This book is the first systematic scientific study of global quasi-legislation. Taking public opinion and multilateral agreements as the international equivalent to national election and passing laws on the national scale, and extending nation-state concepts to a global society, it analyzes citizens' preferences and the state's willingness to enter into 120 multilateral treaties. After identifying the links as a first step toward conceptualizing quasi-legislative global politics, the book examines how each of the 193 states manifests quasi-legislative behavior by factor-analyzing six instrumental variables such as treaty participation index and six policy domains of multilateral treaties, including peace and trade. It then discusses global change between 1989 and 2008, and conceptually and empirically examines the three theories of global politics that originated during that period: the theory of power transition, theory of civilizational clash and theory of global legislative politics. Lastly, it proposes a theory of global legislative politics. Shedding fresh light on the transformative nature of multilateral treaties, this book attracts researchers and students in political philosophy, international law and international relations as well as practitioners and journalists. Inoguchi and Le have developed a genuinely original perspective on world politics, one that opens up a new research agenda for thinking about state and global actors simultaneously.-- Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University This is one of those books that warrant a global readership given its emphasis on the implied trust that we invest in public institutions as viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. -- Richard J. Estes, Professor of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This book is innovative and distinctive in carving out a new way to look at "global legislative politics." I do not know of anything that compares in this interesting and novel niche of international relations analysis.-- William R. Thompson, Distinguished Professor and Rogers Chair of Political Science Emeritus, Indiana University

Although there is broad agreement that preparing global citizens for the digital age is a core responsibility of educators and schools, there is debate and uncertainty about how best to prepare students for this future. Technologies for Enhancing Pedagogy, Engagement and Empowerment in Education: Creating Learning-Friendly Environments explores how technology-based learning can enhance student engagement, performance, and empowerment. This book provides researchers, educators, and practitioners with insights from educational programs, classroom teaching, and theory-into-practice research; places educational technologies appropriately in their social and cultural contexts; and reflects upon challenges and problems in evaluating and implementing changes in the field. It shows how computer-enhanced education can improve teaching and learning without confusing the increase of computer facilities with the quality of education.

This book attempts to develop a novel way of conceptualizing regionalism under hyper-globalization. Until recently, regionalism has been often framed in terms of economic interdependence and security connectivity in which sovereign states are the key navigators within the liberal world order. Under hyper-globalization in the third millennium, hyper-globalization forces us to capture global politics at two more levels of measurement at the state level and both there below and there above. First, how 29 Asian sovereign states join multilateral treaty participation to develop their global quasi-legislative types and how citizens' satisfaction with quality of life in 29 civil societies shapes their societal types. Second, relating these two features above and below sovereign states, the book attempts to measure the features and speculate on the futures of four Asian regionalisms (Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia) and their prospect of the demographically largest continent called Asia in the twenty-first century. Regionalism is measured by the proclivity of 600 multilateral treaty participation in terms of speed (cautious versus agile), angle (global commons versus individual interests) and strategy (aspirational bonding versus mutual binding), whereas quality of life is measured by citizens' satisfaction with 16 domains, aspects and styles of individual daily life in terms of survival (or materialism), social relations (post-materialism) and public policy preponderance. The book opens an innovative vista to better understand tumultuous global politics. This ambitious volume leverages original survey data on citizen satisfaction and country-level data on treaty accessions to characterize the trajectories of countries in four regions of Asia as they adapt -- or fail to adapt -- to the challenges of globalization in the 21st century and beyond. Readers will learn much about politics from the basic level of the individual citizen to the most comprehensive level of the global system - and about the interactions of politics at all levels. -- Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University A wonderful attempt to link a country's domestic development and its adaptation to the global politics. It is truly eye-opening and the findings are likely to significantly shape our understanding of life and global politics. -- Zhengxu Wang, Ph.D. Distinguished Professor, Department of Political Science, Fudan University

This book is a rarity in that it opens a genuinely creative new vista for understanding global politics as distinguished from international politics, enhancing the vision for understanding global subjects such as multilateral treaties and the Covid-19 virus. Six hundred multilateral treaties deposited in the UN are conceptualized as a bundle of quasi-social contracts by sovereign states. A state's participation in multilateral treaties is envisaged as digitized statecraft. Using a state's physical actions and treaties' attributes, 193 profiles of statecraft are analyzed with the implications for the future of global politics. This book demonstrates that multilateral treaties are both a vehicle and an agency in the globalization trend; thus, both state and international actors influence a state's joining multilateral treaties. The book represents a marriage of international law and applied information science. It provides a framework for empirical modeling based on artificial intelligence and analyzes this framework in terms of international law and international relations. This book thus creates a new understanding of global politics.

This book is a rarity in that it opens a genuinely creative new vista for understanding global politics as distinguished from international politics, enhancing the vision for understanding global subjects such as multilateral treaties and the Covid-19 virus. Six hundred multilateral treaties deposited in the UN are conceptualized as a bundle of quasi-social contracts by sovereign states. A state's participation in multilateral treaties is envisaged as digitized statecraft. Using a state's physical actions and treaties' attributes, 193 profiles of statecraft are analyzed with the implications for the future of global politics. This book demonstrates that multilateral treaties are both a vehicle and an agency in the globalization trend; thus, both state and international actors influence a state's joining multilateral treaties. The book represents a marriage of international law and applied information science. It provides a framework for empirical modeling based on artificial intelligence and analyzes this framework in terms of international law and international relations. This book thus creates a new understanding of global politics.

This book is the first systematic scientific study of global quasi-legislation. Taking public opinion and multilateral agreements as the international equivalent to national election and passing laws on the national scale, and extending nation-state concepts to a global society, it analyzes citizens' preferences and the state's willingness to enter into 120 multilateral treaties. After identifying the links as a first step toward conceptualizing quasi-legislative global politics, the book examines how each of the 193 states manifests quasi-legislative behavior by factor-analyzing six instrumental variables such as treaty participation index and six policy domains of multilateral treaties, including peace and trade. It then discusses global change between 1989 and 2008, and conceptually and empirically examines the three theories of global politics that originated during that period: the theory of power transition, theory of civilizational clash and theory of global legislative politics. Lastly, it proposes a theory of global legislative politics. Shedding fresh light on the transformative nature of multilateral treaties, this book attracts researchers and students in political philosophy, international law and international relations as well as practitioners and journalists. Inoguchi and Le have developed a genuinely original perspective on world politics, one that opens up a new research agenda for thinking about state and global actors simultaneously.-- Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University This is one of those books that warrant a global readership given its emphasis on the implied trust that we invest in public institutions as viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. -- Richard J. Estes, Professor of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This book is innovative and distinctive in carving out a new way to look at "global legislative politics." I do not know of anything that compares in this interesting and novel niche of international relations analysis.-- William R. Thompson, Distinguished Professor and Rogers Chair of Political Science Emeritus, Indiana University

While there are many books on language and literacy education, there is an urgent need to provide a book which makes an essential link between theory, research and pedagogy with a focus on the two interrelated fields of linguistics and language education. This book is a timely contribution to the current academic discourse for such a study. It is a big challenge for lecturers and university students of educational linguistics to be fully aware of new developments in the field of linguistics and language education. This book provides some essential insights and directions which have shaped innovative ideas, practices and research implications in this broad field. The chapters of the book are grouped into three parts with different focuses: theory into research, cultural and social aspects which influence theory and practice of language education, and finally pedagogical implications. The book is a collective contribution of scholars with intensive research and professional experiences from different countries, levels of education and global contexts.

One of the most essential aspects in life for anyone in any society is health and well-being. It is the indispensable base on which happiness is based. This book examines these two important aspects of life. It focuses on the social and cultural aspects of health and well-being in current societies and cultures. Traditionally, health research has placed a greater emphasis on physical and clinical aspects such as diseases, medical treatments and rehabilitation. With an increasing interest in population health, particularly in the current context of globalisation, the sphere of health research has been expanded to also cover social and cultural factors which not only affect health conditions of individuals and communities but can also be determining health factors in some respects.

This book was published in response to the need to provide a comprehensive book dealing with the multidimensional complexity of language and literacy education. This book is carefully designed to capture three major interrelated aspects of language and literacy education in a changing and challenging world: to introduces some fundamental theoretical concepts and issues about the nature and functions of language, particularly with insights gained from linguistics and applied linguistics; to focus on language and literacy education in context; and to deal with social and cultural aspects of language and literacy in an intercultural context. This book provides a comprehensive and integrated range of theoretical and practical insights beyond the limited traditional focus on language and literacy pedagogy.

This book is unique in the sense that it presents a broad and dynamic research narrative, which is filled with phenomena, issues and challenges facing researchers in various disciplines, cultural contexts, linguistic and ethical discourses. The content of the book is addressing three overarching research issues: What are the diverse challenges, opportunities, and limitations different cohorts of individuals face? Why and how do these cohorts respond to these challenges, opportunities, and limitations? How, where, when, and why do researchers interact with these challenges and what have they learned from their investigations? One of the strengths of this edited book is, each of the contributors has explored these three issues from a somewhat unique perspective, but collectively they provide a rich discourse and milieu around the purpose of research and how and why it is conducted and interpreted within a contemporary multimodal context. Across all the chapters the contributions have focused on the process of researching and as a consequence there are two recurring discourses identified. The first discourse relates to conducting the research and involves topics, such as methodology, ethics, research populations, assessment, data, and linguistic complexity. The second discourse is around the researchers, because they are the "lens" through which their research is conceived, guided, articulated, and interpreted. For too long now, too many books about research, particularly social science related research, have been locked into a narrow discourse around the benefits of either qualitative or quantitative research methods. While this topic is explored in this text, it is not dominated by this one, rather artificial dichotomy. What is exciting about the book is its diversity and the range of dichotomies that are explored and the range of contexts and issues that are reviewed. There is a strong narrative quality throughout the chapters where the voice of the researchers and their purpose is amplified. The book is of special interest to research-orientated students as well as to those who want to learn more about conducting research in a challenging discourse of diverse paradigms.

The world is becoming more and more intricately multidimensional, both culturally and linguistically. Language is so deeply embedded in culture that cultural identity is defined to a great extent in terms of language. Based on this premise, the loss of one's language contributes to the loss of one's culture. This is the reason it is essential to maintain one's linguistic integrity in order to protect one's cultural identity. This new book captures the fundamental concepts and issues raised in this context.