bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Goliath As Gentle Giant
Authors: Friedmann Jonathan L.
Published: July 2024

In the Hebrew Bible and stories loyal to it, Goliath is the stereotypical giant of folklore: big, brash, violent, and dimwitted. Goliath as Gentle Giant sets out to rehabilitate the giant’s image by exploring the origins of the biblical behemoth, the limitations of the “underdog” metaphor, and the few sympathetic treatments of Goliath in popular media. What insights emerge when we imagine things from Goliath’s point of view? How might this affect our reading of the biblical account or its many retellings and interpretations? What sort of man was Goliath really? The nuanced portraits analyzed in this book serve as a catalyst to challenge readers to question stereotypes, reexamine old assumptions, and humanize the “other.”
Philosophical Perspective on Cinema
Authors: González Pedro Blas
Published: July 2024

The main premise of Philosophical Perspective on Cinema is simple: Can a visual medium such as cinema put in greater perspective diverse aspects of human experience? Films are usually sorted by genres, but by applying metaphysical/existential categories to cinema, the author enables readers to reflect on the nature and essence of existence by making life appear less transparent to itself. Undoubtedly, the connection between sensual reality and philosophical reflection is often glossed over when the emphasis is placed on theoretical abstractions, and not life itself. While this work is a reflection on the philosophy of existence, the author embraces a practical approach to the metaphysical/existential foundation of human existence.
A Cultural History of Modern Korean Literature
Authors: Lee Kyounghoon
Published: July 2024

A Cultural History of Modern Korean Literature: The Birth of Oppa examines the cultural and social impact of Japanese colonialism and modernity on the wider aspects of everyday life in Korea. Selected as an outstanding work in 2004 by the National Academy of Sciences in South Korea, is by any measure a remarkable work. Lee considers a wide range of literary and cultural texts, exploring significant historical moments and phenomena while critically assessing personal experience and social life, mainly how modernity, colonialism, and total war shaped national and cultural identities. This text also reflects the complex and refractory legacy of Japanese colonialism and modernity. Lee’s foray into the complex relationships between Korea, Japan, and the West offers a thoroughly engaging study of the origins of modern Korean culture and society during the first half of the 20th century. The first of its kind, Lee offers a richly vivid portrait of a rapidly changing landscape, fueled by modernity and technology, one that will appeal to general readers and students alike.
Israel's National Security, the Arab Position, and Its Complicated Relations with the United States
Authors: Eilam Ehud
Published: July 2024

This book analyzes major national security issues in the Middle East, focusing on those regarding Israel, which could have negative implications on the United States. Currently, Israel is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, its regional ambitions, and Hezbollah’s arsenal. Other major concerns facing Israel are the chemical weapons in Syria and the Golan Heights, and Egypt’s internal problems, which might undermine its peace with Israel. In the Gaza Strip, the growing conflict between Israel and Hamas could lead to another war.
The Ethical Legitimization of Criminal Law
Authors: Szczucki Krzysztof
Published: July 2024

When creating the norms of criminal law, the legislator should strive for their compatibility with the principle of human dignity while taking into account the ethical legitimacy of criminal law. This thesis is the axis around which The Ethical Legitimization of Criminal Law is constructed. Szczucki shows that criminal law is like a suit; to be a perfect fit, it has to be tailor-made. That is why he argues for three points of reference to guide moral evaluation of criminal law: first, the coherence of the legal system; second, the will of the legislator; and third, the virtues of citizens. Only by analyzing these concepts together in the context of legal culture can one answer the question of what makes good criminal law. The book concludes that an ethical perspective in analyzing, grounding, and evaluating criminal law is inevitable. Appealing to researchers, scholars, and professionals from across the criminal and legal spectrum, this book explores fundamental questions about the nature of ethical perspective in legal analysis.
Mexico's Rebellious Afterlives
Authors: Ohlson Olof Kjell Oscar
Published: July 2024

Mexico's Rebellious Afterlives: Armed Uprisings and Activism in the Narco War examines nonviolent activism and armed uprisings in the narco war. Olof Kjell Oscar Ohlson argues that relatives of Mexico’s many victims of violence, often without earlier experiences of human rights advocacy, become activists protesting violence or form self-armed citizens’ police to resist state, capitalist, and criminal violence. Ohlson develops innovative theories on political afterlives and rituals of rebellion, demonstrating how political street protests transform over time to become annual commemorative events at new memorial sites for the disappeared.
Sino-Russian Policies in the Center and Periphery
Authors: Khan Samra Sarfraz
Published: July 2024

This book is a comparative study of Chinese and Russian policies in their respective inner peripheries. As the inner peripheries of the two states are rather vast, a selected number of regions have been chosen from the two geographical expanses. These regions are not only rich in hydrocarbons and minerals but also serve as conduits of the same. Moreover, the geographical position of the Caucasus provides Russia with an ingress into the Transcaucasia; a region that has often presented Moscow with serious challenges in international politics. Similarly, Xinjiang and Tibet serve as supply bases of hydrocarbon and mineral, and as conduits of the same to the Chinese regime. In addition to this, while Tibet serves as China’s anchorage in Himalayas and a buffer zone against the Indian threat, Xinjiang is China’s gateway to the resource rich Central Asian market. With both Russia and China on the path of changing the post-Soviet unipolar order; insights on Sino-Russian ties and the various challenges and opportunities available to the two states are inevitable for any reader trying to understand the complexity of international politics in general and of Chinese and Russian politics in particular of the twenty-first century.
A Principled Constitution?
Authors: Smith Steven D. , Alexander Larry , Allan James , Schwarzschild Maimon
Published: July 2024

Is the United States Constitution the embodiment of certain principles? The four authors of this book for a variety of reasons, and with somewhat different emphases, believe the answer is no. Those who authored the Constitution no doubt all believed in liberty, equality, and, with caveats, republican self-government values, or if you will, principles. But they had different conceptions of those principles and what those principles entailed for constituting a government. Although the Constitution they created reflected, in some sense, their principles, the Constitution itself was a specific list of do’s and don’ts that its creators hoped would gain the allegiance of the newly independent and sovereign states. And, for somewhat different reasons, the authors of this book believe that was a good thing.
US Pivot Toward India After 9/11
Authors: Sarker Masud
Published: July 2024

The book is a very timely and important work on US foreign policy toward India since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The author traces the trajectory of closer Indo-US relations during the Bush and Obama administrations. The author applies a qualitative methodological approach to describe these changes and explain the factors that explain the strengthened bilateral relationship, especially after decades of irritable relations between the two "estranged democracies." The book compares two factors – (a) the 9/11 attacks; (b) global structural changes after the Cold War – to assess which of these factors best explains closer Indo-US relations over the last two decades. The author's argument seems to be that the explanation lies more in the second factor (structural changes), rather than the first (consequences of the 9/11 attacks). The book should be a fascinating one that provides an excellent analysis of Indo-US relations since India's independence to Obama administrations based on extensive use of key primary sources including interviewing the persons involved in US foreign policy-making process. While the existing literature has mainly focused on the civil-nuclear deal as a turning point for Indo-US relations, this book presented an alternative story for improved Indo-US relations in the 21st century and uncovered the ongoing puzzle. More interestingly, the author showed how Indian diaspora as a 3rd party play role in strengthening Indo-US relations.
Peirce's Pragmaticism
Authors: San Juan E.
Published: July 2024

Praised by Bertrand Russell as “one of the most original minds” and “certainly the greatest American thinker ever,” Charles Sanders Peirce invented “pragmaticism.” Vulgarized by William James and others, Peirce’s revolutionary semiotic recognizes chance, fortuitous happenings, serendipity, in understanding lawful paradigm-shifts in history. Peirce’s thought envisions a process-oriented community of inquirers engaged in confronting urgent social problems by clarifying the groundwork of meanings, beliefs, purposes, ideologies. E. San Juan’s project seeks to excavate the radical resonance of Peirce’s desire for “concrete reasonableness,” an ideal realized in the philosopher’s endeavor to fuse scientific theory and collective praxis, nature and the universal human potential still chained in alienated labor. Peirce’s hypothesis of transforming the conduct of our lives remains not only to be analyzed and interpreted further but also tested in actual practice by future generations of inquirers and activists.
Transracial Adoption, Identity, and Racism in the United States
Authors: Antares Kyrai E.
Published: July 2024

Transracial Adoption, Identity, and Racism in the United States: Between Two Worlds places racial literacy and anti-racism at the center of the transracial adoption debate. The author argues that transracial adoption stems from systemic issues of racial injustice, and that those problems will not be solved quickly, for they are still being realized. While the work to raise awareness of and correct the disproportionate number of Black children in foster care is done, transracial adoption will continue to occur. In the meantime, the author suggests an intentional examination of the narratives of Black transracial adoptees' experiences of race to learn about the racial socialization in transracial adoptive households during childhood, teen years, and into adulthood. Adoptees share what they learned about race in White families, what they needed in terms of racial socialization that they didn't get, the myriad feelings they have toward their families, and how they make sense of race in their lives as young adults in the United States. The stories told by adoptees in this book are centered to inspire a change in how transracial adoption is approached by White parents, adoption professionals, social workers, researchers, and counseling psychologists.
Identity and Violence in Early Modern Granada
Authors: Zakrzewski Tanja
Published: July 2024

In Identity and Violence in Early Modern Granada: Conversos and Moriscos, Tanja Zakrzewski argues that Conversos and Moriscos, despite being distinct sociocultural groups within Spanish society, still employed the same arguments and rhetorical strategies to establish and defend their place within society. Both Conversos and Moriscos relied on contemporary notions of honour, authority, and loyalty to emphasize that they are true Spaniards - not despite their New Christian heritage but because of it. This book offers an entangled narrative of their history and examines how their notions of honour and hispanidad shaped their socio-cultural identities during the time of the socio-cultural identities during the time of the Alpujarras Rebellion.
The War on Terror and Terror of War
Authors: Anastasiou Harry
Published: July 2024

In this book, the author, Harry Anastasiou, explains previously unaddressed historical outcomes resulting from the combined impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the United States’ subsequent Global War on Terror. While expounding on the finer details of the decades-long interaction between militant jihadism and the Global War on Terror, the analysis explores two contrasting narratives: that of bellicose nationalism and that of peace and democracy. As central drivers in the historical evolution of America, their contrasting influences shaped policy, political culture and strategic approaches in both the domestic and international arenas. Throughout the post-9/11 era, mainstream America underwent significant cultural and political shifts away from the narrative of peace and democracy as it tilted towards bellicose nationalism. Focusing primarily on the presidency of George W. Bush, the book explores how nationalism harmed the rule of law, human rights and democracy, both domestically and internationally. Viewing war as a regime, rather than as a means to promote democracy, the author conducts a reality-based demythologization of war, demonstrating how costly and counterproductive it has been. In this light, he questions the historical efficacy of war as well as the way nationalism both generates and glorifies war.
History, Identity and the Bukusu-Bagisu Relations on the Kenya and Uganda Border
Authors: Wekesa Peter Wafula
Published: July 2024

History, Identity, and the Bukusu-Bagisu Relations on the Kenya and Uganda Border analyzes issues of history, identity, and the Bukusu-Bagisu relations on the Kenya and Uganda border. From this microcosmic level, Peter Wafula Wekesa explores forms of trans-border social, economic, and political relations that have evolved between the two communities since the pre-colonial period. Utilizing both primary and secondary sources, Wekesa presents the context within which border relations between the two groups emerged and were transformed over time. This book delves into the history of relations between the two peoples that had long developed before the European colonial partition. The partition, as Wekesa observes, not only ignored African interests, but also generally entrenched western notions of the border that contradicted African conceptions of space. These western notions were augmented by the colonial and independent government policies that froze the historical solidarities that had existed between the two communities. However, colonial and independent government policies generated contradictions over the Bukusu-Bugisu borderland area that made the control of the interactions between the two communities within the distinct geopolitical spaces problematic. As such, both formal and informal dynamics made the common Bukusu-Bugisu borderland a site of numerous permutations.
Religion and Radical Pluralism
Authors: Jose Jeff Shawn
Published: July 2024

In Religion and Radical Pluralism: Engaging Rawls and Gandhi, Jeff Shawn Jose confronts the question of the role of religion in the public sphere through the writings of John Rawls and Mahatma Gandhi. Jose explores Rawls’s and Gandhi’s contrasting and complementary views through the framework of three objections—integrity, fairness, and divisiveness—against a view of public reason that restricts the expression of religious arguments in the public sphere. The book introduces Gandhi’s ideas into Rawls’s political liberal framework and brings Rawls’s ideas into the Gandhian religious framework, a critical and creative encounter where the relationship between Gandhian and Rawlsian approaches becomes a fertile ground for reciprocal, dialectical reflections. Religion and Radical Pluralism teases out and evaluates the tensions and prospects in Rawls’s and Gandhi’s views on the role of religion in the public sphere, thus offering a pertinent contribution to the study of radical pluralism in contemporary societies.
The Spirituality of the English and American Deists
Authors: Waligore Joseph
Published: July 2024

The deists have been misunderstood as Enlightenment thinkers who believed in an inactive deity. Instead, the deists were spiritually oriented people who believed God treated all his children fairly. Unlike the biblical God, the deist God did not punish entire nations with plagues, curse innocent people, or order the extermination of whole nations. In deism, for the first time in modern Western history, God “became” good.

The Spirituality of the English and American Deists: How God Became Good explores how the English deists were especially important because they formulated the arguments that most of the later deists accepted. Half of the English deists claimed they were advocating the Christianity Jesus taught before his later followers perverted his teachings. Joseph Waligore call these deists Jesus-centered deists.

Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams studied these Jesus-centered deists and had similar beliefs. While some of the most prominent American Founders were deists, deism had little or no influence on the religious parts of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Deism did not die out at the end of the Enlightenment. Instead, under different names and forms it has continued to be a significant religious force. Informed observers even think a deistic spiritual outlook is the most popular religious or spiritual outlook in contemporary America.
Constance Fenimore Woolson's Subversive Politics
Authors: Brehm Victoria
Published: July 2024

This seminal study reveals how Constance Fenimore Woolson participated in debates on nineteenth-century political topics considered the province of men. She commented on the most important issues of her time: monetary policy, post-Reconstruction legal decisions, racial justice and interracial marriage, women’s rights, religious hypocrisy, environmental destruction, destabilizing international developments, and the moral character of the nation. The innovative essays in this book introduce her techniques and the political concerns that inspired her complicated art, encouraging scholars to begin the process of rereading and reanalyzing Woolson’s oeuvre to understand the compelling allegories and satires she created. The oppositional, intertextual, and referential techniques she developed allowed her to enter contested political conversations about compelling nineteenth-century problems like few women of her century, sometimes making her work political commentary as much as fiction.
The State and the Legacies of British Colonial Development in Malawi
Authors: Kayira Gift Wasambo
Published: July 2024

What were the origins of British ideas on rural poverty, and how did they shape development practice in Malawi? How did the international development narrative influence the poverty discourse in postcolonial Malawi from the 1960s onwards? In The State and the Legacies of British Colonial Development in Malawi: Confronting Poverty, 1939–1983, Gift Wasambo Kayira addresses these questions. Although by no means rehabilitating colonialism, the book argues that the intentions of officials and agencies charged with delivering economic development programs were never as ill-informed or wicked as some theorists have contended. Raising rural populations from poverty was on the agenda before and after independence. How to reconcile the pressing demand of stabilizing the country’s economy and alleviating rural poverty within the context of limited resources proved an impossible task to achieve. Also difficult was how to reconcile the interests of outside experts influenced by international geopolitics and theories of economic development and those of local personnel and politicians. As a result, development efforts always fell short of their goals. Through a meticulous search of the archive on rural and industrial development projects, Kayira presents a development history that displays the shortfalls of existing works on development inadequately grounded in historical study.
India and China
Authors: Basu Dipak , Miroshnik Victoria W.
Published: July 2024

A regular feature in almost publication has been a comparison of India’s slow economic growth and, until recently, China’s rapid progress. Yet, in 1988, both countries had similar living standards. As things stand, it is undoubtedly a tale of two countries and two systems. Supporters of India can point to the democratic nature of the country’s development while ignoring the slow pace of change. China’s supporters point to exceptional poverty reduction, urbanization, and infrastructure developments while ignoring the social, religious, and environmental costs these efforts have created.

However, popular media has ignored the fact the individual starting points of the two nations, a gap which this book fills. This study examines how China’s economic reforms was initiated with Deng Xiaoping’s fang-shou (‘letting go’ and ‘tightening up’) efforts between 1978 and 1989. However, until 1989 China had nothing much to demonstrate compare with India. Both countries had similar per head national income but India was technologically much superior to China. The reforms in China then accelerated in a sustained manner—be it the Family Responsibility System that transformed agriculture, the opening up of the industrial sector for the growth of local enterprises and foreign investments, or the substantial effort to make state-owned enterprises more efficient.
The Contested State
Authors: Blitz Amy
Published: July 2024

From the author’s first-hand account of the battle for democracy in the Philippines comes The Contested State, an inquiry into the international causes and consequences of regime change. Regime change tends to occur in waves, from the authoritarian transitions of the 1930s, to the democratic transitions of the late 1980s and 1990s, to the rise of authoritarianism again today. But why? To help answer this increasingly urgent question, the author examines a series of regime transitions in the Philippines over time. The book identifies structural inequality as a root cause of civil conflict, which can in turn lead to proxy wars, as transnational revolutionary, authoritarian, and democratic forces vie for control of the state. Tracing the battle for control of the Philippines back to the Spanish era through the US era and beyond, The Contested State presents a historical, transnational picture of regime change through time, offering insights into the broader transnational issues threatening democracy today.
Al-Qaedaism in the Context of Civil War
Authors: Kiyici Hakan
Published: July 2024

Al-Qaedaism in the Context of Civil War: The Nexus between Terrorism and Support explains how al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization has misappropriated the political theory of a Sunni paradigm, developing what is called al-Qaedaism, in order to supply more civilian participation and recruitment and to attain global legitimacy in the context of a civil war. It includes a comprehensive analysis of the political, religious, and social practices of al-Qaeda, through writings of key ideologues and an examination of the original strategies of the political, social and religious practices of al-Qaeda.
Making Meaning of Loss
Authors: Hayes Richard L.
Published: July 2024

Making Meaning of Loss: Change and Challenge Across the Lifespan is about how change brings loss to our lives, how we make meaning of loss, and how our experience with loss directs our encounters with loss in the future. Each loss challenges us in this way: to rethink our world view, to ask who we have become, and to reinvent ourselves anew. Taking a lifespan approach, Hayes examines how we make sense of the losses that change brings in each period of our lives and how the way in which we meet the challenge that each loss brings directs our encounters with loss in the future. In addition, he provides suggestions for how earlier losses can become fruitful allies in encounters with change in the present and how caregivers can help others to make meaning of the loss in their lives. Above all, this book is about how caregivers can help others learn from the losses in their lives and to recognize what part of the past to bring along into the present in constructing a more reliable self for meeting the challenges of an uncertain future.
Federalism in Myanmar
Authors: Lian Pau Sian
Published: July 2024

The central purpose of this book is to examine answers to questions regarding the kind of political system that Myanmar urgently needs to develop. Myanmar has suffered the endless civil war for decades since regaining its sovereignty in 1948. Therefore, the lead research question is: What kind of federal democratic model is the most suitable for Myanmar and what kind of political arrangements should be in place?

To examine answers for this question, the author employed a descriptive–qualitative approach and triangulation research method including interviews with politicians and activists in Myanmar, field observation and analysis of historical documents. The author examines the contemporary political issues of Myanmar in term of federalism to ensure that analysis of this book does not omit the actual political process performed by the government. As a result of the study, Myanmar needs a tailored federal model which is the best to accommodate the ethnically divided country that would enhance solutions to ethnic conflicts and end the civil war.
The New Collective Behavior in Digital Society
Authors: Lee Raymond L.M.
Published: July 2024

In The New Collective Behavior in Digital Society: Connection, Contagion, Control, Raymond L.M. Lee offers an updated view on the sociology of crowds. While the era of crowds that Le Bon famously wrote about more than a century ago reflected the social and political crises of his time, in the twenty-first century we encounter a completely new scenario with crowds forming online or morphing into swarms in digital space. Lee confronts large gatherings that are only virtually present and investigates collective behaviors that are not always palpable and visceral. This is the age of digital dominance where the collective becomes reduced to ones and zeros to become more vulnerable to the social and political interventions of our time. This book attempts to discern and dissect those interventions, focusing on the power of virality that sustains networks, assemblages, and platforms to generate new collective behaviors in an era of smartphones, surveillance, and pandemics that were never imagined in Le Bon’s time.
The Evolution of Banking Regulation in the European Union
Authors: Gertchev Nikolay
Published: July 2024

The Evolution of Banking Regulation in the European Union: An Economic Approach puts the analysis of banking regulation back where it belongs—within the study of the monetary system. Drawing on the theories of Walter Bagehot, this book offers a coherent and analytical framework for an integrated economic approach to a variety of banking regulations. Foregrounding the economics of money and the analysis of monetary institutions in the rationale for banking regulation, this book contributes to the discussion on the nature and efficiency of banking regulation and on its broader consequences for the economy, with a focus on the European Union.
The Church of England and Victorian Oxford
Authors: Turner Michael J.
Published: July 2024

The Church of England and Victorian Oxford: The History of the Oxford Churchmen's Union, 1860–1890 explores key questions about the Victorian Church. How did it respond to challenges, what was the role of Tractarian clergy and laity, and to what extent did the Church’s effort to prove its continuing relevance and usefulness involve compromise? The author uses the Oxford Churchmen’s Union to investigate these matters in a new and integrated way. The OCU participated in Church defense and developed outreach programs. Men were to be brought into the Church through lectures and classes, concerts, sporting events, Christmas parties, and summer excursions, but for many OCU members, the social and recreational became more important than the religious side of the enterprise. Moreover, the Union was born in controversy, because its founders included Tractarians and others looked upon it with suspicion. Controversy also surrounded the OCU’s non-religious activities. There was a sense that leisure and amusement, if they prompted a departure from a strict focus on self-improvement, ought to be shunned, yet this was an age in which pleasure was to some degree divested of its traditional association with sin. This academic study in Church history uses the Union to elucidate the religious, social, and political conditions within which the Church and its supporters had to operate.
The Next Democracy?
Authors: Milligan Tony
Published: July 2024

Representative democracy has long been problematic and subject to erosion through the introduction of components of direct democracy (referenda, voter initiatives and systems of recall). Following the increase of direct action across the world, through the Occupy movement and the rise of new populist parties championing greater citizen inclusion in decision making, many are considering whether the hierarchical system of political control might have had its day. But what might be the alternative, next democracy?

This book considers the viability of a populist conception of democratic organization, which puts power into the hands of ordinary citizens. Examining contemporary and classic theory to contextualize the critique of existing systems, the book goes on to explore alternative arrangements tested out by activists, eco-protestors and anti-capitalists – from the recent Occupy agenda to Gandhi’s experiments in alternative living. Milligan confronts the practical challenges posed by these systems of direct democracy and discusses the considerable difficulties of scaling up and sustaining them in state-level contexts. Whilst the book concedes that such concerns are genuine, it argues that a theory of generalized direct democracy can shake off its utopian aspirations and become a legitimate alternative for the future.
Once Upon a Time
Authors: Kivy Peter , Meskin Aaron
Published: July 2024

Once Upon a Time is a collection of essays in the philosophy of literature with two central themes: the significance of story –telling for us and the question of whether the novel, perhaps the art form most closely associated with story-telling, is a legitimate source of human knowledge. Leading philosopher of art Peter Kivy explores why human beings are so enthralled by being told stories and whether story-telling is a significant source of knowledge. Starting with a study of Aristotle's Poetics, Kivy then undertakes a critical discussion of Noel Carroll’s suggestion that our interaction with the artists of the past is a kind of “conversation.” He goes on to defend the thesis that one of the legitimate artistic pleasures we take in novel-reading is the acquiring of knowledge and, furthermore, that the silent reading of a novel is a kind of performance, making the novel one of the performing arts. The volume concludes with a chapter about jokes, and, in particular, whether it is immoral to tell or be amused by an “immoral” joke. This volume of essays is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in literature and the conceptual problems it may raise for philosophers.
Selective Responsibility in the United Nations
Authors: Harsant Katy
Published: July 2024

The United Nations claims to exist in order to maintain international peace and security, providing a space within which all states can work together. But why, then, does the UN invoke its responsibility to protect through humanitarian intervention in some instances but not others? Why is it that five states have the power to decide whether or not to intervene? This book challenges the dominant narrative of the UN as an institution of equality and progress by analyzing the colonial origins of the organization and revealing the unequal power relations it has perpetuated.

Harsant argues that the United Nations is unable to fulfill its claims around the protection of international peace and security due to its very structure and the privilege of certain states. Moreover, through a rigorous examination of the history of the UN and how those structures came to be, she argues that the privilege afforded to these states is the result of power relations established through the colonial encounter.

In order to understand the pressing contemporary issues of how the United Nations operates, particularly the Security Council, this book discusses issues of power and sovereignty by de-silencing the narratives of resistance and reconstructing a history of the United Nations that takes this colonial and anti-colonial relationship into account. This is a bold challenge to the eurocentrism that dominates International Relations discourse and a call to better understand the colonialism’s role in preserving the existing global order.
Mobilities of Self and Place
Authors: Dugan Mahni
Published: July 2024

When it comes to migration, there is no level playing field. Some people are privileged, advantaged, and supported and others are marginalised, persecuted, and traumatised. The extension of the rights and equalities for which many people advocate, and provision of other extrinsic conditions are insufficient for wellbeing. This work asks: what is sufficient? What is it that people do—and can do—to change their experience from suffering to wellbeing when handling challenges of migration and other mobilities?

What helps people when they are migrating? What have migrants experienced and learned that could be useful to others facing challenges of mobility and change? How can this learning be applied to promote greater social wellbeing and care of environments, in an increasingly mobile world?

Mobilities of Self and Place documents rich conversations with regular migrants and refugees to critically consider migration history, human rights, place, self, and mobilities studies. The work explores ontological and epistemological questions of sense of self, sense of place, identity and agency. Mahni Dugan helps us understand how the relationship between sense of place and sense of self affects the ability of migrants to relocate with wellbeing. The movement from global to local, social to personal, intellectual to experiential offers a broad societal understanding of the phenomena and challenges of contemporary mobilities.
The Philosophical Foundation of Alt-Right Politics and Ressentiment
Authors: Remley William
Published: July 2024

Since its inception, America has laid claim to a liberal democratic style of government with various well-known philosophical tenets. Yet the underlying beliefs or political philosophy of one of the movements that opposes liberal democratic forms of government—the alt-right—are relatively unknown.

The Philosophical Foundation of Alt-Right Politics and Ressentiment is a timely book that analyses how the principles of current American politics have developed. William Remley asserts that the philosophy of Traditionalism is central to the alt-right’s understanding of itself and explores the perceived threat to social status that seems to have propelled the movement to its prominent place in American politics. Remley uses Social Dominance Theory and the philosophical work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche to look at how group formation and hierarchies have given rise to authoritarian leadership and how a tendency that can be best described and explained through Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment led to the anti-foreign sentiment that rules American politics today.
Frantz Fanon
Authors: De Oto Alejandro J.
Published: July 2024

Focusing on the contributions of Frantz Fanon's writing to the construction of a theory of the postcolonial subject, this book engages post-structuralist discussions on subjectivity and explores the most important readings and discussions of Fanon's work. Problems such as historicity, contingency, and the positions of the subject in postcolonial contexts receive special attention together with phenomenological approaches to Fanonian writing. The central idea is to give Fanon a privileged place in social, political, and cultural analysis.

The objectives of the book are to insert Fanon’s texts in contemporary critical theory on modernity and coloniality and to incorporate Fanon in the epistemological and conceptual context of the academy. This innovative work allows us to understand Fanon’s writing as key to linking the experiences and critical developments between the global south and the global north.
Diplomatic Para-citations
Authors: Opondo Sam Okoth
Published: July 2024

Taking seriously the critical conception of diplomacy as the mediation of estrangement, Diplomatic Para-citations turns to the politics and laws that tie modern diplomacy to colonial cultures and the ‘genres of Man’ that they privilege.

In an attempt to read ‘the diplomatic’ from the African postcolony, the book probes the injunction at the center of the law of genre that states that “genres are not to be mixed.” This enables it to investigate the citational/recitational forms of knowledge and practices of recognition that reproduce the diplomatic and colonial order of things in the African context.

Through a reading of literature, philosophy, and a multiplicity of everyday practices in Africa and its diasporas, Sam Okoth Opondo explores amateur diplomatic practices that provide a counterforce to laws that prescribe faithfulness to a norm/form while proscribing the mixing of genres.
Cleaning up Greenwash
Authors: Nurse Angus
Published: July 2024

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title

Through a green criminological perspective, Angus Nurse examines the contemporary reality of corporate environmental crime and illegal activities that have become normalized within many major corporations. Arguably this is an inevitable consequence of a corporate culture that prioritizes profits and the smooth operation of market activities over environmental concerns coupled with the increased political power of major corporations that can act almost with impunity and where problems do occur, can literally buy itself out of trouble. These same corporations are broadly perceived as being responsible actors. However, Nurse argues that corporate environmental offending is often deliberate and that corporations understand that they will often be allowed to continue with polluting and non-compliant behavior because the likely enforcement responses are fines and settlements rather than criminal prosecution. Using several case studies, Nurse explores biopiracy and the rights of indigenous peoples, the behavior of oil companies in African states, the regulation of corporate social responsibility and corporate environmental responsibility, an analysis of contemporary environmental legislation and the prosecution of environmental harm, and state-corporate crime and air pollution. Dealing with these problems requires a wider notion of crime and wrongdoing that directly engages with the types of environmental offending that represent a threat to human populations and non-human nature irrespective of whether these are defined as crime by justice systems.
Complaining As a Sociocultural Activity
Authors: Yoon Kyung-Eun
Published: July 2024

This book examines the role of complaining in conversation and online interaction in Korean society. Kyung-Eun Yoon examines patterns of formulating complainability, linguistic resources for complaints, organizational features of complaining discourse, and the ways in which the participants construct social identities and cultural norms through complaining. Yoon analyzes real language use in various contexts, including everyday face-to-face and phone conversations with family members and friends, social media posts, online customer reviews, news articles, and formal complaints posted on the websites of local governments in Korea. The analysis in this book ties together the relationship among language, interaction, and social organization as well as the relationships between participants and sociocultural norms, using Korea as a case study. Scholars of interactional linguistics, Korean language pedagogy, and intercultural studies will find this book particularly useful.
Paul Tillich and Religious Socialism
Authors: MacGregor Kirk R.
Published: July 2024

Paul Tillich and Religious Socialism: Towards a Kingdom of Peace and Justice argues that the Kingdom of God—the reign of God over all human affairs via God’s manifestations in love, power, and justice—can be fragmentarily achieved through a religious socialism that creatively integrates the early Tillich’s socialist thinking with later insights throughout Tillich’s theological career and with contemporary developments in just peacemaking. The resulting religious socialism is defined by economic justice and a recognition of the sacred reality in all human endeavors. It employs Christianity to furnish the necessary depth for warding off materialism and affirming the spiritual dimension of both labor and acquiring material goods. The unbridgeable Marxist chasm between expectation and reality is bridged through new being, already historically inaugurated in the Christhood of Jesus. New being is fundamentally oriented toward bringing justice to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized. It affirms the individual and equal value of all persons and thus, in Kantian terms, promotes a kingdom of intrinsically worthwhile ends rather than a kingdom of instrumentally worthwhile means of things.
Rationalist Pragmatism
Authors: Silver Mitchell
Published: July 2024

In Rationalist Pragmatism: A Framework for Moral Objectivism, Mitchell Silver draws from a wide array of philosophical fields to formulate a comprehensive theory of ethics. He argues that an understanding of justification rooted in pragmatism leads to practical principles that apply to all those we would recognize as persons. The account bears implications for the nature of selfhood, the freedom of the will, the meaning of moral terms, the power of moral principles to motivate, conceptions of truth, the nature of value, and the use and abuse of abstract moral theorizing. Rationalist Pragmatism develops its pragmatically informed morality in light of prominent ethical schools, as well as relevant topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, including the correspondence theory of truth, inferentialist semantics, motivational internalism, the source of value, and experimental philosophy. Finally, Silver explores concrete moral and political implications of his theory, demonstrating that metaethics can affect positions regarding the morality of personal relations; the treatment of animals; and political assessments of democracy, socialism, and nationalism. Silver maintains that our interest in truth—our rational nature as practical and theoretical beings—forms us as a community of mutually recognizing truth seekers.
Kim Jong-Un's Strategy for Survival
Authors: Shin David W.
Published: July 2024

In Kim Jong-un’s Strategy for Survival, David W. Shin contends that Kim Jong-un's consolidation of power at home and the leveraging of Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, and Washington, and others abroad show that he is not a madman and, like the two earlier Kims, has consistently been underestimated. Shin presents an alternative framework for Kim Jong-un’s behavior through his analysis of Kim's background and his development as the successor to his father, Kim Jong-il; the evolution of the totalitarian system Kim inherited from his grandfather, Kim Il-sung; and the security environment after Kim Jong-il’s death in 2011. This book is recommended for scholars and students of political science, Asian studies, international relations, and history.
Criminality and the Modern
Authors: Brauer Stephen
Published: July 2024

The emergence of the social sciences, established in the mid to late nineteenth-century, had a substantial bearing on how researchers, academics, and eventually the general public thought about criminal behavior. Using Modernism as a lens, Stephen Brauer, examines how these disciplines shaped Americans’ understanding of criminality in the twentieth-century and how it provides a new way to think about culture, social norms, and ultimately, laws. In theory, laws act as articulations and codifications of a community’s beliefs, values, and principles. By breaking laws, criminals help us reinforce social norms by providing the opportunity to affirm what is believed to be right. By operating outside the bounds of acceptable behavior, the criminal serves as a useful figure to understand what is at stake in the culture, what the central issues of that culture might be, and what the fears and anxieties are. Criminality serves as a lens through which we can read ourselves and how the criminal operates as a cultural figure signifies the things we are negotiating in our lives and in our communities. Brauer focuses on two main concepts, central to the very concept of Modernism, to explore criminality: contingency, the idea that the individual might not be in control of their own deviance, and agency, the notion that the criminal makes a conscious choice to use crime as a means of economic success. The figure of the criminal is a powerful one and is key to exploring American twentieth-century culture. This book would be of interest to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, history, and many others.
In the Labyrinth of the KGB
Authors: Bertelsen Olga
Published: July 2024

This book focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, a milieu of writers who lived through the Thaw and the processes of de-Stalinization and re-Stalinization. Special attention is paid to KGB operations against what came to be known as the dissident milieu, and the interaction of Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians in the movement, their persona friendships, formal and informal interactions, and the ways they dealt with repression and arrests. This study demonstrates that the KGB unintentionally facilitated the transnational and intercultural links among the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers and their mutual enrichment. Post-Khrushchev Kharkiv is analyzed as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s–1970s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s–1970s was a period of intense KGB operations, “active measures” designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines domestically and abroad.