of the corporation, and argues that to see the poor only as potential consumers at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) misses half of the story. Make Poverty Business examines the successes, failures and missed opportunities of a wide range of global companies including Wal-Mart, BP, Unilever, Shell and HSBC when dealing with the poor and with development advocates in the media, NGOs, governments and international organisations. It includes a discussion on how to use a poverty perspective to provoke profitable innovation - not only to create new products and services but also to find new sources of competitive advantage in the supply chain and to develop more sustainable, lower-cost business models in developing countries. Make Poverty Business will be essential reading for international business managers seeking to increase profits and decrease risks in developing countries, development advocates who seek to harness the profit motive to achieve reductions in poverty, and academics looking for practical strategies on how business can implement BOP initiatives in developing countries.

This book reassesses the contribution to international thought of some of the most important thinkers of the inter-war period. It takes as its starting point E.H. Carr's famous critique which, more than any other work, established the reputation of the period as the "utopian" or "idealist" phase of international relations theorizing. This characterization of inter-war thought is scrutinized through ten detailed studies of such writers as Norman Angell, J.A. Hobson, J.M. Keynes, David Mitrany, and Alfred Zimmern. The studies demonstrate the diversity of perspectives within so-called "idealism" and call into question the descriptive and analytical value of the entire notion. It is concluded that "idealism" is an overly general term, useful for scoring debating points rather than providing a helpful category for analysis.

Absolutism in Central Europe is about the form of European monarchy known as absolutism, how it was defined by contemporaries, how it emerged and developed, and how it has been interpreted by historians, political and social scientists. It investigates how scholars from a variety of disciplines have defined and explained political development across what was formerly known as the 'age of absolutism'. It assesses whether the term still has utility as a tool of analysis and it explores the wider ramifications of the process of state-formation from the experience of central Europe from the early seventeenth century to the start of the nineteenth.

Series Information:
Historical Connections

We rarely speak or even write in the complete sentences that are often held to be the ideal form of linguistic communication. Language is, in fact, full of gaps, because speakers and writers operate in contexts which allow bits of language to be understood rather than expressed. This book systematically analyses this inherent gappiness of language, known as ellipsis, and provides an account of the different contexts, both linguistic and situational, which affect its use. Peter Wilson draws on a wide variety of examples of spoken and written English, and both literary and non-literary to present a comprehensive classification of elliptical language that ranges from the conversational fragment and the advertisement to the dialogue of Shakespeare and imagist poetry. Mind the Gap shows how ellipsis is a feature of major structural and stylistic importance to our understanding of spoken and written language, and will be of interest to undergraduate students of linguistics, literature, communication and the interrelations between them..